Get Out of Town

By Frank B. Merrick

Special care for Chip Carter

In a small bar in Mexico Beach, Fla., Jimmy Carter's eldest son Chip was drinking beer with several other young men on the afternoon of July 20, 1977. His companions included the skipper of the Foxy Lady, a drab work boat that Carter, who was vacationing that month with then Wife Caron and Son James at her family's house near Panama City, had chartered on several occasions. Indeed, Carter was arranging with the owner to use the Foxy Lady for a fishing trip with 20 or so friends.

Unknown to Chip Carter, now 30, law enforcement officials were getting ready to stage a major drug bust in the Panama City vicinity that very night. Because of its isolated beaches, tree-lined inlets and intricate inland canal system, the resort area had become an important entry point for marijuana smuggled from Colombia.

From an informant, U.S. Customs Service officials had learned that as much as four tons of high-grade Colombian marijuana was due to arrive that night aboard the 48-ft. trimaran Two-Too Much and would be sent ashore in smaller boats. Elaborate plans were laid to catch the smugglers in the act. Planes of the Customs Service were to circle overhead, shining powerful spotlights on the scene below. Patrol boats would be cruising near each of the three suspected drug transfer sites. Hidden on shore would be heavily armed local, state and federal officers.

But then Customs officials suddenly learned that Chip Carter was drinking beer with the owner of the Foxy Lady. Not only was the boat to be used in the smuggling, but the owner had tipped off the law about the operation. Authorities suspected that several of the young men in the bar might also take part in the smuggling. Officials then and today have no indication that Chip knew anything about the illegal activities of his drinking buddies. Nonetheless, until now, the tale of his possible entanglement in a drug bust has been carefully hushed up, chiefly to save his father from embarrassment.

TIME has learned that the Customs officials' initial fear was that the smugglers might spot Chip's Secret Service escorts and call off the operation. The officials thus informed the Secret Service only that a major drug raid was planned soon and that they should take special care not to let Chip out of their sight. Customs officials told the agents nothing about the expected involvement of the Foxy Lady and her owner.

Two Secret Service agents went to the office of Larry Chambers, then Customs patrol supervisor for the area, to find out about the raid. They mentioned that Chip would soon be going fishing aboard the Foxy Lady. Chambers recalled last week that he nearly fell out of his chair when he heard the news. "Jesus Christ!" he exclaimed, "That's a boat that is going to be seized in the dope bust." According to Chambers, one of the agents replied, "My God! Chip is out right now drinking beer with the owner and some other young guys."

Chambers immediately called his supervisors, and within minutes Deputy Commissioner of Customs Robert Dickerson, who is now director of the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, called him back from Washington. Soon, Secret Service Director Stuart Knight, Treasury Under Secretary Bette Anderson and Dickerson headed for the White House to consult with Robert Lipshutz, who was the President's legal counsel. While Knight and Lipshutz went into the Oval Office to tell the President about their predicament, Dickerson phoned Chambers, who told him that there was nothing to implicate Chip with the drug ring but that "he could get hurt [during the raid] or he could jeopardize the case." According to Dickerson, Knight and Lipshutz "came back [from the Oval Office] with the word to get Chip out."

Dickerson further told Chambers that the President would soon phone his son and tell him to leave Panama City; within 15 min. of the call, Dickerson says, Chip was taken by the Secret Service by car to Plains, Ga., leaving his wife and son behind. She later substituted for him at a news conference with local reporters. Asked last week why Chip was whisked away so quickly, Treasury Spokesman Joseph Laitin first said that it was for reasons of safety. Then he conceded: "Perhaps saving the President from political embarrassment did have something to do with it." Chip could have been held for questioning by law officers if he had been in the immediate area at the time of the raid, especially because of his chat in the bar with some of the suspects and his plans to charter the boat.

The raid went off as scheduled: shortly after midnight on July 21, the Two-Too Much unloaded 1,000 kilos of marijuana into the Foxy Lady and more into three much faster boats. The boats sped to shore and crept through inlets to some old docks. When the marijuana was transferred to three trucks, the circling planes switched on their spotlights, while law enforcement officials moved in. Not a shot was fired as they arrested 18 people, ages 20 to 34, and confiscated the marijuana, the Two-Too Much, three smaller boats, seven cars and trucks and 16 weapons, including pistols, shotguns and Army AR-15 rifles. The Foxy Lady and her informant-skipper were allowed to slip away.

After the incident, officials began an all-out effort to keep secret Chip's associations with the suspected smugglers and hasty removal shortly before the bust. According to Laitin, tape recordings of an on-the-scene account of the operation were reviewed in Washington "to see whether there was any compromising information" and then destroyed. Added Laitin: "They were unintelligible anyhow." Customs Service records about the bust on file in the Mobile, Ala., and New Orleans regional offices did not mention his name. Chambers wrote an 86-page special report on the raid, which fully described Chip's departure from the scene. Four months ago, in a break with the Customs Service's procedures, his report and all other official accounts of the raid were shipped to Washington. Usually, field reports are kept in local offices. (Chambers was forced to retire a year ago, ostensibly for conducting minor personal business on Government time, but former colleagues believe that his ouster actually had some connection with bureaucratic disagreements over the Chip Carter incident.)

Dickerson says that the Treasury Inspector General's office looked into the Carter case and found nothing wrong. Says he: "I don't recall an unusual coverup, but we didn't try to broadcast [Chip's leaving Panama City] as a matter of courtesy [to the President]."

One peculiar aspect of the affair is that when the Foxy Lady's owner and his father put pressure on Washington and local federal officials for more money, the skipper's pay from the Customs Service as an informant was increased tenfold--to $15,000. Equally curious, a check for that amount was issued by the Treasury Department in Washington. It was then cashed by a high Customs Service officer in New Orleans. Chambers and a top-level Customs Service official delivered the money-- in $100 bills in a brown paper bag--to the informant.

Chip Carter has refused all comment. But White House Spokesman Ray Jenkins acknowledges that it was the President who rousted his son out of Florida before the raid. Says Jenkins: "The President called Chip in Florida and suggested that he leave Florida. Chip did and went to Plains. The whole idea was to protect the drug bust and, I suppose, him [Chip] as well."

Customs Service officials have refused to release any records on the incident. Last week Arizona Democrat Dennis DeConcini, an Administration gadfly in the Senate, wrote Customs Service Commissioner Robert Chasen, demanding answers to questions about the raid, the payments to the informant and the where abouts of the records. If he does not get satisfactory answers, DeConcini threatens to push for a Senate investigation.

With reporting by Jonathan Beaty

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.