Register Staff Writers Stuart Pfeifer,Bill Rams and Heather Lourie,and news
researchers Dick Glasow and Gayle Carter contributed to this report.

WIRETAPS TIE DEPUTY DA TO DRUG-RING LEADER

Crime: Federal authorities say the prosecutor acted as an 'intelligence
source'and even betrayed an informant.

John David Ward and Bryan Ray Kazarian are golf buddies whose recent
lunchtime meetings in Orange County restaurants had law enforcement agents
straining to hear what they had to say.

"J.Ward and Kazarian met at the National Sports Bar & Grill where they ate
lunch and conversed. During the meeting, (an) FBI agent was able to
overhear portions of the conversation," said an affidavit filed in federal
court Monday. The same lunch in Fullerton was also monitored by police and
agents of the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement.

Kazarian and Ward have been friends for eight years.

For six years, Kazarian, 35, has been an Orange County deputy district
attorney.

Ward, 28, has ies to Howard Coones, 44, the president of the Orange County
chapter of the Hells Angels.

Kazarian, Ward and Coones were identified Monday as the key players in a
massive drug trafficking ring that operated from the East Coast to Orange
County to Hawaii. The three and eight others were charged in federal court
in Santa Ana.

The federal investigation was geared toward documenting the activities of a
the drug ring, which allegedly involved the use of a chartered jet to haul
materials from the East Coast to Orange County to make a street form of
methamphetamine known as ice. The ice and cocaine were smuggled to Hawaii
inside Harley-Davidson parts, authorities say.

Malcolm Guleserian, Kazarian's lawyer, contends his client was sincerely
trying to help a friend he believed had "turned the corner." Ward abused
the friendship, bragging to the other drug-ring members about his
association with Kazarian. Guleserian maintains that the evidence against
his client amounts to tapes of Ward is recorded saying in a May 20
telephone call to an unidentified associate. Ward said he pays the man,
identified by investigators as Kazarian, "a buck twenty-five a year."
Federal officials said that could mean as much as $125,000 a year.

U.S.Attorney Alejandro N. Mayorkas said Kazarian endangered lives by
alerting Ward to the use of a police informer in raiding the Anaheim home
of a member of the drug ring.

In 1990, Ward was stopped by an elite unit of Orange County drug
investigators, said Deputy District Attorney Jeff Ferguson. They found a
police scanner in his car, tuned to the elite unit's frequency.

"Ward has shown the ability to develop information from within law
enforcement in the past," Ferguson said.

In August 1998, Ferguson received a call from an Idaho prosecutor who asked
why Kazarian, then prosecuting the leaders of street gangs, had written a
letter to an Idaho judge seeking probation for Ward. Ferguson reported the
letter to his supervisor and later to the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement.

A full investigation was under way by January, and the telephones of Ward
and other alleged drug-ring members were being tapped by federal
investigators. An early monitored conversation disclosed Kazarian running a
confidential license-plate check for Ward, to see whether one of Ward's
vehicles had been reported stolen.

In March, District Attorney Tony Rachauchas transferred Kazarian from his
assignment with the Costa Mesa Police Department and sent him to handle
minor cases in the Fullerton courthouse.

The reassignment landed Kazarian in a slot where he was assigned the task
of deciding whether to file charges against Peter Tristan, 29, of Anaheim,
an alleged member of Ward's trafficking ring.

Kazarian is accused in federal documents of questioning Anaheim police
about the Perry case. Assistant U.S. Attorney James W. Spertus has called
Kazarian's effort one of "intelligence gathering."

When Kazarian requested a search-warrant affidavit, investigators
manufactured a phony one that said information had been provided by a
confidential informant.

Kazarian and Ward had a telephone conversation, it was wiretapped and a
portion was included in the federal court documents Monday.

"All I wanted to know from you is whether there was a CI or not," Ward said
to Kazarian regarding the confidential informant.

"Yeah?" Ward asked. "Yeah," Kazarian acknowledged.

On another tape, Kazarian identifies by name an Anaheim police office who
participated in the raid on Perry's house.

"In the narcotics world, it's the worst there is," Ferguson said.
"Betraying an undercover cop or an informant is as bad as it gets in the
narcotics business. We're fortunate no one was killed."