Rise and fall of top US agent

By ANDREW GUMBEL

LOS ANGELES - For 16 years, Andrew Chambers was the most successful informant America's anti-drug authorities ever had.

With a kind of streetwise quixotic brilliance he managed to persuade dealer after dealer across the country that he was one of them, luring them into major sales of cocaine or heroin while hidden surveillance cameras captured their every move.

In a career that took him from coast to coast, he made it possible for federal officials to make more than 400 arrests, seize 1.5 tonnes of cocaine and recover approximately $US6 million ($12 million) in assets.

Chambers would arrive in a strange town with a flashy car, a collection of cool gadgets and a suitcase full of designer clothes, and within a few weeks he would not only have earned the recognition and friendship of the sharks controlling the dope rackets, he would quite often have ensured they were slapped behind bars. That golden period, for him and for the Drug Enforcement Administration, is now over, however. Chambers has been discredited and dropped by the Government like a hot potato.

No, he did not steal money, or deal drugs on the side, or play double agent. Rather than own up in court to a handful of misdemeanours unrelated to his activities as an informant, he lied about his past almost every time he took the witness stand in a drugs case and thereby jeopardised every strand of evidence he ever collected.

Police records show that Chambers was charged a handful of times with misdemeanours ranging from domestic assault (hitting the woman who is now his wife) to forging a relative's signature on a loan application. Twice, in 1995 and 1998, he got himself arrested for soliciting prostitutes. And twice, in the late 1980s and again in the late 1990s, he was accused by the Internal Revenue Service of cheating on his taxes.

In the inflexible context of the American legal system, where lawyers eagerly jump on any irregularity by their adversaries to bolster their clients' cases, Chambers' refusal to confess to his misdeeds has triggered a full-blown Government scandal.

Did the DEA know he was lying on the witness stand, and, if so, why did it not try to stop him? Were taxes and prostitutes the only things that Chambers lied about, or was there something inherently suspicious about his extraordinary ability to nail drug dealers in whichever city he set foot? Was it appropriate for the Government to pay him more than $US4 million as his cut of the recovered assets and drugs?

"What I worry is that it is the tip of the iceberg," said Gerald Uelmen, an ethics professor at Santa Clara Law School in California. "How many other Andrew Chambers are there?"

Janet Reno, the Attorney-General, has pressed for an internal investigation and a number of prominent drugs cases are now being reopened and convictions thrown out. In March, 12 defendants in Florida had their cases dismissed, followed by three others in South Carolina. Another 11 appeals have been lodged around the country and are yet to be heard.

- INDEPENDENT