Posted on 09/09/2001 1:46:18 PM PDT by Marianne
Two paid informants helped the FBI in the investigation that led to the capture earlier this year of James C. Kopp, accused of killing Dr. Barnett A. Slepian.
The role of the informants was revealed last week by lawyers representing a New York City couple accused of helping Kopp to elude authorities for 21/2 years.
The identities of the informants remains a secret, but the attorneys said one of them was an acquaintance of Loretta C. Marra, who with her husband, Dennis J. Malvasi, is charged with assisting Kopp.
Bruce A. Barket, Marra's lead attorney, says he is outraged by the behavior of the informant initially recruited to gather evidence for the FBI.
"They paid someone who was a friend of Loretta. The informant rifled through her personal property in her home," Barket said. "It's typical of the things you'd expect an overreaching FBI to do. When the stakes are high, people are pushed, and the rules get broken."
FBI Special Agent Paul M. Moskal declined to comment on the criticisms.
"It would be inappropriate for the FBI to respond to any allegations now that this matter is before the court. Any comment would undercut the authority of the judicial system," Moskal said.
With information from the informant, the FBI obtained court orders permitting wiretaps and searches of the couple's home in the East New York section of Brooklyn.
Authorities said they learned through electronic surveillance that Marra and Malvasi were making arrangements to bring Kopp back from France and intended to let him secretly live with them.
The government's strongest evidence against Marra and Malvasi was gleaned from those wiretaps, which should be thrown out of court, according to Barket, a Garden City, Long Island, lawyer, who has enlisted the help of Buffalo attorney Joseph M. LaTona.
LaTona says government agents misled federal judges when filing incomplete applications seeking electronic eavesdropping on Marra and Malvasi, who, like Kopp, radically oppose abortion.
The information obtained through those wiretaps ultimately led authorities to Ireland and later France, where Kopp was apprehended in March, ending a worldwide manhunt for the fugitive in the 1998 murder of Slepian, an Amherst obstetrician who also performed abortions.
"FBI agents deliberately withheld relevant information from the eavesdropping applications," said LaTona, who plans to file a request Wednesday in U.S. District Court for a hearing to argue against allowing use of the wiretaps.
Federal agents, LaTona alleged, failed to state in the initial applications that a confidential informant was being paid to assist them in collecting evidence and that a second paid informant also was working for the FBI.
Had the judges who authorized the first two of seven warrants to conduct electronic surveillance known that the initial confidential informant, described in legal papers as "CS-1," was receiving money, LaTona believes the courts would have urged agents to try other more conventional means of investigation.
"For example, the judges could have directed the agents to offer more money to CS-1 to wear a wire. The agents claimed that CS-1 refused to wear a wire fearing an alleged FBI regulation would mandate the release of his identity," LaTona said, adding:
"That's a bogus excuse, and if the judges had been told CS-1 was a paid informant they would have realized CS-1 was capable of doing more than the agents claimed. He was for hire."
The 1968 federal Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, LaTona said, limits electronic surveillance by requiring that police make full use of more routine investigative techniques before resorting to wiretapping.
"Congress recognized the importance of strictly limiting the enormous invasion of privacy that electronic surveillance entails," LaTona said.
Through electronic surveillance of Marra and Malvasi, agents were able to capture the couple' conversations in their bedroom and to monitor their e-mail contact with Kopp.
LaTona maintains that an informant wearing a wire, which is a concealed recording or transmitting device, is far less intrusive than bugging a married couple's bedroom with a listening device.
"Because when you engage in a conversation with someone face to face, we assume the risk that person may divulge a confidence, but in the privacy of your own home in your own bedroom, there is an expectation that a conversation with your spouse will be private," he said.
If LaTona is granted a suppression hearing, he says he hopes to put CS-1 on the stand to question him. The lawyer also wants FBI financial records released showing how much both informants were paid.
Without information from the wiretaps, Barket said, prosecutors have no case against the couple.
Marra and her husband remain incarcerated in local jails. In July, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Arcara denied Marra's request to be released on $1 million bail. Barket is appealing that decision.
No bail has been set for Malvasi.
Kopp remains jailed in France, where he is fighting extradition to the United States. He has been charged with the sniper slaying of Slepian, who was shot Oct. 23, 1998, through a kitchen window of his home as he was warming a bowl of soup after returning from a prayer service for his deceased father.
Where have we gone, Jim Robinson, where have we gone?
/john
The attorneys here are not representing Kopp -- they are representing the two people who are being accused of helping to hide Kopp.
The key word is "if." It's up to the judge to grant or deny the motion. Ten to one the judge will tell him that this is a matter to be presented to the jury and not for pretrial motions.
This sounds like some of the "swami" arguments one of the defense attorneys I used to work for would use in his motions. He'd be so convincing in his motion and when he'd practice his argument on me, but when he got into court, he'd be shot down in flames.
You feel no outrage that a married couple's bedroom was bugged when other investigative avenues were available.
Are you an adult? Do you know what goes on in a bedroom? Doesn't it make you squeamish to think of your rights being trampled on in such a manner?
I'm willing to bet that the government apologists on this forum--who never see wrong in corrupt authority--are more of a concern to Mr. Robinson than honest discussion of a federal case that stinks to high Heaven.
Very good, RK.
"They paid someone who was a friend of Loretta. The informant rifled through her personal property in her home..."
If the court's permission to conduct electronic surveillance was based upon evidence acquired through the of acts by a paid informant of the FBI which acts would have been unlawful for the FBI itself to perform the electronic surveillance evidence should be suppressed.
Also, it used to be that LEOs had to get specific permission to bug a bedroom or bathroom, and this could be a secondary basis to suppress.
Though not particularly relevant to this discussion, based upon what I've read, I strongly suspect that Kopp is innocent. There's certainly more than enough to cause a reasonable person to avoid viewing this case with an assumption of his guilt.
They're incarcerated? What is their crime? More FBI incompetence.
Please add me to your ping-list, Marianne. Like LSJohn, I am of the opinion that Kopp is not guilty.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.