No discipline in wake of lying drug informer

ST. LOUIS -- Nobody will be disciplined for letting prolific drug snitch Andrew Chambers lie under oath throughout 16 years of government testimony, the new chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration told a newspaper.

But Asa Hutchinson pledged that the agency would never again give informers the free rein abused by Chambers, whose false testimony about his background and arrest record has compromised dozens of DEA investigations.

"Chambers abused his position with us, and we didn't have the systems in place to keep the checks and balances on that," Hutchinson told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for a story published Sunday.

Hutchinson said no agents have been punished because an investigation found it was the DEA's own policies that failed in the case of 44-year-old Chambers, who grew up in the St. Louis suburb of University City.

Beginning in 1984, Chambers was the DEA's most active, successful informer. Celebrated by agents, Chambers has been credited with contributing to the arrests of more than 400 drug suspects in 31 cities across the country.

The DEA's own records show that senior agency officials agency fought a two-year court fight to keep secret Chambers' records: that he repeatedly lied in court when he claimed he had never been arrested or convicted, inflated his educational background and claimed he paid taxes on his DEA earnings -- more than $1.8 million.

Before his suspension last year, Chambers was one of the highest paid undercover operatives in the DEA's history.

New safeguards

Hutchinson said the DEA has adopted new safeguards.

One measure is a central registry to keep track of informers who testify in more than one place. Beginning in 1984, when Chambers was recruited at the agency's Clayton office near St. Louis, he helped arrest more than 400 drug suspects in 31 cities. He also lied under oath at least 16 times, but the DEA says its agents either didn't know or, if they did, didn't tell their colleagues elsewhere.

In addition, all agents have been ordered to turn over the complete records of their snitches to prosecutors and defense attorneys. Some agents were in courtrooms when Chambers lied but never reported it. Others did, but the agency kept a lid on it.

The DEA spent months investigating itself and concluded that at least one DEA supervisor in the field should have done more to report Chambers' courtroom lying.

"A thorough investigation was done, and there was no finding that would result in a disciplinary action," DEA spokesman Michael Chapman said Friday.

As a former federal public defender in California, Dean Steward led a three-year campaign to make the Justice Department disclose the extent of Chambers' lying. Now, he said, "I'm stunned that so much government wrongdoing meant so little to the government."

"Had this been a major corporation, heads would roll," Steward said.