SECRET EVIDENCE SHOWS HOW HE HELPED DEA

Agents say they can't afford to let "trade craft techniques' be revealed
Informant says secret evidence shows how he helped DEA

The judge postponed sentencing Javier Cruz so his defense lawyer could
review the information that might earn Cruz a lighter sentence.

Some of the information that will show a federal judge how much help
cocaine trafficker-turned informant Javier Cruz gave to drug agents could
jeopardize national security if it were made public, prosecutors say.

Cruz's attorney asked U.S. District Judge James Turk on Monday to look at
certain evidence privately before deciding Cruz's sentence. A federal
prosecutor said he would be reluctant to turn over the evidence if there
were a chance it would become public.

The judge postponed Cruz's sentencing from June 1 to July 22 so the defense
attorney could review the information.

A federal drug agent said he will have to review his files to see if there
is any such secret material that would be considered helpful to Cruz's case.

Don Lincoln, a special agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration,
told the judge that the evidence might include secret law-enforcement
methods that the U.S. government had promised "our allies" not to disclose.

"Basically, this is national security-type stuff," Lincoln said in a
meeting in Turk's chambers before a courtroom hearing.

Cruz's attorney, Bill Cleaveland, told the judge that the benefit to Cruz
of keeping the information secret "outweighs the public's right to know."

Cruz spent three or four years working undercover in Colombia for the DEA
beginning in 1992. He agreed to become an informant to work off a life
sentence after getting caught smuggling cocaine through Roanoke in 1991.

The attorneys did not specify what kind of law-enforcement techniques might
be disclosed in the evidence, but some of the evidence could refer to
results Cruz has been credited with that have never been mentioned in court.

For instance, Cruz said in a 1996 interview -- the only one he gave before
going into hiding -- that he had given the DEA the location of several
cocaine-processing laboratories in Colombia that were then bombed. He also
provided the government with pictures of submarine-type watercraft that he
said Colombian traffickers were using to smuggle cocaine through U.S. waters.

Prosecutors are required to turn over to the defense any evidence that
tends to exonerate a defendant. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Mott said
the government does not have to reveal "trade craft techniques" except
under narrow circumstances.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski