St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 55

F5 SEP 3 0 2001 September 30, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH 2001 SECTION Dominant BiU McClellan STUoday.comMcC1ellan DEA won't punish agents who failed to disclose lying by informer Chambers foes KO'd registry to keep track of informers who testify in more than one place. Beginning in 1984, when Chambers was re- Agency's own policies failed to provide checks, balances, chief says newscasts testimony has compromised dozens of DEA investigations. Hutchinson said no agents have been punished because an investigation determined that it was the DEA's own policies that failed. Chambers, 44, grew up in University City.

Before his suspension last year, he Jn 1 V1U1LCU ai LUC I agency's Clayton I I office, he helped on KDNL Asa Hutchinson "Chambers abused his position with us" Andrew Chambers Lied under oath for more than 16 years anesi mure man 400 drug suspects in 31 cities. He also lied under oath at least 16 times, but the DEA says its By Michael D. Sorkin Of the Post-Dispatch C2001, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Nobody will be disciplined for letting St. Louis-based drug snitch Andrew Chambers lie under oath throughout 16 years of government testimony, Asa Hutchinson, the new head of the DEA, disclosed in an interview with the Post-Dispatch.

But he vowed that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration would never again give informers the free rein that Chambers abused. It hurts the agency," Hutchinson said, referring to Chambers' lying in testimony about his background and arrest record. The was the most active and one of the highest paid undercover operatives in the DEA's history. "Chambers abused his position with us, and we didn't have the systems in place to keep the checks and balances on that," Hutchinson said last week.

He said he's confident the right checks are now in place: The DEA has set up a central agents either didn't know or, if they did, didn't tell their colleagues elsewhere. All agents have been ordered to turn over the complete records of their snitches to prosecutors and defense attorneys. Some agents were in courtrooms when Chambers lied but never reported it. Others did, but the agency kept a lid on it. See DEA, C4 A succession of problems ranging from an ownership battle to an industrywide advertising slump combined to keep Channel 30 fronf developing a consistent competitor, -to KSDK and KMOV.

By Gail Pennington Post-Dispatch Television Critic For more than a decade, the competition to attract TV news viewers at 10 p.m. has been a two-station race in St. Louis. Now, it's official. KDNL (Channel 30) gave up on Friday, announcing that it would no longer produce local newscasts and lay off 47 people as of Oct.

12. That move leaves KSDK (Channel 5) and KMOV (Channel 4) as the only players in the 10 p.m. time slot, and that loss proves again that viewing habits in St. Louis make running a competitive news operation particularly difficult here. KDNL aired only two half-hours of news a day, "You can never have too much security at these public events." Patrick Shaw, of Tampa, referring to the Gateway Classic football game at the Trans World Dome on Saturday i i 4 1 -r v.

As 'V at 5 and 10 p.m., and both trailed badly in the ratings. Raising the white flag, general manager Tom Tipton blamed "the increased competitive landscape and current market conditions." In part, he referred to a nationwide slump in advertising sales, compounded by the recent four-day hiatus from commercials after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. But in St. Louis, the In an odd quirk of I St Louis viewing patterns, ABC programming, both news and entertainment, has never been as popular here as it is nationwide." 1 i ft rib This branch of the family tree cares for old stumps, too One day this spring, a tree fell in Olivette.

It hit some electrical lines, causing a power outage to a number of homes, as well as to the Public Works building on Price Road. The city inspectors work out of that building, so perhaps that incident caused the inspectors to become especially alert to the danger posed by dead trees. Like the one in the back yard of a house on Pricewoods Lane. It's a stump of a tree, actually. Maybe 15 feet high.

A number of branches jut out from the trunk. If your perspective is a little off-center, you could say it looks like a sculpture. Betty Wynn has a decidedly off-center perspective on life. So does her brother, Sam Lachterman. They inherited the home on Pricewoods Lane several years ago upon the death of their brother, Julius.

He was a successful accountant, the sort of fellow you'd expect to find living in an upscale suburban neighborhood. Betty and Sam are not your typical suburbanites. They have chosen the path less traveled. Or maybe the path was chosen for them. Who knows how these things work? Betty is 87.

Sam just turned 4 80. Betty was married briefly, some 50 years ago. Sam has never been married. Well into adulthood, they lived with their widowed mother. She died approximately 25 years ago.

Shortly after her death, the little house in Clayton they had been renting Betty once described it as an Elizabethan cottage in the forest of Arden was razed. The location is now the site of the Ritz-Carlton Ho- tel. "There were beautiful oak trees there," Betty told me. "I saw them cut down, which is why, I suppose, I feel so strongly about the tree in our back yard." We were sitting in the Danforth Butterfly Garden at Washington University. Betty was dressed in a mishmash of things that students have discarded.

She was carrying some belongings in two plastic bags. She looked like a street person, which bothers her not at all, but has caused her some difficulty in the past. That's not quite right. It isn't just that she looks like a street person, it's that she has the perspective of a street person, albeit the smartest, most knowledgeable street person you've ever met. "It is ironic we're meeting here," she said of our appointment in the butterfly garden that was built by the Woman's Club of Washington University to honor Elizabeth Danforth, the wife of the former chancellor, William Danforth.

"Mrs. Danforth was never a friend of mine." It was during the Danforth tenure that Sam and Betty were banned from the Wash U. campus. That happened in the spring of 1979. A cat got out of their car while they were attending a lecture.

For the next three weeks, as they searched for their cat, they lived in their car, a rusted 1956 Chevrolet that they had parked in a university parking lot. The car was filled with papers, books and boxes. Taking up residence in a parking lot was the final straw, as far as the administration was concerned. Forever, it seemed, Sam and Betty had been fixtures on the campus, attending lectures, concerts, movies and receptions. Especially receptions, according to their detractors, and especially receptions at which food was served.

1 But they also had their supporters. They were gentle people. They were truly interested in learning. Most important, perhaps, they had legitimate connections to the university. Betty had earned a degree in social work in 1936.

Sam had earned a bachelor's and a doctorate in mathematics. He even taught at the university from 1955 to 1960. So the faculty was split. Obviously, Betty and Sam could not live in a parking lot. But should a former graduate and a former professor be banned from seeking knowledge because they seemed odd? -f- See McCleUan, C7 LAURIE SKRtVAN POST-DISPATCH Dorothy James, 20, of St.

Louis has her bag checked before entering the Trans World Dome Saturday for the Gateway Classic football game. "I am glad they are taking the extra precaution," James said. "It's not really a big deal." Football fans don't seem to mind added security The crowd attending the Gateway Classic game at the America's Center stadium downtown found more uniformed officers, more checkpoints, more restrictions. landscape for news is- always treacherous, especially for a station like KDNL. News viewership here is deeply entrenched, with! television watchers overwhelmingly choosing KSDK and KMOV Read a ratings report from 10; years ago, or even 20, and the substance is very-much the same: Channel 5 in first place, and Channel 4 battling to go ahead but never quite For years, KTVI (Channel 2) was a scrappy challenger, repeatedly advancing and then falling A year ago, the station opted to go its own, way, abandoning its 10 p.m.

newscast in favor of a one-hour edition at 9 p.m., a move that has paid off in viewership. In a three-station race at 10 p.m., KDNL couldn't profit from the reduced competition, however. Ratings edged up during the May sweeps period but then slumped again. Only about 50,000 St. Louis-area households, less than 7 percent of the viewing audience, opt for KDNL at 10 p.m.

In KDNL's news operation's short history, just about everything that could go wrong did. The station itself was a latecomer to St. Louis television, arriving in 1969 (more than 20 years after KSDK and positioned on the UHF dial, requiring a separate antenna. An independent and then (beginning in 1986) a Fox affiliate, KDNL' aired no news at all for most of its history. The newscast, launched in January 1995, was constructed from the ground up, at a cost of $5 mil-" lion, by Barry Baker, who had built his hugely successful River City Broadcasting chain on the foundation of KDNL.

See Channel 30, C6 tight for Sunday's Rams game, said Bruce Sommer, the director of America's Center, the city-owned convention and exhibition facility downtown. Sommer said that in addition to more uniformed police officers on site, dogs were being brought in to search the stadium and more electronic security measures had been added. See Security, C5 ByDawnFallik Of the Post-Dispatch Outside the Trans World Dome on Saturday, 19-year-old Jaroneua Juest sucked down a green slush and said she felt pretty safe. "I haven't seen a lot of cops around, but that could be because they're undercover, roaming around," she said. Inside the stadium, St.

Louis el ementary school teacher Nakia West waited for the Gateway Classic football game to start. She said she felt all was well there, too. "I didn't notice much (security), but my friend had her backpack purse searched," she said. "I do feel safe." Police officers and stadium personnel were very much in evidence around the facility, and security was expected to be equally Illinois family with green acres just says "no" to road project Money isn't the issue, nursery operator says; a forced sale is possible -I y-J Based on what commercial property is selling for in that area, the Foucek property is worth well over $10 million. The Fouceks are fighting a battle that faces people in towns throughout the St.

Louis area, communities where the newest crops are fast-food restaurants, strip malls and outlet stores. But this family says it will not give up any part of its property without a struggle. They don't want a road on their land. They don't want any part of the development that the road could bring. "The land is already plenty valuable," said JoAnne Foucek, president of Sunnyside Nurseries and the eldest daughter of its founders, Joseph and Zden-ka Foucek.

"But money is not the issue here." Family ties From Illinois Route 159, Sunnyside Nursery looks like a forest surrounded by overgrown farmland an aberration on a vr -a 1 By Trisha L. Howard Of the Post-Dispatch The Foucek family is sitting on a gold mine, but they have no interest in digging. The family owns 79 acres along a flourishing commercial corridor in Glen Carbon. They know they could make millions of dollars by selling the land, home to their longtime business, Sunnyside Nurseries Inc. The Illinois Department of Transportation recently offered the family $759,500 for almost 5.4 acres of the site so that it can build a three-lane road through the heart of the property and a new highway along the land's western boundary.

DAVID CARSON POST-DISPATCH. Jeff Gause tills the land at Sunnyside Nurseries Inc. in Glen Carbon on Thursday. The Illinois Depart- ment of Transportation wants to build a road through the middle of the nursery, but the family who owns the business is declining offers to sell 5.4 acres to the state. busy road whose most prominent features are Target, Kmart and Burger King.

Doris Gause, one of JoAnne Foucek's two younger sisters, lives in a farmhouse in the middle of the property, which Joseph and Zdenka Foucek bought in the early 1940s when their business outgrew their original nursery in JoAnne Foucek still lives with her mother on the grounds of the Troy nursery. See Land, CZ.