Ex-Agent Says Gold Smuggled Into LAX

A former federal drug agent described Friday how he and a fellow agent were able to smuggle gold bullion past U.S. Customs at Los Angeles International Airport by using a private security door to which one of the agents had obtained a key.

In this manner, former Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Darnell Garcia was able to covertly bring into the United States thousands of dollars in gold for an Italian-based firm between 1983 and 1987, John Jackson told a federal court jury in Los Angeles.

“Do you know how he (Garcia) came into possession of such a key?” asked U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr., who is presiding over Garcia’s corruption trial.

“I do not,” Jackson replied.

Gold smuggling is the principal defense Garcia is raising to justify the $3 million he deposited in European bank accounts between 1983 and 1988 while, during most of those years, he was a DEA agent in Los Angeles.

Garcia, 43, of Rancho Palos Verdes, was arrested in 1988 along with Jackson, 41, of Claremont and former DEA Agent Wayne Countryman, 47, of Walnut on charges of drug trafficking and money laundering. The case has become the DEA’s worst scandal.

In August, Jackson and Countryman pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the government and testify against Garcia, whose trial began last week.

Besides drug trafficking and money laundering, Garcia is charged with supplying a fugitive drug dealer with confidential DEA information.

On Thursday, Jackson’s dramatic testimony outlined a series of thefts by the three agents of drugs and seized cash in a crime rampage that began in 1983.

So bold were the three, Jackson testified, that they stole narcotics and drug money from the DEA’s evidence vault and cashier’s office at the agency’s Los Angeles headquarters in the World Trade Center.

Jackson also said he even cut, packaged and shipped narcotics right at his desk at the DEA’s headquarters.

On Thursday, defense attorney Mark Overland cross-examined Jackson, eliciting testimony that Jackson lied to a DEA investigator just four days after his agreement last August to cooperate with the government and tell the truth about his role in the scandal.