Tag: FBI sting

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Opinion

Keeping It Unreal

So the government fired five shots at John Ford and hit him once, federal prosecutors kept their Tennessee Waltz winning streak unbroken, and the E-Cycle FBI Actors Repertory Company closed another Memphis performance.

This one was a little shaky. Prosecutors said they are sending out a strong message of deterrence. But four years after its inception, Operation Tennessee Waltz still looks more like a sting targeting Democrats in Memphis and Chattanooga than a purge of “systemic corruption” in state government. Its success is due to secret tapes of a handful of public officials taking bribes from a fake company that their colleagues were too honest, too smart, or too irrelevant to deal with.

Or maybe they just know how to Google.

Type “Joe Carson” and “FBI undercover” in a Google search and you find that Joe Carroll, whose FBI undercover name is Joe Carson, starred in at least two FBI undercover productions before Tennessee Waltz. In “Operation Lightning Strike” from 1991 to 1994, he posed as a big shot for Eastern Tech Manufacturing Company, a phony business seeking crooked contracts in the aerospace industry in Houston. His undercover name? Joe Carson. The sting resulted in indictments and a mistrial.

In 2001, Carroll and the FBI resurrected “Joe Carson” in a Maryland undercover operation targeting state lawmakers. His phony Atlanta-based company was seeking crooked deals with Comcast for fiber-optic contracts. A former state senator, Thomas Bromwell, is under federal indictment but has not yet gone on trial.

Give the FBI, Carson, L.C. McNeil, and Tim Willis credit for pulling off a two-year Tennessee undercover operation, including the 2004 and 2005 legislative sessions, without a leak. The Ford tapes were so powerful that the defense barely tried to explain them away. They left no doubt that money was exchanged for special legislation. The sting worked, but it hasn’t yet exposed corruption in real deals in high places.

Operation Tennessee Waltz started in 2003, after FBI agents investigating phony contracts in Shelby County Juvenile Court found evidence of “systemic corruption” in state government. Seven of the 11 Tennessee Waltz indictments were announced at a press conference in Memphis on May 26, 2005. The investigation, convictions, and guilty pleas since 2003 have produced no indictments for bribery or other wrongdoing by any full-time state employee, lobbyist, or contractor. On tape, Ford boasts that he is the man who “does the deals” and “control[s] the votes,” but his trial was all about E-Cycle and legislation that never got beyond committee.

“Systemic corruption,” it seems, is a product of Shelby County and Hamilton County, two of the 95 counties in Tennessee. Five Memphians have been convicted or pleaded guilty. In a conversation with agent McNeil in 2004, Barry Myers, the bag man who later became a government witness, explained why lawmakers were wary of the free-spending black millionaire: “To be honest with ya’, most of the money I used to pick up come from white folks, white males, established businessmen that would send money to Kathryn, Lois, Roscoe, and John. That’s where the real money came from.”

Who spent the “real money” for “the big juice” — Ford, Roscoe Dixon, Kathryn Bowers, and Lois DeBerry? We don’t know. The payment of “consulting fees” by real companies is at the heart of Ford’s pending case in Nashville, which is not part of Tennessee Waltz. He has a hearing on May 3rd. Eli Richardson, assistant U.S. attorney in Nashville, said “it remains to be seen” how the Memphis case will mesh with the Nashville case, which apparently relies on old-fashioned evidence and witnesses.

“The conviction in Memphis opens up all kinds of possibilities for plea negotiation that didn’t exist before,” said Bud Cummins, a former federal prosecutor in Arkansas. “But there is not a whole lot of pressure on the government. They are still holding most of the cards. My best guess is they’re pretty intent on going to trial.”

Ford could appeal his Memphis conviction and request a sentencing delay until after he is tried in Nashville. If he is sentenced and goes to prison before his appeal is resolved, he could still be tried on the Nashville charges.

“We try people all the time who are sitting there in prison clothes,” Cummins said, although Ford would probably be unrestrained and in civilian clothes in the courtroom, with a federal marshal standing behind him.

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News

John Ford Guilty on Bribery Charge

John Ford became the latest casualty of the FBI’s Tennessee Waltz sting Friday when a jury returned a guilty verdict for bribery, one of five counts the former state senator was charged with.

That was Count Two of the indictment against Ford. The jury could not agree on Count One, a charge of extortion, and presiding Judge Daniel Breen declared a mistrial on that count.

Three other counts, relating to charges of witness intimidation alleged against Ford, resulted in Not Guilty findings.

Sentencing of Ford was set for Tuesday, July 31, at 9 a.m. — a point in time distant enough to allow for an appeal of the verdict by Ford, as well as possible negotiations between himself and the U,.S. Attorney’s office that might involve an offer of cooperation in future prosecutions.

The jury’s deadlock on the Count One extortion charge would seem to mean that defense attorney Mike Scholl gained some traction in his efforts to demonstrate undue inducements on Ford by FBI agents. The senator ultimately was persuaded to accept some $55,000 for legislative aid given the bogus E-Cycle computer firm.

There apparently was no such disagreement on Count Two, alleging bribery. That charge was backed up by countless FBI surveillance videos showing Ford, then an influential state senator, accepting sums of money in 2004 and 2005.

The three intimidation counts were always regarded as the weakest points of the indictment, and, though surveillance evidence was presented in court to substantiate that Ford had issued threats against agent “L.C. McNiel” and undercover informant Tim Willis, it was not corroborated in depth and was clearly subject to alternate interpretations.

How the verdict came

News of a pending verdict was circulated at about 3 p.m., Friday, the third full day of deliberations. The 11th-floor courtroom of Judge Breen was quickly filled up by members of the media, friends and family of ex-Senator Ford, and representatives of the U.S. Attorney’s office and the F.B.I.

A message from the jury,shared with the prosecution and the defense by Judge Breen, quickly established that all counts had been resolved except for one. Sensing victory, chief prosecutor Tim DiScenza moved for acceptance of the available counts and for a declaration of mistrial on the unresolved one. Defense attorney Scholl asked for time to consult with his client.

In the end, DiScenza’s preference would be honored by Judge Breen after the judge had called the jury in and heard from its foreman that no agreement was possible on Count One.

Two circumstances had prefigured the outcome. One was a question had come to Judge Breen late on the evening before asking in effect for a definition of a phrase in the indictment relating to official culpability.

The other indication that a verdict of some sort was imminent came when jurors opted not to go out for lunch on Friday but had food delivered, which they ate quickly before resuming afternoon deliberations.

Ford ‘Disappointed’

Although the accusaed senator had enjoyed a leisurely lunch with members of his immediate and extended family at a downtown grill, his attitude was clearly one of somber apprehension, as was theirs. This was in stark contrast to an air of relaxation, even jauntiness, they had all exhibited during break periods on Wednesday and Thursday.

During that lunch, Ford took time out to insist that he had been the victim of entrapment and to express a wish that more time and attention had been devoted to that subject during the trial.

In a brief statement to members of the media after exiting the Federal Building, former Senator Ford, who remains free on bond, expressed disappointment with the verdict.

Although well-wishers for Ford and family members attended the trial throughout, a striking feature of the former senator’s trial was that it attracted less out-of-town media contingents and fewer demonstrators than had a previous one for Ford’s former state Senate colleague, Roscoe Dixon.

Dixon was convicted of bribery and extortion charges last year and is now serving a term in federal prison. Another local figure,former Shelby County Commissioner Michael Hooks Sr., pleaded guilty to similar charges and has yet to begin his term.

Tennessee Waltz indictees yet to be tried include former state Senator Kathryn Bowers and fortmer Memphis school board member Michael Hooks Jr.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Trying Times

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

On the surface, there is little to connect the well-observed tribunals now going on concurrently in downtown Memphis and in outlying Selmer, 100 miles away. But there are synchronicites — and more.

Steve Farese, Leslie Ballin, and Michael Scholl, all of them well acquainted with each other, belong to a small fraternity of well-regarded blue-chip defense attorneys in the greater Memphis area. Farese and Ballin, used to working as a team, have undertaken to defend Mary Winkler of the murder of her husband, a well-known Church of Christ minister. Scholl is defending former state senator John Ford, the best-known defendant in the Tennessee Waltz bribery/extortion sting.

Both defendants are, as they say, up against it. By her own admission, Mary Winkler had issues with Matthew Winkler and was physically holding the shotgun on her sleeping husband when it fired once and lethally on that fateful morning more than a year ago. Nor do a multitude of surveillance videos introduced by the prosecution leave any doubt that John Ford took large sums of cash in connection with legislative services promised and performed for E-Cycle, an FBI-front company supposedly in business to refurbish used computers.

But neither trial is quite the slam-dunk it would appear to be. Farese and Ballin have labored hard to suggest that the Winklers’ 12-gauge might have gone off on its own and that their client, clearly drowning in a personal stew that included a history of abuse and, of all things, being duped by an Internet lottery scam, was as much victim as perpetrator.

And even Ford, despite his dual reputation as bon vivant and kingfish in the wheeler-dealer world of Nashville’s Capitol Hill, is being portrayed by Scholl as a veritable innocent under siege from government-funded high-livers determined to bait-and-switch the reluctant senator into compliance with an extortion scheme.

That a number of close observers think that both defenses may have made headway is in itself a reflection of the times.

Through his cross-examination of FBI operatives so far, Scholl has drawn a portrait of an entrapment operation whose principals, to further their sting, lived lavishly — consuming mountains of public money, driving “high-end” luxury cars, imbibing impressive quantities of food and drink, entertaining their marks aboard confiscated yachts, and staying only in the finest hotels.

The resultant storyline blurred distinctions and may have given the jurors, all stoutly working class in appearance, a plausible alternative to the usual cops-and-robbers, good vs. evil scenario.

Dividing lines have also come under attack in the Selmer trial, where, both in their cross-examinations and in presenting their own witnesses, Farese and Ballin have done their best to obscure the presumed distinctions between the victim and the accused.

The late Rev. Winkler, a towering man, has so far been represented as A) a committed male chauvinist; B) an importer of suspect images to the household computers; and C) a man given to rages, who on more than one occasion threatened to kill neighbors’ dogs that had disturbed his peace of mind and who once — reacting to toothache medication, said his father, also a minister — locked his wife out of the family’s house.

Nor has Mary Winkler, who appeared waif-like in the first pictures of her incarceration, made any points toward sanctification. During the trial, she has managed for the most part to appear stoic and then some — even cracking grins or, alleged one TV reporter who was there, even offering what looked like a smirk when the Winklers’ oldest daughter gave dramatic testimony about hearing the shot and seeing her father’s body.

Both tribunals involve trusted members of the social order — a state senator and a minister’s wife — and both have so far involved defenses that impugn the reliability of both law-enforcement officials themselves and the would-be incriminating documents they have brought to court.

Ever since the O.J. Simpson not-guilty verdict of 1995, the issue of “jury nullification” has concerned students of American justice. Another way of putting that is to suggest that our system rarely metes out pure justice, administering its verdicts, rather, within a defining social context.

That’s one good reason why no one should be surprised at any verdict that comes out of either trial.

Jackson Baker is a Flyer senior editor, whose trial reports, along with those of senior editor John Branston, appear atwww.memphisflyer.com.

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Opinion

Analyzing the Ford Trial

The government “can’t just go trolling for public officials, can they?”

The answer is “absolutely not.” FBI agent Brian Burns said that from the witness stand in John Ford’s trial in response to a question from defense attorney Michael Scholl, just like he said it from the witness stand in Roscoe Dixon’s trial last year in response to a question from assistant U.S. attorney Tim Discenza.

So when the FBI and federal prosecutors set up Operation Tennessee Waltz to root out “systemic corruption” in state government in 2003, they did not target John Ford. And when Captain Quint and Matt Hooper and Chief Brody set out in that fishing boat and started chumming the waters in Jaws, they were not looking for a big shark.

Seven days into the Ford trial, the case for entrapment is as murky as the case for bribery is clear. Jurors have seen and heard tapes of 10 payoffs to Ford, totaling $55,000, in 2004 and 2005. Each one is made in the context of conversations about Ford helping undercover FBI agents posing as business executives get special legislation for E-Cycle Management. Undercover agent L.C. McNeil counts out stacks of $100 bills and passes them across a desk to Ford, who often puts them in his pocket without bothering with an envelope. Some of the videos are shot from multiple angles and are as clear and carefully analyzed as NFL football replays, with McNeil, à la Boomer Esiason, circling the money with a red marker on his computer screen.

“I can walk into a room and get more done than 10 motherfuckers,” Ford says on one tape in a typical example of the former senator’s bravado and ratiocination. Obscenity may be edited out of family newspapers but not federal trials.

The prosecution’s biggest problem is probably also Ford’s best hope: showing that it caught Ford without setting him up. In the current news climate, with the Justice Department and U.S. attorney general Alberto Gonzales under fire for the firing of eight federal prosecutors, possibly for political reasons, establishing that Tennessee Waltz was nonpartisan is especially important.

Here’s an overview of the trial as of Tuesday, April 17th:

Who’s on the stand? Undercover FBI agent L.C. McNeil (not his real name) has been on the stand for most of four days. He was Ford’s running buddy in 2004-2005 and taped hundreds of hours of conversations. He is the government’s key witness because he actually made the payoffs to John Ford in a way that, in hindsight, seems like a dead giveaway to an undercover sting.

“I don’t target anyone,” McNeil said in response to a question from Discenza. “My focus is to go out and conduct a fair and balanced investigation.”

In two days of cross-examination, Scholl has done everything but shout “liar liar pants on fire” in numerous efforts to get McNeil to depict acting as lying.

Who is L.C. McNeil? The short answer is undercover specialist who looks like he could kick anyone in the courtroom’s ass. The long answer is more complicated. In real life, he is 39 years old, African-American, 6’1″, 220 pounds, a former Los Angeles policeman, a graduate of Oral Roberts with a theology degree, and a former full-time minister who was still ministering last year. For some reason, the government got McNeil to divulge most of that information in the Dixon trial but only gave the Ford jury an abbreviated resume and let Scholl flesh out the details.

In his fake identity, McNeil was the single father of a son in Chicago, a music producer and investor in lucrative stock offerings, and a world traveler. On the tapes, he and Ford are partying, talking about women in language that would get a budding Don Imus in trouble, and going to sports events. But McNeil is not nearly as foul-mouthed as Ford. He calls Ford “cat” and “doctor” and almost always ends his phone conversations with “Peace.”

Does he ever slip up? It’s hard to say, but there seems to have been a close call or two. McNeil always refers to his fellow undercover FBI agent Joe Carroll (alias Joe Carson) as simply “Joe.” Inevitably, Ford says something like “who?” And McNeil says, “My partner.” But he never uses his full name, which is perhaps too easy to confuse with his real name. And his fake career in music and movies, by coincidence or design, put him in Los Angeles and New York at the same time that one of Ford’s daughters was trying to break into the business there. He even says he will contact her, but apparently he never did. Nor did Ford check him out, which might have blown the cover.

Was John Ford targeted? At some point, he obviously was, but when and how are key issues in the trial. The FBI and prosecutors had to comply with guidelines for undercover operations and get approvals from higher-ups in Washington. Given the notoriety and history of the Ford family, it seems likely that Gonzales or his predecessor were in the loop, but that has not come out in court.

The jury must decide whether Ford was “predicated” or predisposed to take a bribe or entrapped by overzealous FBI agents. That’s the reason why so much has been made of an April 2004 dinner at Morton’s Steak House in Nashville when Ford and McNeil met for the first time. Kathryn Bowers, who definitely was an early Tennessee Waltz target, arranged the dinner and E-Cycle paid for it.

“I got a brother on City Council and another brother on County Commission and I control the votes in both places,” Ford says. But he was not an eager player. In his cross-examination of McNeil, Scholl played a tape on which Ford said he was too busy to help.

“It takes five months of my time, and I just don’t have time to do it,” he says.

The next day, McNeil and Tim Willis, his undercover informant, visit Ford at his Nashville office in the legislative plaza. Ford wants to talk more about the music business, but McNeil wants to talk about E-Cycle.

“Do you think we’re in good position to do some things?” he asks.

Three months later, Ford travels to Miami to meet Willis and McNeil, supposedly for a black film festival. He gets a tour of E-Cycle’s yacht and an earful of Willis blabbing interminably on his cell phone at lunch one day. Scholl’s tapes, in contrast to the government’s tapes, present Ford as quiet and mainly interested in the music business and women.

The man who came to dinner: The government wants to start the Ford story at the dinner at Morton’s. Ford came to the dinner, apparently without a personal invitation. Other legislators did not. Bowers, like Ford, is a black Democrat from Memphis. The road through Bowers and Dixon, another early target, would logically lead to Ford.

Ford’s self-assessment as political godfather was not shared by everyone. In tapes played at Dixon’s trial, Dixon says to E-Cycle executives that “we’re all leaders in the Senate.” And Bowers says, “The Senate didn’t have no leaders.” Also, Barry Myers, a Dixon understudy who testified against him at trial, says on tape that the powerful Sidney Chism-Willie Herenton Democrats “don’t give a fuck” about the Fords.

What are the risks of the entrapment defense? It’s a chess game, and prosecutors can counter with evidence such as the Rolex watch gift from developer Rusty Hyneman to Ford to bolster their predication argument. It is still early in the trial, and Discenza likely has more witnesses and more evidence that he might not have been able to put before the jury without the entrapment defense. There has already been testimony that Ford was involved in three previous FBI investigations.

Could the bribes be construed as legitimate? The intent is as clear as the video quality. McNeil always brings the conversation around to E-Cycle legislation so there is little, if any, chance of the payment being depicted as a legitimate consulting fee. Ford, of course, drives home the nature of the payments by playing the part of the dutiful legislator in the early tapes and, in the later tapes, threatening anyone who rats him out.

So, it’s a slam-dunk case? Never. That’s for the jury to decide.

Where’s Tim Willis? In the wings. The government will have to put him on the stand to talk about the witness-intimidation charge against Ford. He will take his standard beating from the defense (this will be the third trial in which he has testified) and will be questioned sharply about his moviemaking, which could suggest that he saw the whole thing as a sort of “Tim’s Excellent Adventure” project to advance his career.

Deleted scenes: Like the dozen or so reporters in the courtroom each day, the defense and prosecution are each trying to create a storyline for an audience by selectively choosing quotations, characters, and incidents. Scholl has effectively changed the plotline for now, but his points are sometimes hard to decipher. Discenza works faster and always has his witnesses repeat what he considers to be key statements.

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News The Fly-By

The Cheat Sheet

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Police arrest a man at a downtown parking garage who was posing as an attendant and taking money from patrons. This makes us wonder: Was he wearing a uniform? Was he standing in the little booth? Where was the real attendant? Did the lot even have a real attendant? We’ve considered giving out awards for the city’s best con job, since we’re seeing so many of them lately, but we really don’t want to encourage this kind of behavior.

As part of its Tennessee Waltz Greg Cravens

sting, the FBI gathered 57 videotapes of former senator John Ford saying some very interesting things to informants. In one video, Ford tells an undercover agent posing as a businessman that he can get him Grizzlies tickets anytime he wants and offers this odd reassurance: “I got your back. I got your front. I got your injured knee.” The agent did indeed have a knee injury, but when one grown man tells another grown man, “I got your front,” we say, back away.

In more Ford news — this time involving Edmund, not John — the city councilman wants it clear that during an argument about his select treatment by Memphis Light, Gas and Water, he supposedly told Carol Chumney, “Don’t make me your pawn” instead of “Don’t make me your punk.” Oh yes, that’s much better.

The good people of Walls, Mississippi, are offended when a private club erects a series of billboards along Highway 61. The first one reads, “Got Beer?” and the second one beckons, “Got Boobs?” We won’t say where you would go for the beer, but Walls should consider itself fortunate. For all the boobs you need, just keep driving to Memphis and look at the long list of civic leaders caught in the Tennessee Waltz scandal.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

A Standing Rebuke

Our first reaction to getting the news last week about the latest FBI sting exposing corruption in local officeholders was to say, “What, again?” — or words to that effect, accompanied by an expletive or two. Then we gave out a long collective sigh. And, to be frank, made a few jokes (thereby vindicating Freud’s suggestion that humor was, at least in part, a self-defense mechanism).

Then we began the process of serious analysis, wondering if perhaps this latest civic embarrassment didn’t amount to an overstatement. The terms employed by the FBI — “Operation Clean Sweep” and “Operation Main Street Sweeper” — seemed a little grandiose, frankly, as descriptions of processes whereby pol/lobbyist Joe Cooper and city councilman Rickey Peete, both previous offenders, were targeted and squeezed into incriminating themselves. A third figure caught up in the operation, Councilman Edmund Ford, was — to some, at least — a surprise of sorts.

Cooper, after all, had walked into a trap of his own making. Working as a Cadillac salesman, he had maximized his profits by some sleazy contract arrangements involving finding stand-ins (including his own wife) to sign for purchasers who lacked acceptable credit but had up-front money for down payments. Several of these buyers were drug dealers — one of whom presumed to stiff Cooper by withholding his off-the-ledger cash payments for several months. So what did old Joe do? He called the police, reporting a “stolen” car, which, when found at the address of the defaulting drug dealer, was discovered to contain marijuana and counterfeit money. One question led to another, and soon the dealer was wearing a wire and incriminating the not-too-clever Cooper, who revealed on a surveillance tape that he knew the cash payments he had been receiving came from illegal proceeds.

From that, it was evidently but a short step to turning Cooper, who was soon wearing a wire himself and helping catch Peete and Ford in the act of accepting bribes to vote for a zoning project Cooper was lobbying for.

Sordid business, and in one sense the feds had lucked into the collars. But the fact that such open graft could occur in the wake of the well-publicized Tennessee Waltz arrests and trials (and stiff sentences, for that matter) was truly staggering — a standing rebuke to the larger community, unless dealt with swiftly and decisively. For their deft no-nonsense action in this regard we are in debt to the FBI and to the office of U.S. attorney David Kustoff, who in his short tenure has managed to serve notice that governmental corruption and white-collar crime will not be tolerated.

We wish we could say something equally complimentary about the City Council, half of whose members on Tuesday employed disingenuous reasons to reject a request for resignation by the two accused councilmen. The vote was six to six. Peete was absent, but Ford (who, not surprisingly, voted nay) was not. Yes, both Peete and Ford are entitled to their day in court but not to even one more day as official representatives of the people whose trust they are accused of betraying.

We can only hope that justice will be administered both sternly and swiftly.