DRUG PURCHASE FOR BUSH SPEECH LIKE KEYSTONE KOPS
By Tracy Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 15, 1989
; Page C01
The first time, the alleged drug dealer never showed up. On the second
attempt, the undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agent wore a body
microphone that didn't work. Then the cameraman supposedly videotaping the
deal missed the action because he was assaulted by a homeless person.
"This is like a Keystone Kops thing," U.S. District Judge Stanley Sporkin
said to the witness, DEA special agent Sam Gaye. "You're in Lafayette Park.
You're trying to film this thing . . . . And then what happened?"
"There was this lady," Gaye explained, "who got up off the ground and said,
'Don't take my photo! Don't take my photo!' " The jury laughed.
So it went in federal court yesterday, as the government presented its case
against Keith Jackson, 18, the student charged with selling the bag of crack
cocaine that President Bush used as a prop in his Sept. 5 speech to the nation
about the war on drugs.
Jackson, who attends Spingarn High School and who has no arrest record, is
charged with four counts of distributing crack between April 24 and Sept. 1 at
three locations: Hechinger Mall, the 1900 block of East Capitol Street near
Eastern High School, and Lafayette Square. If convicted, he faces from 10
years to life with no parole.
His otherwise ordinary drug case became something out of the ordinary
because of the alleged Sept. 1 deal, a transaction DEA officials have said was
specifically set up to give the president a dramatic chance to show the
country just how easy it is to buy drugs, even across the street from the
White House.
Not that easy, as it turns out. Gaye's testimony yesterday, which was
offered on the second day of the government's case against Jackson, described
a drug deal that almost didn't happen and that was beset by logistical
difficulties even when it did.
Gaye said his boss asked him on Aug. 31 to set up the deal.
"He just walked into my office and said, 'Can you make a drug buy around
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Can you call any defendants you've been buying
from?' " Gaye testified, adding, "I had 24 hours to buy three ounces of
crack."
Presidential speech writers conceived the idea of having Bush hold up a bag
of crack during his anti-drug speech last summer while the president was on
vacation in Kennebunkport, Maine. When Bush endorsed the idea, White House
officials called a top aide to Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, who in turn
called the DEA and asked that a drug purchase be made near the White House to
fit the words in the president's speech.
Gaye was given the assignment. But the first dealer he set up a meeting
with didn't show. Then, Gaye said, he called one of his informers, who
allegedly arranged a meeting in the park for the next day with Jackson.
The DEA officials said that their efforts to get Jackson to the park almost
failed because Jackson didn't know where the White House was. "We had to
manipulate him to get him down there," William McMullan, assistant special
agent in charge of DEA's Washington field office, said last September. "It
wasn't easy."
DEA officials also had said the telephone conversation setting up the deal
was tape recorded. Yesterday, defense attorney Charles Stow told Sporkin that
he had asked the government for the tape, only to be told it did not exist.
Three other tape recordings of Jackson and undercover agents -- made on July
26, Sept. 14 and Sept. 18 -- have been entered into evidence.
A tape recording of the Aug. 31 phone conversation, however, "does not
exist, and I invite Mr. Stow to explore," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark
Carroll. Stow was not satisfied.
"I may be simple, but I'm not a fool," he protested, but Sporkin ordered
him to proceed.
Under cross-examination by Stow, Gaye described the Sept. 1 meeting, an
account that elicited muffled laughter from the jury. The laughter turned into
guffaws when Stow played the DEA videotape.
It begins with a shot of Lafayette Square on a summer day. Gaye can be seen
waiting on Pennsylvania Avenue; the White House and the usual hordes of summer
tourists are seen in the background.
Suddenly, just before the car with Jackson and the informer appears, an
angry-looking woman rears up from below the camera's field of vision, and
unintelligible shouts can be heard.
For the next few moments, the tape shows only high-speed, jerky shots of
grass and pavement and rapid pans of the horizon. By the time it focuses again
on Gaye and Jackson, the two men are in the far distance.
"Was the agent ever able to get close enough to film the transaction?"
Carroll asked Gaye.
"No sir," Gaye said. "He was too far away."
Gaye also testified that the deal did not go quite as planned: Instead of
handing the three-ounce bag of crack to Gaye, Jackson allegedly gave it to the
informer to hand to Gaye. A photo of Jackson leaving the car was taken after
Gaye took the bag and then handed $2,400 in cash to Jackson, Gaye said.
Staff writer Michael Isikoff contributed to this report.
Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington
Post and may not include subsequent corrections.
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