14 Years Later, Puerto Rico Rests Its Case

May 18, 1992

14 Years Later, Puerto Rico Rests Its Case

Jim McGee's excellent May 9 news story on the recent testimony in Puerto Rico of former Justice Department Civil Rights division
chief Drew S. Days III -- who told a Puerto Rican Senate committee that the local San Juan office of the FBI covered up 1978
murders of two members of the Puerto Rican Independence Party by Puerto Rican police officers -- understated two important facts.

From 1978, when the men were murdered and the local FBI office was ordered by then-Assistant Attorney General Days to begin a
civil rights investigation, to 1990, no FBI or Justice Department official was willing to publicly admit any impropriety in the federal
investigations of the murders on the mountain called Cerro Maravilla. On the contrary, they steadfastly supported the FBI's and Civil
Rights Division's whitewashing of the Puerto Rican police and their superiors who were involved in the murders.

In 1990 FBI Director William S. Sessions was the only high-ranking federal official who had the courage and integrity to step forward
and admit error on the part of the local FBI office when, on behalf of the president of the Senate of Puerto Rico, I briefed him on the
evidence the senate was ready to disclose in public hearings. Mr. McGee's story refers, in a very abbreviated form, to a letter from
Judge Sessions in this regard. But the reference does not do justice to Judge Sessions, who also, in that letter to the president of the
senate, announced significant changes in FBI procedures as a result of the Cerro Maravilla murders and pledged zealous federal law
enforcement to the people of Puerto Rico. He also encouraged an important witness formerly under FBI protection to testify before the senate committee.

Second, Mr. McGee's story does not sufficiently make clear just how hollow is Civil Rights Division official James P. Turner's claim
of "great victory" in Cerro Maravilla because of the Justice Department's prosecution of 10 Puerto Rican police officers in 1984. For
five years, 1978 to 1983, the Civil Rights Division persistently kept clearing these same officers and closing its investigations, despite
substantial evidence in its possession of their guilt. Then in 1983 the Senate of Puerto Rico, which had begun its own investigation
because of the failures of the Civil Rights Division and with fewer resources, proved that the young men had been murdered by these
police officers on the basis of the same evidence that had been available to the FBI and the Civil Rights Division years before.

What credit can the Justice Department claim for having been caught with its pants down by the Puerto Rican senate's disclosures and
having to go back and do the job it should have done in the first place?

SAMUEL DASH (The writer is special counsel to the president of the Senate of Puerto Rico, and adviser to its investigating staff).

June 9, 1992

Murder in Puerto Rico

James P. Turner's May 30 reply to the May 18 letter of Samuel Dash on the misconduct of the San Juan office of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation and the Civil Rights Division in their investigations of the Cerro Maravilla murders continued the policy of the Civil
Rights Division to deny the coverup by the local FBI and the improper investigation by the Civil Rights Division in this case. The
deputy assistant attorney general justified the federal government's conduct even though his boss at the time of the investigations,
former chief of the Civil Rights Division Drew S. Days III, recently conceded this failure of justice in sworn testimony before the
Puerto Rican Senate and apologized to the people of Puerto Rico.

First, Mr. Turner said that neither the FBI director's 1990 letter to me admitting error on the part of the San Juan FBI office nor the
1984 internal investigation by the FBI of the local office's conduct in the Cerro Maravilla investigations was prompted by the Senate
through the work of Mr. Dash. He is wrong. At my request, Mr. Dash briefed the FBI director in the summer of 1990, and the
director's letter to me was the result of that meeting.

Mr. Turner's own files should have reminded him that in 1984 Mr. Dash and other representatives of the Senate met in Washington
with Justice Department and FBI officials (including Mr. Turner) to discuss earlier concerns expressed by the Senate about the
coverup and to request cooperation with the Senate's effort to subpoena FBI agents and Justice Department lawyers.

The Civil Rights Division refused to take any action. The FBI, on the other hand, conducted its own internal investigation "to resolve
questions raised by the Senate of Puerto Rico" concerning the FBI's failures, and found that the Senate positions were "legitimate
concerns."

Second, Mr. Turner denied Mr. Dash's accusation that the Justice Department had substantial evidence of the guilt of the police
officers when it closed its investigation clearing these officers. He said that "diligent" investigations by Civil Rights Division lawyers
"failed to produce actionable evidence of a criminal violation" and that later, when three police officers recanted, Justice Department
lawyers went back and obtained convictions.

Mr. Turner's statements in this regard are deceptive. In 1981, when Mr. Turner admits he announced closing the investigation because
his division had not uncovered any incriminating evidence against the police, he and his lawyers had at least the following evidence: (1) a sworn statement by an eyewitness that the youths had been on their knees and were beaten by the police before they were murdered; (2) a sworn statement by a police officer that he had been coerced by higher officials to change his story to support the police's false version of self-defense; (3) a sworn statement by a ranking police officer that the youths had been murdered by the police and that a coverup had been developed and maintained by high police officials; and (4) autopsy reports, photographs of the bodies, clothing and other physical evidence that experts have interpreted as supporting findings of beatings and murder and not self-defense.

In 1983 three police officers recanted earlier testimony and confessed to murder, but only after the Senate of Puerto Rico granted
them immunity and persuaded the U.S. Attorney to do likewise. This immunity strategy was always available to the Civil Rights
Division, and in his testimony before us, Mr. Days deplored the fact that his lawyers failed to use it to get at the truth.

It is time that high Justice Department officials such as Mr. Turner eschew self-serving denials and follow the examples of FBI
Director William Sessions and Mr. Days by admitting error and making assurances to regain the confidence of the people of Puerto
Rico in federal law enforcement.

MIGUEL A. HERNANDEZ AGOSTO, President Senate of Puerto Rico San Juan, Puerto Rico