The Stingers Get Stung

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Attorney General William French Smith declared that the verdict would not deter the Government from conducting undercover operations in the future. Since 1977 the FBI budget for such investigative techniques has climbed from $1 million to $12 million. While Assistant FBI Director William Baker conceded that the agency's procedures for conducting a sting operation might need some "tuning up," he claimed that the verdict will not set a precedent. But Democratic Congressman Don Edwards of California announced that he will push for legislation for tighter control of such operations in the future; he proposes that in some types of undercover stings the Government should be required to get a judge's authorization, as is now the case for wiretaps. "The Government sending secret agents in to commit crimes is a kind of dirty business," said Edwards.

"Hopefully we can get the laws changed so that this type of conduct never happens again," said De Lorean after the verdict was announced. "Hopefully this terror and horror that me and my family have been through for the last two years won't be wasted." In 1975, 2½ years after leaving as executive in charge of all North American car and truck manufacturing at General Motors, he set up his own dream-car company. It is now in receivership, though its gull-winged, stainless-steel sports cars are suddenly selling rapidly as collectors' items. He hopes to go back into the automobile business, said De Lorean last week, "the only thing I know how to do."

Yet the De Lorean saga is far from concluded. His legal expenses are reported to be close to $1 million, he faces suits from creditors seeking $25 million or more, and his once far-flung estates are tied up in legal wrangles. The British government, which put $156 million into financing his now bankrupt automobile factory in Northern Ireland, is demanding an accounting of $17.65 million that investigators say was apparently funneled into private bank accounts. And in Detroit, John De Lorean's home town, he is still the subject of a federal grand jury investigation paralleling the British probe into an apparent transfer of millions of dollars from the De Lorean Motor Co. or subsidiaries into a paper trail of foreign and domestic personal bank accounts. Indictments may be handed down this fall.

"Would you buy a used car from me?" asked De Lorean wryly after his acquittal. Almost certainly many people would. He is a master of the role of charming rascal. Even the jury, held hostage for five months to his trial, agreed after its emotional deliberations to a highly unusual request from the defense attorneys for a private meeting with the man they had just found not guilty. De Lorean, his wife and lawyers spent half an hour thanking the jurors, many of them well-paid professionals, for their verdict. —By Jane O'Reilly. Reported by Richard Woodbury/Los Angeles