Author: Kate Zernike, Globe Staff

SPECIAL REPORT

Weld's record on drugs runs counter to image

By Kate Zernike, Globe Staff, 08/17/97

It began with an aside spoken by a conservative, secondterm congressman
from Indiana at a littlenoticed hearing on Capitol Hill three months ago.

The nomination of William F. Weld as ambassador to Mexico was an
''embarrassment,'' said Representative Mark Souder; after all, Mexico is
the entry point for 80 percent of this country's illegal drugs, and Weld
supports the medicinal use of marijuana.

Souder and 11 other Republican congressmen put their criticisms in writing
to President Clinton. Then an antidrug group run out of a Hanover, Mass.,
living room joined in, papering Capitol Hill with provocative headlines
about Weld's ''propot'' stance, his face beaming from the cover of High
Times, the counterculture magazine of the prolegalization movement.

The Weld record on drugs

Senator Jesse Helms says William Weld is too soft on drugs to serve as
ambassador to Mexico. Here is a partial look at the record:

Drug task force indictments

The New England region of the Organized Crime Enforcement Drug Task Force
brought fewer indictments than nearly all of the 13 national regions during
the period that included Weld's time as US attorney.

1. MidAtlantic 722 indictments
2. Great Lakes 722 indictments
3. Southeast 689 indictments
4. North central 535 indictments
5. Gulf coast 417 indictments
6. South central 366 indictments
7. Northwest 289 indictments
8. Mountain states 281 indictments
9. NYNew Jersey 273 indictments
10. Southwest burder 221 indictments
11. New England 162 indictments
12. L.A.Nevada 102 indictments

Indictments and information leading to charges being filed from FY83 to
FY88. Weld was US attorney in New England from 1981 to 1986.

And soon, Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, the stubborn and
influential chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who first
simply said Weld was ''too looselipped'' to be an ambassador, latched onto
the softondrugs charge as the reason even a hearing was unwarranted.

Now, as Weld tries to argue that the Helmsled opposition is driven by
political, cultural, and ideological differences, his foes insist the issue
is drugs.

But an indepth examination by the Boston Globe of Weld's drug record as US
attorney in Massachusetts from 1981 to 1986, as head of the criminal
division of the Justice Department from 1986 to 1988 and as governor from
1991 to 1997, shows his critics' allegations are largely baseless.
Prosecutors, drug enforcement agents, and police officers who worked with
Weld over the years universally praise his record on enforcing, and
strengthening, drug laws. They say they are surprised Weld's drug record is
being questioned at all, and note that it has never emerged as an issue
before.

But Weld's support for medicinal uses of marijuana and clean needle
programs is his most stubborn problem as he continues his fight to get a
hearing before Helms. Moreover, the image the former governor has burnished
as the laidback, Grateful Deadadoring social libertarian, helps make the
allegation that he is soft on drugs seem reasonable even if his entire
record does not.

Weld Going to Washington William Weld packs up his Boston office in
August 1986 (Globe File Photo / Janet Knott)

The softondrugs rap against Weld, who declined to be interviewed for this
report, takes root in the posture he assumed as US attorney in Boston.

Coming into office in 1981 without any experience as a prosecutor, he
earned a national reputation by fighting highprofile public corruption
cases. Associates who arrived in his office were given a handbook with
Weld's priorities: Public corruption was number one. Drugs were second,
ahead of fraud and financial crimes. But critics say those priorities
suffered as Weld devoted disproportionate energy and resources to what they
call his obsessive pursuit of former Boston Mayor Kevin H. White.

During his campaign for governor in 1990, Weld defended his focus on public
corruption, saying it was a bigger problem than drugs. Yet in a memo
prepared for his Justice Department superiors when he took office as US
attorney, Weld acknowledged that local law enforcement officials had
''listed narcotics as the worst single crime problem in Massachusetts.''
Weld himself wrote of ''substantial'' heroin problems in the state's urban
ethnic areas, and cocaine distribution ''in virtually epidemic proportions.''

A question of comparison

As Exhibit A in their case against prosecutor Weld, his past and current
critics cite a report showing that a regional drug task force he headed
came in 12th out of 13 in the United States in the number of drug
prosecutions from 1983 to 1988.

Weld had left office for the last two years of the report, which included
onlytask force cases and not other US attorney drug prosecutions. And a
closer look at the study shows several flaws in the interpretation of its
data. The statistics do not adjust for regional differences in the
availability of drugs, or population. The New York region, for example, had
twice as many people as New England, yet only 111 more charged with drug
offenses. Because of such factors, the study explicitly warns against
ranking the regions. Any comparisons, it says, are ''methodologically naive.''

And despite Weld's own written characterization of the drug issue as
severe, independent statistics strongly suggest that drugs were not as much
of a problem in New England as in other regions during his time as US
attorney. Nationally, cocaine use soared from 1982 to 1985, with the number
of emergency room visits because of problems with the drug more than
doubling. But that increase was in other urban areas, not Boston. In
Detroit, for example where the regional task force had the highest number
of people charged with drug offenses admissions to emergency rooms
because of cocaine increased nearly fivefold between those years, to
1,083; in Chicago, nearly fourfold to 748. Meanwhile, the number of
admissions in Boston increased by 63 cases, to 320.

''Any differences were attributable to vagaries of the region, not to
attitude,'' said Joseph Russoniello, former San Francisco US attorney who
headed that region's task force when Weld headed New England's. ''I don't
think anyone was left with any lingering sense that he was soft on drugs.''

Apparently, that includes thenAttorney General William French Smith. In
1983, he came to Boston to praise Weld's work as head of the New England
drug task force.

Weld might have been known for public corruption cases, law enforcement
officials who worked with him say, but that did not mean he was ignoring,
or even shortchanging, drug cases.

When Weld took office, there were two prosecutors in the drug unit; he
increased that to six, later to eight.

Former State Police narcotics investigator Robert Long recalls Weld coming
in to the Middlesex County district attorney's office on a midsummer
Saturday to talk about a drug bust the previous day. ''Of all the US
attorneys I've worked with, he's the only one who showed up personally,''
Long said. ''He was looking to make things happen.''

A 1989 Syracuse University study of 11 major US attorneys offices found
that out of all cases prosecuted, Weld consistently had one of the highest
percentages of drug cases, even higher than areas such as Detroit and New
York. The percentage of drug cases doubled the year Weld took office, the
study showed. And his conviction rate was consistently among the highest of
all the offices.

Still, Weld was embarrassed and angered when he saw the study of the task
force regions, with his numbers among the lowest. He summoned other federal
agents on the task force, and, according to one, ''read us the riot act.''

A federal drug investigator at the meeting responded by telling Weld the
task force could boost its statistics if drug investigators got more
support from his office. But while this official's comments, which had been
reported at the time as made by an unnamed source, have been taken by
Weld's critics in Congress to mean that he was ignoring the drug problem,
the official, who asked not to be identified in this story, recently said
he did not mean that Weld was reluctant to go after drugs. Rather, he said,
he was disappointed because associates in Weld's office were reluctant to
prosecute the drug cases unless the evidence was a sure bet to win a
conviction.

But that, said the investigator, was not unique to the US attorney's office
in Boston. ''It's not unusual, it's universal,'' he said. ''But we're
talking about micromanagement issues in the US attorney's office. That
doesn't mean Weld was soft on drugs. He never was.''

Officials said Weld also refused to take most small drug cases, which might
have padded his statistics, referring them instead for prosecution by
district attorneys' offices. In the most noted episode, he referred actress
Jodie Foster, caught at Logan Airport with a gram of cocaine in 1983, to
Suffolk County instead. In East Boston District Court, Foster's case was
continued without a finding but she was placed on probation and paid court
costs.

Weld won several big convictions under the thennew ''drug kingpin''
statute: Frederic MacCaffrey, caught smuggling more than 87 tons of
marijuana into Massachusetts; Timothy Minnig and Robert Frappier, for
smuggling 250 tons of marijuana; Robert Sullivan, who had been involved in
a $10 million heroin smuggling operation, and Arnold Katz, charged with
running a $40 million a day drug ring.

But among these cases was also one of Weld's biggest controversies.
Investigators had begun to worry that a federal prosecutor was leaking
information to drug kingpins. One of the most notorious traffickers, Frank
Lepere, had fled the state just as he was about to be indicted on charges
he masterminded an international, $173 million drug smuggling operation.
When he was caught and offered to identify the leak, Weld agreed.

In a plea bargain, Weld asked that Lepere be put away for 10 years. The
judge sentenced Lepere to five, and ordered him to forfeit $3 million in
assets. Ultimately, he served just 2 1/2 years, and had enough money left
when he got out to build a lavish oceanfront mansion in Marshfield. The
implicated prosecutor, David Twomey, was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Critics accused Weld of letting a kingpin off too easily. But FBI and
Justice Department officials and his subordinates said a corrupt prosecutor
would have ruined many more kingpin cases, and corroded morale. ''In Weld's
thinking, every drug offender should go to jail, and it should be for a
long time,'' said Janis Berry, head of the US attorney's drug unit at the
time. ''Getting him to agree to this was like pushing him up a hill. It was
not a decision he wanted to make, to deal with the devil, but it was the
right decision.''

Despite what his critics now say was his laxity on drug issues as US
attorney, within five years, Weld was plucked to be head of the Justice
Department's criminal division under Attorney General Edwin Meese during
the early days of the Reagan administration's ''Just Say No'' era.

Weld's tenure in Washington is most remembered for his resignation in 1988
after a feud with Meese over ethics charges. But he also wrote the National
Narcotics Prosecution Strategy, and oversaw the capture of Panama's Manuel
Noriega for drug trafficking. And within drug enforcement circles, Weld
distinguished himself in the Enrique Camarena case notably, his
supporters now argue, a case involving Mexico.

Camarena, an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration, had disappeared
on an investigation in Mexico in 1985. Mexico refused to turn over forensic
evidence on the case, or let US investigators work on it. The State
Department, anxious to promote better trade and economic relations with
Mexico, did not want the Camarena case to cause trouble between the two
countries.

But Weld spoke to his Justice Department superiors, who encouraged
President Reagan to raise the matter with the Mexican president at a White
House meeting.

''The State Department gave the Camarena case lower priority than the
eradication of the screw worm from vegetable crops in Mexico,'' said Carlo
A. Boccia, the DEA agent who headed the Camarena investigation. ''The case
would have withered on the vine if it weren't for Weld.'' Eventually, a
brotherinlaw of a former Mexican president was convicted in US court for
his role in the kidnap and murder; more than two dozen people were
convicted in Mexican courts in the same case.

Weld rode his record as a federal prosecutor to the governor's office in
1990. Aides and supporters point to the rise in the number of drug
offenders in jail during his time on Beacon Hill, and an increase in the
length of sentences served, saying both are tied to the truthinsentencing
bill Weld proposed and signed in 1994.

''I ran for office because I thought we were coddling criminals,'' said
State Senator James P. Jajuga, a Democrat from Methuen and a former State
Police investigator, now cochairman of the Legislature's Joint Committee
on Public Safety. ''We're not doing that, and I think a lot of it has to do
with Governor Weld.''

Weld draws fire on two drug fronts

But the part of his gubernatorial record that his critics now seem to be
focusing on is Weld's support for medicinal marijuana and needle exchange.

In 1991, Weld signed a bill establishing a state research program that
would enroll patients who may benefit from therapeutic marijuana. In 1995,
the Legislature proposed another bill allowing people caught with marijuana
to defend themselves against criminal prosecution by claiming they needed
it as medicine. Thenfederal drug czar Lee Brown wrote Weld, advising him
to veto the bill, and Weld did so.

In a letter sending the bill back to the Legislature, he explained that he
feared the measure would allow patients to ''selfdiagnose'' their
illnesses as needing treatment with marijuana. ''In all likelihood,'' Weld
wrote, this would ''lead to inappropriate assertions of the defense.''

He proposed amending the bill to require patients enrolled in the research
program to have their cases certified by a panel of three doctors, who all
had to say that the medical condition would benefit from therapeutic
marijuana. Under the bill, which Weld ultimately signed into law in 1996,
patients could claim the defense only if they were in possession of
marijuana certified by the program.

But it is not so much the Massachusetts law that has caused Weld trouble as
he tries to persuade Helms to grant him a hearing. It is his comments on
laws in California and Arizona, where the prolegalization lobby last year
funded ballot initiatives that allow doctors to prescribe marijuana.

Last December, reporters asked Weld what he thought of a White House threat
to strip the medical licenses of doctors who prescribed marijuana in those
states. ''I think it's too strict,'' Weld said, and the next day's Boston
Herald front page blared, ''Weld Backs Pot Use for the Ill.''

Then, in the weeks following, answering questions at a press event when
Massachusetts' medicinal marjiuana law took effect, Weld got into more
trouble. The state research program would take applications from patients
with glaucoma, asthma, and chemotherapyinduced nausea, but Weld said he'd
like to explore therapeutic marijuana for more illnesses. ''I'd like to see
the net as broad as possible,'' he told reporters. He said further
scientific research was essential before that net was cast.

In Washington in recent weeks, his comments on medicinal marijuana have
spun out in conservative circles as Weld favoring outright legalization.
But Weld's views were similar to the conclusions of the National Institutes
of Health, which earlier this summer said the evidence in support of
marijuana's therapeutic effects was strong enough to justify federal
funding for research programs like Massachusetts'. Thirtyseven other
states have similar laws or programs, and Massachusetts is strictest of all
in requiring three doctors to approve the use of marijuana, said Mark
Kleiman, a former narcotics policy adviser under President Reagan.

''It's easy to get three prolegalization doctors in Massachusetts,'' said
Janet Lapey, executive director of Hanoverbased Concerned Citizens For
Drug Prevention, who has faxed articles and letters critical of Weld's drug
record to congressional offices. Lapey and Weld's critics in Congress argue
the state's statute is as liberal as the California and Arizona laws. The
next step, they say, is kids thinking marijuana is safe, and outright
legalization.

But Weld has, in fact, shared some of the very concerns of the antidrug
lobby, particularly in a letter to friends last February. ''I gathered that
you were hopeful my statements about the use of marijuana ... did not mean
that I had signed on with the Dark Side,'' Weld wrote, going on to note
that he opposed the California and Arizona initiatives, had helped set up
the national Partnership for a DrugFree America, and was a ''pioneer of
the `zero tolerance' principle.''

''In any statement I have made about ... the use of marijuana to treat
glaucoma or nausea, I have been careful to note that marijuana is a gateway
drug, particularly for young people, and should not be legalized. (I am not
sure that always gets reported in the paper.)''

Weld has also been criticized for supporting needle exchange, though
mainstream groups ranging from the National Institutes of Medicine to the
American Bar Association have taken the same position.

In 1995, Weld approved a proposal by Senator Jajuga to begin a pilot needle
exchange program in two cities, later expanding it to 10. Weld insisted
that local communities be allowed to refuse the programs, and so far, only
four have accepted. The programs offer addicts clean needles at counseling
centers, where they are also offered drug treatment. Massachusetts is one
of only nine states to require a prescription to buy needles.

For Weld, his aides say, the issue is one of public health, and preventing
the spread of the virus that causes AIDS. Several studies have shown the
virus spreading at slower rates in cities with needle exchange programs. In
Massachusetts, the needle exchange program was one factor cited in the 35
percent reduction rate in AIDS deaths last year, twice the national rate.

But opponents say needle exchange programs abet drug users. They point to
studies that show the AIDS virus spreading because of clean needle
programs, and that drug and AIDS education programs cut the spread of HIV
as effectively as any needle exchange programs.

Rather than the drop in AIDS deaths, Weld's critics point to the rise in
the number of heroin users, and Boston having the nation's cheapest and
purest heroin, as evidence of what they see as Weld's permissiveness. The
recent suicides of teenagers in South Boston, several associated with
heroin addiction, are an example of the results of needle exchange, critics
charge.

Weld's defenders say his support for needle exchange programs and medicinal
marijuana do not mean he is soft on drugs. The supporters, some of them DEA
agents themselves opposed to medical marijuana and needle exchanges, say
these issues are irrelevant in Mexico. There, they say, the issue is
enforcement, and when it comes to enforcement, there are few prosecutors
with a stronger record than Weld.

But conservative critics counter Weld's stances on medicinal marijuana and
clean needles send a message of softness.

''The Mexicans are always trying to change the subject and say the problem
is not our drug exporting, it's your drug demand,'' said Marc Thiessen, a
Helms spokesman. ''To send someone as ambassador who has a permissive
record on consumption sends exactly the wrong message.''

''No one in Mexico would be particularly aware of his prosecution rate, but
people are going to be aware of his publiclystated policies on our drug
laws,'' said Dave Mason, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

In the end, Weld's supporters say the key question is whether the drug
issue is not just the pretext Helms is using to stick it to the former
governor, his political opposite. Arnold Burns, who was Weld's superior at
the Justice Department before resigning with him in the Meese affair, said,
''Bill Weld is uniquely qualified to go to Mexico by reason of the fact
that he's got this splendid law enforcement record. This is hitting him in
his strongest suit.''

Robert Stutman, who headed Boston's DEA office during Weld's time as US
attorney and now heads the DEA office in New York, added, ''Criticize him
for his politics, for the color of his tie, for liking the Grateful Dead.
But don't criticize him on the drug issue, because it's not an issue.''

This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 08/17/97.
(c)Copyright 1997 Globe Newspaper Company.