January 25–February 1, 2001

pretzel logic

On the Right Track

by Howard Altman

There they all were, the suits of the narco war, and even a Colombian general, standing around the podium talking proudly of the latest victory over the bad guys.

It was quite an undertaking. For the first time, information that was developed in Philly’s fertile crescent of dope-dealing led directly to the dismantling of a drug organization back in sweet home Colombia. And the suits and the general were there to spread the good news.

But there is another layer to this story.

One of the main individuals caught in this joint DEA-FBI-INS-Customs Service-Philly DA-Philly PD-Colombian National Police bust is Felix De la Mota, who had come to Philadelphia from the Dominican Republic. City Paper has learned that this was not De la Mota’s first dance with the law.

In September 1995, members of the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s elite narcotics unit busted De la Mota at the same house where he was arrested in last week.

But that time he eluded prosecution — because Philadelphia’s DA let him go.

In September 1995, De la Mota was caught with nearly 50 grams of heroin and two loaded handguns. The arrests were made by John McLaughlin and Charlie Micewski, members of the PAG’s Bureau of Narcotics Investigation and Drug Control, who, in another month, would stumble upon a plan by a State Department-backed Dominican political party to raise campaign funds for their presidential candidate by selling drugs in Philadelphia.

But that was the future.

On Sept. 8, 1995, acting with a search warrant prepared by Judge Seamus McCaffery, Micewski and McLaughlin busted De la Mota.

The evidence that was good enough for McCaffery — a former police officer with an admitted pro-law enforcement bent — was not good enough for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, which declined to prosecute the case, meaning all charges against De la Mota were dropped and he was free to go home.

Which is just what he did.

And eight months later, his brand of heroin, Super Buick, was responsible for sending more than 110 people to the hospital.

As for McLaughlin and Micewski, by the time Super Buick was crashing junkies as far away as Trenton and Delaware, their careers were for all purposes over.

In April 1996, one month before the massive overdoses and just one week after they refused the CIA’s demand for the identity of their confidential sources, McLaughlin and Micewski were investigators no more. Both the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office refused to take any more of their cases, claiming that the officers were fast and loose with the facts.

As chronicled in City Paper’s two-part investigative series "The Dominican Connection," two separate investigations, including a federal grand jury probe conducted by the FBI, found the BNI officers did nothing wrong.

Yet prosecutors continued to refuse using the officers’ evidence, and even went so far as to ask judges to release convicted drug dealers. Eventually, under pressure from U.S. Attorney Mike Stiles, the PAG took the BNI guys — later dubbed "The Bastard Squad" by a supervisor — off the streets.

Fed up, their careers in tatters, their reputations slammed, McLaughlin, Micewski and their partners Dennis McKeefery and Eddie Eggles filed a lawsuit.

Their investigation into the Dominican political party, which by then had spread to New York and Massachusetts as well and would include individuals who gave money to the Democrats at a fundraiser attended by Al Gore, was squashed after the CIA got involved, they claimed.

The District Attorney’s decision not to go forward on The Bastard Squad’s De la Mota case had nothing to do with any of that, a spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

First of all, it happened before any of the trouble.

The DA’s office says they kicked the first De la Mota case for good reason.

"We denied approving the warrant due to insufficient probable cause," DA spokesperson Cathie Abookire said in a phone interview on Tuesday. The decision, she added, "was not connected to [the squad’s] other problems."

Perhaps the recent arrest of De la Mota — who would likely still be in jail had he been convicted on the charges that the District Attorney’s Office didn’t want to bring — is some small token of vindication for the Bastard Squad.

Nearly six years after they arrested De la Mota, and nearly five years since the CIA stepped in and prosecutors put the muzzle on, the Bastard Squad is watching De la Mota charged with, among other things, distributing more than 1,000 grams of heroin. His arrest, the narco suits said so proudly in front of the cameras last week, slows the flood of heroin from Colombia, via the Dominican Republic, which is governed by the same State Department-backed political group that The Bastard Squad investigated in ’95.

Individually and as a group, the squad members have avoided comment.

Judge Seamus McCaffery, whose son now works for the BNI, is not so shy. He says news of De la Mota’s arrest is good news for the squad.

"As far as I am concerned, they were hitting good locations with good warrants and finding drugs and guns," McCaffery said in a Jan. 23 phone interview. "Here are these law enforcement officers, banished from the streets, their reputations tarnished. Now, as a result of a national bust, it brings into question whether or not the focus was on the right people at the time.

"Based on what you are telling me," he added, "it sounds to me like these investigations are now starting to really show they were on the right track."