Friends Doubt Bush Plot by Broker : Inquiry: A man being investigated in connection with a possible threat against the President is the son of a former Oxnard mayor.

Friends of an Oxnard man under investigation by the U.S. Secret Service following an informant’s tip that he was plotting to assassinate President Bush described him Wednesday as a successful real estate broker who likes to collect semiautomatic weapons.

Thomas Robert Ward, 45, the son of a former Oxnard mayor, is a successful commercial real estate broker who “never gave us any indication that this would be brewing,” said John Davis, who works in the same field. “It’s just so unlike Tom.”

Davis said he and his wife were totally shocked upon learning that a police informant alleged that Ward said he had scouted land around the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library near Simi Valley for a site from which to shoot the President. Bush and several former Presidents are expected to be on hand when the library is dedicated Nov. 4.

Ward often went target shooting with friends on land along the Santa Clara River owned by the McGrath family, Davis said. He said he accompanied him on one of the outings last Thanksgiving.

“I do not believe Tom Ward even thought about in jest what he’s being accused of,” Davis said.

Davis said Ward engineered a multimillion-dollar real estate deal in the late 1980s to persuade 20 property owners to sell 2,100 acres of beachfront land at Ormond Beach to the Baldwin Co., of Irvine. Baldwin plans to build a 4,100-unit residential community with parks, a school and commercial buildings.

Ward had never expressed any ill will toward President Bush, said Oxnard gun shop owner Tony Montemorra, who sold Ward several of the semiautomatic rifles seized Sunday at Ward’s apartment.

“I think he felt slightly betrayed like most of us did when the President said ‘No new gun laws,’ yet rolled over and signed a presidential edict preventing the importation of a number of firearms into the United States,” Montemorra said.

“I know he made phone calls, like a lot of us did, to President Bush, saying, ‘We respectfully hope you would not do such and such a thing, because you said you would not,’ ” he said.

Montemorra said Ward and fellow gun enthusiasts in Oxnard helped raise money to hire a Sacramento lobbyist to whip up opposition to a bill forbidding the import, sale and manufacture of 60 types of semiautomatic assault rifles, shotguns and pistols that took effect Jan. 1, 1990.

Acting on a tip, federal and Ventura County investigators obtained a search warrant and ordered Ward out of his apartment at 9 a.m. Sunday.

Inside they found a large collection of weapons, including 12 fully automatic machine guns, several handguns and about 27,000 rounds of ammunition. They also seized laser sights, night-vision goggles and two silencers that could be used to muffle MAC-11 machine pistols.

Ward appeared Monday before U.S. Magistrate Carolyn Turchin and was ordered held at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles without bail.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Uttam Dhillon said he plans to pursue a federal grand jury indictment of Ward on charges of possessing an unregistered machine gun. If he is not indicted, Ward will face a preliminary hearing before a federal judge in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Nov. 4. The maximum penalty for such a charge is 10 years and a $10,000 fine.

Meanwhile, the Secret Service is continuing to investigate reports that Ward planned to assassinate Bush. That allegation could be added to the indictment if evidence supports it, Dhillon said.

The intelligence unit of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department is continuing to investigate Ward.

Ward is the son of former Oxnard Mayor Carl Ward Sr., who served from 1956 to 1960 and now serves as a board member of the Calleguas Municipal Water District. Ward’s brother, Carl E. Ward Jr., said of the charges, “It’s just total bull.”

Carl Ward Jr. said his younger brother graduated in 1964 from Santa Clara High School and in 1968 from the University of San Diego, where he earned a degree in business administration. He said he and his younger brother began shooting recreationally at age 10 with the Oxnard Junior Rifle Club.

“He’s not violent, he’s not homicidal, he’s not mentally ill, he’s a normal guy whose interests lean to collecting and firing guns,” he said.

He said the number of guns seized from his brother’s home by police--34--does not mean that he is violence-prone, only that he is a gun collector.

As for his brother’s feelings about Bush, Carl Ward said: “He voted for him . . . The only thing Bush has done was attack Iraq, and I think (Tom) was in support of that.”