DRUG DEALERS' PACT WITH AGENT GENERATES MANY CONVICTIONS

MIAMI - When Roberto Rodriguez was sentenced to 12 years in prison in
1989, apparently ending his reign as one of Los Angeles' premier
cocaine dealers, a federal judge in Los Angeles gave the Cuban
immigrant 30 days to get his affairs in order.

That month became nearly a decade.

Mr. Rodriguez jumped bond and headed south, embarking on an odyssey
through the drug underworld of the Americas that made him a target of
hit men in Los Angeles and Detroit, a drug supplier for street gangs
in Chicago, Detroit and New York, and a partner and friend to leaders
of the Cali cocaine cartel in Colombia.

Before it ended this year on witness stands and debriefing rooms in
four U.S. cities, that long journey through drug land for Mr.
Rodriguez and his Cuban-born stepbrother, Osvaldo Marcial, also
exposed official corruption in several U.S. cities.

Their testimony ultimately revealed the dark double lives of corrupt
police in suburban Michigan, a middle school vice principal dealing
crack cocaine in South Florida and a former federal prosecutor who
crossed the line for his cocaine overlords in Miami. And it led to
charges against two prominent businessmen in the Dominican Republic
accused of laundering cocaine profits.

In all, court documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times show that
these stepbrothers and Mark Minelli, the Drug Enforcement
Administration special agent who won their trust, account for more
than 40 convictions of major drug dealers and the officials who
protected them in Chicago, Detroit, New York and Miami.

In the more than 18 months since Mr. Rodriguez joined his brother in
secretly working for Mr. Minelli and the DEA, their undercover
operations led to the seizure of nearly $3 million in drug money,
aircraft worth $3 million and cocaine worth $12 million. Their
cooperation also helped solve a gangland slaying in Chicago and an
attempted murder in Los Angeles.

In short, the three men quietly became a singular wrecking crew
against the Colombian cartel's distributors and protectors in the
United States and exposed the depth and reach of cocaine corruption in
U.S. society.

The array of cases prosecuted with the help of the three men is "a
disturbing example of how the drug trade permeates every level of our
society, corrupting even those who we trust most," said Vincent J.
Mazzilli, chief of the DEA's Miami office.

The court documents in these cases, culled from federal courthouses in
the United States and their counterpart in the Dominican Republic,
also tell the story of a unique friendship between hunter and hunted
at the front line of the U.S. war on drugs.

It is the kind of relationship that many prosecutors and drug agents
say is the key to winning that war.

"Without someone like Rodriguez, we could not have uncovered the
nature of the corruption we had here," said Assistant U.S. Attorney
Joe Allen, who used Mr. Rodriguez this year to successfully prosecute
four senior police officers in the suburbs of Detroit for taking
drug-protection money.

"It would take years and years and years to make a case like this
without a person at . . . [Mr. Rodriguez's] level in the drug world,"
Mr. Allen said.

How the brash and enterprising Mr. Rodriguez reached that level,
bringing along his younger brother, helps explain how the drug
underworld has flourished in the Western Hemisphere.

Mr. Rodriguez's lawyer declined to make him available for an
interview. Mr. Marcial gave a brief interview outside a Miami
courtroom recently, confirming his undercover role and saying it has
left him feeling at peace - despite the price he said the drug
underworld has put on his head.

The brothers have told their story separately and in detail under oath
on witness stands during trials this year in Miami and Detroit. Those
details also were confirmed in testimony by Mr. Minelli, who has
supervised the brothers since they switched sides in the drug war.

Mr. Marcial testified at a trial in Miami in January that, unlike his
brother, he had immigrated to Los Angeles illegally - a yearlong
journey from Havana through Panama, Costa Rica and Mexico that cost
$4,000 before he finally crossed the U.S. border at Tijuana in 1987.

Mr. Marcial stated that Mr. Rodriguez started him in the drug business
soon after and he moved up through the ranks as his brother rose in
stature with the Colombians and the Mexican cartels that ship cocaine
into the United States.

The brothers later testified separately that their key contacts were
in Mexico, Chicago, New York and Miami. Those contacts were so
powerful that the U.S. government has spent more than $150,000
relocating at least 41 members of Mr. Rodriguez's family from
California and Colombia, according to court documents and testimony.

Mr. Rodriguez testified that the family members received death threats
after the brothers began cooperating with drug enforcement agents
following Mr. Marcial's capture in May 1995. Mr. Marcial was arrested,
along with four other people, while delivering 30 pounds of cocaine to
a suburban Miami apartment complex.

Through it all, the brothers later testified, official corruption was
the subtext that allowed their smuggling operation to flourish.

Mr. Marcial helped federal authorities win a guilty plea to drug
conspiracy charges from his prominent Miami defense lawyer, former
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Burnbaum.

Mr. Marcial, who testified that his attorney's actions helped persuade
him to cooperate with the DEA, also went undercover earlier this year
to expose drug trafficking by Willie Young, who was vice principal of
a middle school in Miami at the time. Mr. Marcial was the key witness
in September against Mr. Young, whom he described as a buyer and
seller of cocaine, before a federal jury that convicted Mr. Young of
drug trafficking.

It was Mr. Marcial's elder brother, though, who helped prosecutors win
the federal case against the four police officers in suburban Detroit.
Such cases, U.S. authorities say, are among the most difficult forms
of official drug corruption to expose because the law breakers are
also the law enforcers. The accused ranged in rank from sergeant to
deputy chief.

Mr. Rodriguez testified at the Detroit trial of one officer that the
four police officials from Highland Park and Royal Oaks Township had
taken a total of several thousand dollars in bribes to protect cocaine
shipments that Mr. Rodriguez brought into their towns for the
Colombians. The officer was convicted, and the other three pleaded
guilty to drug-conspiracy charges.

Asked during that trial why he decided to switch sides in the drug
war, Mr. Rodriguez gave the same answer his brother has offered: the
trust and friendship they forged with DEA agent Minelli.

For a year after Mr. Marcial's 1995 arrest and decision to work
undercover for the DEA, Mr. Rodriguez testified that he had several
telephone conversations with Mr. Minelli.

"The understanding between me and Minelli was that if he was to see
me, he was to arrest me," Mr. Rodriguez stated.

Meanwhile, Mr. Rodriguez added, he helped Mr. Minelli make a case
against Jorge Hernandez, his former partner, who had been arrested
with Mr. Marcial.

Finally, in January 1997, Mr. Rodriguez met Mr. Minelli for the first
time - for breakfast in North Miami Beach - and surrendered. For the
next two months, he worked undercover. Wearing hidden microphones and
cameras, he led Mr. Minelli to some of the top cocaine distributors in
the United States.

As Mr. Marcial said on the witness stand in Miami when asked why he
decided to cooperate with federal authorities: "I talked to my
brother, and I told him about Mr. Minelli. I convinced him to
surrender himself. . . . I told him I know an agent, and he is honest,
and he can trust him with his life."

Mr. Minelli, a 14-year veteran of the drug fight, recently was awarded
one of the Justice Department's highest honors for his lead role in
the case of Luis H. Cano, a Mexican-American businessman. He has won
high praise from state prosecutors in Chicago, who say he and his key
witnesses solved a contract murder there earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Mr. Marcial has pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy charges
and is scheduled to begin serving a nine-year prison term. And Mr.
Rodriguez is in federal prison serving a 17-year term for his two drug
convictions in Southern California, although his attorney, Mr. Minelli
and other federal agents have indicated that they will appeal formally
for a reduced sentence.

Looking back, Mr. Marcial, who also hopes to have his sentence reduced
in the coming weeks, said one of the best days of his life came when
he was arrested - and decided to "do the right thing."

"I'm glad I got caught," he told The Times. "That day they put the
handcuffs on me, something left my body - some kind of heavy stuff. It
was like, that's it. It's over."

Checked-by: Patrick Henry