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Federal sting often put more drugs on the streets (cont.) Turning the tables Rodney Matthews was the centerpiece in the government sting called "Operation Shanghai," an example of just how little control the U.S. sometimes has in its drug interdiction efforts. Matthews agreed to smuggle drugs with the government’s blessing in 1984 to avoid a three-year prison term for smuggling marijuana. It wasn’t a bad trade. Government agents said he could keep anything he earned from the smuggling operations, and he earned millions. The government sting had two objectives, Matthews said in several letters responding to questions the Post-Gazette posed:
Matthews said he got nowhere with Stadter, managing only to take one of his secretaries on a few dates. His pursuit of Escobar was more complicated and ultimately unsuccessful. Escobar died of multiple gunshot wounds after a shootout with Colombian police in December 1993, before U.S. agents ever laid a hand on him. During the years in between, Matthews smuggled more than 50 loads of cocaine for the U.S. Customs Service. At the direction of federal agents, he delivered his loads to illegal drug syndicates in the United States, which then distributed them across the nation. Matthews said he invested most of his profits in property and aircraft and made sure the operation never cost the government a cent. He said the government wasn’t interested in pursuing the people who bought his drugs. By not busting them, agents hoped to enhance Matthews’ reputation with Escobar and Stadter, creating an image of a super trafficker who could avoid the government’s web. That he never got close to Escobar wasn’t for lack of imaginative schemes. At one point, Matthews tried to sell the cartel leader the coastal schedules of U.S. AWACS surveillance planes, used to detect smugglers in boats and planes, for $6 million. It was all a scam, he said. He was hoping the ploy would get him closer to the Colombian. He said his encounter with scores of federal agents in 1989 at the airport near Houston was a wakeup call. His contacts for the smuggling sting were two Customs Service agents and two Texas Department of Public Safety narcotics agents, and he no longer believed they had enough support for the operation to protect him. "It was glaringly apparent that the people who had given me authorization had over-reached their authority, so from that point on I made sure that no cocaine hit the street," he said. Soon, he was accepting only contract assignments from federal law enforcement agencies, for a fee of $50,000 a flight. He brought in the drugs and let the federal agents take it from there. These flights often included overnight stops at U.S. military bases in the Carib-bean, including Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba, "where I would fly in loaded with Colombian cocaine, using prearranged code names like ‘Dark Cloud’ and ‘Hot Rod’ for tower clearance." The final irony: The government still owes him $180,000 for those flights, which agents corroborated during his trial. Matthews’ last operation was in 1992 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. An old friend set him up to be busted. Jimmy Norjay Ellard was an ex-police officer from Texas, a pilot and a longtime associate of Escobar, and he had served as liaison for Matthews with the cartel leader. Ellard’s resume was bloody. He had instructed Escobar in how to attach a bomb to an Avianca Airlines plane, which the drug leader did in the early 1980s to eliminate two informers. More than 100 innocent people died in the mid-air blast. Federal agents busted Ellard in 1985 for cocaine smuggling, and he was sentenced to life in prison. He had been in jail for four years when he cut a deal with an assistant U.S. attorney in Fort Lauderdale, based on his promise to deliver Mat-thews. From prison, he arranged an illegal drug shipment that Matthews would pick up. Federal agents had falsely told Ellard that Matthews not only worked for the government but had been responsible for setting Ellard up in his 1985 arrest, Matthews said. Federal prosecutors and agents in South Florida told Matthews they didn’t believe his story about working for the federal government, despite the drug agents’ corroboration. During pre-trial meetings, when Matthews’ lawyer named the agents he was working with, prosecutors suggested they had conspired in his crime. So prosecutors offered Matthews a deal: Implicate the agents in some of his crimes, and he’d be recommended for a reduced sentence. Matthews refused; they were honest officers, he said. Matthews was convicted of drug conspiracy and sentenced to three life terms in prison, based on the amount of drugs he’d smuggled. Ellard, because of his help in nailing Matthews, got only five years, but his luck didn’t last. In September, he and his son were arrested in Fort Lauderdale and charged with conspiring to import marijuana. He is back in jail. The agents were charged with conspiracy based on facts that came out of Mat-thews case. Both were acquitted. Matthews thought he would find some relief, because he believed the government would surely come to its senses — the government’s agents, after all, had corroborated his story and been found innocent of trumped up perjury charges. He sent a package of information to 140 Members of Congress. He got five responses, most of them "offering good wishes," he said. Last summer, he did an extensive interview with the ABC show "Prime Time Live" in which he explained his story. Shortly before that story aired, he was put into an isolation cell at Leavenworth, where he is only allowed out for a short walk each day.
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Snare a South Texan named
Vic Stadter, an outspoken government critic who made his opinions known through his
newspaper. Federal agents believed he was a longtime drug smuggler. Stadter denied the
charge and accused the government of harassment.
