EX-AIDE RECALLS A 1997 RACIAL PROFILING MEMO HE GAVE VERNIERO, THEN LOST
TRACK OF

TRENTON, March 27 - A former aide to Peter G. Verniero told a legislative
committee today that he gave Mr. Verniero data that he thought should be
passed along to federal civil rights investigators who were examining
racial profiling by the New Jersey State Police.

The former aide, Alexander P. Waugh Jr., now a Superior Court judge,
testified that when Mr. Verniero was state attorney general, he gave him a
memo dated July 29, 1997, with documents including findings from one state
police station that blacks and Hispanics accounted for nearly two-thirds of
the drivers searched by troopers.

When he later asked Mr. Verniero about the report, Judge Waugh said, "The
attorney general said to me, 'I don't know' or 'I haven't read it yet,' and
then I lost track."

Mr. Verniero, now a State Supreme Court justice, is the central character
at the hearings and is scheduled to testify for a full day Wednesday. Judge
Waugh was the latest in a series of witnesses who have told the State
Senate Judiciary Committee that Mr. Verniero was given documents that
should have alerted him to discriminatory practices by state troopers; the
committee is trying to determine whether he knew about such evidence before
he acknowledged in April 1999 that profiling was "real, not imagined."

At the time, Mr. Verniero had just been nominated to the Supreme Court and,
after brushing aside legal challenges and public complaints for two years,
was suddenly answering growing criticism of his office. He was also under
increasing pressure from the Justice Department.

He has maintained, both in testimony two years ago and in a 79-page
statement released yesterday, that he was given only sketchy statistics
from the state police and believed assurances that racial profiling was not
a problem.

The same committee questioned Mr. Verniero in earlier hearings on racial
profiling in April 1999, and again two weeks later, during his court
confirmation hearings. On those occasions, the senators asked Mr. Verniero
what he knew about evidence of profiling. Now the committee also wants to
know whether Mr. Verniero answered truthfully when he said the issue
"crystallized in my mind" only in the spring of 1998, when the shooting of
three black and Hispanic men during a stop on the New Jersey Turnpike drew
national attention.

Tonight, another former aide, First Assistant Attorney General Paul Zoubek,
testified that when they were preparing for the April 1999 hearings, Mr.
Verniero told him that he had only recently seen the damaging information
from the state police.

Mr. Zoubek acknowledged that the state's investigation of troopers' conduct
all but collapsed when Mr. Verniero was confirmed by the Senate and Mr.
Zoubek stepped in as acting attorney general. He said shutting it down was
his own decision.

In his testimony earlier, Judge Waugh repeatedly voiced misgivings about
his own inattention as he described documents ignored, edited or lost as
the attorney general sought to avoid a court challenge from the Justice
Department. At the time, Judge Waugh was in charge of answering the
department's requests.

"This situation is a public official's worst nightmare," he said. "In
hindsight, you see things that should have been done differently and I wish
I had done them differently."

The committee also heard today that the attorney general's office did not
give the defense requested data on traffic stops during the long-running
case in which a trial court found a "de facto policy" of profiling.

William H. Buckman, a defense lawyer in the so-called Soto litigation in
Gloucester County, testified that he asked prosecutors to produce any
documents favorable to the defense, as they are constitutionally required
to do, but received none of the reports on highway stops and searches that
were later found.

Mr. Buckman said he was told by the deputy attorney general handling the
case, John M. Fahy, that the information was not relevant or was too
burdensome to obtain.

The judge in the Soto litigation ruled in 1996 that the prosecution's
evidence obtained in searches of the defendants' cars was tainted by the
conduct of the state police in traffic stops on the turnpike.

The state brought an appeal before Mr. Verniero took office; he continued
to defend the police until 1999, when the appeal was withdrawn.

Judge Waugh, who was the first executive assistant attorney general, left
the office in January 1998, about a year and a half after the Justice
Department inquiry began. He said that after top aides discussed the
department's request for documents with Mr. Verniero in late 1996, "if I
got a document I thought he should see, I would send it to him."

Like the two deputy attorneys general who testified last week that they
received and passed along information from the state police, Judge Waugh
said the attorney general understood the importance of the data showing
that minority drivers were much more likely than whites to have their cars
searched.