MOB INFORMANT CHARGED WITH DRUG DEALING

NEW YORK (AP) -- Returning to the Brooklyn courthouse where he gained fame
as a turncoat mobster, Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano was accused
Thursday of being a common drug dealer.

Gravano -- looking solemn and pale -- stood silently before Magistrate
Simon Chrein to face conspiracy charges linking him to a $100 million
Ecstasy ring run by an Israeli living in Manhattan. Chrein ordered him held
without bail until a hearing Jan. 26.

Outside court, defense attorney Lynne Stewart said her Brooklyn-born client
told her he is innocent. "There is an irony here," she added, asserting
that the case against the former government witness is built solely on the
word of cooperators.

"I guess we can say that nobody knows better than the government about how
to use confidential informants," she said.

Gravano, 55, was transported under tight security from Arizona, where he
was accused in February of heading the state's largest Ecstasy syndicate.

Brooklyn prosecutors allege the former Gambino crime family underboss
bought 40,000 pills from the Israeli, Ilan Zarger, between late 1998 and
early last year. He also allegedly demanded a tariff on other designer-drug
sales on his turf, declaring, "I own Arizona."

Also charged in the Brooklyn case is Gravano's son, Gerard, 25, a
co-defendant in Arizona as well. Zarger pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy
charges carrying a possible 20-year prison term.

Zarger -- once caught on tape boasting that he wanted to "whack" Gravano --
has not agreed to testify for the government, his lawyer said.

Gravano's homecoming was a throwback to the glory days of high-drama mob
trials in Brooklyn, in which prosecutors won convictions against the likes
of Gambino boss John Gotti and Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, head of the
Genovese family. It also was a reminder of the mob's descent into a drug
trade it had once considered beneath it.