PROFILE: MARVIN M. FELDMAN : ‘Citizen Patriot’ or ‘Prince of Deception’? : The ex-leader of a Bradley recall campaign courts publicity but often attracts unfavorable notices.

In his long, rowdy career as a conservative political activist, Marvin M. Feldman has never been known for graceful exits. And his departure last week from a grass-roots group trying to recall Mayor Tom Bradley was no exception.

Minutes after members of the North Hollywood-based Bradley Recall Coalition voted to exclude Feldman from further participation, he was asked to leave the Van Nuys office where they were meeting. After the door was locked behind him, he began pounding and kicking it and yelling, recall coalition members said.

“He was hysterical,” said one. “I thought the whole side of the wall was going to cave in,” said another. Feldman left the building, they said, only after a police sergeant was summoned.

It was not the first time Feldman, a 58-year-old Republican, has left amid an uproar.

Best known for his involvement in recall campaigns against judges, Feldman in the past dozen years has left behind a turbulent wake of angry former allies, charges of political dirty tricks and lawsuits against employers who fired him.

In 1981, he was ousted as head of a group seeking to recall former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Rose Bird and later was accused of embezzlement in a lawsuit, a charge he denied. In 1984, Feldman was prevented from adopting a 14-year-old Laotian orphan girl after Wisconsin child-welfare officials complained that he had intimidated her uncle into signing custody papers.

His boasts of shadowy connections to government intelligence agencies cause associates to scoff. According to court documents, he has told acquaintances he is a CIA agent and has performed “secret government activities” in Central America. In a recent newspaper interview, he claimed he knew of a secret plot to assassinate Saddam Hussein.

In May, he was accused by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California of participating in a “bizarre effort” to make it appear that the ACLU was willing to accept financial contributions from the Iraqi government.

Feldman, who is listed in voter records as living in Van Nuys, did not respond to phone calls seeking comment for this story.

Articulate and well-dressed, Feldman is described by friends as a compassionate, energetic man who has taken time from his work as a public relations and political consultant to set up memorial scholarship funds in the names of murdered children and other crime victims.

He has portrayed himself as a “citizen patriot” who has made significant personal sacrifices to carry on his political crusades. His home telephone answering machine greets callers with: “Hi. Isn’t it great to be an American?” He said, in 1983 he was forced to sell his $220,000 home in La Canada Flintridge to pay off debts incurred through his political efforts.

“I am no different than the Founding Fathers,” he told an interviewer at the time. “Many of them gave up a great deal to give us a free country. I dearly love my country and I will do anything humanly possible to make this land a better place to live.”

Despite his patriotic sentiments, however, opponents have labeled him “the prince of deception,” “a public relations ambulance chaser” and “a remarkable creep.”

Last Monday, Feldman announced that he was resigning as the unsalaried chairman of the Bradley recall group, saying he needed to start making money again as a publicity agent. He offered to remain an adviser or volunteer for the group, which was formed this spring after Bradley urged the ouster of Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates following the March beating of Rodney G. King.

Within hours of his announcement, however, angry recall coalition members voted to exclude him from any further participation in their efforts.

Several members said they felt Feldman’s involvement slowed the recall drive and badly damaged their chances of gathering the nearly 185,000 voter signatures needed to put the matter on the ballot. The signatures must be submitted by Sept. 20.

Bradley and his aides have dismissed the recall drive, saying it will fail and characterizing Feldman as a publicity hound.

Recall coalition members charged that Feldman mishandled, or lost, completed petition forms, failed to return phone calls to supporters and spent money without authorization by the group’s executive committee.

“The mayor said he’s a joke, and he is a joke,” recall organizer Sharon Yackey said. “He just sabotaged us the best he could do.”

They also claimed that Feldman’s presence in the organization kept away numerous potential supporters, including some prominent Republicans.

Celeste Greig, president of the Los Angeles County Commission on the Status of Women and a longtime GOP activist, said she was invited by Feldman to join the effort but declined.

“I decided not to get involved because I was advised by people I respect not to do so,” she said. “I think he means well, except that he’s not honest enough . . . to let people know he was doing it for profit and expected a salary.”

Ten years ago, Feldman similarly alienated members of a group trying to recall then-Supreme Court Justice Bird.

Feldman was hired for the $3,000-a-month job on the strength of his leadership of an unsuccessful 1979 drive to recall former Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Paul Egly, who presided over the school desegregation court case that resulted in mandatory busing of schoolchildren.

Feldman’s colleagues in the 1981 Bird recall effort charged in a lawsuit that the campaign fell short because Feldman failed to secure any endorsements or contributions to the group. They also charged that he angered many of those solicited with his “use of profane language and his generally offensive demeanor.”

After ousting him as chairman, recall leaders discovered that a post office box he had rented to receive financial contributions had been purchased in his name and they had no legal access to the money, the lawsuit said. It claimed Feldman and an associate embezzled “tens of thousands of dollars” in contributions.

The suit also charged that after Feldman was dismissed, he went to Sacramento and without authorization altered the group’s articles of incorporation, removing one of his critics as treasurer and replacing him with a friend.

Feldman responded that he was entitled to $6,000 plus expenses at the time he was fired and that two of the people who sued him actually embezzled funds. The suit eventually was dropped after the plaintiffs ran out of money, said Paul McCauley, the recall group’s former treasurer.

Feldman’s private life has sometimes been as tumultuous as his public one. Twice divorced, he was ordered by a Van Nuys court commissioner in 1988 to stop harassing and to stay away from a former girlfriend, Delia R. Hackett.

Hackett said in court documents that Feldman told a friend of hers he was “a special agent for the CIA.” In addition, she said Feldman told her he was engaged in “secret government activities that included his being flown secretly to Central America.”

In a message left on her telephone answering machine following their breakup, Feldman claimed he had infiltrated “a number of offbeat political groups” in the United States, according to court documents. At the end of the message, he urged her to “please destroy this tape.”

In an interview with Copley News Service in May, Feldman boasted that he was informed of a secret plot to murder Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

“Let’s just say I’m accustomed to gathering information,” he said. “. . . I have a lot of contacts in Europe and the Middle East. I was made aware that a team was on its way to the Middle East to hit Saddam Hussein.” He declined to provide more details.

A graduate of Southwestern University law school, Feldman worked as an insurance salesman for the Automobile Club of Southern California from 1960 until his 1979 firing.

He sued the club in 1981, contending that he was dismissed because of his activities against Judge Egly. Auto club attorneys, however, said the reason was poor job performance. The suit was settled out of court and an auto club lawyer declined to discuss its terms.

Feldman has won praise from some quarters for setting up memorial scholarship funds in the names of murdered children and other crime victims. One such fund, named for a slain 7-year-old Pacoima girl, since 1982 has awarded at least three $1,000 scholarships to local high school students.

But detractors, while acknowledging the high-mindedness of such funds, said Feldman becomes involved because he is a compulsive publicity seeker.

“A friend of mine who’s an alcoholic said, ‘Feldman needs publicity like an alcoholic needs a drink,’ ” said McCauley, the Bird recall treasurer and an old political foe. “It’s just obsessive with him--to get his face in front of a camera, his name in the paper.”

In a 1984 incident that was highly publicized, Feldman was prohibited from adopting a 14-year-old Laotian girl after Wisconsin social service officials complained that he had pressured the child’s uncle into signing a custody form.

Feldman, who said he has joint custody of four children from his marriages, tried to adopt the girl, See Vang, after reading a magazine article about her plight in a refugee-transit camp in Thailand.

Feldman said at the time that he was simply trying to provide a better life for the girl, who was headed for a meager new home that then housed seven people.

But Wisconsin officials said Feldman took advantage of the uncle who did not read English or understand it well and who had been in the United States less than a year. A Milwaukee judge later issued an order barring Feldman from any contact with the girl.

In May, Feldman again became embroiled in controversy when the ACLU said he tried to discredit the civil-rights group by falsely saying it was soliciting financial donations from the Iraqi government.

Ramona Ripston, the ACLU’s Southern California director, charged that Feldman, in a telephone conversation with another ACLU employee, said his name was Jim Fields and that he was a wealthy Los Angeles oilman. He had offered to raise money from Americans of Middle Eastern descent, promising to give $3 million to the ACLU, Ripston said.

The employee later sent a letter to Fields addressed to a Sherman Oaks office used by Feldman. The letter welcomed contributions from “your Middle Eastern and Iraqi contacts.”

In one newspaper interview at the time, Feldman said he had conducted a “sting operation” against the ACLU to prove it was willing to go to any lengths to raise money to oust Police Chief Daryl Gates. Ripston has been a vociferous critic of Gates since the March 3 videotaped beating of Rodney G. King by Los Angeles police officers.

In another newspaper interview, Feldman denied that he had identified himself as Fields, whom he described as a “very good investigator.”

Robert Colaco, a Van Nuys businessman who replaced Feldman as head of the Bradley recall group, said Feldman still is in possession of signature petitions that the group needs. But Colaco added that he is confident Feldman will return them.

Meanwhile, Feldman’s ouster has given organizers new hope.

“I think it’s fabulous that he’s out now,” said Virginia Meyer, a North Hills real estate broker. “I just hope he hasn’t sabotaged us so far that we don’t have enough time left.”