Date sent: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 05:57:55 -0500
From: Mark Keesee <mark@idmedia.com>
To: ciadrugs mailing list <ciadrugs@mars.galstar.com>
Subject: ciadrugs] WSJ - Dan Harmon

The Wall Street Journal April 15, 1997

Big News From Arkansas

By MICAH MORRISON

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.--To Whitewater aficionados the exciting news of the moment is neither the Jim McDougal sentencing hearing showing his cooperation with the prosecutors nor Janet Reno's decision not toappoint an independent counsel on campaign contributions. Rather, it's last Friday's indictment here of Dan Harmon.

Mr. Harmon served as prosecuting attorney for Arkansas's Seventh Judicial District from 1990 until his abrupt resignation in July 1996. Earlier, he had insinuated himself as a volunteer investigator and later special prosecutor in the controversial "train deaths" murder case of teenagers Kevin Ives and Don Henry, unsolved since 1987. A federal grand jury charges that Mr. Harmon (and two associates, Roger Walls and William Murphy) "operated the Seventh Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney's Office as a conduit to obtain monetary benefits to themselves and others, and to participate and conceal criminal activities."

Distributing Cocaine

Mr. Harmon faces two counts of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and two counts relating to the production of methamphetamine. Also four extortion counts and a count under RICO, the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations law. Plus one count of witness tampering and another of retaliating against a witness, for physically attacking Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter Rodney Bowers last May.

The defendants are not directly connected with President Clinton. However, the Harmon indictment is the clearest charge yet that during Gov. Clinton's tenure certain Arkansas law enforcement officials were dealing in drugs. The new charges were brought to the grand jury by Paula Casey, Mr. Clinton's hand-picked U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, who says that an FBI and IRS investigation is continuing. Mr. Harmon vigorously denies the charges, saying they are the result of "a federal bureaucracy that's out of control."

Mr. Harmon knows something about being out of control. In March 1996, two months prior to allegedly assaulting Mr. Bowers, he briefly kidnapped and threatened to kill Holly DuVall, his estranged wife. She had been arrested on drug charges in November 1995, and was thought to have cooperated with the corruption probe. In her condominium, police found an evidence package that was supposed to contain two pounds of pure cocaine and be locked in the safe of Mr. Harmon's drug task force. It proved to contain a silicon-based substance.

Mr. Harmon has a long and colorful career in Arkansas law enforcement. In 1980, he was running unopposed for a second term as prosecuting attorney when he abruptly withdrew and declared personal bankruptcy. He came back from political oblivion with the train deaths case. When Ives and Henry were found dead on railroad tracks southwest of Little Rock in August 1987, Gov. Clinton's medical examiner, Fahmy Malak, quickly ruled the deaths "accidental," saying the teenagers had fallen asleep after smoking too much marijuana. After a public outcry, a second autopsy concluded the boys had been murdered, and Mr. Clinton's solicitude for Dr. Malak in this and other cases became a subject of controversy. Gov. Clinton named Department of Health Director Joycelyn Elders to head a commission to review Dr. Malak. She cleared him of improprieties and recommended a raise. Dr. Malak was eased out of office on the eve of Mr. Clinton's 1992 presidential run.

Shortly after the death of the boys, Mr. Harmon approached Linda Ives, Kevin's mother, to help with the investigation on a volunteer basis. Later he persuaded a judge to name him special prosecutor to supervise the investigation. In 1990, he was elected again as the local prosecutor. But meanwhile, he'd come under scrutiny in a 1989 corruption probe alleging drug distribution, money laundering and political payoffs. In June 1991, then-U.S. Attorney Chuck Banks cleared Mr. Harmon, saying there was "no evidence of drug-related misconduct by any public official."

Mrs. Ives is not impressed with the current indictment. She's conducted a decade-long campaign over the airwaves, and lately the Internet; her account was elaborated in a story on this page on April 18, 1996. She charges that Mr. Harmon was at the murder scene and that "high state and federal officials" had participated in a coverup. "I firmly believe my son and Don Henry were killed because they witnessed a drug drop by an airplane connected to the Mena drug smuggling routes." She scornfully notes that the current indictment only goes back to August 1991, two months after U.S. Attorney Banks cleared Mr. Harmon in the earlier probe. "Are we to believe Dan Harmon was clean in June, but dirty in August?"

Mrs. Ives might be dismissed as a grieving mother grasping at straws, but in charging that Mr. Harmon was involved in the boys' murder she has found some allies among investigators. One of them is Jean Duffey, who in 1989 headed a Seventh Judicial District drug task force. Ms. Duffey left the state when Mr. Harmon filed charges against her, later found to be baseless. "We had witnesses telling us about low-flying aircraft and informants testifying about drug pickups" in the area of the train deaths, Ms. Duffey said last year. She also says that a local official told her she was "not to use the drug task force to investigate any public officials."

Someone else who believes Linda Ives is former Saline County Detective John Brown, who reopened the case in 1993 and found a new witness he says saw Mr. Harmon on the tracks the night the boys died. Detective Brown's work caught the attention of the FBI's new top man in Little Rock, Special Agent I.C. Smith. A storied figure in the bureau, Mr. Smith was sent to Little Rock in August 1995 by Director Louis Freeh. The Harmon indictment is part of a new interest in public corruption by investigators under Mr. Smith and Ms. Casey.

Money Laundering

Earlier last week, Ms. Casey also indicted Arkansas lawyer Mark Cambiano on 31 money laundering and conspiracy counts. The indictment said the $380,000 Mr. Cambiano allegedly laundered had come from a methaphetamine ring, and that $20,000 of it went to the Democratic National Committee and $9,770 to President Clinton's inaugural fund. Ms. Casey said that although Mr. Cambiano laundered the money, he was not involved in drug trafficking, and that there was no reason to believe those receiving the contributions knew of their tainted origins. Mr. Cambiano denies the charges. The allegations arose from a drug investigation that resulted in guilty pleas from Willard Burnett, alleged leader of the ring, and Carl Poteete, former Conway County sheriff.

Whether or not the Smith and Casey investigations proceed to further revelations about the "train deaths" and Mena, the signs of a shifting landscape are unmistakable. Exhibit One: Dan Harmon.

Mr. Morrison is a Journal editorial page writer.

Linda Ives and Jean Duffey's Website may be viewed at

http://www.idmedia.com/ttd.htm