Deputy Director’s Arrest, Mass Firings Wrack Legal Center : Law: The Reginald Denny case catapulted the firm into the spotlight before things unraveled.

Two months ago, the Center for Constitutional Law and Justice was a brash young law firm representing one of the best-known criminal defendants in Los Angeles, the chief suspect in the attack on truck driver Reginald O. Denny.

Today, five of the center’s attorneys have been fired--one of them after he claimed to be an intellectual force behind the fall of communism--and the center’s deputy director is sitting in jail in Arkansas, where he was arrested Wednesday.

The deputy director, who has been using the name Fred Sebastian, turns out to be Frederick George Celani. And Celani, 44, turns out to be a felon who spent six years in federal prison before being released in 1991. On Wednesday, he was arrested again, this time in Little Rock, on charges that he tried to con $50,000 out of a woman by claiming he could bribe a federal prosecutor and secure her husband’s release from prison.

The arrest marked the latest chapter in the bizarre history of the 2-year-old center, whose top officials had purported to be running a nonprofit, public-interest law group. On Friday, center officials asserted that the organization is an undercover arm of federal law enforcement.

Celani was unavailable for comment, but in a statement released Friday the center claimed that Celani’s work in Little Rock was at the behest of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Center officials also released a letter intended to support Celani’s various claims.

But the letter merely promises that subcommittee staff will inform other officials about Celani’s cooperation with their investigation. A staff member for the subcommittee Friday denied that Celani had ever worked for it.

“We had contacted him in connection with an investigation back in 1986,” said Jeffrey Hodges. “He was never working for the committee or undercover for us or anything like that. . . . That’s definitely incorrect.”

Celani’s arrest, coupled with the rapid-fire string of dismissals, has quickly gutted the center and battered its self-made image as an aggressive public-interest law firm. In a prepared statement Friday, center officials called the organization “a secret intelligence group” and asserted that it is controlled by Congress and the FBI.

Ever since it was hired to represent Damian Monroe (Football) Williams, one of three lead defendants charged with attacking Denny on April 29, the center has aggressively courted the spotlight and boasted of its willingness to battle the district attorney’s office at every turn. Using the name Sebastian, Celani tried to plant stories in the press concerning personal and unverified allegations regarding Denny, while other lawyers from the firm floated an allegation that Denny provoked the attack that left him critically injured.

That allegation has been denied by Denny and even by some of the men accused of participating in the beating.

The center’s involvement in the case ended in August, when it fired lawyer Dennis Palmieri during a lunch break on the final day of the preliminary hearing. Some acquaintances of Palmieri said he had claimed to be Jesus Christ, and he stated in his resume that his ideas had helped lead to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War.

Williams allowed Palmieri to finish his closing remarks, but the Williams family later hired another lawyer for the trial.

Then, last week, the center fired four of its six remaining lawyers.

“It was basically Black Friday,” Celani, still using the name Sebastian, told the Los Angeles Daily Journal. “They all got their heads chopped off.”

Contacted Friday, the four discharged lawyers were dumbfounded by the disclosure that their former boss is behind bars in Little Rock.

“I can’t believe it,” said Alaleh Kamran, one of the fired lawyers. After consulting with her colleagues, Kamran and the other three attorneys issued a statement in which they said they were “shocked and amazed to learn of Fred Sebastian’s recent arrest and activities.”

For its part, the center vaguely alleged that federal officials had ordered Celani to assist in “setting up” an aide to Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, the Democratic candidate for President. The center said Celani was arrested when he refused.

FBI agents declined to comment, but a sworn affidavit lays out their view of the Celani case.

In that affidavit, FBI Special Agent David Reign states that Celani told an Arkansas woman that he could secure the release of her husband from prison if she would pay him $50,000. Celani allegedly told the woman, Judy Glasco, that he planned to use the money to bribe an assistant U.S. attorney in Little Rock.

Glasco went to the assistant U.S. attorney, Robert Govar, and told him of Celani’s plan, the affidavit states.

“Govar denied the allegation that he could be bribed or that he had ever been approached by Sebastian (Celani) or any of his associates in this regard, and he immediately directed Judy Glasco to report the situation to the FBI,” according to the affidavit.

Glasco contacted the FBI in June, and on July 25 met with Celani in Los Angeles. According to the affidavit, she brought $25,000 to that meeting, and Celani explained how he intended to secure her husband’s release by paying $50,000 to Department of Justice officials in Washington. Glasco tape-recorded the meeting, the affidavit adds.

As the center scrambled to explain the latest tale in its unraveling operation, Mary Celani said her husband was trying to tell his side of the story and was waiting for permission to call from the Little Rock jail.