The Super-Snitch
When DEA agents are not working undercover themselves, they rely on a special category of "employee" -- snitches (also known as informants). These individuals often receive a cut of seized assets as payment for their services, so convictions can become profitable. When Michele Leonhart moved to St. Louis, she hooked up with the most prolific snitch of all time -- Andrew Chambers.
The details of Andrew Chambers' career as a super-snitch are mostly hidden (partly to protect him, and partly to protect the DEA). Much of what we know about Chambers comes from an excellent investigative report by Michael D. Sorkin And Phyllis Brasch Librach for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on January 16, 2000 and several follow-up reports later that year.
Here are some of the facts:
- Chambers' career as a snitch spanned an amazing 16 years, from 1984 until 2000, and he was credited with 291 investigations, including 76 the DEA considers "significant."
- He traveled all over the world for the DEA, but his home was St. Louis, and his second home Los Angeles.
- For his snitch work with the DEA, he was paid over $2.2 million. DEA regulations limit informants to a career total of $200,000, but those regulations can be waived. The DEA says its second-highest paid informant has received about $500,000.
- Since he also worked for the FBI, U.S. Customs Service, U.S. postal inspectors, Internal Revenue Service, Secret Service and state and local police, his total take may have been much more.
- He lied. He lied under oath on the stand. He lied on the stand repeatedly, beginning the year after his recruitment in 1984.
For years, some prosecutors and many defense attorneys had expressed concerns about Chambers' perjury. In 1993 in California, a 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling agreed that Chambers lied on the stand. In 1995, the 8th U.S. Court of Appeals in St. Louis added its voice: "The record, however, clearly demonstrates that Chambers did in fact perjure himself . . ."
The DEA protected Chambers repeatedly, and avoided notifying prosecutors and defense attorneys about Chambers' past. At one point, the Drug Enforcement Agency and Justice Department lawyers stonewalled for 17 months, fighting a public defender who was trying to examine the contents of DEA's background check on Chambers.
Later, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Wolf stated that it was clear that the drug agents never put any damaging reports into Chambers' file -- even though DEA regulations require it.
Finally, the DEA conducted an internal review of Chambers' career, and although there was some talk of reprimanding DEA supervisors, the report was never made completely public, and the DEA refused to agree to stop using Chambers. Janet Reno finally intervened in 2000 and Chambers was deactivated as an informant.
Leave a comment