BY DAVID KIDWELL AND MANNY GARCIA

 Raul Martinez, Miami's new police chief, was one of several targets in a failed 1980s federal corruption probe of Miami Police that included allegations he helped destroy evidence against drug smugglers, shared bribes, and skimmed cash and drugs from seizures, according to FBI documents obtained by The Herald.

 But retired Police Chief William O'Brien said he personally reviewed the FBI case file last week before Martinez's appointment and found nothing to prevent his becoming chief.

 ''There were no problems, and that is a fact,'' O'Brien said Friday. ''Raul has an impeccable reputation for fairness. He is an excellent choice for police chief.''

 Martinez, who served as a Miami police officer for 24 years before retiring to become an assistant city manager, said Friday the allegations against him were concocted by a drug dealer he helped convict and that he was told specifically by FBI agents who interviewed him at the time that he was not a target.

 ''It's a hatchet job,'' Martinez said of the claims. ''These are the allegations of a drug dealer that I sent to prison for 21 years.''

 Several Miami Police Department veterans and federal law enforcement agents expressed surprise at Martinez's appointment last week, noting that it was well known Martinez had invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination before a federal grand jury.

 None, however, was willing to have comments attributed by name. Martinez said he took the Fifth in about 1984.

 But Miami Mayor Joe Carollo said Friday that Martinez's pleading the Fifth Amendment had been a factor in City Manager Donald Warshaw's decision in 1998 to name O'Brien police chief.

 ''Warshaw told me he couldn't pick Raul because he had taken the Fifth . . . Warshaw said he had been under investigation at one time,'' Carollo recalled.

 But Warshaw, who was fired last week by Carollo and is now locked in a court battle with the mayor to retain his job, denied that the conversation took place.

 ''Raul Martinez is absolutely, 100 percent qualified to run the Miami Police Department. You cannot ask for a better police chief,'' Warshaw said.

 Martinez acknowledged Friday that he had asserted his Fifth Amendment right not to testify before a federal grand jury investigating the allegations against him, but said it was a decision made in anger under advice from a union lawyer. He said he has regretted it ever since and tried immediately to correct it.

 'NOTHING TO HIDE'

 ''I knew I had made a mistake,'' he said. ''I had nothing to hide.''

 Martinez said he immediately contacted his supervisors, who arranged for him to meet with two FBI agents in North Miami-Dade County.

 ''I waived any immunity,'' he said. ''The agents told me from the beginning that I was not a target of the investigation.''

 The 12-page memo written by FBI case agent Lazaro J. Mouriz on March 24, 1987, laid out in detail what Mouriz believed might have been the involvement of Martinez and other police officers. Martinez calls the memo a ''fantasy.''

 The memo repeated what Mouriz said he had been told by a number of convicted drug dealers, confidential police informants and others, then detailed what steps he believed would be necessary to prove the allegations.

 Based on those interviews, Mouriz wrote that Martinez and other officers ''may have participated in the destruction of state Title III (wiretap) evidence that incriminated narcotics traffickers and disseminated sensitive information obtained through Miami Police Department investigations to the same traffickers in return for monetary payments.

 ''In addition, it is alleged that the same officers participated in the theft of money and narcotics that were seized . . . and used the proceeds for personal gain,'' Mouriz wrote.

 ''Miami FBI believes that the subjects in this case are part of an organized criminal enterprise'' that ''targeted well-known narcotics traffickers through the South Florida area in order to extort money from them, thereby reaping vast profits.''

 Mouriz, who declined comment Friday, wrote that Martinez, who then held the rank of major, and others allegedly had ''provided protection and/or favors, in exchange for money and/or narcotics.''

 Martinez was never charged, and three years later was cleared by internal investigators of his own department.

 That clearance memo said the informants in the case were not credible because they were all seeking either reduced charges or sentences on criminal charges.

 FBI GAVE FILES

 Hector Pesquera, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Miami office, confirmed Friday that the FBI had provided O'Brien with Martinez's FBI file, but would not comment on specifics. ''We gave them everything in our files,'' he said.

 But four high-level federal law enforcement officials interviewed by The Herald said Martinez was never ''cleared'' by them. They said it was difficult to get police insiders to testify and that no one agreed to wear a wire to catch Martinez and others. The case was abandoned for lack of proof.

 ''I never would have taken the police chief's job if there was something hanging out there,'' said Martinez, Miami's first Cuban-American chief.

 ''This is a sensitive job where you work together on federal investigations and there has to be mutual trust,'' Martinez said. ''I would not jeopardize that relationship where the Miami Police could not work with the FBI and federal prosecutors.''

 Some of the specific allegations contained in the 1987 FBI memo include:

 Convicted drug smuggler Carlos Fernando Quesada told the FBI that Miami Police officers had told him that Martinez could fix his 1981 case for $500,000. He never paid the money, but the charges were dismissed, according to the memo, because evidence against him was mishandled. Prior to the case being tossed out, the FBI memo says, four Miami officers fired gunshots randomly into Quesada's home to coerce him into paying the bribe.

 Two of the officers, Jorge Manresa and Jorge Lopez, were charged in the shooting, but the charges were dismissed mid-trial by U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King. King did not rule whether the officers had fired the shots or not, but he said that even if they had fired them, the prosecution had failed to prove they did so in their official capacities -- something that had to be proved for them to be convicted under the civil rights charges that had been brought.

 Convicted perjurer Joaquin Antonio Cortizo, who had been a confidential informant for Martinez when Martinez oversaw the narcotics unit, told the FBI that Martinez and others skimmed seized cash and drugs.

 Convicted drug smuggler Oscar Oliva Cantu told the FBI -- and later testified at a 1988 drug trial -- that Martinez, Manresa, Lopez and another officer, Raul Puig, took a $75,000 cash bribe to destroy wiretap recordings. Cantu said he also had paid Martinez $50,000 because the officer tipped him off about an impending traffic stop and search by officers.

 Puig, convicted on federal charges of destroying the wiretap evidence, told the FBI that he and Martinez used the bribe money to buy property. Puig later told Miami Police internal investigators that both he and Martinez were innocent and that he had lied to the FBI.

 Martinez points to that Miami Police Internal Affairs investigation and its close-out memo dated Dec. 14, 1990, as proof he was innocent. In addition to Cantu and Puig, Internal Affairs investigators interviewed 18 other people.

 ''It is apparent from this investigation that Oscar Oliva Cantu fabricated these allegations,'' wrote then-Lt. Paul Shephard. ''From this initial incarceration, Cantu has made numerous and contradicting allegations in his attempt to reduce his prison sentence.

 ''There is no evidence or corroborated statements that support any of the allegations against Raul Martinez and/or Jorge Manresa.''

 Martinez said he carried the close-out memo with him, knowing full well that one day it might become an issue.

 HELPED PROBE

 He said he had helped generate a federal grand jury probe after he discovered someone had erased the wiretap tapes used to nab drug dealers.

 Martinez said he told Warshaw and O'Brien that they should ask the FBI about him before his appointment and that if he didn't come up ''300 percent clean'' he would not accept the post.

 On Monday, Warshaw told The Herald that he and O'Brien got clearance from the FBI to name Martinez the new chief.

 ''We've been in contact with them all morning,'' Warshaw said Monday afternoon. ''They checked him out and everything came back OK. He's clean.''

 A high-level FBI official said Friday that no one at the agency called Martinez ''clean.''

 ''There's a big difference between not filing charges and declaring someone has a clean bill of health,'' the FBI official said. ''Raul Martinez was never given a clean bill of health.''

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald