
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 6, 1995                   TAG: 9506060145
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MIAMI                                LENGTH: Medium

DRUG CARTEL CASE SNAGS LAWYERS

The government extradition expert who once helped bring Colombian drug smugglers and other foreign criminals to justice in the United States was among three U.S. lawyers accused Monday in a drug smuggling conspiracy.

More than 60 people were charged in the case, including the former Justice Department official and a former federal prosecutor. Three other lawyers, including a second federal prosecutor, have already pleaded guilty to reduced charges.

One of the lawyers named in the indictment was Michael Abbell, who once headed the international affairs office of the Justice Department's criminal division. Abbell's duties included heading efforts to bring the Cali cartel smugglers to justice in the United States.

``These lawyers defended clients charged with drug crimes aggressively,'' said Roy Black, Abbell's attorney. ``They did all the things lawyers are supposed to do and now they're charged.''

The charges against the former Justice Department lawyers stemmed from their activities after they left the department, authorities said.

Federal officials said the lawyers warned potential witnesses to keep silent, provided drug money to relatives of cartel associates being prosecuted and fabricated false evidence for use in Colombia to obstruct prosecution.

U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey called the indictment ``the single most significant prosecution in history against the Cali cartel.''

After leaving government service, Abbell represented reputed Cali cartel leader Gilberto Rodriguez-Orejuela.

Another of the lawyers, William Moran, was accused of tipping off the cartel to the identity of an informant who was later killed. Moran's lawyer, Marty Weinberg, said his client was innocent.

The investigation, dubbed Operation Cornerstone, provided one of the most detailed pictures yet of the sophisticated Cali cartel, and especially how it used U.S. defense lawyers to deliver money, falsify evidence and even deliver warnings to those in jail about the hazards of cooperation, federal agents said.

The indictment ``pulls together all the threads of how the cartel worked. We have a better appreciation of their mechanisms, the steps they take to protect the cartel, the support network, the legitimate businesses that are the fronts,'' Customs Commissioner George Weiss said Monday.

by CNB