Lawyer Indicted on Drug Charges Recognized as Brilliant by Peers

Michael Abbell was widely recognized at the Justice Department as a reserved but brilliant Harvard-educated lawyer who preferred legal research on extradition cases to the noisy, combative life of a federal prosecutor.

While he loved his work and lived modestly with his family in the leafy Washington suburb of Bethesda, Md., friends said that he eventually recognized that he could earn more outside the government. So he resigned his post as chief of the Justice Department’s office of international affairs in 1984 and joined a private law firm.

Soon after, he began representing leaders of the Cali drug cartel, a Colombia-based ring of drug traffickers that he had once investigated. This week, that association led to his indictment on charges of drug conspiracy, racketeering and money laundering.

Abbell has yet to enter a plea in the case but his lawyer, Roy Black of Miami, said: “These lawyers defended clients charged with drug crimes aggressively. They did all the things lawyers are supposed to do and now they’re charged.”

Black added in an interview that “it is a frightening thought that lawyers can now be charged with crimes of their clients.”

Although many former associates in government expressed surprise Tuesday at Abbell’s indictment, others said that they saw early danger signals in what they described as his hardheadedness and consuming self-interest. “Mike may just have gotten drawn in over his head,” one remarked.

Others said that the corruption charges are “out of character” and may represent an overstepping by the federal government to tar the reputation of lawyers who defend drug kingpins.

But federal officials said that Monday’s indictment of Abbell, 55, and two other former Justice Department attorneys represented the most insidious of all crimes.

“This is not a case of lawyers falling into ethical gray areas,” U.S. Atty. Kendall Coffey of Miami said of the current charges. “It would be criminal if a truck driver had done these things.”

Officials charged that Abbell and two former assistant U.S. attorneys, Donald Ferguson and Joel Rosenthal of Miami, used illicit drug profits to keep some potential witnesses silent and fabricated evidence to obstruct prosecutions. All the alleged offenses occurred after the lawyers left government service.

The defendants are scheduled to surrender today in Miami and appear at a bond hearing. Rosenthal already has pleaded guilty to charges of money laundering.

A well-known criminal defense lawyer in Miami drug cases, Rosenthal represented a co-defendant in the drug prosecution of former Panama strongman Manuel A. Noriega in 1991-92. His client, Amet Paredes, pleaded guilty to lesser charges and testified against Noriega.

Abbell is accused of submitting false documents to protect assets of the cartel, of obtaining and using false affidavits in his representation of cartel leaders and of providing drug money to hire lawyers to defend other cartel members.

But, said one former federal prosecutor here:

“This case raises some very serious questions about the representation of high-level drug suspects and what you can and cannot do.

“Here, the same prosecutors who prosecuted the drug suspects themselves now are investigating and going after the lawyers who were their former adversaries by saying they were part of the conspiracy. That’s very dangerous territory.”

Abbell, despite his recognized brilliance, or perhaps because of it, always had difficulty getting along with his superiors at the department, former associates said.

The indictment, which charges more than 60 alleged drug dealers and others, describes the Cali cartel as a multinational corporation-style enterprise that has supplied about 80% of all the cocaine smuggled into the United States over the last 10 years--or nearly 250,000 tons. Prosecutors charged that the U.S. lawyers were used to protect its financial interests and help obstruct investigations here and in Colombia.

Special correspondent Mike Clary in Miami contributed to this story.