Editor Under Siege

The sting operation that led to Smith’s arrest is described in the criminal complaint the FBI filed in federal court. It involved two undercover woman agents and a cooperating federal prisoner. The complaint alleges that shortly before the FBI broke in “Johnny L. Smith” passed two counterfeit cashier’s checks totaling $300,000 to one of the agents.

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It was stressful for Leavell, too. She didn’t know what had happened to her husband until the Defender’s Chinta Strausberg tracked her down in Saint Joseph Hospital and began questioning her. Leavell is a journalist of national stature–she’s treasurer of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, which represents 204 black-owned papers. Even though Smith’s arrest at the Crusader received modest media attention overall, Leavell would have preferred none at all. Especially painful were the two articles–one of them extremely long-by Strausberg in the rival Defender. “It seemed like there was a great deal of glee in doing it on her part,” Leavell told us. From the detail in the article, Leavell believed Strausberg was exploiting an inside source.

Why would she? we asked.

Gadlin, who used to work for the Operation PUSH magazine in Chicago, reached Frank Watkins, communications director for the National Rainbow Coalition. “I got a rather panicked call from Stephanie indicating that the door of the Crusader had just been basically knocked down by the FBI. She said either four or five FBI agents came to the front door–they have buzzers on the door–and demanded entry. She refused to open the door; she didn’t know who they were. So they reared back and knocked the door off its hinges. Another 15 FBI agents came in from every kind of direction with their guns out. She had no idea what was going on. They got verbally rough–‘We could arrest you and take you in,’ that sort of stuff. She called me because she was scared to death.

And Doug Dobmeyer, executive director of the Public Welfare Coalition, “plans to use his year to develop his media skills and to research other advocacy efforts and how these other movements have worked with the mela to advance social issues.”