🚀 go-pugleaf

Algore is a liar, just like Bill.

Tracey-Levin wrote:

> TENNESSEE UNDERWORLD
> Gore plays fixer
> to 'crooked' uncle
> How vice president used police
> to 'take care' of friends, family
>
> Editor's note: This is Part 2 of a three-part exclusive WorldNetDaily
> investigative series on allegations that Vice President Al Gore
> and his Tennessee associates have thwarted criminal investigations involving
> friends and family members and have engaged in
> abuse of power and illegal fund raising.
>
> In Part 1, "Al Gore's Uncle Whit," yesterday, WorldNetDaily revealed that
> Gore's uncle and confidant, retired judge Whit
> LaFon, has been targeted as an alleged drug trafficker by federal and state
> law enforcement officials in Tennessee.
>
> Part 2, in today's edition, involves allegations that Gore has routinely
> relied on his longtime friend and supporter Larry Wallace,
> director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, to "take care" of criminal
> matters involving Gore's family and friends.
>
> The series was researched and written by native Tennessee reporters Charles C.
> Thompson II and Tony Hays. Thompson is a
> long-time veteran of network news, having been a founding producer of ABC's
> "20/20," as well as Mike Wallace's producer at
> CBS's "60 Minutes." Hays is an experienced journalist whose recent 20-part
> series on narcotics trafficking received an award
> from the Tennessee Press Association.
>
> Part 3 will be published in tomorrow's edition of WorldNetDaily.
>
> By Charles Thompson and Tony Hays
> � 2000, Charles C. Thompson II and Tony Hays
>
>                  SAVANNAH, Tenn. -- According to a senior official with the
> Tennessee Bureau of Investigation,
>                  the state's premier law-enforcement agency, Vice President Al
> Gore Jr. routinely contacted his
>                  longtime friend and supporter TBI Director Larry Wallace for
> assistance with criminal matters
>                  involving Gore's family and political cronies.
>
>                  Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official stated that
> on at least four occasions during the
>                  past two years, while sitting in Wallace's office, a
> secretary would enter the room and announce,
>                  "Director Wallace, Vice President Gore is on the line for
> you." The official, who was intimately
>                  involved in criminal investigations, understood that the
> calls were related to criminal cases.
>                  According to this same source, Wallace frequently told senior
> staffers that Gore had put the arm
>                  on him to "take care" of criminal matters involving Gore's
> "crooked [expletive] uncle," retired
> judge Whit LaFon, brother to Gore's mother, Pauline LaFon Gore.
>
> LaFon, 82, who according to one senior political correspondent is "as close to
> Gore as you can get," was apparently
> also in frequent need of protection from the TBI and other law-enforcement
> agencies. At least twice while LaFon
> was a state prosecutor and later a judge, federal prosecutors attempted to
> indict him for bribery and extortion under
> the federal Hobbes Act. He has also been under investigation by federal and
> state agencies for public corruption,
> alleged narcotics trafficking and desecration of a Native American burial
> mound.
>
> The Gore campaign declined to answer questions about LaFon, who denied that he
> had any involvement with
> illegal drugs. LaFon recently bragged to the Sun newspaper in his hometown of
> Jackson, Tenn., that his nephew
> visited him often in Jackson and at his cabin on the Tennessee River and that
> his family shared a skybox with the
> Gore family during the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.
>
> Wallace had no comment for this story, despite repeated calls over a
> three-month period.
>
> The fact that Wallace was helping Gore and his uncle was well-known among a
> number of TBI higher-ups,
> according to many former and current agents, as well as three past directors
> of the TBI. During Wallace's tenure, the
> once highly respected TBI has been laid low by ever-increasing charges of
> institutional corruption, causing
> wholesale defections.
>
> John Carney, who headed the TBI 10 years ago and is now the district attorney
> in Clarksville, Tenn., said, "The TBI
> is in sad shape. Nobody trusts it because it's totally dominated by politics."
>
> Former TBI Director Arzo Carson, who drafted the 1980 legislation to take the
> TBI outside the governor's control,
> agreed, saying he is "bitterly disappointed" with what Tennessee Bureau of
> Investigation has become.
>
> "The TBI is really great for getting small fry, but for some reason, they are
> never able to make cases against the rich
> and famous, especially if these folks are politically well-connected," said
> one federal prosecutor.
>
> Wallace, a tall, rugged individual, began his law-enforcement career as a
> 20-year-old patrolman on the Athens,
> Tenn., Police Department in 1964. He then served with the Tennessee Highway
> Patrol for seven years before joining
> the TBI in 1973.
>
> He was only a field agent for three years, but some of his contemporaries
> never forgot nor forgave what they
> considered his lack of courage in the face of danger.
>
> Retired agent Bill Thompson said that Wallace once left him in the lurch by
> not showing up to arrest a multiple
> murderer, whose case was assigned to Wallace.
>
> "Jimmy Dale Smith was the murderer. He was about the baddest character in
> rural eastern Tennessee back then,"
> Thompson said.
>
> Thompson had learned that Smith would be playing poker in a club one night in
> the shadows of the Great Smokey
> Mountains. When Wallace failed to show to make the collar himself, Thompson
> positioned himself just inside the
> club and snared Smith when the killer arrived. He stuck his pistol in Smith's
> neck and handcuffed him.
>
> "I heard all about Larry Wallace's cowardice. I knew better than to take him
> along as a back-up when there was
> going to be gunplay," said George Haynes, another retired TBI agent.
>
> "George Haynes and Bill Thompson are the real thing," Carney said. "George
> killed at least two men in the line of
> duty, and Bill was there to back George up during one of those shoot-outs."
>
> According to Robert Lawson, the former commissioner of public safety and
> Wallace's one-time boss, "Everybody in
> law enforcement knows that Larry Wallace isn't going anywhere near where
> bullets are flying."
>
> Wallace left the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation in late 1976 when he was
> elected sheriff of McMinn County
> occupying that office for four years.
>
> He returned to TBI in 1980. Seven years after Wallace's return, he incurred
> the wrath of Carson, who suspected
> Wallace of leaking secrets from a 1987 federal grand jury to high-ranking
> members of then-Gov. Ned McWherter's
> cabinet.
>
> Wallace used family connections to become the uniformed head -- colonel -- of
> the Tennessee Highway Patrol, or
> THP. His then-wife Charlotte and her family were big in the Democratic Party.
> He asked his in-laws to intercede
> with the governor, and it worked. He landed the job.
>
> According to former members of the Tennessee Highway Patrol, Wallace involved
> himself whenever a prominent
> politician had a traffic accident on a state highway or had a dust-up with the
> law. One such case involved state Sen.
> John Ford, who allegedly fired a pistol at a trucker on Interstate 40 near
> Lexington, Tenn., in 1990. Ford was a
> member of the powerful African-American Ford political dynasty in Memphis. A
> Dallas trucker reported the
> shooting to the Highway Patrol station in Jackson, Tenn., around 4:30 p.m. The
> Jackson troopers called Nashville
> headquarters for guidance, and according to a former THP official, Wallace
> said, "Don't stop that car (Ford's). Let it
> go."
>
> At this point, there was adequate time to apprehend Ford on the interstate and
> search his car for the weapon. But
> because of Wallace's order, Ford escaped and wasn't questioned until the next
> day. By that time, there was no pistol
> found in his Mercedes-Benz.
>
> Although a bullet was recovered from the truck, Ford accused the trucker of
> making everything up. A jury in
> Jackson acquitted Ford of all charges.
>
> Lawson said that he, like Carson before him, became convinced that Wallace was
> bootlegging highly sensitive
> criminal investigative material to politicians who were under investigation in
> order to curry favor with them.
>
> The primary motivation for the TBI director selection committee and Gov. Ned
> McWherter to pick Wallace,
> according to former director Carson, was self-preservation.
>
> "At that time, the TBI was feared by all politicians, regardless of their
> political party," Carson said. "The bureau had
> sent many corrupt Tennessee officials (33 out of Tennessee's 95 sheriffs) to
> jail. The politicians obviously thought
> that TBI's fangs had to be pulled."
>
> What better way, Carson said, to control the TBI than have a weak individual
> head it, someone who would
> undermine the organization, keep the governor and other officials thoroughly
> apprised as to ongoing investigations
> and terminate politically sensitive investigations before they became public
> issues.
>
> A sampling of aborted investigations under Wallace involving politicians as
> well as institutional cover-ups bears
> out Carson's assessment of Wallace.
>
> Among Wallace's first acts as director was to abolish the agency's highly
> regarded public corruption unit. Wallace
> went even further, ordering his agents never to open an investigation in any
> of Tennessee's 95 counties without first
> notifying the sheriff, if the sheriff was the target of the investigation.
>
> Rank-and-file agents and their supervisors were outraged.
>
> "We were hamstrung. There was no way we could investigate a crooked sheriff
> anymore," one supervisor said.
>
> Wallace also allegedly interfered in the murder investigation implicating his
> own son, Larry Dean Wallace.
>
> In 1994, at least three TBI agents and supervisors came to Wallace and told
> him that his son, Larry Dean Wallace,
> then in his late 20s, was heavily involved in drug trafficking.
>
> When former TBI drug agent Milton Bowling told Wallace about his son's drug
> dealings, the director reportedly
> became glassy-eyed and said, "You're to stay away from this case."
>
> A year later, Larry Dean lay in ambush and shot to death James Edward
> Wilkerson over $1,500 that Larry Dean
> owed Wilkerson for drugs.
>
> Larry Dean then loaded the body into the trunk of Wilkerson's car and arranged
> to have a wrecker haul the car some
> 10 miles from the scene of the crime.
>
> After confessing to second-degree murder, Larry Dean was sentenced to a
> 15-year prison term. Never imprisoned,
> he served his time in a cushy clerical job, all because, in the words of his
> attorney, Hal Hardin, "His father is the
> state's top law-enforcement officer."
>
> Wallace faced a political quandary in 1994. His staunch supporter, McWherter,
> was retiring as governor and would
> not be able to help him when he came up for another six-year appointment as
> TBI director in 1998.
>
> Bill Morris, the mayor of Shelby County (Memphis) was locked in a heated
> contest for the Democratic gubernatorial
> nomination with Phil Bredesen, the mayor of Nashville, and eight other
> candidates. Even though Morris appeared
> to be a winner, Wallace hedged his bets, hoping to be on the side that won.
>
> But before Morris' campaign left the launching pad, a bombshell landed. A
> hard-hitting series by investigative
> reporter Louis Graham of the Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis inspired a
> TBI criminal investigation of
> Morris. The newspaper documented 100 events since 1987 in which Morris
> allegedly used prison inmates to cater
> his political and personal social events.
>
> Wallace sent his No. 2 man, Robert Reeves, to coordinate this delicate
> investigation and try to rescue Morris. TBI
> agents based in Memphis were upset by Reeves' orders to investigate only two
> of Morris' subordinates -- his
> executive assistant, Robert C. Lanier, and Garner Branch, who was in charge of
> dietary services at the Shelby County
> Correctional Center -- and to leave Morris alone.
>
> Roger Moore, an assistant district attorney in Nashville appointed special
> prosecutor, worked hand in hand with
> Reeves. According to a well-placed source in the Shelby County District
> Attorney's Office, Reeves presented
> evidence to the grand jury. But, according to one of the grand jurors, her
> fellow jurors became incensed by Reeve's
> blatant attempts to insulate the mayor from blame.
>
> "People (on the grand jury) were awfully mad," the grand juror said, and they
> voted to indict Morris on six felony
> and three misdemeanor charges.
>
> Reeves hastened back to Nashville to explain what happened to Wallace.
>
> When Reeves emerged from Wallace's 3rd-floor offices nearly four hours later,
> he was visibly shaken.
>
> "Larry told me to go back to Memphis and unindict Morris," said Reeves,
> according to a senior TBI official.
>
> Five weeks later, rather than face the defiant grand jurors again, special
> prosecutor Moore and Reeves appeared
> before Criminal Court Judge Joseph B. Dailey and signed a motion dismissing
> all the charges against Morris. They
> left the indictments standing against Lanier and Branch.
>
> "Why would they drop the charges against the mayor when my husband only did as
> he was instructed to?" Branch's
> wife asked.
>
> Both Lanier and Branch later pleaded no contest and were placed on probation.
> Reeves publicly rebuked them for
> not having "the courage to stand up in court and admit their guilt."
>
> Morris never recovered from the quashed indictments. Phil Bredesen beat him,
> who was in turn beaten by
> Republican Don Sundquist.
>
> Secret test site for Hillary's plan
> A lifelong Democrat, Wallace quickly switched his allegiance to the Republican
> Party with great fanfare. Although
> he kept close contact with many of his Democratic buddies, such as Gore, he
> began ingratiating himself with
> members of the Sundquist administration.
>
> Early in the Clinton administration, while Hillary Clinton was unsuccessfully
> attempting to cobble together a
> nationwide health-care system, then-Gov. McWherter contacted Bill Clinton and
> Gore and volunteered Tennessee as
> a test site for Hillary's health plan.
>
> About 1.1 million poor and uninsured people were enrolled in the program. The
> federal government allowed
> Medicaid dollars to be diverted into TennCare, and the program quickly became
> the financial and criminal
> equivalent of the Black Hole of Calcutta.
>
> Despite the fact that the state contributed more than 25 percent of its annual
> budget to the program, TennCare was
> still under-funded.
>
> "We couldn't get the big guys (insurance companies) in. We got the
> fly-by-nights," said a federal prosecutor who has
> tried a number of TennCare fraud cases. "Many of these insurance companies who
> joined TennCare were just fronts
> for legislators, their families and other public officials who raked in money
> while the poor were denied services to
> which they were legally entitled."
>
> The program was a revolving door for administrators, eight in only six years,
> and now threatens to bankrupt the
> state. continued
>
> Wallace established a health-care fraud unit, which many TBI agents described
> as a joke. Even so, some members of
> the unit were aggressive and vigorously pursued those who bilked TennCare.
>
> According to TBI agents and federal prosecutors, OmniCare, a health insurance
> company closely allied with the
> politically potent Ford family of Memphis, was one of the most scandal-ridden
> of the 12 managed-care
> organizations participating in TennCare.
>
> In 1995, TBI agents arrested a Nashville woman who admitted forging more than
> 140 applications for TennCare
> while working as an independent contractor for OmniCare. Pamela Renee King
> said she obtained the data
> contained on the false applications while working as a fitness consultant in
> the health center at the sprawling Saturn
> automobile plant in Spring Hill, Tenn.
>
> TBI investigator Shana Roberts said King was paid between $13 and $17 for each
> application. As long as the scam
> went undisclosed, OmniCare received $111 per patient per month for patients
> who didn't exist or who were
> fraudulently enrolled in the program.
>
> King was the second OmniCare representative to be caught by TBI agents in
> 1995. Harold McGhee, a former
> employee at the Shelby County Corrections Center, admitted to agents he had
> enrolled 202 inmates that he knew
> already had medical coverage and were therefore ineligible for TennCare.
>
> Both King and McGhee were convicted of mail fraud and making false statements.
> Each received a sentences of
> about a year in prison.
>
> 'The Fords had gotten him'
> Although he wasn't a company officer or a member of OmniCare's board of
> directors, former Rep. Harold Ford was
> publicly identified in 1996 by the Commercial Appeal as being associated with
> OmniCare. Ford, an
> African-American, was first elected to Congress in 1974, beating a white
> incumbent. Ford's district encompassed
> most of Memphis, which became majority black.
>
> Ford had a rocky political career, and he allied himself and his family with
> Gore. He was indicted on federal bank,
> mail-fraud and conspiracy charges in 1987, stemming from $1 million of loans
> he had received from banks
> controlled by Democratic politician Jake Butcher and his brother C.H. Butcher.
> The money was loaned for business
> purposes, but was allegedly converted to personal use by Ford. His first trial
> resulted in a hung jury. A second jury
> acquitted him.
>
> When the House banking scandal broke in 1993, it was revealed that Ford had
> written 388 bad checks totaling
> $552,447 at the bank between 1988 and 1991. Although he was one of the worst
> offenders, a special prosecutor's
> probe found no criminal wrongdoing on Ford's part.
>
> Ford retired from Congress in 1996 and was succeeded by his son, Harold Ford
> Jr., a move that angered some local
> black leaders who resented the Ford family's belief that the congressional
> seat belonged to them rather than to the
> people. At the time, Ford Jr. was only 24 years old, the youngest member of
> Congress. It was Harold Ford, Jr. whom
> Gore picked to make one of the Democratic convention's keynote addresses.
>
> In addition to Harold Ford Sr.'s older brother, John, a state senator, other
> Ford brothers who have been actively
> involved in family politics include: 1) Joe Ford, who ran for mayor of Memphis
> in 1999; 2) former state Rep. Emmitt
> Ford, who served time in a federal prison in the late 1990s for failure to
> file tax returns on income of $700,000; and 3)
> Dr. James Ford, an ophthalmologist, a member of the Shelby County Commission
> and a TennCare provider.
>
> A hard-charging young TBI agent, David Loftus, who worked on the Shelby County
> Corrections Center portion of
> the OmniCare investigations, told his colleagues he was bound and determined
> to find out why the Ford family's
> involvement in OmniCare was not being taken more seriously by the TBI.
>
> "The evidence showed that the Fords were up to their eyeballs in OmniCare and
> yet nobody was holding their feet
> to the fire," said Loftus. Even though an assistant U.S. attorney in Memphis
> warned Loftus to be more discreet
> "about what he said about the Fords or they will get you," he continued to
> probe the Ford family's involvement with
> TennCare.
>
> Loftus had nearly finished his two-year stint as a probationary agent with TBI
> and had recently received an
> outstanding evaluation from his supervisor, when suddenly he was summoned to
> TBI headquarters and was
> summarily fired. No reason was given.
>
> He was going boating that day with three of his colleagues on a lake near
> Nashville. The others were laughing and
> drinking beer when he arrived. They saw his long face and asked him what had
> happened. "I got fired," Loftus said.
>
> "I knew immediately that the Fords had gotten him," one agent said. "There was
> no way that Larry Wallace was
> going to let a rookie agent upset the Fords."
>
> 'Good Ol' Boys Roundup'
> Agents say that TBI cover-ups weren't limited to just protecting politicians.
>
> In the summer of 1995, Tennesseans and the rest of the nation were dismayed by
> the news that a group of off-duty
> federal, state and local law-enforcement officers had gathered in May for an
> event known as the "Good Ol' Boys
> Roundup," where racist activities were apparently encouraged.
>
> Camping along the banks of the Ocoee River in southeast Tennessee for three
> days of whitewater rafting and beer
> drinking, 300 law-enforcement officers and their friends, including federal
> and TBI agents, were exposed to some
> virulent racist displays.
>
> Vendors sold T-shirts depicting the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in gun-sight
> cross hairs and others bearing the
> slogan "Boyz on the Hood" with police officers surrounding two black men
> spread-eagle over a police cruiser.
>
> The reaction was swift from Washington. President Clinton denounced the
> roundup as "an event literally
> overflowing with racism." Both the Justice and Treasury departments opened
> wide-ranging investigations.
>
> Gov. Sundquist announced there would be an investigation of the roundup to be
> headed by Wallace. There was
> only one hitch -- Wallace had reportedly attended the roundup.
>
> Wallace handed over the day-to-day management of the investigation to his
> general counsel, David Jennings.
> Richard Brogan, TBI's special agent in charge in Chattanooga, handled the
> fieldwork and some of the interrogations.
> Like Wallace, Brogan had also allegedly attended the roundup.
>
> State arson investigators Robert Frost and Dennis Ledbetter said that
> Ledbetter provided Jennings with a statement
> putting Wallace inside the meeting grounds. Ledbetter said he cooked a steak
> for Wallace.
>
> Agent Lee Porter wrote a memo stating that Brogan and his wife, Brogan's
> assistant, Brooks Wilkins and his wife,
> and agent T.J. Jordan and his wife were present.
>
> Jennings turned his investigative file over to Jeff Long, head of the
> intelligence division, for further processing.
> Long was one of the most respected senior officers in the Tennessee Bureau of
> Investigation.
>
> Long, who subsequently resigned from the TBI and is now a prosecutor serving
> four counties in Middle Tennessee,
> said that Ledbetter's statement and Porter's memo were missing from the file
> Jennings gave him.
>
> "Jennings told me that no further investigation was required. I took him at
> his word," Long said. "In retrospect, I
> wish I hadn't."
>
> During a televised news conference, Wallace reassured Sundquist, who appeared
> with him, that neither he nor any
> of his senior officers had attended the roundup.
>
> Bat guano
> Another institutional cover-up, which is still haunting Wallace and the TBI,
> involves a substance known as bat
> "guano," a genteel way of saying feces.
>
> In 1994, the TBI sought accreditation from a nonprofit organization, the
> Commission on Accreditation for Law
> Enforcement Agencies, Inc., or CALEA. Thousands of dollars of tax money and
> many hours of employee time were
> allocated to the project, headed by Jennings.
>
> CALEA sets rigorous guidelines regarding an agency's training, record
> management and storage of evidence. That
> last category appeared to be an insurmountable obstacle to the TBI's
> accreditation. Evidence of upcoming cases and
> cases under appeal were spread willy-nilly in agents' offices throughout the
> headquarters building.
>
> This practice was strictly counter to state and federal court guidelines
> requiring a rigid chain of custody. Evidence
> was supposed to be logged in and preserved in a tightly controlled vault. TBI
> had a vault, but it was not nearly
> adequate to hold all the evidence.
>
> Bulky evidence was stored in a separate building referred to as the old
> cafeteria. Two or three rooms in the building
> were filled with bat guano taken from a cave in the foothills of the
> Cumberland Mountains. This fertilizer had been
> advertised in nationally circulated magazines devoted to the drug culture.
>
> Bat droppings are supposed to make marijuana grow faster and hardier. The
> guano is also guaranteed to work
> miracles on vegetable gardens and flowers.
>
> The guano had been seized from Robert Senick, who ran a company called Bat
> Majic. At the time of the
> accreditation, Senick was awaiting trial on drug charges.
>
> In addition to Senick's exotic fertilizer, an elaborate hydroponic marijuana
> growing system was also crammed into
> the old cafeteria.
>
> The day before the CALEA inspectors arrived, agents say that Jennings, along
> with Reeves, Wallace's most trusted
> aide, decided to get rid of everything in the old cafeteria and also throw
> away or hide many other pieces of
> evidence.
>
> Jennings and Reeves allegedly both looted piles of the Bat Majic guano for
> their own use. Reeves hauled a pickup
> truck full of bat dung away to fertilize his flower garden. Ten to 12 other
> employees helped themselves to the
> guano. These same employees also destroyed evidence, according to a TBI memo
> written after the event.
>
> Bob Pearce, then TBI's assistant director for administration, was seen
> carrying away five bulging duffels and three to
> four boxes of evidence. The boxes and bags contained hunting rifles, shotguns,
> pistols, assault weapons, sheaf
> knives, switchblades and bayonets, according to multiple TBI sources.
>
> After the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation cheated its way through the CALEA
> exam, Pearce brought back just
> two of the boxes. Nobody is quite sure what happened to the rest of the
> evidence. Pearce, who has since retired and
> is a Baptist minister, refused to talk about the incident.
>
> Agents say that evidence destruction occurred again in 1997 during CALEA's
> re-inspection process. When
> WorldNetDaily first contacted CALEA, Steve Mitchell, the program manager for
> the TBI, was incredulous. Mitchell
> said he found it hard to believe that a state police agency would willfully
> destroy evidence.
>
> When informed that documentation existed, he said, "That's very serious,
> possibly a criminal matter."
>
> Mitchell later said that Wallace and Jennings told him that TBI destroyed
> evidence in 1994 and 1997. Did they obtain
> the requisite court orders before doing so?
>
> "They told me they didn't obtain court orders," he said.
>
> According to many former and current agents, drug cover-ups perpetrated under
> the Wallace regime undermined
> many agents' morale.
>
> 'The godfather'
> In 1995, Butch Morris, one of the TBI's best undercover agents, and his
> partner, Milton Bowling, were investigating
> reports that local law-enforcement officers and perhaps local prosecutors in
> the Cookeville, Tenn., area were
> providing protection to drug dealers and might even be involved in drug
> trafficking themselves.
>
> In the course of their investigation, Morris and Bowling learned how hazardous
> it could be to run afoul of a Wallace
> political crony. Numerous law-enforcement sources said that Cookeville land
> baron Mike Gaw is a close associate
> of Wallace. Gaw owns 500 pieces of rental property in Putnam County
> (Cookeville).
>
> "Mike Gaw is the godfather of Cookeville. He owns the whole town, the condos,
> apartment buildings and slum
> property," a TBI official said.
>
> Tennessee political reporters said that Gaw gained his power by contributing
> $70,000 to Sundquist's two
> gubernatorial campaigns and that he became acquainted with Wallace through
> Putnam County Sheriff Jerry Abston,
> one of Wallace's closest friends.
>
> Morris infiltrated a Putnam County gang and served as its intermediary in
> buying a pound of methamphetamine
> from a Los Angeles group. He then arranged for the gang to buy up to 40 pounds
> of the drug, which had a street
> value of about $360,000.
>
> Morris said the gang was connected "to some of the highest rollers in the
> community," people who rubbed elbows
> with the sheriff, the prosecutor and Mike Gaw.
>
> Shortly before he rounded up the gang members, Brogan, Morris's TBI
> supervisor, stepped in and "put his
> investigation on hold."
>
> "We missed a chance to shut down one of the largest meth labs in the country
> and at the same time destroy a major
> Tennessee drug connection," Morris said.
>
> Five years after Morris was pulled off the case, a gung-ho FBI agent picked up
> the threads. Two defendants pleaded
> guilty to federal drug trafficking charges and another was convicted after
> Morris testified against him. Later, Morris
> tells WorldNetDaily, he was asked by an assistant U.S. attorney what had gone
> wrong back in 1995, in response to
> which Morris shrugged and looked at the ceiling as if to say, "it's a very
> long story."
>
> Two years ago, Morris appeared before a state legislative investigative panel
> and publicly criticized TBI's drug
> policy. The next day, TBI Deputy Director Reeves appeared before the same body
> and trashed Morris' job
> performance. One of Reeve's complaints was that Morris had misspelled an
> informant's name. Morris later resigned
> from the agency and is now police chief in La Vergne, Tenn.
>
> Sundquist reappointed Wallace to another six-year term in 1998, although
> Wallace received fewer votes from the
> "independent" selection committee than Jeff Long. According to published
> reports in the Tennessean and
> Associated Press, within a matter of hours after having received the
> committee's recommendation, Sundquist,
> without comment, ignored the committee and reappointed Wallace.
>
> Some members of the state legislature have become so disenchanted with the
> TBI's desultory performance in
> catching drug dealers that there is now a serious legislative effort to
> abolish the agency's drug unit.
>
> Not long ago, TBI dispatched 49 agents to shut down a cockfight in eastern
> Tennessee.
>
> "If the TBI doesn't have the manpower to make serious drug cases, then how
> does it have 49 men to halt a rooster
> fight?" one top official said. "It's high time to quit doing favors for public
> officials, even if they are the vice president
> of the United States, and get back to enforcing the laws fairly like we did
> before Larry Wallace came along. If we
> can't do that, then it's time to abolish the TBI and start all over."
>
> TOMORROW: In Part 3, senior Tennessee law enforcement officials says Vice
> President Al Gore killed a major drug trafficking
> investigation in their state that allegedly implicated several of Gore's
> long-time friends and supporters.
>
>      Read Part I: Al Gore's Uncle Whit.
> http://www.worldnetdaily.com
>
> See Tuesdays update on Gore and his Tennessee dealings......