FEDERAL JUDGE SPARKS PROBE OF DEA AGENTS

They defied order on drug smuggling

A federal judge has sparked a criminal investigation into two Drug
Enforcement Administration agents who defied his order barring them from
using a convicted smuggler to import drugs from Mexico.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Fort Lauderdale, together with top DEA
investigators in Washington, are weighing whether to charge DEA special
agents Aldo Rocco of New York City and Sam Trotman of Camden, N.J., with
criminal contempt.

Rocco and Trotman also are under internal DEA investigation for using
convicted drug pilot Jimmie Norjay Ellard, 52, of Aventura.

In 1997, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, working with the DEA agents, asked
U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch to move Ellard's probation from Fort
Lauderdale to New York so they could use him as a paid informant.

Zloch denied the request in a confidential August 1997 memo that was
unsealed last week. Despite the judge's ruling, Ellard, a former deputy
sheriff from Fort Bend County, Texas, continued broadening his contacts with
high-ranking members of Mexican drug cartels.

When Ellard was arrested in September after flying 187 pounds of marijuana
into Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport, he told the South Florida drug
agents he was working for Rocco and Trotman.

But the DEA agents, who had worked with Ellard on several high-profile cases
that ended in 1995, denied any knowledge of his recent activity. Ellard
eventually produced a surreptitiously recorded phone conversation with Rocco
revealing the DEA agent was unofficially urging him to smuggle.

South Florida federal prosecutors quietly dropped the marijuana smuggling
charges last month after the 21-minute tape surfaced.

Mexican trip

Ellard's unauthorized foray into Mexico had the potential to become an
international incident and violated DEA policies regarding undercover work
abroad.

Most undercover operations are supposed to be cleared with DEA agents at the
U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, who share information with their Mexican
counterparts. Only in rare, highly sensitive situations, can agents avoid
the embassy and seek direct approval from DEA Administrator Thomas
Constantine's office.

The tape indicates Rocco knew he needed to distance himself from any
undercover drug buys Ellard might make in Mexico. They discussed several
scenarios for Ellard to stop in a friendly third country, such as Jamaica,
before delivering cocaine to DEA in New York.

Federal sources said Thursday that the DEA agents took extra measures to
hide their unauthorized relationship with the smuggler. The agents
registered Ellard's brother as a confidential informant, using him as a
conduit to conceal information Jimmie Ellard was developing with the Mexican
traffickers.

While agents are permitted to use this type of "subsource" relationship in
foreign countries, the practice is prohibited with domestic informants, said
DEA chief inspector Felix Jimenez in Washington. Jimenez, who oversees DEA's
Office of Professional Responsibility, is supervising the internal and
criminal investigations for Fort Lauderdale-based federal prosecutor Theresa
Van Vliet.

Ellard claims he was making major inroads into several big Mexican drug
organizations before his September arrest and was on the verge of
consummating a 26,000-pound cocaine deal with a high-ranking government
official in the border state of Sonora. Ellard also claims he gave the DEA
agents key information about a corrupt U.S. agent on a Mexican drug
trafficker's payroll and "holes" drug pilots had discovered in the
government's radar net along the southwest border. 5 years in prison

Zloch sentenced Ellard, who was facing up to 25 years on the dismissed
marijuana smuggling charges, to five years in prison last week for violating
probation.

Ellard was on probation stemming from his 1991 guilty plea to his leadership
in a smuggling ring that flew more than 27 tons of Colombian cocaine into
Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport between 1985 and 1988.

Ellard, who had fled to Colombia in 1985 to avoid a marijuana smuggling
charge in Texas, was living under a false name when he was arrested in March
1990 in Indian River County.

He started cooperating with federal prosecutors and agents and quickly
became one of the government's most valued informants in the drug wars.
Ellard provided key historical intelligence on the cartels, set up a
14,000-pound marijuana sting and showed agents how he regularly evaded the
government's airborne anti-drug radar system.

The fugitive ex-cop eventually befriended the major drug cartel leaders,
including the late Medellin cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar. Ellard later
testified he gave Escobar's hitman Dandy Munoz-Mosquera the know-how to blow
up a Colombian commercial airliner in 1989, killing 107 passengers to make
sure he erased two police informants on board.