Ex-DEA Agent Pleads Guilty to Trafficking

A former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court to charges that he conspired with two other agents to traffic in narcotics, including stealing drugs from the agency’s evidence vault in Los Angeles and hiding drug profits in foreign bank accounts.

“I actually distributed cocaine and heroin,� John Jackson told U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. in Los Angeles. Jackson spoke clearly and without emotion.

Ralph B. Lochridge, the DEA’s Los Angeles spokesman, said afterward: “This guilty plea should send a message to all those in DEA who have taken an oath to uphold the law that DEA will aggressively pursue and seek prosecution against any agent who is tempted to go to the dark side.�

Jackson, along with the two other agents, Darnell Garcia, 43, of Rancho Palos Verdes and Wayne Countryman, 47, of Walnut, were indicted in 1988 in connection with a major corruption scandal in the DEA’s Los Angeles office.

Also indicted were Jackson’s wife, Barbara, 42, and Jackson’s business associate, Sherman Lair, 39, of Alta Loma.

Jackson, 40, of Claremont, is the first of five defendants to plead guilty. He faced 16 drug trafficking-related counts, but under a sealed agreement with the government was allowed to plead guilty to three counts.

The three counts--drug trafficking, secretly transferring drug cash from a Swiss bank to a California bank and tax evasion--carry a maximum prison sentence of 45 years plus fines totaling more than $4.5 million.

Under the agreement, Jackson and his attorney, Anthony P. Brooklier, made a deal with the government under which Jackson could be sentenced to a maximum of 15 years in prison in exchange for testifying against Garcia and recounting other events associated with the case, knowledgeable sources said.

Neither Brooklier nor the prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Attys. Joyce A. Karlin and Stefan D. Stein, would comment on Jackson’s plea agreement.

Judge Hatter told Jackson he was not bound by the agreement.

Jackson is expected to be one of at least two key prosecution witnesses at Garcia’s trial, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 11.

Jackson’s plea came after a convicted Brooklyn drug dealer, Mahlon Steward, testified that Garcia and Jackson used him as one of their traffickers between 1983 and 1988.

In a deposition taken in Hatter’s courtroom during the last week, Steward said that he had received large quantities of cocaine and heroin from the two agents. Steward said that the agents would send him drugs by Federal Express and that he sold the narcotics through his New York network.

Jackson and Steward have been friends since early 1981, when they met during a major drug investigation in New York. Jackson was working as an undercover DEA agent and Steward was an informant.

During the deposition, the heavyset Steward at one point locked glances with Jackson and then broke down and cried. Hatter adjourned the session.

In February, 1988, Steward had a major heart bypass operation and has not been well since. It isn’t clear whether he will be able to testify before a jury, which is why government prosecutors video-taped the deposition sessions.

DEA officials have made clear that they believed all along that Garcia was the mastermind of one of the most serious scandals in the agency’s history.

A dapper-looking karate expert, Garcia was named in 26 counts, including providing “narcotics traffickers . . . with intelligence� about DEA activities, stealing heroin and cocaine from the DEA vault and marketing drugs through dealers in other parts of the country.

Garcia was a fugitive for seven months before he was arrested in Luxembourg in July, 1989. Under the terms of the extradition treaty, several of the charges, including tax evasion, were stripped away so that he faces six counts, including drug trafficking.

Dubbed “Action Jackson� by some of his former DEA colleagues, Jackson was considered one of the flashiest DEA agents in the Los Angeles office, a person who had a reputation for fancy clothes and cars and all-night poker games.

Jackson’s case took a bizarre turn last year during a bail hearing when Hatter questioned his lawyer about a list of names of prosecutors, investigating agents and potential witnesses found in one of Jackson’s shoes in a search of his Claremont home.

The defense lawyer at the time, John Robertson, said the list was nothing more than “spiritual warfare� by his client, who wore it in his shoe on the advice of his minister as a way to overcome those who oppose him.

Jackson, a native of Hartford, Conn., graduated in 1967 from John Muir High School in Pasadena. He went on to Pasadena City College and then to Cal State Los Angeles, where he graduated in 1972 with a degree in police science.

Jackson joined the DEA in September, 1972, and spent his entire career in the Los Angeles division before retiring in March, 1986.

At the time of his arrest, on Nov. 22, 1988, Jackson and his wife were living in a $750,000 Claremont house. They told neighbors their money came from a video arcade they owned.

After serving 13 months at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center, Jackson was placed under house arrest in his Claremont home under a $1-million bail arrangement that included an electronic device on his body which told law enforcement if he left the house.

During the Steward deposition, a taped telephone call of last March between Jackson and Steward was played in which the two discussed a potential narcotics transaction. On July 13, Jackson’s bail was revoked and he was sent back to the detention center near downtown Los Angeles, where Garcia also is an inmate.

After the guilty plea, Judge Hatter said he would agree to allow Jackson to be released on $1-million bail.