Double Trouble

Scandals rock New Mexico

The search that produced such startling "results began routinely enough when investigators of the New Mexico Organized Crime Strike Force, a special state investigative unit, started looking into underworld activities. The allegations that developed were both dismaying and frightening. They involved a college basketball scandal, which was bad enough, but last week TIME learned that the agents also discovered that gamblers had used a computer to do their bookkeeping--and that the computer was owned by Sandia Laboratories, a supposedly supersecret contractor that makes nuclear weapons.

The agents got wind of the Sandia operation when they tapped the telephone of Robert McGuire, described in a police affidavit as a "known gambler and bookie." A remarkable message was transmitted from McGuire's phone at 6:39 p.m. on Oct. 11. No voice spoke and no ear listened: the electronically encoded message was sent by a portable terminal and it was received by a computer at Sandia. The information conveyed: data about gambling.

Police claim that the person doing the syndicate's homework on the computer was Jerry Shinkle, 40, a Sandia employee with a doctorate in mechanical engineering. Shinkle, says Lee Hollingsworth, the company's chief computer analyst, "is a very bright young man." FBI agents later found betting information and a copy of the computer code in Shinkle's home. The engineer was fired in November and prosecutors with take his case to a federal grand jury later this month. Possible charges: violations of federal gambling and racketeering statutes.

Although he had a security clearance, Shinkle did not have access, Sandia insists, to the company's two main computers, which contain the classified material. The one that Shinkle is said to have used, says Sandia, had only unclassified material. Still, FBI agents and officials at the Department of Energy, which underwrites the work at Sandia, were shocked that Shinkle could get such easy access to any company computer. James P. Crane, the DOE official in charge of security at Sandia, said last week that he had set up new monitoring procedures and restricted access to the computers.

Following gambling leads, the investigators also uncovered a tawdry story at the University of New Mexico that involved faking academic credits for Guard Craig Gilbert. Agents overheard a conversation between Coach Norm Ellenberger and Manny Goldstein, his assistant, in which Goldstein said he arranged to get some credits for Gilbert by paying $300 to John Woolley, dean of admissions at Oxnard College in Oxnard, Calif. Gilbert had gone to school there for one year. The plan was to have Woolley certify that Gilbert had earned the credits at, of all unlikely places, Mercer County Community College in Trenton, N.J. Gilbert, a Californian, had never gone to far-off Mercer, but Goldstein, who is from Brooklyn, knew his way around the place. Somehow he got a blank transcript and a fake school seal, counterfeited the record and sent the envelope special delivery to Woolley. Before it got there, agents intercepted the packet.

Ellenberger and Goldstein have been suspended by the university and will be brought before a grand jury on charges of bribery and wire and mail fraud. Woolley insists: "I haven't done anything illegal or wrong." The university later discovered that five more players had been given false academic credits; they had never showed up for an aptly named course, all things considered, called "Current Problems in Coaching Athletics." New Mexico declared all five ineligible and also suspended a sixth while his academic record was reviewed. The team will forfeit its only win so far this year, a 112-100 victory over West Texas State.

There may be more trouble to come. The FBI is investigating the athletic department's financial records, looking for evidence that the school paid for recruiting trips that were never made. And the university must respond to 57 allegations by the National Collegiate Athletic Association that it had offered cash gifts and free travel for players, as well as tampered with academic records. It could be a long winter in New Mexico.

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