INFORMANTS' WORLD INCREASINGLY TAINTED

NEW YORK - The informant's secretly recorded tapes -- exhibits 7A and
7B, as introduced by the prosecution -- incriminated the four
"gangstas" charged with the attempted murder of a Bronx police captain.

The defendants listened closely as the tapes were played in a pretrial
hearing. As the sound of their "confessions" filled the courtroom,
recalled defense attorney Lynne Stewart, two of the defendants began
laughing.

"Both of them said, 'That's not my voice,' " Stewart recalled. They
were right: An FBI expert soon determined all the "voices" belonged to
informant Julio "Tuco" Caraballo, a criminal with a rap sheet longer
than the 10-minute tape.

The doctored tapes provided by the would-be impressionist led to the
swift release of three of the defendants on the eve of their April
trial. (The fourth was already doing time on an unrelated case.)

"No one has ever heard an informant story that comes up to this
level," said Stewart, attorney for one of the suspects. "This guy was
a real grifter."

Yet in the ever-expanding brotherhood of CIs -- lawspeak for
confidential informants -- tales of sweet deals for bad guys with worse
intent are fairly commonplace.

The legal world is rife with stories of informant abuse: the mob
turncoat who fatally stabbed a coke dealer while under federal witness
protection, or the crackhead crook who tried to ruin a detective in
exchange for a reduced sentence.

Altruism is rarely an informant's motive; self-preservation generally
works. Caraballo hoped to duck drug charges and a jail term when he
went to work for police.

"They are many more informants than ever before," said Gerry Lefcourt
of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "They cut
deals to save themselves. And they have to make evidence up if they
don't have it." Why?

Stiff sentencing statutes with mandatory minimum terms have encouraged
more criminals to testify, defense lawyers say. Judges have no room
for discretionary sentences; they can only show leniency if the
prosecutor requests it in a form letter called a 5K-1.

"Every informant wants that 5K-1 letter," said veteran criminal
attorney Ron Kuby.

Informants, in many ways, remain the lifeblood of law enforcement. Not
even the harshest government critics advocate their
elimination.

Informants helped take down the American Mafia, played key roles in
infiltrating white supremacist groups and militias, and assisted in
cracking the World Trade Center bombing case (where the informant
collected a reported $1 million). But some critics, including an
ex-federal agent who handled scores of informants during a 25-year
career, complain that the current system -- which has grown into a
multimillion-dollar government business -- is heavily flawed.

"Criminal justice has now turned into a snitch-ocracy," Kuby said.
"There is wholesale reliance on the worst people, with the meanest of
motives, to secure justice for all."

Kuby's observation comes from experience. In 1995, Malcolm X's
daughter Qubilah Shabazz was arrested for allegedly hiring a hit man
to kill Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in revenge for his
alleged role in the 1965 assassination of her father.

Shabazz was implicated by informant Michael Fitzpatrick in return for
a $45,000 payment. But Fitzpatrick had a history of his own.

Once a bomber with Rabbi Meir Kahane's violent Jewish Defense League,
Fitzpatrick turned on his cohorts, became an informant and was
relocated to Minneapolis. Once there, he had three trips to rehab for
cocaine abuse. He was facing drug charges when he opted to flip
against Shabazz, a high school classmate.

Federal prosecutors offered 40 taped phone calls between Fitzpatrick
and Shabazz. The defense noted that 38 of them were initiated by the
informant. Entrapment, shouted Shabazz's lawyer (and Kuby's late
partner), William Kunstler, describing Fitzpatrick as "evil and
immoral." Even the case prosecutor labeled Fitzpatrick a "very
unsympathetic" witness.

Faced with Fitzpatrick's credibility woes, prosecutors struck a plea
bargain to keep him off the stand. In 1997, a judge simply dropped the
charges against Shabazz.

Yet Fitzpatrick's story was no anomaly.

Nicholas Mitola was a New Jersey mobster who flipped in 1987,
testifying against his cohorts in the Lucchese crime family. The
Witness Protection Program moved him to Spokane, Wash.

Once west, Mitola returned to his old ways: gambling and dealing
drugs. On Feb. 20, 1991, after a cocaine buy went bad, Mitola fatally
stabbed a drug dealer and stuffed his body into a car trunk.

Mitola did barely 28 months for the slaying before his release on Aug.
13, 1997. He then opened an espresso company that never produced a
single cup of joe, using it as cover for a $5-million-a-year gambling
ring, authorities said.

In April, former Black Panthers leader Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt received
a $4.5 million settlement from the FBI and the city of Los Angeles for
false imprisonment. Pratt, 53, spent 25 years in prison until his
conviction for murdering a California school teacher was overturned in
1997.

Pratt accused the FBI and police of hiding exculpatory evidence. But
the judge who finally granted Pratt a new trial cited the credibility
of a key government witness, Julius Butler. The witness, who claimed
that Pratt confessed to him, was a police informant.

Mike Levine, a retired federal agent who spent a quarter-century
handling informants, remembered the only instruction he ever received
for dealing with the folks he now dismissively calls "rats."

"Every undercover is told the same thing: Do not trust an informant.
They are habitual, congenital liars," Levine recalled. "And then an
assistant U.S. attorney stands up and tells a jury, 'Believe this
witness.' "