LOS ANGELES : City Cleared in Defamation Suit by Reputed CIA Agent

The city of Los Angeles has been cleared of liability in a defamation lawsuit brought by a mysterious San Fernando Valley man who has claimed to have worked for nearly two decades on behalf of the CIA.

Robert Booth Nichols said his constitutional rights were violated when he was taken into custody by two Los Angeles police officers at the Palomino nightclub in North Hollywood in 1986. But the jury, in a case heard before Glendale Superior Court Judge Charles W. Stoll, found in favor of the city.

In a previous trial that ended in a mistrial, Nichols testified that because he had been detained, the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department rescinded his concealed weapons permit. That action, Nichols said, resulted in the loss of Swiss financing for a multimillion-dollar deal to manufacture machine guns for sale to foreign governments.

Nichols’ name first surfaced in a late 1980s FBI investigation of alleged mob penetration into the entertainment industry. Last year, his name surfaced again in a House Judiciary Committee report on possible malfeasance in the Justice Department during the Reagan era.