THIEVES GO FREE; HOOKERS DON'T

When a hooker reported something fishy about a client on Sept. 17 last
year, Jeanette Maier, madam of the Canal Street brothel, set her mind at
rest: "This is wartime. They are looking for terrorists, not this s - - -."

The FBI agent recording the conversation must have had quite a chuckle over
that one. The feds might have failed to anticipate the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon and ignored anti-American tirades from Arabs
enrolled in our flight schools, but a handful of prostitutes would be
relentlessly pursued.

Before 9/11, on 9/11 and after 9/11 agents monitored every call. At any one
time at least 10 of them were assigned to the task, which went on for four
months and failed to uncover any crimes worthy of federal attention.

The feds, presumably embarrassed to have wasted an unknown, but obviously
considerable, amount of money, did their best to hornswoggle us into
thinking that this was a serious investigation by loading up the indictment
with overblown charges.

They eventually dropped most of the counts against Maier and her mother,
Tommie Taylor, in return for their help in prosecuting others involved in
the New Orleans brothel and associated establishments in other states.

But Taylor was still required to plead guilty to money laundering, an
offense normally associated with drug kingpins who use front companies to
conceal the source of their millions. But, according to the U.S. Attorney's
broad, and mean-spirited, reading of the statute, spending any money
illegally made amounts to money laundering. Thus minor offenders can face
serious prison time.

Taylor, according to the feds, was guilty of money-laundering when she
invested a few hundred bucks in magazine advertisements for her brothel.
The charge she wound up admitting in court was writing a rent check for $695.

Taylor and Maier also pleaded guilty to prostitution conspiracy, which
carries a statutory maximum of five years.

U.S. Attorney Jim Letten and Ken Kaiser, FBI chief in New Orleans, greeted
the guilty pleas with a press release that suggested they had brought off
the greatest law enforcement coup in Louisiana since Bonnie and Clyde.

Letten and Kaiser noted that this must be a big deal since "one customer
spent well in excess of $300,000 on prostitutes and illegal drugs between
1994 and 1998."

The feds, in affidavits accompanying warrant applications, have struggled
from the beginning to depict the brothel as a major drug den. But the best
they could do was to extract a guilty plea from "Grandma" Loretta Mims, 62,
for selling about five pounds of marijuana over a period of five years.
That wouldn't raise an eyebrow at Tulane and Broad.

What the press release fails to mention is that the big-spending john with
a drug habit was a federal snitch, a crooked doctor out of Ruston by the
name of Howard Lippton.

When the feds discovered he had been defrauding Medicaid and Medicare,
Lippton offered to rat out the cathouse in return for a lenient sentence.
The investigation was launched and from then on the calls Lippton made to
Canal Street were designed to ensnare the defendants. Such is the policy of
your government; give the thief a break and punish the hookers with the
utmost severity.

The feds, in support of warrant applications, suggested that the mob was
running the brothel network, but that, too, was fantasy. On the first day
of surveillance, the feds knew that tricks were being turned, and that's
about all they knew after monitoring more than 5,000 calls.

If the investigation was a farce, the resulting charges were a mockery of
justice, not only because they were too tough on the hookers but because
the feds chose to let their customers off the hook. Letten has suggested
that any prostitution charges should be brought by the state, although he
has not handed over any of the evidence to District Attorney Harry Connick.
In any case, defense attorneys say that, if Maier and Taylor were guilty of
conspiracy, so were johns.

But fair play has nothing to do with this case. This was a high-end
brothel, charging up to $300 an hour, and patronized by men of power and
influence. Why the customers are being protected is a matter of conjecture,
but the feds have shown so little interest in the customers that you almost
get the feeling Osama bin Laden could have hung out on Canal Street with
impunity.