[Win Tickets to Tea with Mussulini--Click Here!] Published Saturday, May 1, 1999, in the Miami Herald Snitch turns tables on DEA Phone tapes tell a tale of deceit By LARRY LEBOWITZ Herald Staff Writer Jimmie Norjay Ellard has a survival instinct second to none. The daring pilot has admitted flying more than 27 1/2 tons of cocaine into the U.S., often skimming beneath highly sophisticated radar systems. As an undercover snitch, he has taped personal meetings with some of the most violent Colombian drug kingpins, including the late Pablo Escobar. He even provided Escobar's No. 1 hit man with the know-how to blow a commercial airliner from the sky in 1989, a bombing that killed 107 people to silence two police informants on board. Now Ellard, who was sentenced to five years in prison Friday in federal court in Fort Lauderdale for violating probation, is turning on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents who helped him get a drastically reduced sentence in 1995. As part of his defense, Ellard produced a secretly taped phone conversation with a New York-based DEA agent urging the smuggler to flout a federal judge's order and consummate a 26,000-pound cocaine deal with Mexican traffickers in violation of U.S. policy. DEA officials in New York and Washington confirmed late Friday that an internal investigation is under way by the agency's Office of Professional Responsibility. ``There is an OPR investigation concerning the use of Ellard,'' said Lou Rice, special agent in charge of the DEA office in New York. Ellard and his son, William, were arrested in September after South Florida drug agents watched them fly 187 pounds of marijuana into Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport. Ellard told Customs agent Paul ``Skip'' Hilson, the lead investigator, he was working for DEA Special Agents Sam Trotman, based in Camden, N.J., and Aldo Rocco, based in New York, on a major investigation involving three Mexican drug cartels and corrupt politicians. Ellard said the Mexicans had changed plans at the last minute, deciding to test him with a smaller load of marijuana before trusting him with tons of cocaine. Hilson testified that the DEA agents denied authorizing any of Ellard's smuggling activities. Rocco and Trotman had used Ellard as an informant in the early 1990s when he was working to reduce a potential life sentence down to six years. But his cooperation ended in 1995 and he was deactivated as a DEA informant. Ellard's longtime lawyer, William Norris of Coral Gables, mounted a ``government authority'' defense, arguing DEA had given Ellard permission to import the drugs. Norris subpoenaed Rocco, Trotman and the federal prosecutors in New York who had used him as an informant and witness in the early 1990s. South Florida prosecutors fought to quash the subpoenas. With the marijuana smuggling trial approaching, Norris suddenly came up with Ellard's 21-minute secret tape of a conversation with Rocco. Late last month, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Fort Lauderdale dismissed the smuggling case against Ellard and his son due to the DEA's involvement, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Thompson. Father and son had been facing up to 25 years in prison. The younger Ellard was freed, but the elder remained behind bars because the unauthorized drug flights and informant work violated Ellard's probation. Ellard was still under the supervision of U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch, who presided over Ellard's 1990 guilty plea to spearheading an aerial cocaine smuggling operation out of Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport. At the government's urging, Zloch had twice reduced Ellard's sentence, from nearly 27 years to 15 years and later to six years after Ellard testified in New York against Dandy Munoz-Mosquera, the Medellin cartel's No. 1 hit man who blew up an Avianca Airlines flight in 1989. In July 1997, Brooklyn-based prosecutors specifically asked Zloch to move Ellard's probation to New York so he could work as an informant for Rocco and Trotman. Zloch denied the request, in writing, in a confidential ruling. On Friday, the judge wanted to know why Ellard took it upon himself to get back into the smuggling trade. ``I don't care if the President of the United States came down from Washington and recruited Mr. Ellard,'' Zloch said, ``I want to see any piece of paper signed by this court'' authorizing him to work under cover for DEA. According to the tapes, Thompson, the Fort Lauderdale-based drug prosecutor, was the target of plenty of derision from both Ellard and Rocco. The allegiances became so muddled that at one point the DEA agent complained to the twice-convicted smuggler that the prosecutor was letting tons of cocaine enter the U.S. unchecked. ``It's criminal. It really is,'' Rocco said. ``I mean [Thompson's] no different than a cartel attorney. The bottom line is he's making it easier for stuff, not only coming to this country, but to get distributed.'' At one point on the tape, Rocco warns Ellard that he can't protect the smuggler if he gets caught with any drugs: ``I'm not going to lie to you . . . if I was in your position, I would not do it.'' But for the remainder of the 21-minute conversation, the ex-con and the agent discuss all of the possible scenarios for bringing the cocaine out of Mexico. They discussed several air routes Ellard could use through intermediary countries to cover up that the load would originate in Mexico. Rocco needed to disguise the origins of the undercover purchase for a reason. U.S. relations with Mexico were strained last summer after the feds indicted some Mexican bankers for drug money laundering in an extensive undercover sting called Operation Casablanca. Since Casablanca, most undercover operations in Mexico have to be cleared with DEA agents at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico, who share information with their Mexican counterparts, said Greg Williams, DEA chief of operations in Washington. In rare, highly sensitive situations, agents can avoid the embassy and seek direct approval from DEA Administrator Thomas Constantine's office, Williams said. Ellard, in a long speech before the sentence, said he did exactly what the agents instructed him to do. His primary motivation: to stop the Mexicans from importing 12,000 kilograms of cocaine that he intended to give to the DEA. Ellard said his undercover work with the Mexicans was like the television program Mission: Impossible. ``Luckily for me,'' Ellard said, ``the tape did not self destruct in five seconds.'' Contact Us Copyright 1999 Miami Herald
