AN UNDERCOVER INFORMANT COMES UNDER SUSPCION

Andrew Chambers was a highly effective DEA operative.

Problem is, judges say he lied under oath.

Lying and criminal misconduct by a top undercover operative--a
streetwise pro paid $2.2 million by the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration--have put in jeopardy scores of felony convictions in
Los Angeles and around the nation.

The case of Andrew Chambers has forced the top drug agency to conduct
a painful reassessment of the way it handles its elite stable of
professional informants. Acknowledging lax oversight of Chambers, the
DEA has stopped using the informant and promised a series of reforms
to make sure future cases are not jeopardized by tainted undercover
operatives.

But that may just be the beginning.

Chambers' actions threaten to roil the courts for years to come, as
defense lawyers seek to reverse convictions in which he played a role.

Chambers, a 42-year-old former Marine from the St. Louis area, has
spent the last 16 years going undercover for the DEA and other law
enforcement agencies. Unlike other DEA informants, he wasn't put up to
the task to get out of legal trouble of his own. He wanted to go
undercover, he'd tell those for whom he worked, because it was just
the right thing to do.

Chambers soon became known as the best around, court and law
enforcement records show. He is believed to have worked on more cases
and served the DEA for more years than any other full-time paid informant.

He worked more than 300 cases in Los Angeles and a dozen other cities,
resulting in 445 arrests and the seizure of tons of cocaine, heroin
and methamphetamines as well as $6 million in assets, DEA records show.

"Andrew Chambers is a hero who has put his life on the line many
times," said Terry Parham, chief spokesman for the DEA in Washington,
D.C. He said Chambers always wanted to be an actual DEA agent but
couldn't because he lacked a college degree.

One reason for Chambers' effectiveness was that he passed himself
off--to his DEA handlers, prosecutors and juries--as an upstanding
citizen with no criminal background. But a tenacious public defender
in Orange County began asking questions that led to the disclosure
that Chambers has been arrested at least six times and was convicted
of soliciting sex from an undercover police officer and impersonating
a DEA agent.

At least two judges have publicly labeled Chambers a liar. Assistant
U.S. Atty. Stephen Wolfe in Los Angeles told a federal judicial panel
that Chambers is "undefendable." And the DEA itself has sanctioned
Chambers for lying on the stand, docking him $5,000 in one case when
it found that he had lied in another, records show. Chambers could not
be reached for comment.

According to some estimates disclosed in court filings, a variety of
law enforcement agencies have paid Chambers a total of $4 million for
his work. Chambers' payments were based--at least indirectly, the DEA
concedes--on arrests and seizures.

On assignment from the DEA, he would drive into one city after
another, typically in a fancy car, meet the street hustlers, set up
deals and then help drug agents bust everyone involved, DEA and court
records show.

Many times the DEA would arrest people in controversial "reverse
sting" operations, after they bought what they thought were illegal
drugs from Chambers--a practice that defense lawyers say borders on
entrapment. Such undercover efforts are considered dangerous but
essential by the DEA in conducting the federal government's war on
drugs.

Authorities say these tactics allow them to gain access to the
underbelly of the drug trade.

Chambers seemed perfect for the assignment: He's a fast-talking,
street-savvy chameleon who can easily pass for a gang member or for a
Mercedes-driving drug kingpin, court papers show. Sometimes he says
he's black, other times a Latino named Rico or a host of other aliases.

Chambers' information and testimony have helped put away dozens of
drug dealers and other criminals, including two men the federal
government wanted to send to death row in California under a federal
murder-for-hire statute.

However, records show that Chambers has lied in numerous cases about
his background, his use of aliases and other personal information.
What's more, the DEA continued to use Chambers long after warnings
that his effectiveness as an informant could be compromised, according
to law enforcement and court documents.

DEA agents in some cases never told defense lawyers, judges or the
government's own prosecutors about Chambers' criminal record or
credibility problems. Chambers has been convicted and fined for
soliciting an undercover Colorado police officer for sex in 1995, and
for impersonating a DEA agent to try to wrangle out of that arrest.

Chambers has also been arrested on suspicion of forgery, theft,
domestic assault and soliciting prostitution, according to court and
law enforcement records. DEA officials confirmed that Chambers has
been arrested six times, not including traffic arrests.

DEA agents interceded on Chambers' behalf when he got into legal
trouble while on their payroll.

Court and legal records show that one DEA agent persuaded a Kentucky
judge to recall arrest warrants issued for Chambers in 1985, and
another posted bail for Chambers in 1998 after an arrest in Dallas on
suspicion of soliciting an undercover officer posing as a prostitute.
That case was quietly dropped, even though Chambers never showed up
for his required court appearance.

Authorities were required by law to fully disclose such matters to
attorneys defending suspects accused in Chambers' many drug cases.

That failure has called into question many cases in which Chambers
worked for the DEA, particularly in instances in which he testified,
say defense lawyers and legal experts.

In a Hillsborough County, Fla., case last June, Chambers disclosed in
a deposition that he had been arrested once for soliciting a prostitute.

"Is that the only time you've ever been in trouble?" asked defense
lawyer Paula Adams.

"Yes," Chambers testified.

The DEA "deactivated" Chambers from the ranks of its informants in
February. It has also promised to fully investigate his operations and
reform the way it handles its $20-million-a-year informant program.

"There are a number of things that we feel need to be reviewed," said
the drug agency's Parham.

Accusations of Repeated Lies

Parham, however, defended the use of Chambers, saying it is nearly
impossible to breach the highest levels of the drug trade without
streetwise operatives, many of whom have less-than-impeccable
backgrounds.

Parham said the DEA has found at least three cases in which Chambers
lied outright on the stand about his background.

Defense lawyers said Chambers has lied a lot more than
that.

Chambers "has lied under oath virtually every time he has been put on
the witness stand," wrote H. Dean Steward, a federal public defender
in Santa Ana, in a formal complaint to the DEA in 1998.

Chambers, he contended, "lies about his criminal history, his
educational background, his aliases, where he is from, and just about
every personal detail you could imagine."

The disclosures about Chambers "should reopen past cases where he has
been used," said Gerald Uelmen, a professor at Santa Clara University
Law School's Center for Applied Ethics. "If we have an informant whose
credibility is suspect, I would think the government has an obligation
to go back and reexamine prior cases, especially if there are
allegations of lying."

That could add up.

In Los Angeles alone, Chambers was paid $721,388.33 for a variety of
cases over more than a decade, DEA records show.

The DEA refuses to discuss Chambers' role in specific cases, but court
records and interviews show he worked frequently in Southern
California. He went undercover for one multi-agency task force
investigation dubbed Operation Desert Stop that resulted in the arrest
of 82 defendants in a nationwide drug trafficking ring, and in many
convictions.

But Chambers also had problems here. According to a 1989 memo by
Assistant U.S. Atty. Ellyn Marcus Lindsay, Chambers "is not working in
Los Angeles anymore" because of a dispute between him and his DEA
handler over "how Mr. Chambers spent and accounted for the money he
was paid."

DEA officials in Los Angeles had no comment on why they continued to
use Chambers for years after that. Some legal experts criticized the
payment of Chambers based on his success, saying such practices
encourage professional informants to ensnare as many people as
possible in their investigations.

"The reward system that the DEA has been allowed to set up, giving
informants an incentive to create information, has become a tremendous
problem," said Uelmen, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles who
worked often with informants.

Of particular concern is whether Chambers lied about his troubled
background to bolster his credibility and continue getting paid by the
DEA, according to Uelmen and several defense lawyers.

"What I worry is that it is the tip of the iceberg.

How many other Andrew Chambers are there?" asked Uelmen. The DEA's
continued use of an informant with such credibility problems, he said,
"is a pretty sad reflection on the degree of supervision the DEA is
exercising over its informants."

The effort to challenge the DEA's use of Chambers is being led by
lawyers for Edward Stanley Jr. and Daniel Ray Bennett, the first two
men whom federal prosecutors in Los Angeles wanted to send to death
row under a 1994 federal murder-for-hire statute.

By voluntarily pleading guilty to murder in the 1996 slaying of an
alleged heroin ring accomplice in Las Vegas, Stanley and Bennett
avoided the gas chamber.

Now, their lawyers say, the two men deserve a chance to go to trial,
or have their convictions overturned, based on the fact that the DEA
used information provided by Chambers to get the wiretap used to
convict them. That wiretap never would have been approved, lawyers for
both men contend, if the judge had known of Chambers' true background.

Chambers' actions "seriously undermine the legitimacy of the
convictions" and require, at the very least, a review of all the cases
in which he played a role, said David Chesnoff, Stanley's lawyer. "I
think every judge and every jury should have known that the person
being used to put people in jail has been found by courts across the
country to be a [liar]."

Minneapolis defense lawyer Jonathan Peck is preparing an appeal for
convicted drug seller Ralph "Plukey" Duke and plans to attack
Chambers' credibility, saying the issue never came up during
prosecution. He also contends that his client was set up, essentially,
by Chambers.

"Hundreds [of cases] might be looked at," said Peck, "and I think they
certainly should be." Some defense lawyers contacted by The Times said
that, had they known of Chambers' background and propensity to lie,
they would have been much less likely to cut a deal for a plea bargain.

And in the relatively few cases that went to trial, they contend, they
would have attacked Chambers' credibility to the point where juries
wouldn't have believed anything he said.

It will take years for the impact of Chambers' activities to become
known, as judges one by one assess whether he irreparably tainted
individual cases. The federal standards for reversing a case based on
a tainted witness are high, and some legal experts said many defense
lawyers will have a tough time saying Chambers alone swayed the outcome.

Public Defender's Crucial Role

Chambers' relationship with the DEA might never have become public
without the dogged detective work of Steward, the federal public
defender in Santa Ana.

Steward, who had no comment for this story, was in the initial stages
of defending Bennett when he became suspicious of Chambers.

The DEA refused to provide Steward with information about who Chambers
was or how much he had been paid. So Steward filed a Public Records
Act lawsuit demanding that the DEA open its files on Chambers.

In April 1998, Steward filed a complaint with the DEA's Office of
Professional Responsibility, alleging misconduct so serious that the
DEA should never again use Chambers in an inves tigation. But that
didn't happen. Last summer, the head of the DEA's internal affairs
office promised Steward he would review the material the public
defender had sent in and would, if the allegations were true, ensure
that the DEA stopped using Chambers, according to one of Steward's
court filings.

That didn't happen either.

In a July 22 ruling, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler condemned the
DEA's continued stonewalling with regard to its relationship with Chambers.

Citing "extensive government misconduct," she ordered the agency to
give Steward the information he wanted. "Furthermore, it is clear from
the far-reaching and serious consequences of the activities and
collaboration of Chambers and DEA that there is a substantial public
interest in exposing any wrongdoing in which these two parties may
have engaged," Kessler wrote.

In September the DEA launched an internal investigation and restricted
the use of Chambers. But it kept using him, Steward alleges in court
papers.

Subsequently, the National Law Journal and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
published articles giving some of the details of Chambers' background
and his role in cases.

On Jan. 27, Steward wrote to Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, asking that she
get personally involved.

"In the 18 months since I filed my original complaint, [DEA officials
have] talked to me two or three times, and done utterly nothing,"
Steward wrote. "To my shock, Chambers continues to work for the DEA to
this day."

In the past few weeks, four drug trials in Florida have been postponed
because defense attorneys and even some prosecutors say they were
never told about the government witness, Chambers.

In February, DEA administrator Donnie Marshall ordered Chambers
"deactivated," saying agents cannot use him until an internal
investigation is complete.

Meanwhile, the DEA says it is revamping its procedures for using
informants like Chambers.

A series of mistakes, incomplete files and "communications
breakdowns," Parham said, allowed DEA field agents to use
Chambers--and other informants--without knowing that they had criminal
backgrounds.

That had a ripple effect in which prosecutors and defense lawyers "in
many cases" also didn't know, he said. The DEA is now instituting a
rule forbidding an informant who has lied on the stand from being used
again without special exemption, Parham said, and it has vowed to
create central files that will include any information about an
operative's criminal record.

DEA agents have always been required to put an informant's criminal
record in their file, "but that wasn't always done. . . . In a lot of
cases the agents who were responsible for advising the prosecutors
were not aware of Mr. Chambers' background," Parham said.

That central file also will include a synopsis of what an operative
did in prior cases, and a prosecutor's assessment of whether the
operative was truthful in his testimony.

Parham praised Chambers as a man "willing to risk his life" in many
dangerous situations.

But is Chambers so good that the DEA should help him out when he runs
afoul of the law?

"There are occasions where a determination is made and authorization
is provided to assist with the adjudication" of certain cases, Parham
said, "because we still need him to continue with our
investigation."

Nevertheless, Parham said several cases in which defense lawyers have
sought appeals because of his involvement already have been rejected.

Chesnoff and others say there are far better test cases, but Parham
said, "We'll have to wait and see what happens in court."