DEA PAID INFORMANT $2 MILLION, REPORT SAYS

Background May Jeopardize Cases

The federal court file -- U.S. versus Terrell King -- reads like a routine
drug arrest in the annals of South Florida crime-busting: A paid informant
arranged a buy in a hotel parking lot near Miami International Airport. Drug
agents and Metro-Dade police swooped in and arrested King and another man,
seizing 11 kilos of cocaine in October 1999.

But among the file's many pages is this revelation: Over the years, the Drug
Enforcement Administration has paid the informant, who earned $5,000 in the
King case, a total of $2,222,478.33.

That's correct. More than $2.2 million.

The Two Million Dollar Man is Andrew Chambers, 42. On and off the drug
agency's payroll since 1984, he is officially described by the DEA in
Washington as the second-highest paid informant in agency history.

Since Feb. 2, he has also been under suspension -- "deactivated," as the DEA
calls it -- amid controversy stirred by disclosures that he had lied about
his criminal background while working as a source in up to 291 drug cases
from coast to coast.

The revelation first came up in a California case where Chambers was a
witness in a murder-for-hire trial. Federal public defender H. Dean Steward
of Santa Ana, Calif., who calls Chambers the DEA's "most notorious and
well-paid informant," documented several instances where Chambers failed to
mention a criminal record in drug trials.

And it will probably come up again Monday in Miami at a status hearing on
the federal drug charges U.S. Attorney Tom Scott's office is bringing
against King, 22, and Donald St. Plite, 23.

Scott's spokeswoman Rosa Rodriguez said the federal prosecutor's office
would not discuss whether the DEA's decision to suspend Chambers would have
any affect on the King-St. Plite prosecutions. Case prosecutor Matthew Dates
also was forbidden from discussing the case, she said.

But at the local level, the Chambers case reveals the shadowy world of paid
secret informants, who law enforcement officers see as a necessity to
infiltrate the crime world and get convictions.

Chambers' Testimony

How many other Miami-based cases might rely on Chambers' testimony is
unclear. Ever since Chambers' suspension, Miami's DEA office has referred
all questions about the informant to Washington. There, chief DEA spokesman
Terry Parham says people such as Chambers get paid for a special service:

"His skill is he can insert himself into these violent communities, at DEA
direction, to gather evidence for state and federal prosecutions," Parham
said. "It would be extremely, extremely difficult without people like him"
to make cases, he said.

"What he ends up doing is putting his life on the line to assist us with
getting drugs off the street. There are some who would say he is basically a
hero."

Since he started with DEA in 1984, Parham said, Chambers' work has resulted
in:

* 445 arrests.

* the seizure of about 1,200 kilograms of cocaine, 4 kilograms of heroin, 3
kilograms of crack cocaine, 4 kilograms of methamphetamine, 1 gallon of PCP.

* the seizure of about $6 million in assets, including numerous weapons and
vehicles.

He's A Freelancer

Not an agent, instead a freelancer of sorts, the man identified as the
"confidential source" in Miami federal records also has a criminal past that
includes a fugitive arrest in St. Louis in 1979, a second-degree forgery
arrest in Paducah, Ky., in 1985 and soliciting prostitution as well as fraud
arrests in Denver in 1995.

When it was suggested to Parham that $2.2 million was an impressive take for
Chambers' work, he replied "you're talking 15, 16 years." He described
Chambers as the second-highest paid informant in DEA history, but was unable
to identify the first, or say how much that person was paid.

And he added that while it is true Chambers received $2.2 million from DEA,
$223,414 is to cover expenses and $59,235 is listed as a loan -- to let him
buy drugs as part of his informant work. Doing the math: that's $1,939,829
after expenses or, averaged over 16 years, $121,239 annually.

Tampa defense attorney Guillermo Gomez says Chambers' previous problems with
the truth pose a problem for prosecutors. His client, Gilbert Manney, faces
trial in Hillsborough Circuit Court for drug trafficking -- after, Gomez
says, Chambers posed as a cocaine peddler and created "a reverse sting."

"Of course we realize that confidential informants have to be used," Gomez
said. But, "if you had trouble with the truth in the past, that puts your
whole investigation in jeopardy."

In The Dark

Since federal enforcement was unaware that he had perjured himself from time
to time, Gomez wonders, what else don't they know about their Two Million
Dollar Man?

"He hasn't been clear regarding his past convictions," Gomez said. "That's
very troubling. You have to be very careful with the incentive structure you
put forward. The question is how careful have they been?"

As a result of defense attorneys' investigations, the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch launched a four-month investigation into Chambers last year --
and reported he had worked not only for DEA but also for the FBI, U.S.
Customs Service, U.S. postal inspectors, Internal Revenue Service, Secret
Service and state and local police.

"By one estimate, his pay from all sources may total as much as $4 million,"
it reported in January.

Sometimes driving a flashy sports car, sometimes calling himself "Rico," he
infiltrated American narco-culture in cities such as St. Louis, Los Angeles,
New Orleans, Atlanta, even in Nassau, the Bahamas.

According to the paper, a 1994 Bahamian bust netted DEA agents $10 million
in drug assets and property. Chambers received $200,000, a sort of
consulting fee.

The Post-Dispatch described Chambers, born in Jackson, Miss., as a high
school dropout who sought to join the DEA in the 1980s as an agent. Although
he had a three-year stint in the Marines, he did not meet the four-year
college degree educational requirements.

He was instead offered work as a paid informant, a career that saw him
crisscrossing the country to work for local, state and federal officials --
until his career came careening to a halt last month with the DEA
suspension.

Career On Decline

A Justice Department official said Friday that Chambers DEA career was on
the decline even before the newspaper examination. Tighter restrictions were
put on him in September, said the official, who did not want to be named.

But the decision to suspend him came after Attorney General Janet Reno read
the St. Louis newspaper's investigation and contacted top officials at the
DEA.

"She was interested in this issue," the Justice Department officials said.
"She was very concerned about it."

Asked for guidance on whether Chambers-involved cases could collapse around
the country, the official said there was no such available evidence. He did
concede that prosecutors might be studying cases in the pipeline and
thinking about whether to proceed with prosecutions where a snitch with a
history of perjury is a witness.

Chambers was also listed as an informant in a Tampa drug case last year, in
which all four suspects pleaded guilty rather than go to trial. One defense
lawyer said the case was built around many witnesses -- not only Chambers --
so there has been no talk of upsetting the guilty pleas there.