During the time that Junior Sweat was setting up his huge meth lab, the TBI brought in others for debriefing on the Jones/Harmon investigation. Randy Isbell received a call from John Mehr asking him to attend a Jan. 12, 1999, meeting at the TBI's Jackson office.

Like David and Jane Riddell, the Baptist minister was instructed not to tell anyone that he was talking to the agency. This gag order effectively isolated the Riddells and Isbell for about two months, because they couldn't share their information.

Mehr, Hughes and the other agents who attended the meeting with the Riddells were also present for Isbell's initial debriefing.

Isbell asked when the TBI expected to launch a full-scale investigation in Hardin County.

"It may be weeks, it may be months, but we are coming," Mehr said.

The Baptist minister made two other trips to the TBI headquarters in Jackson, bringing documentation and escorting half a dozen informants.

These informants turned over lists of drug dealers from whom they regularly obtained their narcotics to the TBI. On one of these lists appeared the name of Charlie Jones, Clark's brother and partner in their car dealership.

One informant worked for E&K Trucking Company, in which Ron Harmon has a major financial stake. This same informant brought a computer disk and a document containing particulars about E&K's alleged illegal activities.

According to Isbell, the disk contained information about E&K's smuggling points, quantities of narcotics shipped, amounts of cash paid for the drugs and delivery dates.

Hughes loaded the disk in a computer and scrolled down the screen. The disk contained the equivalent of two typed pages. When the agent reached Judge Ron Harmon's name, he paused. Mehr pointed at the name with a ballpoint pen and chortled, "Look here, Roger!"

"The TBI was intensely interested," Isbell said.

During the TBI investigation, Isbell said he had regular telephone phone conversations with Mehr and Hughes. In addition, other TBI agents visited him at his church and home in Savannah.

Around this time, Ron Harmon called Randy Isbell at home and invited him to a meeting at his private law office. Isbell told WND that he was scared about going, but that he screwed up his courage and went anyway.

Arriving at Harmon's back-alley office as the sun was setting, Isbell became even more apprehensive. The judge had instructed him to look for a green door and then knock. Isbell located a green door, but he paused before knocking. There was no name on the door, no sign indicating that this was Harmon's law office.

Isbell finally rapped on the door, and Harmon let him in. A robust man in his early fifties, Harmon seemed as uncomfortable as his visitor. Both Harmon's and Isbell's accounts of the meeting are remarkably similar.

The judge professed his innocence, saying that he had never used nor dealt drugs. Isbell told Harmon that his involvement with E&K Trucking Company was incriminating.

Isbell told Harmon that defending notorious dopers and partying with cocaine users and dealers were among the reasons that he was now under suspicion. Harmon said he agreed with Isbell and promised to mend his ways.

Although the 35-minute-long meeting ended amicably, Isbell said, "I was really shook up when I left."

And then something happened.

The first inkling that something was amiss came shortly after Isbell's meeting with Ron Harmon. Several days later, Isbell said that he received a phone call at home from a TBI agent. Even though the caller didn't identify himself, Isbell instantly knew who he was.

The caller, Chris Carpenter, had been assigned to the Hardin County drug case. Carpenter had once lived in Hardin County and attended Isbell's church. He had also chatted with Isbell at his church several times during the investigation.

"There's going to be a meeting in Memphis with a certain car dealer in your town. We're going to be meeting next week. I just thought you ought to know," Carpenter said, according to Isbell. He understood that Carpenter's reference to "a certain car dealer in your town" meant Clark Jones.

WND attempted twice to ask Carpenter about this. Both times he said, "I've been instructed to refer your questions to Nashville for any comment or to answer any questions." Then he slammed down the phone.

The TBI's internal memoranda reveal that Carpenter was ordered not to talk to WorldNetDaily by TBI director Larry Wallace.

By mid-March of last year, Jane Riddell and Randy Isbell had decided to ignore the TBI's prohibition about talking to each another and were actively comparing notes.

Isbell called Riddell and told her about his strange message from Carpenter. Ridell recalls the conversation:

"Is it good or bad?" Isbell asked.

"It has to be bad," Riddell said, "He has pull all the way to the White House," she replied.

While the TBI investigation was ongoing, Clark Jones attended a regular coffee klatch at the Tollhouse Restaurant with about 20 other Savannah movers and shakers. Savannah Mayor Bob Shutt, who was also at the Tollhouse that day, said the hot topic for conversation was drug trafficking in Hardin County.

"Every day the people at the restaurant were asking, 'Who are the police going to catch?' That's all they talked about," said Shutt.

A well-tanned man, Jones argued that drug trafficking in Savannah was negligible. Accounts of drug dealing published in the Courier were "blown way out of proportion," he said.

Shutt, who is now running for the state senate against longtime Gore supporter Lt. Gov. John Wilder, said that Jones became agitated over what he heard from the other attendees and stated that he was driving to Memphis the next day "to straighten this s--t (the drug inquiry) out with the TBI."

Shutt said he was initially skeptical of Jones' statement.

"Even though he was friends with Al Gore, I doubted whether Clark had the clout to shut down an ongoing investigation, " Shutt said. "But as events unfolded, I became absolutely convinced that Clark really did possess the clout."

Shutt says Jones may have mentioned Gore's name in connection with shutting down the TBI investigation.

"The only reason I'm not absolutely sure about Gore's name being used is that Clark regularly threw Gore's name around," he said.

The TBI inquiry was dead in the water, TBI sources tell WorldNetDaily, on the personal instruction of Larry Wallace.

A politically ambitious former Tennessee Highway Patrolman and sheriff of McMinn County, Wallace often boasted about being a close friend of Gore. One high-ranking TBI official said, "Gore's pictures are plastered on all of Wallace's walls." Former U.S. Sen. Harlan Matthews, a force in Tennessee Democratic Party politics for more than four decades, confirmed that Gore and Wallace were close friends and political allies.

Travel expense vouchers obtained by WorldNetDaily from the TBI show that Gary Azbill and Chris Carpenter, two of the agents working on the Hardin County drug case, were in Memphis on Friday, March 19, 1999, the date of the alleged meeting with Jones. Cathy Dent, another agent assigned to the case, arrived in Memphis the next day.

Wallace has ordered these agents not to talk to WND. Although Wallace furnished Azbill's, Carpenter's and Dent's travel vouchers, he didn't turn over any of Roger Hughes' records for the same time period.

David Jennings, the TBI's legal counsel, said Hughes didn't submit any travel vouchers for March, April and May of last year.

Morris, a former senior TBI narcotics agent who is now chief of police in Lavergne, Tenn., said, "That tells me that somebody's hiding something. It doesn't happen that way. The TBI is using the color of their office to lie about the facts."

WND made numerous attempts to talk to Roger Hughes. Although Hughes wouldn't respond to repeated inquiries, he wrote a memo last March to Larry Wallace, denying that he had ever met with Jones.

"I don't know Roger Hughes," Jones said, adding that, "you don't mess with criminal matters."

Not long after the alleged meeting in Memphis, Riddell said she called the Jackson TBI office to pass on some information she had received relative to a large drug shipment coming into the Hardin County area.

Hughes told her that he wasn't interested in her information about the trucks, startling her by saying that the drug investigation in Hardin County was dead.

In response to killing the investigation, two senior law enforcement sources told WND, "That's politics, pure and simple." They blamed Al Gore for having the investigation killed.

Lawson believes Wallace would never have terminated a criminal investigation involving three of Gore's close friends and fundraisers without tipping the vice president off in advance.

Lawson was Wallace's boss when Wallace was a colonel in command of the Tennessee Highway Patrol from 1987-1992. Lawson said he nearly fired Wallace for leaking sensitive investigative material to cabinet officers who had been subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury. Some of these men managed to escape prosecution and later supported Wallace in his successful 1992 bid to become TBI director.

According to Lawson and others, Wallace's principal conduit to Gore is Alberta Winkler, an aide in Gore's Carthage, Tenn., office. Winkler refused to talk to WND about Gore's relationship with Wallace. She also refused to answer questions concerning whether Gore and Wallace conferred about the Hardin County drug case or about other TBI ongoing criminal cases.

"During his entire career, Wallace has exhibited a terror about offending politicians," Lawson said.

Arzo Carson agrees with Lawson's assessment of Wallace. Carson, a hard-nosed former prosecutor from eastern Tennessee, was TBI director for 11 years. He wrote the 1980 statute that supposedly insulated the TBI from political interference by the governor or other politicians.

Also like Lawson, Carson wanted to fire Wallace in 1987 as head of the TBI's criminal investigation division, because in Carson's opinion Wallace lacked integrity.

"Wallace would do anything to keep politicians happy, including killing investigations and leaking sensitive investigative material and sources," Carson said.

After being informed by Hughes that the TBI had bailed out of the Hardin County drug investigation, Riddell didn't waste any time calling Shutt. The mayor told her what Jones had said about killing TBI investigation.

Community leaders were dumbfounded when they learned that the TBI investigation was dead.

Two law enforcement sources told WorldNetDaily that FBI special agents mentioned Judge Ron Harmon and Whit LaFon as targets of a federal public corruption probe during a planning session. Harmon had been a potential target on several law enforcement officers' radar screens for nearly 20 years. His name was first brought up by an informant working for Larry Phelps, who was at that time a narcotics officer for the Shelby County Sheriff's Department in Memphis.

The Memphis drug dealer owned a luxurious home near Pickwick Lake and said he had shared cocaine with Harmon on a Pickwick boat dock.

Phelps had a colleague run a check on Harmon on EPIC, a federal computerized data network which keeps track of illegal drug activity, and discovered that Harmon was listed as a "suspected drug dealer." Very recently, a check of that same data network revealed that Harmon is still on the radar screens as a suspected narcotics trafficker.

Don Cannon and other local police and federal sources say Harmon was also a suspect in the TBI investigation of Sheriff David Seaton, conducted during Carson's tenure. Harmon was never charged with any crime in that case, and he repeatedly claimed he has never used nor sold drugs.

Harmon talked to WND in his private legal office about a block from the Hardin County Court House.

Harmon said he wasn't sure about whether Clark Jones actually met with the TBI in Memphis. But if it did happen, he said, "It's dumb."

Asked about Whit LaFon, Harmon answered, "He talks too much all the time. He's someone who might make a call (to halt the TBI investigation)."

When asked about the FBI investigation, the color drained from his face. After regaining control, he asked what allegations were being investigated. He was told that obstruction of justice, narcotics trafficking and conspiracy were being discussed.

"What the hell would we [Harmon and Clark Jones] have to conspire about?" he asked.

Clark Jones was interviewed at his Savannah auto dealership. Jones, who met Gore when he first ran for Congress, couldn't fully explain why he allowed Junior Sweat to hang around his showroom four days a week.

"Junior visited Gary Wilson (a Jones Motor Company salesman)," he said.

He tried to downplay his involvement with Al Gore, claiming that he only talked to Gore once a year. However, Gore recently purchased a car from Jones for his son, Albert Gore, III, and Gore was expected to attend the wedding of Chad Jones, Clark's son, this summer, but he cancelled at the last minute reportedly due to heavy scheduling demands.

The 24th Judicial District Task Force, a multi-county narcotics unit, conducted a round-up this past May -- the culmination of a year's undercover work done by task-force members, the Savannah Police Department and agents from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Affairs Office of Inspector General.

Some of the investigation took place in public housing projects, and HUD furnished thousands of dollars of "buy money." Task-force members say a number of the suspects have been turned for use as informants.

HUD's anti-drug program was strongly endorsed by the vice president when it was first introduced in 1997, two years before Gore allegedly played a role in terminating the TBI's drug investigation in Hardin County.

Gore and HUD cited Savannah and Hardin County as "success stories," based solely on a May 20, 1997, round-up of 37 individuals for using and selling crack cocaine and marijuana in and around public housing developments.

A number of these individuals were perennial addicts who sold only miniscule amounts of drugs to support their habits. They were charged with simple possession of a controlled substance and released on their own recognizance.

Despite Gore's declaration that Savannah and Hardin County were "success stories" in the war on drugs, numerous local and federal anti-drug sources say the situation in Savannah and Hardin County has dramatically worsened, and that the county's cries for relief have fallen on the deaf ears of Al's pals.

So, what happened in Hardin County? A fair reading of the facts reveals this: A serious inquiry into narcotics trafficking was begun by Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director Larry Wallace after a request from a powerful state politician. TBI agents collected information and evidence, interviewed subjects and solicited assistance from local citizens. Then, apparently after a clandestine meeting with one of Al Gore's pals and top fundraisers -- an individual with strong connections to a career criminal even then under investigation for constructing the largest meth lab in the state -- that drug trafficking inquiry stopped cold.

"Clark Jones did me in. I'll never forgive him and Al Gore for that," Jane Riddell said, and then she began to cry.

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