EX-INFORMANTS CONTINUE TESTIMONY ON FAKE DRUG BUSTS

DALLAS - Former drug informants continued Thursday to describe how they
helped police make bogus busts with fake cocaine, while attorneys for a
former narcotics officer challenged their credibility by getting them to
confirm that they lied repeatedly.

Enrique Alonso and Roberto Gonzalez testified in federal court during the
second day of the trial of Mark Delapaz, a former Dallas police senior
corporal.

Delapaz is accused of making false statements to the FBI and of violating
the civil rights of people who were framed with fake drugs.

Alonso and Gonzalez said that they were willing to frame people for
thousands of dollars and that to do that, they would to lie to anybody,
including Delapaz, who was using Alonso as a highly paid confidential
informant. Alonso said he also lied to FBI agents and a TV news reporter.

John Helms, an attorney for Delapaz, asked Gonzalez whether he recalled
testifying before a federal grand jury that Alonso was "an incredible liar."

"He's the master, isn't he?" Helms asked.

"In certain ways, you could say so," Gonzalez responded through an interpreter.

"Is there anyone who is a better manipulator than Enrique Alonso?" Helms asked.

"No," Gonzalez replied.

"It's not surprising," Helms said, that "he's able to fool a lot of people,
is it?"

"True," Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez also testified that he pretended to be a Mexican drug lord during
a phone conversation with Delapaz. On Wednesday, Alonso testified that he
told Gonzalez to help him deceive Delapaz so that they could set up more
busts with fake drugs.

Alonso said he did not want to deal with real Mexican drug dealers because
he was afraid of them.

On Thursday, Gonzalez recounted his career as a dealer, which was
interrupted by his arrest in 1998. He served 25 months in jail and was
deported to his native Mexico, but he immediately returned to the United
States and hooked up with his old partner, Alonso, in the fake-drug scheme.

Also Wednesday, prosecutors entered evidence that Delapaz had testified
that he saw Yvonne Gwyn, a native of Honduras, remove a package believed to
be cocaine from a car parked in her auto-detail shop.

But during questioning Thursday by federal prosecutor Jeffrey Blumberg,
Gonzalez said that never happened.

He said the plan was for another man, Jose Ruiz, to go to Gwyn's office
with drugs hidden in his pants. When he left, Alonso was to call Delapaz
and tell him that Gwyn had just sold drugs to Ruiz.

Gonzalez said he did not know if that happened. Gwyn, however, was arrested
Sept. 7, 2001, according to her testimony Wednesday.

Also Thursday, Nancy Weber, a forensic drug chemist, testified that she
tested more than 25 packages of white powder seized by Delapaz. She said
she began noticing in August 2001 that the material was just lumpy white
powder, which later proved to be pool chalk sprinkled with a scant amount
of real drugs.

Weber said the packages didn't resemble typical drug parcels, which are
wrapped in brown paper, sometimes sealed with spices to mask their odors,
and finally covered with strips of duct tape.

"It takes a lot of effort to cut through those many layers," Weber said,
"whereas this was covered with yards of Saran Wrap that I just had to keep
unpeeling."

Weber said she told Delapaz that the evidence he brought for testing in the
Gwyn case was similar to numerous other packages he had begun submitting a
few months earlier.

"I told him it was bunk, the same old thing I had seen the last two
months," Weber said. "He was a little surprised."

Weber said Delapaz urged her to rush the tests on other packages; he also
gave her his cellphone number so that he could be quickly notified of the
results.

Testimony is scheduled to continue today.