NARCOTICS AGENTS WIN LAWSUIT AGAINST PA ATTORNEY GENERAL

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A jury has sided with two narcotics agents who claimed
their boss -- the Pennsylvania attorney general -- retaliated against them
because they uncovered a drug-trafficking ring that diverted profits to a
CIA-backed Dominican presidential candidate.

Agents John McLaughlin and Charles Micewski filed a lawsuit claiming their
forcible transfer from the Philadelphia office of the state Bureau of
Narcotics Investigation violated their civil rights.

A federal jury in northeastern Pennsylvania agreed, awarding $1.5 million
to McLaughlin and Micewski on Friday after a one-week trial. The verdict
capped more than five years of litigation.

"They won their lives and their reputations back," Don Bailey, attorney for
the plaintiffs, said Tuesday. "These people were just destroyed, devastated."

Through a spokesman, state Attorney General Mike Fisher said he will
appeal. The agents' allegations involved leftist politician Jose Francisco
Pena Gomez, the longtime leader of the Dominican Revolutionary Party and a
three-time presidential hopeful. Gomez died in 1998.

McLaughlin and Micewski said they had uncovered a Dominican
drug-trafficking ring operating in Philadelphia, New York and other Eastern
cities that funneled drug profits to the Dominican Revolutionary Party,
which they claimed was supported by the Central Intelligence Agency and
State Department. The agents said the federal government had allowed Gomez
to return to the Dominican Republic after a 1995 fund-raising swing through
New York with $500,000 in alleged drug profits.

Shortly after their allegations surfaced, the Philadelphia district
attorney and U.S. Attorney's office began questioning the agents'
credibility and stopped prosecuting their drug cases. More than 125 drug
cases ultimately were dismissed or dropped after prosecutors accused agents
of fabricating evidence and lying on the witness stand.

McLaughlin, Micewski and other agents from the drug agency's Philadelphia
office were subsequently transferred to other bureaus -- and removed from
street duty -- by then-state Attorney General Tom Corbett.

The agents filed a civil rights lawsuit in 1997, saying they had "become
the targets of vicious unfounded attacks on their credibility and careers
by the federal government," with the "marionetted support" of the
Philadelphia DA's office and Corbett.

The lawsuit also claimed that Gomez's Dominican Revolutionary Party "was,
and is, protected and sanctioned, unlawfully, by agencies of the United
States government, to include the CIA and the State Department, enabling
the Dominicans to distribute illegal drugs at will to the black and
Hispanic populations of the Eastern Seaboard."

That lawsuit ultimately was dismissed. Undeterred, the agents filed a
second lawsuit -- the subject of last week's federal trial in Wilkes-Barre
- -- claiming the state attorney general and his deputies had retaliated
against them for the first lawsuit.

The jury awarded $1 million in punitive damages and $500,000 in actual damages.

"We were certainly surprised by the jury's verdict and we respectfully
disagree with it. We intend to pursue all our post-trial and appellate
remedies," said Fisher's spokesman, Sean Connolly.

Though it's been several years since McLaughlin and Micewski worked
Philadelphia streets, Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham said her
policy of refusing their cases remains in effect.

"We are very disappointed," said Cathie Abookire, Abraham's spokeswoman.
"The verdict will not in any way cause us to change our policy in declining
cases in which these officers have participated."