ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 29, 1997 TAG: 9703310068
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NORFOLK
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
By allowing an imprisoned witness to have sex, two FBI agents allowed life sentences to be dismissed.
A pair of federal agents who came under scrutiny in a sex-for-testimony scandal may have broken the law, according to a judge who reviewed the case.
At the least, the agents who permitted an imprisoned witness to have sex with both his wife and girlfriend in a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office operated a bawdy house in the city's downtown Federal Building, U.S. Magistrate Tommy Miller concluded.
The agents may have aided and abetted fornication and adultery when the witness had sex with his girlfriend, Miller wrote in his review. He added that the agents ``are fortunate because each of these offenses is a misdemeanor for which the statute of limitations is one year.''
The half-dozen sexual liaisons occurred in 1990 during prosecution of a Portsmouth drug gang that distributed $20 million in heroin from 1984 to 1989.
The key witness against the gang, Gary Weathers, already was in prison. But he was allowed private visits with his wife and girlfriend in return for testimony about the gang's operations.
The agents who set up the visits - Jim Watters of the FBI and Richard McGoldrick of the DEA - were investigated by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility after the visits became known in 1994.
The investigation has been completed, but its findings haven't been released pending a final review, a department spokesman said Thursday.
Because the agents failed to tell the court and defense attorneys about the arrangement with Weathers, three convicted drug dealers - two serving life sentences without parole - have been released. Four others received substantially reduced sentences.
At one point, Weathers testified with Watters present in the courtroom that he had not been allowed to have the conjugal visits. Watters never told the trial judge that the testimony was false, and the judge later told the jury that the sexual encounters didn't occur.
Chuck Griffith, who prosecuted the drug gang and is now commonwealth's attorney in Norfolk, said the agents' actions showed they ``wanted the case so badly they were willing to do something that is not appropriate for law enforcement.''
Griffith also said the liaisons were unnecessary because Weathers received a reduced sentence for his testimony and would have cooperated anyway.
Watters remains on duty with the FBI's Norfolk office. McGoldrick has been transferred to the DEA office in Chicago.
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