MISTRIAL DECLARED IN COCAINE ARREST NEAR WHITE HOUSE

A federal jury's four-day deadlock ended in a mistrial yesterday for the Spingarn High School senior accused of selling undercover drug agents the crack cocaine that President Bush later held up for the cameras in his Sept. 5 anti-drug address.

Keith Timothy Jackson, 18, who could not find the White House without assistance, was lured to Lafayette Square Sept. 1 by an undercover agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, who had been ordered to buy crack cocaine there for the president's speech. Bush displayed four rocks of crack for the camera and said they had been purchased across the street from the White House.

"The majority of the jurors felt it was a setup," jury foreman Cheryl Adams-Huff said in an interview yesterday. She added that the jurors were hung 11-to-1 for acquittal on that count of the indictment.

The federal jury here also deadlocked on allegations that Jackson had sold crack to DEA agents on three previous occasions between April 24 and Sept. 1. There were as many as nine votes for conviction on some counts, jurors said, but no unanimous verdict.

U.S. District Judge Stanley Sporkin set a new trial date of Jan. 8. He will hold a hearing this morning to decide whether Jackson may be released on bond to await the new trial.

Jackson's arrest followed what Sporkin called a "Keystone Kops" transaction across from the White House. One DEA agent's body microphone failed to work, and another agent attempting to videotape the sale missed the action because he was assaulted by a homeless woman in the park.

Jurors interviewed after the verdict said the evidence was sloppy.

"People felt as though, because it was the president saying 'Get me something to show on TV,' the government was pressured to go out and say, 'Get anybody,' " Adams-Huff said.

Charles F. Stow III, Jackson's attorney, said that "by luring him up to Lafayette Park, that was an affront to the citizens of the District of Columbia."

DEA spokesmen insisted yesterday, however, that it had been no mistake to bring law enforcement powers to bear in the president's search for a prop.

"My only regret, very frankly, is that a dope peddler is still out on the street," said Mario A. Perez, a spokesman for the DEA's Washington field division. "We did our job, and the jury did theirs. I'm sure that we can live with what we did. Hopefully, they in their own consciences can live with what they did."

"The facts are that the guy sold cocaine, right? So apparently, because it's adjacent to the White House, it makes it that the guy was enticed. Well, the point is he wasn't dragged there kicking and screaming," Perez said.

In fact, he was driven there by a government informant.

"We had to manipulate him to get him down there," William McMullan, assistant special agent in charge of DEA's Washington field office, said in September. "It wasn't easy."

Presidential speechwriters conceived the idea of having Bush hold up a bag of crack during his anti-drug message to the nation. When Bush approved the idea, White House officials called a top aide to Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, who in turn called the DEA and asked for a drug purchase near the White House to fit the words in the president's speech.

Special agent Sam Gaye, who drew the assignment, testified that he set up a meeting with one drug dealer, but the dealer did not show up. He testified that he then called one of his informants, and the informant brought Jackson to Lafayette Square.

"I don't think there was any mistake at all," DEA spokesman Con Dougherty said yesterday. "You always try to pick the spot that's advantageous to the law enforcement authority."

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