GOVERNMENT DROPS CHARGES AGAINST CUNY PROFESSOR
ACCUSED OF USING A GRANT TO BUY HEROIN

Federal prosecutors last week dismissed their charges against an
anthropologist they had accused of embezzling grant money to buy
heroin for research projects. But government officials said they would
continue to investigate, and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice
in New York City, where the anthropologist is a tenured professor,
promised to pursue its own complaints in an effort to fire him.

The local U.S. attorney's office had investigated Ansley Hamid for two
years before finally charging him with embezzlement last October. Mr.
Hamid, an associate professor at the college, a campus of the City
University of New York, is an expert on drug cultures. He had denied
the government's charges that he used federal funds to buy heroin for
research subjects participating in his federally financed project,
"Heroin in the 21st Century." Mr. Hamid further denied that he had
used the drug himself and that he misspent federal money on, among
other things, pleasure trips abroad.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office said the government's
complaint had been dismissed for now, but could be reinstated later.
The spokesman would not elaborate.

Robert E. Diaz, a lawyer for the college, said he wasn't sure what to
make of the government's action. "It did come as a bit of a surprise
to us," Mr. Diaz said. But he added that the government's decision to
step back allowed the college to move forward with its administrative
complaints against Mr. Hamid.

The college stripped Mr. Hamid of his role as principal investigator
of the heroin project in 1997, soon after the embezzlement
investigation began. The college suspended him with pay about a year
ago, Mr. Diaz said. The lawyer would not discuss the college's
allegations against Mr. Hamid, except to say that they were similar to
the government's criminal charges.

Referring to the government's case, Paul Schechtman, Mr. Hamid's
lawyer, said: "They have told us this is not a final decision, and I
take them at their word. The good news for Professor Hamid is that
they've obviously decided that the case is less straightforward than
they thought it was initially."

Mr. Schechtman said he provided evidence to show the U.S. attorney
that "Professor Hamid told university authorities what he was doing
with this money, and no one was defrauded." He added: "I think we've
convinced them that there's a good deal of truth to what we're saying,
and I'm hopeful that they decide this is a case better not
reinstated."