Garcia Says Other Agents Put His Life in Jeopardy : DEA: Investigators planned vengeance because they were angry that he was reinstated after being fired, he says.

As an investigative net closed around him, former federal drug agent Darnell Garcia said Friday that he found himself in a “Serpico-type situation” where his life was placed in jeopardy by fellow agents angry over his civil rights activism and a legal victory restoring him to a position from which he had been fired.

The year, Garcia recalled, was 1987 and a government investigation was uncovering evidence of a major corruption scandal in the Los Angeles office of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The following year, Garcia and two other DEA agents would be indicted on drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges.

But 1987 also was the year Garcia won a federal appellate court decision in which the DEA was ordered to rehire him after firing him two years earlier for refusing a transfer to Detroit.

Guided during testimony Friday by his defense attorney, Mark Overland, Garcia dramatically described a frantic September, 1987, meeting in a South Bay restaurant with a close friend, FBI agent Victor Guerrero. At the meeting, he told Guerrero “agents were following me around” and “watching me like a hawk.”

Garcia testified that he wanted Guerrero to know vengeful DEA agents might be planning a setup to make it look like Garcia was killed in the line of duty.

“If I get out on an arrest and get shot or something . . . I want you to know . . . I want you to tell (my wife), . . . “ Garcia said of the meeting.

It was the second day of testimony for Garcia in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter, Jr. The defense is expected to complete its questioning early next week, clearing the way for what is expected to be a sharp confrontation between Garcia and Assistant U.S. Atty. Joyce Karlin.

Garcia, 44, of Rancho Palos Verdes, characterized his dilemma as “a Serpico-type situation,” referring to the 1973 film in which actor Al Pacino portrayed an honest cop operating amid corrupt police who almost cause his death when he’s abandoned during a shootout with a sniper.

Garcia said that in September, 1987, he was followed on the Pasadena Freeway and, through adroit maneuvering, confronted his pursuer at a stop light on Orange Grove Avenue. He told jurors he walked up to the driver and asked, “Are you a good guy or a bad guy?”

The driver, he said, pulled a Beretta pistol from a briefcase, pointed the weapon at a spot just below the driver’s window, and declared, “What difference does it make? You’re going down anyway.”

During his two days on the witness stand, Garcia has spoken out publicly for the first time about his role in the corruption case.

He has used six years of personal date book notes to rebut, point by point, incriminating testimony by government witnesses that he helped steal massive amounts of seized drugs and cash, leaving him with $3 million deposited in Swiss bank accounts in Luxembourg. Garcia contends that the cash represents commissions for helping an Italian jewelry firm smuggle gold chains past U.S. Customs.

Two of Garcia’s former DEA colleagues, John Jackson and Wayne Countryman--both of whom have pleaded guilty to drug-trafficking charges--and a convicted Brooklyn drug dealer, have testified that Garcia participated in several drug thefts. Those included the theft of 400 pounds of cocaine from a Pasadena stash house on the evening of Nov. 11, 1985.

But on Friday, Garcia, again referring to his calendar jottings, said that the theft--known as the “Big Rip”--was not possible since, he said, he took a flight from Los Angeles to Frankfurt, Germany, the same day.

Thus far, however, he has not produced any air ticket or hotel receipts that would corroborate his story.