Informers

The federal investigation of white supremacists that erupted to national attention last week began with a quiet set of introductions more than two years ago, after an FBI informant managed to win the trust of some hate group members by pretending to share their ideas. The informant--who has not been identified by the FBI but who white supremacists believe is a man they know as the Rev.

Early last fall, a husky state Senate aide named John Shahabian drove out to the Federal Building a few miles north of the Capitol for a 7 a.m. meeting. Shahabian thought that he was going to be helping a developer overcome some environmental questions the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had raised about a project. Instead, he was led through a side entrance of the building, past a door bearing the Fish and Wildlife insignia and into a room filled with FBI agents.

A federal informant claims a millionaire candy heiress who mysteriously disappeared 28 years ago was beaten and shot and her body was dumped in an Indiana steel-mill furnace. The informant's account, contained in court documents filed in Chicago, alleges that horse swindlers beat 65-year-old Helen Brach at her suburban home in early 1977. He said they stuffed her into a car -- still alive and wrapped in a blanket -- and he was ordered to shoot her when she moaned.

The first Los Angeles County jailhouse informant to be charged with perjury has died while awaiting extradition from New York. Sidney Storch died of complications from AIDS Sunday night, New York City jail authorities said. Storch, a 46-year-old heroin addict and check forger, was arrested in Queens last month on a Los Angeles indictment that charged him with lying about past favors he had received from prosecutors while testifying in 1988 as a key prosecution witness against Sheldon Sanders.

Aladena (Jimmy the Weasel) Fratianno, whose government pay for informing on the underworld was cut off last week, said Wednesday he would tell anyone who might become a protected witness in a federal case to "think twice." Fratianno, 74, an admitted gangland killer, said on ABC's "Good Morning America" program that he never would cooperate with federal prosecutors if he had it to do all over again.

Jailhouse informants are often rewarded for their testimony in criminal cases, even if they are not explicitly promised special treatment, documents released Tuesday indicate. Memoranda written by Los Angeles County prosecutors on their use of jailhouse informants appear to support the argument advanced by some defense attorneys that informants testify with the implicit understanding that they will receive lenient treatment from authorities.

The CIA has loosened its rules to let field officers recruit informants with violent or criminal backgrounds without prior approval from headquarters, a U.S. official said Friday. CIA Director George J. Tenet and other senior agency officials changed the policy so officers can get information about terrorists as quickly as possible, said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Field officers can now recruit such sources immediately if they have information on terrorist threats.

Ernesto Gamboa was a rare find -- the sort of informant who might come along once or twice in a cop's career. The 41-year-old Salvadoran auto mechanic assisted police in making hundreds of drug busts in the Pacific Northwest over 14 years. Armed only with a cellphone, he had a knack for posing as a drug buyer or seller, leading to harrowing transactions between heavily armed traffickers and narcotics agents. For about $10,000 a year, he risked his life time and again, according to those who worked with him. Undercover detectives came to trust him with their own lives.

In the first case of its kind to grow out of the jailhouse informant scandal, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office agreed Thursday to free a man convicted of murder in 1988 on the testimony of an informant. Citing the "best interest of the public" and the "best interest of justice," the district attorney's office asked in court papers that the case against Arthur Grajeda be dismissed because information had come to light that the informant was not credible.

Senior Los Angeles County district attorney's officials suspected in 1987 that sheriff's deputies may have been breaking the law by deliberately placing jailhouse informants in cells with defendants "from whom law enforcement could use a confession," according to a prosecutor's memorandum obtained Wednesday by The Times. The memorandum, dated Nov. 1, 1988, and marked confidential, was written by Deputy Dist. Atty. Denis K. Petty, then head of the district attorney's Long Beach office.