Judge Clears City in Man’s Defamation Suit

The city of Los Angeles has been cleared of liability by a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury in Glendale 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 had contended that 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 Superior Court Judge Charles W. Stoll, found in favor of the city.

In a previous trial that ended in a mistrial, Nichols testified that as a result of his being detained, the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department had rescinded his concealed weapons permit. That action, claimed Nichols, 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 came up in a House Judiciary Committee report on possible malfeasance in the Justice Department during the Ronald Reagan presidency.

The report said Nichols met frequently with Washington reporter Danny Casolaro--who had been investigating conspiracies ranging from the Iran-Contra affair to government skulduggery--shortly before the reporter’s mysterious 1991 death.