CLUB OPERATOR CREATED `DRUG SUPERMARKETS,' PROSECUTOR SAYS

Describing scenes of unbridled and flamboyant drug use, a Federal
prosecutor charged Wednesday that Peter Gatien, the prominent nightclub
operator, was a profit-driven Pied Piper who lured young people to his
clubs by turning them into "massive drug supermarkets."

"At nightclubs throbbing with music and flashing lights, thousands of young
nightclub patrons would take hallucinogenic pills and snort cocaine as if
it was candy at Halloween, and drug dealers dropped cocaine powder into the
hands of club patrons as if it was sugar," the prosecutor, Michele Adelman,
declared as Gatien's trial on drug racketeering charges opened in Brooklyn.

Gatien, she told the jury in Federal District Court, did not take a portion
of the profits from the drug sales -- and, in fact, sometimes even "paid
for drugs to be given away for free at his clubs" -- because his intent was
to "rake in" millions of dollars from the admission charges and the bar
proceeds from two of his popular Manhattan clubs, the Tunnel and Limelight.

But Gatien's lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, characterized the charges as riddled
with lies and distortions and based on "fabricated evidence" and on what
would be "coached and rehearsed testimony" of drug dealers and gangsters.

Brafman maintained that the witnesses would implicate his client to gain
leniency in their own cases, and he said the prosecution was willing to
give them big breaks for their help in snaring such a prominent figure on
New York City's night-life scene.

The lawyer insisted that Gatien (pronounced GAY-shen) had tried to keep
drugs out of his clubs, but that "dealers had infiltrated" the Tunnel and
Limelight just as they had infiltrated other clubs in the city.

"Some people used drugs in our clubs despite our best efforts," Brafman
said in a packed downtown Brooklyn courtroom where the spectators included
friends, associates and employees of Gatien's. "Some of the millions of
people who came to the clubs in the six years in this case came for drugs.
But it was not a part of a criminal conspiracy by Mr. Gatien."

As he spoke, his slender, 46-year-old Canadian-born client listened
intently at the defense table. Gatien, who often wears an eye patch because
of a hockey accident that cost him an eye when he was a teen-ager, did not
wear the patch Wednesday but instead wore dark eyeglasses, as he had
previously in court.

Gatien, who at one time was a leading nightclub impresario, is charged with
authorizing and financing extensive drug use from 1991 until 1996 at the
Tunnel, in a former meatpacking plant at 12th Avenue and 27th Street, and
Limelight, in a former church at Avenue of the Americas and 20th Street.

Although the clubs are in Manhattan, the case is being prosecuted in
Federal District Court in Brooklyn because many of the drugs used at the
clubs came from suppliers operating in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island,
according to the United States Attorney's office in Brooklyn.

If convicted of the drug racketeering and conspiracy charges, Gatien would
face up to 20 years in prison under Federal sentencing guidelines.

Ms. Adelman said that "probably the most widely distributed drug" at the
clubs was ecstasy, an illegal amphetamine derivative that produces euphoric
highs and mild hallucinations, but that cocaine was also sold. At some
parties at the Gatien clubs, one party promoter dropped ecstasy pills into
huge vats of punch, she said.

Gatien is also charged with giving marathon parties at luxury Manhattan
hotels at which he and his associates binged on cocaine and other drugs for
days at a time and where, Ms. Adelman said, Gatien was "very strung out."
She said the parties were to reward members of Gatien's drug enterprise.

But Brafman held that the parties came while Gatien was "struggling with a
personal drug problem" that he has since "dealt with" and had nothing to do
with the drug activities charged at the clubs. He said that the hotel
parties had been thrust into the case because of a lack of evidence tying
him to drugs at the clubs.

Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company