Houston Chronicle
August 31, 1988
Raid leaks suspected, aide says
By Richards Stewart
Houston Chronicle
SHERMAN - An Orange County deputy sheriff testified Tuesday that he repeatedly warned suspended Sheriff James Wade that rumors were circulating that another deputy was a drug user who had a lifestyle that didn't fit the image of a law enforcement officer.
Deputy Wayne Dial also described for jurors a complex, commando-
style drug raid operation developed by deputies who suspected that secret enforcement information was being leaked to drug dealers by someone inside Wade's department.
Wade is on trial here on federal charges accusing him of running a methamphetamine manufacturing and distribution operation with department money and supplies from the department's evidence locker.
Part of the charges allege that Wade hired Deputy Don Duhon to help run the drug operation.
In testimony Tuesday, Dial said he eventually stopped trying to warn Wade about Duhon's lifestyle because Wade was becoming increasingly hostile to the rumors.
Dial didn't detail the rumors to the jury, but prosecutors two weeks ago told prospective jurors that they might hear testimony from persons with homosexual and bisexual lifestyles.
At a hearing in May to determine whether Wade should be confined to jail, an FBI agent testified that Duhon told him that he was recruited by Wade to run his drug Operation and for homosexual reasons.
Duhon, who was not indicted and has been cooperating with government prosecutors, testified before U. S. District Judge Howell Cobb in a closed courtroom Tuesday morning.
Cobb, who moved the trial to Sherman on grounds that pretrial publicity had mad a fair trial impossible in Beaumont, ordered the jury out of the courtroom after defense attorney Gray Richardson, attempting to show that wade treated rumors about deputies in an equal and fair manner, asked Dial if damaging rumors also had been circulated about him.
Those rumors were that Dial had a drug problem, that he spent one vacation in a drug rehabilitation center and that he was caught in Louisiana with cocaine in his car.
Dial said the rumors were false and that he had traced them to another investigator.
Cobb said he would rule today on whether testimony about the Dial rumors can be presented to he jury.
In testimony in open court and before the jury, Dial said that while he was the captain in charge of the department's narcotics division last year, it became apparent that there was a huge security leak inside the department.
He said Wade turned down his request for radios provided by the U.S. Customs Service that allowed investigators to scramble on-air messages.
Officers finally abandoned regular county radio channels, Dial said, and used citizens' band radios, changing often to prearranged channels and using code words so eavesdroppers wouldn't know what they were doing.
When officers were going to raid a suspected drug site, Dial said, one officer would go to a judge to get a search warrant and wouldn't tell anybody else where the search was to take place.
The same officer would draw up plans for the area being searched and officers involved would be briefed like military commandos going out on a mission.
The location of the search would be given out only as officers were leaving the department and no officer was allowed to use a telephone after the location was given.
Wade often would go along on raids, Dial said, and sometimes would tell officers after a briefing that he would meet them at the scene.
After one of those times, Dial said he returned to the office to find Wade on the telephone.
Dial said he thought the security leak could have come from any of the officers in his department.
"I never looked up the ladder," he said. "It didn't occur to me."
Wade often showed up at the scene of crimes, drug busts, fatal wrecks and other events where his officers were in acting, Dial said, even when the events happened at 2 or 3 a.m.
Duhon would sometimes arrive at scenes with Wade in the middle of the night, Dial said.
"It didn't really concern me," Dial said. "I thought it was odd."
He said that he saw Duhon wearing a gun before he had gone to an officer training school and wasn't yet a certified officer entitled to legally wear a gun.
"Were you aware that he was a certified jailer?" Richardson later, asked adding that jailers can wear firearms.
"He was wearing a deputy's badge," Dial said.
Dial said he made a copy of the law that says officers must complete their training and be certified before they can be armed. When he gave the copy to Wade, Dial said the sheriff wadded it up and threw it in a waste can.
"I don't want to hear of this again." Dial said Wade told him.
Wade was elected sheriff in 1984 and was defeated in his first bid for re-election in a Democratic Party primary in April.
His term lasts through the end of this year, but a state district judge ordered him removed from office July 11 pending the outcome of his federal criminal trial.
Back
