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In 1991, shortly after his 22nd birthday, Lee Lucas became an undercover agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. He quickly built international drug investigations stretching from his Miami base to the Bahamas, Brazil, Bolivia and beyond. Over the next five years, in every major case the long-haired undercover operative and son of a Cleveland cop worked, there were charges of deceit, perjury, missing drugs and money, questionable associations with criminal informers and allegations that sting operations he orchestrated were rife with fraud. At the time, none of the complaints resulted in any public disciplinary action, but several individuals who have complained about his tactics say they were recently questioned by U.S. Department of Justice officials investigating Mr. Lucas for his work in a Mansfield, Ohio, drug sting that led to 26 arrests. Twenty-three of those cases were dismissed or ended in acquittals after a federal informant who worked with Agent Lucas said he had framed innocent people. It's an old pattern with Agent Lucas. It dates to the mid-1990s, when Gary J. McDaniel, president of Pretext Services Inc., a private investigative firm in North Palm Beach, Fla., joined a group of defense lawyers and defendants who complained about Agent Lucas to the DEA, the Justice Department and members of Congress. Mr. McDaniel called the cases made by Agent Lucas "a textbook example of the abuse of power of which appear to be endorsed by senior management of the DEA." He recently was interviewed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Bruce Teitelbaum, the Pittsburgh prosecutor handling a special investigation of what went wrong in Mansfield. Complaints about Agent Lucas began shortly after his promotion from a non-law enforcement "aide" at the DEA. He was involved in a Bahamas-to-Miami bust of 423 kilograms of cocaine -- a haul valued at more than $10 million. The case led to a conviction and life sentence for Peter Hidalgo and several others. Mr. Hidalgo, who claims he is innocent, and his codefendants asked for internal investigations of Mr. Lucas when a cooperating witness said 23 kilograms of the cocaine had disappeared. They offered sworn statements from cooperating witnesses and surveillance tapes that documented informers discussing the missing dope. Yet Agent Lucas was cleared of impropriety in that case as well as another drug bust where defendants reported that 20 kilograms of cocaine had disappeared. In appeals, Mr. Hidalgo and his codefendants claimed Agent Lucas and his partner also illegally created an aura of fear around their cases by damaging cars at the crime scene, and then testifying the vandalism had been done by a Colombian hit team aiming to harm informers. The government later admitted it hid polygraph tests showing a key witness against Mr. Hidalgo was lying. "He's willing to break the law, whatever the cost is, in order to come away with a conviction," Mr. Hildago said during a telephone call Friday from the Federal Correctional Institution at Coleman, Fla. His appeals have been denied. Agent Lucas worked another high-profile Florida drug case in 1994, leading to a 27-year sentence for a Miami police officer. The defendant said prosecutors "knowingly exploited the perjured testimony of Agent Lucas from the inception of the investigation, repeatedly misrepresenting the facts." Agent Lucas was then teamed up with a German criminal and undercover operative named Helmut Groebe. Despite Mr. Groebe's criminal record dating to 1981 for various frauds around the world, he was paid more than $600,000 by the DEA to work with the young agent to build international drug cases. The largest was the arrest and extradition of a Bolivian anti-drug czar after the duo convinced American authorities that 500 audio and 14 videotapes implicated him in a drug conspiracy As Faustino Rico Toro sat in detention in Miami for five years awaiting trial, Pretext Services' Mr. McDaniel traveled to Bolivia for Mr. Rico Toro's attorney. Mr. McDaniel said he found no damning tapes, no physical evidence of drugs and no hidden assets that could be tied to his client. What he did find were four men who said Agent Lucas and his partner attempted to pay them $20,000 each for testimony. Federal prosecutors allowed Mr. Rico Torocq to plead guilty to a minor drug charge and in late 1996, sent him home. Post-Gazette Staff Writer Bill Moushey can be reached at bmoushey@post-gazette.com or at 412-263-1449. |
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We are careful not to duplicate the efforts of other organizations, and as a grassroots coalition of prisoners and social reformers, our resources (time and money) are limited. The vast expertise and scope of the various drug reform organizations will enable you to stay informed on the ever-changing, many-faceted aspects of the movement. Our colleagues in reform also give the latest drug war news. Please check their websites often. |
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