[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 86 (Thursday, June 30, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 30, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
  INTRODUCTION OF LEGISLATION TO COMPENSATE THE VICTIMS OF ILL-FATED 
         POSTAL INSPECTION SERVICE DRUG ENFORCEMENT OPERATIONS

                                 ______


                        HON. WILLIAM (BILL) CLAY

                              of missouri

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 30, 1994

  Mr. CLAY. Mr. Speaker, since at least 1985 the Inspection Service of 
the U.S. Postal Service has been hiring convicted felons as paid 
confidential informants in its narcotics tarifficking enforcement 
operations. Those felons were placed in postal positions in postal 
facilities and given the responsibility of handling our mail. Postal 
inspectors did not supervise their informants properly. The informants 
began running the drug enforcement operations. They implicated innocent 
postal employees who were falsely arrested by inspectors who blindly 
accepted the information furnished by their paid felons. The more 
arrests an inspector made, the higher his or her performance rating--an 
operation known as Collars for Dollars. There was no incentive to 
scrutinize a paid informant who was targeting innocent postal 
employees.
  Proper police procedures were not followed by the Postal Inspection 
Service. Inspectors were given only 2 days' training on the use of paid 
confidential informants in drug enforcement operations. This lack of 
training and expertise showed. Informants made alleged drug buys out of 
the view of inspectors. Innocent employees were arrested during Postal 
Service staged media events at which these innocent employees were 
handcuffed, paraded in front of TV cameras and taken to jail. In Los 
Angeles in 1986, both the judge and jury in one case made statements in 
court that a case against a postal employee should not have been 
brought because the investigation was so poorly conducted. But the 
Inspection Service continued to hire more felons as paid informants 
throughout the country and continued the same errors. This resulted in 
a 1992 operation in Cleveland where 19 innocent postal employees and 
one private citizen were falsely arrested. Some were erroneously 
convicted. There were no drug buys in Cleveland. The informants 
pocketed the buy money and provided the inspectors with baking soda. In 
all, $300,000 of Government funds were wasted and lost, and the lives 
of innocent workers were ruined. They lost income, jobs, reputation, 
and self esteem. Their families shared in that suffering.
  The Committee on Post Office and Civil Service conducted its own 
extensive investigation into Inspection Service drug enforcement 
operations after it learned about the disastrous Cleveland drug sting 
from press reports. The committee found that the Cleveland operation 
was not an isolated case. Innocent employees were falsely fingered by 
the Inspection Service's paid felons in Los Angeles, West Palm 
Beach, Indianapolis, Boston, Toledo, and Minneapolis. Most of these 
employees were never convicted because of improper actions by the 
inspectors and their paid felons. In fact, in West Palm Beach, a postal 
inspector warned his superiors that the paid informant was entrapping 
postal employees. That inspector was reprimanded for his efforts. 
Because the Postal Service did not control its paid felons and made no 
effort to do so, innocent people suffered. These people and their 
families may never recover from the injuries they suffered.

  The Postal Service has compounded their suffering. After removing 
them from their source of income, it fought providing them unemployment 
compensation. It has fought rehiring many of these victims. It has 
forced those it rehired to pay for health insurance during the time 
they were unemployed and did not have health insurance. It has failed 
to help any family members who suffered from its negligent actions.
  The Postal Service's actions have been deplorable. The Postal Service 
must compensate those it wrongly harmed and must cease its disregard 
for the rights of its employees. The House has already passed one 
important piece of legislation to help prevent a repeat of these 
deplorable actions. H.R. 4400, the Postal Inspection Service and 
Inspector General Act creates an independent inspector general for the 
Postal Service who will oversee the Inspection Service and who would 
have protected postal workers from overzealous inspectors. H.R. 4400 
also prohibits the Postal Service from hiring paid confidential 
informants for drug investigations unless the use of the mails is 
involved. Never again should the Postal Service employ paid felons and 
set them loose on the workroom floor. This legislation that I am 
introducing today provides a mechanism to compensate these innocent 
victims. Any individual who was arrested after 1983 by the postal 
inspectors for violating a controlled substance law as the result of an 
investigation in which a paid confidential informant was used, and was 
not convicted of violating a controlled substance law, may petition a 
panel of three administrative law judges for compensation for injuries. 
The individual must have exhausted all judicial and administrative 
procedures. In awarding damages the panel must consider injuries 
suffered by the victim's spouse and children and any compensation 
already received by the victim. No award may exceed $500,000. The 
Postal Service, not the U.S. Treasury, shall fund the costs of the 
procedures and all awards.
  This is an extraordinary compensation bill to correct an 
extraordinary disrespect of the lives and rights of postal employees by 
the Postal Inspection Service.

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