TROOPER SAYS HE WAS OSTRACIZED BY SUPERIORS BECAUSE OF REPORT

State Trooper Robert Monahan believed he had done the right thing when he
reported that federal law enforcement agencies had paid hundreds of
thousands of dollars to an informant suspected of drug running, money
laundering, and hiring other troopers to conduct illegal wiretaps. But
after making the allegations, Monahan says his investigation was
terminated, his supervisors were pressured to protect the informant, and he
languished without an assignment for a year and a half. Yesterday, a
Suffolk Superior Court jury heard opening statements in Monahan's civil
trial against the State Police, one of the first trials under the state's
whistle-blower law. Monahan, 40, of Dorchester, said he sued under the law
because he is still bitter over the coverup.

He is seeking an unspecified amount of damages.

''They tried to kill the messenger,'' he said. In his lawsuit, Monahan,
says federal officials pressured his superiors to protect the informant,
Michael L. Taylor, from prosecution. But his superiors maintain Monahan had
conducted a rogue investigation outside of his duties at the time and had
requested what became his next assignment - patrolling the Massachusetts
Turnpike.

The state whistle-blower statute, passed in 1994, is designed to protect
public employees who expose wrongdoing. The first verdict under the law was
returned earlier this month in Norfolk Superior Court. Monahan, a state
trooper since 1985, contends that while investigating an international
marijuana smuggling ring, he discovered that Taylor, a private detective,
had been paid as an informant by the Boston offices of the FBI, the Bureau
of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and
the US Customs Service.

Earlier this year, a Middlesex County grand jury indicted Taylor on
wiretapping and drug charges.

Taylor is awaiting trial. In his opening statement, Eric Maxwell, Monahan's
lawyer, said the trooper's superiors ''chose to try and destroy him,
branding him insane, unreliable, and incompetent and removing him from the
job he loved for political convenience.'' But Assistant Attorney General
James A. Sweeney, who is representing the State Police, told the jury that
Monahan's allegations were taken seriously. In court documents, Monahan
said Taylor had been arrested for several crimes but the charges had been
dropped under questionable circumstances. When he reported his finding,
Monahan said his superiors discredited it. Days after sending his report to
then-State Police Colonel Charles Henderson, Monahan said he was ordered to
terminate his investigation of Taylor. The trooper said he was directed to
speak to Paul V. Kelly, at the time the federal prosecutor who was handling
several drug cases in Boston in which Taylor was an informant.

According to court documents, Kelly allegedly said Taylor was a valuable
informant, and it would be embarrassing if he was indicted. After sending
his report, Monahan said he was increasingly ''ostracized and isolated'' by
State Police officials.

>From May 1994 until he was transferred in January 1995, Monahan said he
>''was assigned virtually no duties and was prohibited from working on any
>criminal cases'' and was the only Massachusetts State Police trooper
>subject to such an order. In an affidavit, then- Lieutenant Colonel
>Francis Reilly said Monahan, although assigned to the State Police's Asset
>Forfeiture unit, had continued working on a drug investigation left over
>from his assignment in the Suffolk narcotics unit during the late 1980s.

Reilly said he ordered the trooper not to work on investigations which were
outside the responsibility of the asset forfeiture unit.

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)