He is, rather, an unusually talented undercover officer who gathered evidence against a fairly extraordinary number of people: somewhere around 50. The fact that there was an "aggregation of allegations" by a good number of them did, Assistant Attorney General Gary Freyberg wrote in a summary of his investigation of Altuzar, give him "pause."

Here's how the report clearing Altuzar described the witnesses against him:

"Taken in context, the allegations against Altuzar are the product of criminal defendants and their allies, all of whom have obvious biases, and in some cases, lengthy criminal records. None of the accusations of wrongdoing by Altuzar was made until well after the defendants were formally charged with committing their own crimes. The majority of the accusations were made by individuals who, by their own admissions, had been consuming alcohol, drugs, or both, at the time they claim to have witnessed Altuzar's alleged misconduct, and were recalling their observations months or years after the events. The allegations are vague as to time, place and circumstances. There is no physical evidence to substantiate the allegations. Some of the allegations are contradicted by other available information. In sum, there is no credible basis upon which to issue any criminal charge."

The columnist's take:

In some instances, it's clear, his accusers probably only thought they saw something. They thought Altuzar was getting drunk when he could just have been dumping many of his drinks down a bathroom sink.

They thought he was "French inhaling" when what he could, just as easily, have been doing was using a simulation technique taught to undercover officers.

In other instances, it appears, his accusers either made things up out of whole cloth or were incapable because of the fog of alcohol and drug use of knowing exactly what happened or when.

The columnist concludes:

In fact, my reading of it is, the only way anybody would ever have gotten a jury to convict the guy based on the flimsy or non-existent evidence was if they got the jurors themselves to inhale.

This is the same flimsy evidence that the Government uses to secure convictions every day in cases across America. From Jack Abramoff to Enron to Bernie Ebbers to virtually every drug defendant convicted in a drug conspiracy.

So rats are only to be trusted when they tell the Government's truth. If their truth as to what they witnessed, heard and experienced deviates from the Government's truth, it's worthless.