Silberman Pressed for ‘Bigger Money’ Deals, FBI Tapes Reveal : Justice: Defense lawyers acquiesced on release of the tapes. But they vow to fight the expected release of a report on the businessman’s behavior after arrest.

During secretly taped meetings with an undercover FBI agent posing as a drug-money launderer, San Diego businessman Richard T. Silberman repeatedly pressed for involvement in “bigger money” deals to help relieve what he vaguely described as “some pressures” facing him.

In two tapes released by a federal judge Tuesday during preliminary legal skirmishing in Silberman’s federal money-laundering case, Silberman and the undercover agent, who portrayed himself as a representative of Colombian cocaine traffickers, discussed various ways to “move” the purported drug money to conceal its origins.

The tapes, whose release initially was opposed by Silberman’s attorneys, reveal Silberman talking often and apparently knowledgeably about possible money-laundering schemes--even though, in keeping with the cryptic style appropriate for the circumstances, the word “laundering” itself never is used. Instead, Silberman often used phrases such as “movement thing” and “round trip . . . on a clean basis” to describe his suggestions.

During one particularly compelling exchange, the undercover agent pointedly emphasized the source of the money as Silberman drove him back to the bayfront Marriott Hotel from a brief February, 1989, meeting at a Denny’s restaurant downtown.

“There’s one thing doing it when you can say that the money came from one place,” the agent said, “but when you gotta turn around and say that the money came from a bunch of . . . Colombian cocaine drug lords, for Christ’s sake, I mean, what do you say?”

“I don’t want to hear that,” Silberman replied.

“It’s reality,” the agent continued. “If you’re going to deal with me, that’s what you’re into. If you don’t want to, then I’m not going to bother you. . . . You can’t pretend it isn’t there.”

When the agent asked Silberman whether he had any qualms about meeting his “customers,” the businessman replied: “I’ve got no problem.”

The tapes, which added colorful details to the information included in the money-laundering indictments handed down last October against Silberman and four others, were made public Tuesday after Silberman’s attorneys decided not to appeal an order that U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving issued last Friday releasing them. Silberman, reputed mobster Chris Petti and three other men are accused of laundering $300,000 in cash that the undercover FBI agent characterized as proceeds from Colombian drug dealers.

In ordering the tapes made public, Irving said last Friday that Silberman’s attorneys had failed to show that their release would irreparably damage his right to a fair trial.

The announcement that there would be no appeal of that order came at a hearing Tuesday at which Irving indicated that he also is likely to order the release today of an FBI narrative report of Silberman’s behavior immediately after his arrest last April.

Hannah Bentley, one of Silberman’s attorneys, had urged the judge to keep the narrative secret, saying that, if released, it, like the tapes, would prejudice Silberman’s fair trial rights.

“The public will remember this statement more than anything else in the case,” Bentley said.

Though he said he was “inclined” to agree with Bentley on that point, Irving explained that he believes that laws favoring the public nature of court documents give him “no choice” but to release the narrative. Lawyers for the San Diego Union and Tribune had requested press access to the tapes, the narrative and other sealed documents.

Although they acquiesced in release of the tapes, Silberman’s attorneys said Tuesday that they would appeal Irving’s decision to release the narrative.

Silberman, a former top aide to then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. and the husband of county Supervisor Susan Golding, declined to comment on the tapes or the narrative after Tuesday’s hearing. But, in a prepared statement, lead defense attorney James Brosnahan argued that the release of the tapes suggested that prosecutors were “so anxious to get a conviction by any means that they want to try the case in the newspapers.”

The tapes, which flesh out conversations skimmed over in the indictment, indicate that Silberman was especially eager to, as he put it at several points, “motivate” the purported drug dealers’ agent to initiate deals involving substantially more money than the $100,000 used in an earlier money-laundering operation. In that first “test” deal, Silberman allegedly intended to disguise the purported drug money through a complicated stock swap involving a subsidiary of Yuba Natural Resources, a mining company that he then headed.

“I don’t really know the extent to which you can get your hands on big money,” Silberman told the undercover agent on the tapes. “But my reasons for doing this--and I hope it doesn’t sound too arrogant--I mean, I wouldn’t have (messed) around for this kind of money. . . . I just got a vibe the first time we met that you and I might be able to develop a very interesting, longer-term relationship that could get into some big money that would be beneficial to you and, obviously, it would help me out.”

When Silberman proposed a larger-scale version of the first stock swap deal on the tapes, the undercover agent insisted that his clients preferred another method that would produce a quicker return--and that, even then, they would be reluctant to commit large amounts until they were convinced of the safety of the transaction.

The two tentatively agreed on a $200,000 deal, for which Silberman would be paid a 12% commission, totaling $24,000. Dismissing that as a small-time deal in which “all I’m going to do is break even,” Silberman continued to press the agent for larger deals on the tapes.

“It just seems to me that to do a round trip of three or four or 500 (thousand dollars) for them on a very clean basis, somehow there’s got to be a guy who likes you and . . . you could twist his arm” to commit bigger dollar amounts, Silberman said on the tapes.

“Could happen down the road,” the agent replied.

Apparently convinced that that $200,000 deal, which involved conversion of the funds to U.S. Treasury bonds, had, indeed, led to bigger things, Silberman sat down with the agent again in two months in a San Diego hotel room to negotiate a $1.1-million deal. That day in April, however, he was arrested.