Outgoing U.S. attorney led the charge in drug war

By DEBORAH TEDFORD
Copyright 1997 Houston Chronicle

The courtroom was never the prime battlefield for U.S. Attorney Gaynelle
Griffin Jones' war on drugs.

She marshaled her forces in countless communities in the 43 county war
zone that makes up the Southern Judicial District of Texas, training law
enforcement officers and citizens to battle international criminals.

Jones, who leaves her post Friday, even called in the U.S. Army.

"Gaynelle had the vision to see that what happens in the courtroom largely
drives itself. Agencies investigate and prosecutors take the cases to
trial. There has to be supervision, of course, but she had the ability to
see that the U.S. attorney could also have an impact on what happens
outside the courtroom," said Assistant U.S. Attorney John Lenoir.

Last year, Jones called in officials with the U.S. Army to teach police and
deputies in Brownsville, Harlingen and McAllen the art of developing
longterm strategies for use in fighting international drug crime.

Because drug organizations are manytentacled and their chieftains maintain
very low profiles, law enforcement has historically had a hard time
identifying the enemy.

The training sessions taught law enforcement officers in the Valley how to
trace "mopes" the lowly drug couriers back up the chain of command to
identify the drug chieftains, often nearly invisible through the layers of
the organization, said Lenoir.

The Army's instructors also taught ways to pinpoint the comings and goings
of traffickers, so that a strategy for capture could be developed.

And because the kingpin is usually farremoved from actual street sales,
police and deputies learned to tailor their investigative techniques in
ways that would link the kingpin to the drug smuggling and sales.

"You catch the guys who are driving the 1,000 kilos of dope across the
border, but the guys up the ladder are harder to identify and harder to
catch. They never actually touch the drugs," said Lenoir.

"But the Army knows how to plan on a multinational, long term level and
that's what it takes to fight drug crime. We're dealing with huge
international organizations that are almost corporate in nature. We
translated the military concepts of planning to law enforcement."

Dubbed RIONet, the project also will create an intelligence network that
enables law enforcement officials in the Valley to trade information on the
movement of drug criminals in their area long a hotspot for drug smuggling.

While maximizing law enforcement efforts, Jones also set out to train
members of the community to be partners in the drug effort.

Jones teamed law enforcement, tenants in low income housing projects and
the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Operation Safe Home. The
project aims to drive crack dealers off the stoops and out of the hallways
of lowincome apartment complexes.

The project used federal funds to increase security patrols and put in such
features as controlled access gates in two Houston housing projects and one
in Galveston.

"What she has done is really quite revolutionary," said Lenoir. "It cuts
down on crack dealing and ancillary violence. It increased the scope of the
office from merely prosecuting cases to include investigation and
prevention, he said.

Jones felt so strongly that an integral part of crime fighting was crime
prevention that she moved Lenoir, a 19 year prosecutor, out of the
courtroom and made him coordinator of the community effort.

It's because of her that the district has snagged $326,000 to conduct
training in community oriented policing, and $600,000 over a threeyear
period for each of four community crime prevention projects, said Lenoir.

"Gaynelle has brought about $2 million in federal funding into the
district," said Lenoir. "That's $2 million we wouldn't have had otherwise."

At the Monday news conference in which she announced her resignation after
four years, Jones touted her successes in the community and took kudos for
courtroom victories, as well.

Boasting that she has directed hundreds of drug prosecutions and
convictions, Jones said her greatest achievement was leading the team that
ended Juan Garcia Abrego's reign as premier Mexican drug trafficker.

The drug kingpin was sentenced earlier this year to nine life terms for his
role as head of the notorious Gulf Cartel, which ferried more than 100,000
kilos of cocaine across the border.

Since taking office in August 1993, Jones has beefedup the ranks of
prosecutors from 119 to 133 especially in narcotics, according to
office statistics.

"I found my years as U.S. attorney the most exciting and rewarding of my
life. It has been an honor and a privilege to serve the citizens of this
great state and I have enjoyed working with the fine men and women in the
U.S. attorney's office, law enforcement and communities throughout the
district to help make a difference," she said.

But while Jones has had her successes, her tenure also has been marked by
numerous internal affairs probes that have often caused her staff and
members of the defense bar to question her judgment.

In 1994, Jones was accused of halting a federal probe of Democratic judges
in Harris County. The investigation included allegations that the judges
appointed financial backers to lucrative legal jobs.

A longtime Democrat who ran an unsuccessful campaign for a post on the
Texas 1st Court of Appeals in 1992, Jones denied politics was involved in
the decision.

Then in 1995, a probe of a Galleriaarea jewelry designer by the state
comptroller's office revealed that Jones and her family members wrongly
claimed a tax exempt status on jewelry purchases.

Records from the jeweler's office showed Jones had resale certificates on
file that enabled her to make a purchase without paying sales taxes.

Such certificates are for use by business owners whose enterprise involves
the sale of the item purchased.

Jones said she was asked to provide the business identification number of a
Louisiana law firm in which she owned an interest and never realized there
was anything wrong.

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibilities
investigated but refused to release its report on either probe. Officials
said the reports involve personnel issues that federal law has made exempt
from public disclosure.

The taint on the office seemed to linger. Dan Cogdell was among five
members of the defense bar who called on Jones about 2 « years ago with
particular concerns about prosecutorial ethics in a massive bank fraud case
involving a Department of the Interior official.

Cogdell said Jones ignored their concerns.

A few months later U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt ended the bank fraud
and conspiracy trial by summarily acquitting the 10 defendants, saying
their right to a fair trial was "snared on the branches of strange and
subverted truth" because of misconduct by two federal prosecutors.

Hoyt also sanctioned the two prosecutors for deceiving the court and
failing to disclose evidence that could have cleared the suspects.

"My perception is that Gaynelle is a good person, but our collective
concern was that Gaynelle's rigidity was inflexibility to a fault," he
said. "There has to be some discourse between the defense bar and
prosecutors. A line doesn't have to be drawn in the sand on every single
issue."

Jones is joining the legal staff of Compaq Computer Corp.

Texas' senior Democratic Congressional leader Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez, DSan
Antonio, is expected to recommend a replacement to President Clinton before
the end of the year.