Special Agent

A supervisory special agent for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service pleaded not guilty Monday to charges that he perjured himself to shield former co-workers from bribery allegations when he worked in Santa Ana. Alvaro A. Bracamonte, 56, of Huntington Beach entered the plea before U.S. Magistrate Venetta S. Tassopulos in Los Angeles. Bracamonte is the first INS special agent "in memory" to be charged with a crime relating to his government duties, according to an INS spokesman.

A former IRS special agent who has become a prominent leader among challengers of the U.S. income tax was acquitted this week on federal charges that he had helped file false tax returns. Joseph Banister, 42, of San Jose quit the Internal Revenue Service in 1999 after delivering a 95-page memo to his bosses questioning the legality of the income tax law. He has since become a lecturer and expert witness on the tax protest circuit. A U.S.

Latino FBI agents charged in federal court Thursday that the bureau has taken "retaliatory employment actions" against them since they won a landmark class-action discrimination suit against it. In a move certain to intensify ill feeling inside the FBI over the unprecedented legal action, Hugo A. Rodriguez, the agents' lawyer, urged U.S. District Judge Lucius D. Bunton to bar the bureau from punishing his clients and others who were involved in the suit.

Before the illicit relationship with his best friend's 16-year-old daughter was discovered--an affair that led to his conviction Friday on sex and drug charges--U.S. Secret Service Agent Timothy John O'Brien lived the good life. At work, he had reached the top rungs of his profession--the presidential detail. O'Brien was assigned to protect the Bel-Air home of former President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy.

Working as a federal narcotics agent has always been dangerous, but never more so as in recent years, DEA officials said Friday. In the last 14 months alone, three other Drug Enforcement Administration agents have been killed in the line of duty elsewhere in the United States--two by gunshots, one in an accident when his car collided with a truck outside an Arizona border town.

High on the FBI's most wanted list are women and minorities--as agents. "WOMEN, Earn $28,998 As A Career Special Agent With The FBI," read full-page advertisements in such specialized magazines as Professional Engineer, Collegiate Career Woman and Washington Woman. In Miami, radio stations carry advertisements in Spanish aimed at recruiting Latinos. Only Center in Nation And in suburban Alexandria, Va.

A defense attorney grilled a federal agent Friday on the decision to go ahead with a raid on religious leader David Koresh despite a plan to abort the move if the element of surprise was lost. In the federal murder trial of 11 Branch Davidians, attorney Tim Evans asked special agent Barbara Maxwell about a decision by supervisors to send two cattle trailers full of agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to confront Koresh on Feb. 28, 1993.

State agents confiscated approximately $152,000 worth of methamphetamine and an estimated $500,000 in U.S. currency from two Los Angeles homes Thursday morning. The raids occurred after agents seized 47 kilos of cocaine and an estimated $500,000 from a Canadian man seen visiting both homes, said Shirley Lessiak, a special agent with the Department of Justice. The cocaine has a potential street value of $4.7 million, she said.

Federal drug trafficking charges were filed on Tuesday against a Korean citizen for allegedly trying to sell crystal methamphetamine, known as "ice," to undercover agents at a Garden Grove hotel, FBI officials said. Jong Beom Kim, 37, was arrested on Monday as he allegedly tried to sell 4 1/2 pounds of the drug, worth an estimated $1.2 million on the streets, to two agents for $130,000, said FBI special agent Charles J. Parsons.

Federal agents targeting potential national security breaches arrested 14 illegal immigrants Tuesday who had been working for a San Diego company that constructs fencing at a U.S. Navy base. None of the immigrants, 13 Mexicans and one Guatemalan, worked at the base; they apparently were used on other projects for Golden State Fence Co.