The Marijuana Tycoon In Reagan's White House

PHOENIX - To co-workers in the Reagan White House, Arizona businessman Walter Bell McCay was a star.

They admired the "gentleman farmer" for his business savvy, social charm and political connections.

They didn't know that McCay, a presidential advance man, was using his position to start a multimillion-dollar drug ring.

That he was growing hundreds of marijuana plants on several farms in Arizona and California.

That he once used his White House ID and a government car to smuggle marijuana seeds.

McCay's illegal activities caught up with him in 1990 when a Yuma drug suspect told police that McCay was involved in the marijuana trade.

But McCay's luck hadn't completely run out: By helping authorities catch and convict others, he avoided federal prosecution despite confessing to a long list of drug-related crimes.

NEVER ARRESTED

McCay was never arrested. He faces no federal charges, even though he exploited his positions at the White House, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and a Scottsdale bank.

Unlike a Hawaii couple that helped him run the operation, McCay will spend no time behind bars.

And although McCay confessed to storing marijuana in his house - an action usually considered grounds for property forfeiture - prosecutors have not seized the house.

"It's ultimately a relationship of trust," said James Hooley, who headed the White House Office of Presidential Advance. "That someone used the presidency and the White House to do this demeans what everyone else did."

As a volunteer advance worker for former President Ronald Reagan, McCay smoothed travel, security and related arrangements during the president's overseas trips.

McCay had worked as an advance man for Reagan when he kicked off his presidential campaign. When Reagan became president in 1981, McCay joined the White House advance office.

He was, former supervisors say, one of their best.

AMSTERDAM RUNS

They were shocked to learn that, during preparations for a 1987 presidential trip to Germany, McCay had a U.S. Embassy employee drive him from Bonn to Amsterdam in a government car. There, he bought 100 to 200 high-grade marijuana seeds.

McCay told agents he knew customs officials were not likely to search him.

McCay told investigators that he and his partners used the smuggled seeds to start the first of several marijuana-growing operations disguised as legitimate farms in Arizona and California.

McCay, who has a long history of legitimate business endeavors, got into the banking industry in 1984 when he was named a director of Founders Bank of Arizona in Scottsdale.

Federal agents said McCay used an account at the bank to launder money he made from a marijuana farm. McCay and Thomas Dedora, a Phoenix man convicted of selling marijuana harvested from one of the farms McCay financed, opened an account under the name Southwest Growers III, court records show.

A U.S Customs agent described Southwest Growers III as a front for laundering drug profits, according to an affidavit.

In February 1989, McCay joined the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office as a reserve deputy. He was issued a uniform and a badge and spent 16 hours a week patrolling with various deputies.

"He was a pretty top-notch person," said Sgt. Jay Ellison, a sheriff's spokesman.

McCay's activities finally came to the attention of authorities in December 1990, after drug officers raided a Yuma home, seized 450 pounds of marijuana and arrested three men.

One of the men, Mark Andrew Williams, told investigators he and McCay had grown marijuana at McCay's 40-acre Yuma citrus farm.

Williams, who was sentenced to nearly four years in prison, told investigators the citrus farm was only one of several places McCay and his partners had grown marijuana.

Williams also told investigators that McCay was growing yet another marijuana crop at a farm near the town of Eloy in central Arizona.

When state Department of Public Safety and U.S. Customs agents descended on the Eloy farm a month later, they were surprised to see McCay drive up.

When agents confronted him, he admitted his involvement in the scheme, according to a U.S. Customs report of the investigation.

In a subsequent interrogation, McCay also confessed to growing thousands of marijuana plants at the Eloy farm, a greenhouse and two farms in Bard, Calif., and his Yuma farm.

The agents enlisted McCay to help gather evidence against other members of the drug ring.

Wearing a hidden microphone, McCay met with his former accomplices, who made incriminating statements that were recorded on tape. McCay also set up at least one drug sting, federal search-warrant affidavits show.

McCay's cooperation helped prosecutors obtain indictments against 22 people, most of them people who helped harvest and package the marijuana, on federal drug charges.

Prosecutors later dropped charges against three people alleged to have been McCay's accomplices, including one who pleaded guilty to state drug charges. One indicted suspect committed suicide.

By turning in his confederates, McCay avoided federal racketeering and drug charges that could have gotten him a mandatory prison sentence.

Instead, McCay was charged in Yuma County Superior Court with less serious crimes in connection with growing marijuana in Yuma. He was not arrested.

Last October, he pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to produce and offering to sell marijuana. He was sentenced to three years of unsupervised probation.

As of last week, McCay was living in his Paradise Valley home.

Pam Gullett, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Phoenix, said federal prosecutors have no plans to take forfeiture actions against McCay because they consider the case to be under the Yuma County prosecutor's jurisdiction.

The threat of McCay's testimony, combined with evidence he had helped agents gather, was apparently enough to prompt other suspects to plead guilty.

Gerald Cedar, 45, of Captain Cook, Hawaii, and six others have received sentences ranging from probation to more than four years in prison. On March 1, Cedar's wife, Janice, was sentenced to four years and four months in prison. Their daughter, Miryeha, was sentenced to five years of probation.