Trial Begins Over Possession of Explosives

Robert Ferro pulled a handkerchief from his three-piece suit and wiped the tears from his red eyes as he sat in the Pomona courthouse cafeteria.

He was recalling the morning he was arrested in his Upland home and a dozen officers trained automatic weapons on his wife and four young children.

“It was dangerous,” Ferro said of the pre-dawn raid by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies last July 29. “It was dark and they didn’t let us put the lights on. They could have killed my wife and kids.”

Now, the 47-year-old, 6-foot, 210-pound U.S. Army Special Forces veteran, who holds a black belt in kosyuskikaikan karate, is on trial in Pomona Superior Court. He could face up to seven years in prison if found guilty of felony charges of illegally possessing five pounds of plastic explosives and bomb-making paraphernalia.

The materials were found during simultaneous raids by deputies on Ferro’s home and his abandoned chicken processing plant in Pomona. The actions resulted in the largest seizure of C-4--a plastic explosive--in Sheriff’s Department history, officials said.

Ferro, a Cuban immigrant, admitted to investigators his membership in the quasi-military, anti-Castro group “Alpha 66,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Carol Najera said. He reportedly told deputies the morning of his arrest that he was using the explosives to train Mexican men to overthrow Fidel Castro, the Caribbean island’s Communist dictator.

“I think he’s a danger, a very definite danger,” Najera said last week outside court.

But defense attorney Peter Scalisi argues that Ferro, who narrowly escaped death as a 16-year-old medical student in Cuba, was not running a paramilitary camp.

The Pomona plant was being torn down to make way for a housing development and Ferro had hired workers to do the job. One of them, Jamie Wolden, stole the plastic explosives from his brother’s mine in the Angeles National Forest and, unknown to Ferro, was trying to sell golfball-size pieces, Scalisi said.

The bomb paraphernalia is actually electronic components from a dismantled burglar alarm system from the old plant, the attorney said. And if Ferro admitted membership in Alpha 66, it was only after deputies badgered him and held his family at gunpoint for more than an hour, Scalisi said.

“He’s an extremely patriotic man who has given his country many, many years of faithful service in the military. And he strongly believes in the principles of democracy,” Scalisi said. “He feels he is being unfairly prosecuted.”

Deputies might never have made the raids if Wolden, a heroin addict with needle marks on his arms, had not caught the attention of Baldwin Park police. Officers spotted Wolden looking into store windows about 6 p.m. on July 27 and, suspecting he might be casing the premises for a robbery, questioned and searched him--and found a wad of C-4 in his pocket, Najera said.

Wolden told officers he got the explosives from Ferro. The story was backed up by Wolden’s 11-year-old daughter, who was with him when he was stopped by police, Najera said.

Based on Wolden’s statements, search warrants were obtained and the raids were launched two days later. Among the evidence seized was a can of black gunpowder, flare cartridges, firearm magazines, glass bottles with gasoline-residue wicks, a dummy grenade, miscellaneous electronic circuits, the five pounds of C-4 plastic explosives and an empty, 18-inch length of pipe with electrical terminals on the end that resembled a pipe bomb.

Sheriff’s investigators also found what they called “booby traps”--a dummy cigarette package and a package of gum that works like a mousetrap, flipping a piece of metal on the fingers when a stick of gum is removed. Investigators believe these could have been rigged to detonate explosives.

Scalisi has been attempting to show that, except for the plastic explosives, all of the materials seized can be obtained legally and that none of the items could be combined to make a bomb. Ferro is a licensed gun dealer who trades in antique Colt pistols and rifles and, therefore, would have reason to possess gunpowder, Scalisi said.

Ferro, who during court recesses trades jokes with the deputies who arrested him, insists the “booby traps” are simply practical jokes--trick devices he purchased from a magic store in Miami. “I also have a (whoopee) cushion you sit on that makes noise,” he said.

“At some point, you’ve got to wonder how much taxpayer money is being spent to prosecute someone for novelty items,” Scalisi said outside of court.

The person who could shed some light on all this--Wolden--has been directed by his attorney not to testify for either side. Convicted of possessing the C-4 explosives, he is serving a two-year prison term.

Najera said Ferro’s association with Wolden points to his guilt.

“He sold or gave some C-4 to a drug addict to commit a crime. . . . That’s why I’ve got a problem with him,” she said of the defendant.

But Ferro said Wolden came to his plant seeking a job and he simply decided to help the man.

Scalisi said Wolden is not the type of person with whom Ferro regularly associates. The attorney expects to call several character witnesses who will testify to Ferro’s standing in the community.

“You won’t find a more patriotic man than Robert Ferro,” Scalisi said outside of court.

Ferro said he served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Special Forces and was sent on various classified missions that, even now, he refuses to talk about. He was a volunteer in Operation Sky Hook, a private effort to rescue missing servicemen believed still held in Vietnam.

He serves on a citizens’ advisory group to the National Security Council and is an ardent backer of Presidents Bush and Reagan. He is also a supporter of former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, who was accused of involvement in selling arms to the Nicaraguan Contras.

Ferro said his deeply conservative political beliefs come from his experiences in Cuba in 1960, a year after Castro took power. The son of a physician, his own medical studies were interrupted by his participation in anti-Castro demonstrations.

After an older sister died in a traffic accident near the U.S. Embassy that he said was a planned murder by Castro forces, Ferro’s family, believing he was next, sent him out of Cuba.

Since his military service, Ferro said he has made a living as a chicken processing plant manager. He eventually owned three plants, including the Pomona facility that he closed in 1990 after the area was rezoned for residential use.

He believes he is being prosecuted, in part, because he filed a claim for damages against the deputies who raided his house and in part because of the specter of Alpha 66.

“They made a mistake; they made a big, huge mistake,” Ferro said. “They went on the statement of a heroin addict and they didn’t investigate.”

But Najera said Ferro is being prosecuted only because of what deputies found.

“We’re not all that involved in terms of what his political affiliations are,” she said. “If he had not said that he was part of Alpha 66 and he was just some guy with all this C-4, we’d still be prosecuting him.”