Dymally Sought Bribe, Informant Says : Court: Allegations, denied by former congressman, are made in Tucker trial. Businessman who proposed waste conversion plant also accuses two former Compton council members.

Former Rep. Mervyn M. Dymally and two former members of the Compton City Council were accused Wednesday of soliciting bribes from a businessman-turned-FBI informant who tried to build a $250-million waste-to-energy conversion plant in Compton.

The accusations came during defense cross-examination of businessman John Macardican, the government’s chief witness in the federal extortion trial of Dymally’s successor, Walter R. Tucker III.

Tucker, 38, is charged with soliciting and accepting $37,500 in bribes from Macardican and another businessman and demanding an additional $250,000 in kickbacks while serving as mayor of Compton in 1991 and 1992.

While defense lawyers do not deny that Tucker received cash payments from Macardican--the transactions were documented by hours of undercover FBI videotapes and audiotapes--they contend that Tucker was the victim of FBI entrapment.

Under cross-examination by defense lawyer Robert Ramsey Jr., Macardican testified Wednesday that he was summoned to a meeting with Dymally at the Cockatoo Inn in Hawthorne on June 5, 1984, after he first proposed his waste conversion project.

“If you don’t give me $50,000, I’ll kill your project,” he said Dymally told him.

Macardican, who was not working for the FBI at that time, said he doubted Dymally could make good on the alleged threat and he refused to pay.

“My mistake was that I didn’t believe he had the power,” he said.

A few weeks later, the Compton City Council voted to deny the project a conditional use permit and it died. Macardican blamed Dymally.

Reached for comment Wednesday, Dymally denounced the charges as false and called Macardican “a pathological liar.”

“I categorically deny soliciting a bribe from Macardican or anyone else,” said Dymally, who retired from Congress in 1992 and now operates an international political consulting firm based in Inglewood.

After their project was killed, Macardican and an associate, Robert Schultz, went to the FBI with their allegations against Dymally. But federal authorities did not follow through, Macardican testified.

Macardican said that in 1987, however, he took an undercover FBI agent with him when he was invited to meet with two Compton City Council members, Robert L. Adams and Floyd James, to discuss reviving his project.

Under defense questioning, he said that the two council members wanted $50,000 to help him get the project approved, but that the FBI would not provide the cash to pursue the investigation.

In a telephone interview, James, who served on the council from 1977 to 1989, said he was “totally shocked and outraged” by the allegations and denied soliciting any bribe.

He said he vaguely recalled a meeting he and Adams attended “with some guys from New York” who talked about an energy conversion project and who “wanted to contribute to my campaign, but I never heard from them again.”

Adams could not be reached for comment.

In divulging Macardican’s allegations about Dymally, James and Adams, the defense appeared to be trying to show that Macardican had an ulterior motive when he became an FBI operative: revenge against Compton officials.

That would support the contention that Tucker was the victim of illegal entrapment by an overzealous undercover operative.

Outside of court, Ramsey and co-counsel Mark Smith said they elicited Macardican’s allegations Wednesday to demonstrate his state of mind, and did not intend to suggest that any of them were true.

Whatever the reason, it did not sit well with Dymally’s son, Mark, who issued a statement in the family’s name saying, “We are very confused and disappointed that the defense would try to bring up false allegations about my father.”

Although Dymally and Tucker have clashed politically in the past, Mark Dymally said he and his father are supporting Tucker in his trial and have contributed to his legal defense fund.

In his questioning of Macardican Wednesday, Ramsey tried to suggest that Dymally was the main target when Macardican was recruited in 1990 to work as a “cooperative witness” in an FBI investigation of political corruption in Compton.

Macardican denied that any particular politician had been targeted as far as he knew.

Dymally, reached en route to Trinidad, said he knew he had been targeted. Everyone in Compton knew Macardican was an undercover FBI operative, he said, “and I once told him he was a sting.”

“How did I know? He was throwing around a lot of cash. He set himself up in an office near me. And he said he was being financed by the Japanese. I know about international finance, and the Japanese don’t deal with cash or even checks. They use bank transfers.

“So I told him if you’re legit, then you can take your project to the City Council.”

In court, meanwhile, Macardican admitted he had lied when he told Tucker that he actually had Japanese financial support for the project, which involved recycling rubbish and burning what could not be recycled in energy-generating incinerators.

Macardican also admitted lying to Tucker when he claimed to have given a $3,000 “payoff” to then-City Council member Maxcy Filer in 1984. “I was lying. I never made a payoff,” he admitted after a testy exchange with Ramsey, one of several that marked his testimony Wednesday.

Macardican has given conflicting testimony about the alleged payment to Filer, describing it variously as a payoff and a loan. Filer, who consistently opposed Macardican’s project when he served on the City Council, has denied taking any bribe.