Defense in Fowlie Drug Smuggling Trial Questions Credibility of a Key Witness

Trying to discredit one of the government’s key witnesses against accused Orange County drug smuggler Daniel J. Fowlie, defense attorneys Friday focused on the witness’ history of lying to the IRS and dealing in hundreds of pounds of hashish.

Under cross-examination, Joseph M. Cooper, 45, who allegedly kept ledgers on drug shipments for Fowlie, told jurors in federal court that he had enjoyed a handsome share in millions of dollars in drug profits from Fowlie’s operation but that he never declared them on his income tax returns.

Furthermore, Cooper testified that he later pleaded guilty to two of 14 felonies involving his role in the smuggling operation. Government prosecutors dismissed 12 other counts as part of a deal to obtain information from Cooper and have him testify.

On Friday, Fowlie’s attorney, James D. Riddet, attacked Cooper’s credibility during a line of questioning that involved inconsistent statements, including Cooper’s declarations of earned income to the Internal Revenue Service.

In an earlier hearing, Riddet won a motion from U.S. District Judge Alicemarie H. Stotler to have Cooper’s tax forms available because Riddet claimed they would show that Cooper “lies and is a liar” when it is convenient.

When Riddet asked Cooper in court whether he had had a “pretty good year,” in 1983, Cooper said, “Yeah, it was good. It was great.”

But Cooper told jurors that on his 1983 income tax form, he declared that he only earned $53,000. In 1982, after arranging a drug deal that guaranteed Cooper $25 a pound on 5,000 pounds of marijuana smuggled in from Mexico, he testified that he put down $26,000 in earned income.

“Didn’t you make more than that?” Riddet asked.

“It was a lot more than that,” Cooper said.

Fowlie, 58, who was extradited from Mexico to Orange County in July, is being tried on 26 felony counts. According to a 32-page indictment, Fowlie is accused of income tax evasion, distribution of 53,000 pounds of marijuana, failing to report shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars overseas, and operating a continuing criminal enterprise. If found guilty, he faces a possible life sentence.

On Thursday, when questioned by a federal prosecutor, Cooper testified that Fowlie headed the operation. But under questioning by Riddet, Cooper told jurors that he, and not Fowlie, continued to run the huge drug operation while Fowlie was in Europe in 1983.

In fact, Cooper admitted that two of the operation’s biggest clients, Chris Reckmeyer, from Virginia, and Howard Rosin, from Hawaii, were brought into the smuggling ring not by Fowlie, but by him.

A second government witness, Clyde Ronald Gates, who is now a federal prisoner, told jurors Friday that he met Fowlie during a party in 1978 in South Laguna. The two became friends, rode motorcycles together and went skeet shooting on Fowlie’s 213-acre estate, Rancho del Rio.

Gates, who was a carpenter, said that Fowlie later hired him to build a warehouse on the ranch, which was located on the Orange and Riverside border. It was during construction, Gates testified, that Fowlie moved a heavy table to reveal a hole leading to an underground stairway beneath a slab of concrete.

“He (Fowlie) told me he had buried a container, a secret compartment as a secret room, or stash compartment,” Gates said.

The room, a metal tank, about 10 feet tall and 30 feet long, was used as an underground storage facility, hiding tons of marijuana, according to Cooper’s previous testimony.