Silberman’s Attorney Assails Tactics of FBI : Courts: Lawyer attacks use of felon as informant and wins right to question him at the trial.

An attorney for San Diego businessman Richard T. Silberman stepped up his attack against the federal government Tuesday by contending that FBI agents were overzealous in using a convicted felon with a history of violence to ensnare his client on money-laundering charges.

Because of those concerns, attorney James J. Brosnahan won assurances from U. S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving that the felon, Robert Benjamin, will be taken from hiding in the government witness program and brought to San Diego to testify for the defense once the trial begins next month.

Ironically, although prosecutors do not intend to call their own government informant to build their case against Silberman, Brosnahan wants Benjamin on the stand to show that the FBI went too far to get Silberman.

“Mr. Benjamin’s role in the case is central,” Brosnahan said. “He initiated the involvement of my client.”

The lawyer also characterized the FBI’s decision to make an informant out of Benjamin, whose criminal record dates back at least to 1969, as being tantamount to outrageous governmental misconduct.

“The FBI has done some very serious things here,” the lawyer said. “They knew exactly who Mr. Benjamin was and what he was capable of doing and what he was doing.”

“I have great respect for the FBI,” he added. “I know a lot of them. But not here. What was done here was not right. I know of no situation where the government has taken a person with such a propensity for violence and put him in contact with someone like this defendant.”

The lawyer last month raised similar allegations against the federal government in a failed attempt to have the case dismissed against his client. Prosecutors have maintained that the FBI, in pursuing the case, did nothing improper.

Silberman, alleged San Diego mobster Chris Petti, and three other men were arrested last year and accused of conspiring to launder money they were told were profits from illegal drug sales. A man posing as a representative of Colombian drug traffickers actually was an undercover agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation who was working with Benjamin.

Last week, one of the defendants, Terry Ziegler, a Los Angeles-area investment broker, pleaded guilty to one criminal count, marking the first resolution of any charges connected to the complex case.

The 60-year-old Silberman, once an aide to then-California Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. and married to San Diego County Supervisor Susan Golding, is scheduled to stand trial alone when jury selection begins in his case May 1. His trial is expected to last from four to six weeks. The remaining defendants are scheduled for trial in July.

Brosnahan leveled his charges against the FBI during a two-hour pretrial hearing on Tuesday, in which the judge denied a series of defense motions setting up the parameters of the trial.

However the defense attorney did prevail in persuading the judge not to allow any testimony about Silberman’s bizarre and sudden trip to Las Vegas in February, where he apparently tried to kill himself because he did not think he could get a fair trial.

In other action in the Tuesday hearing, prosecutors agreed that an FBI report in which Silberman allegedly confessed to the money-laundering conspiracy after his arrest will not be entered into evidence at the trial.

But Assistant U.S. Atty. Charles F. Gorder said agents will testify about portions of the alleged confession.