SAN DIEGO – A strip club lobbyist and an undercover FBI informant spent at least five months in 2002 trying to set up a phone call between a city councilman and a supposedly corrupt cop, the informant testified today. Tony Montagna was on the stand for a sixth day, Friday, in the so-called “stripper- gate” corruption trial of San Diego City Councilmen Ralph Inzunza and Michael Zucchet, Las Vegas lobbyist Lance Malone and David Cowan, a former aide to the late Councilman Charles Lewis.

The councilmen are accused of taking monetary bribes in return for help in repealing the city’s “no-touch” nude dancing ordinance.

Under questioning by Inzunza’s attorney, Michael Pancer, Montagna said Malone was trying to get Inzunza to get the supposedly corrupt vice officer to commit to testifying before a city council committee that the police wanted to do away with “no-touch.”

In a secretly recorded conversation from April 4, 2002, Montagna told Malone that Inzunza had to call the corrupt officer on the “right phone and at the right time” so another vice officer not involved with the scheme wouldn’t answer. “Listen, you don’t want Ralph to call looking for (the supposed corrupt officer),” Montagna told Malone in the taped conversation. “I don’t want anyone else to get a telephone call.”

Montagna told Malone that he was “worried” the wrong person would pick up the phone at the police department and throw the scheme off its “(expletive) track.”

The informant told Malone that he’d arrange to have 10 different people in Inzunza’s district send the councilman e-mails supportive of the move to abolish “no-touch.”

“We’ll make it look real legit,” Montagna is heard telling Malone. “Don’t worry about it.”

The informant testified that the e-mails and campaign contribution checks that went to the councilmen were crafted by the FBI.

In a May 10, 2001, secretly recorded conversation, Cheetah’s manager John D’Intino told Montagna and the Kearny Mesa strip club’s owner Michael Galardi that he had attended a fund-raiser for Inzunza.

“And he flat out said, ‘If you brought (no-touch) to council right now, it wouldn’t pass,”‘ D’Intino is heard telling the other men. “But it would even be worth more to us if (the police) just went to the city council and said, ‘This isn’t working.”‘

During that conversation, D’Intino told his boss Galardi that Inzunza was “the one who voted you should be able to have a beer at the beach.”

D’Intino told Galardi that no councilman was going to champion the cause of repealing “no-touch” without the police saying the ordinance wasn’t working.

“It would be political suicide,” D’Intino told Galardi and Montagna.

The three men are overheard talking about paying the corrupt vice officer $50,000 to testify in front of the council committee on the failings of “no- touch.”

During the conversation, D’Intino says politicians aren’t corrupt in California like they are “back east.”

Galardi is heard saying they wouldn’t have to bother with Inzunza if the corrupt officer was willing to testify about repealing “no-touch.”

“We don’t have to offer him nothing,” Galardi said, referring to Inzunza.

In a May 1, 2003, secretly recorded conservation, Malone told Inzunza that he found a vice officer who would tell the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee that “no-touch” was a waste of time and most officers felt they should be out on the streets fighting crime.

“If you’re going to have an officer that’s going to say that, then it will happen,” Inzunza said of getting the committee to consider repealing the ordinance. “If you don’t, it won’t happen.”

At a downtown luncheon attended by Inzunza, Zucchet, Malone and Montagna, Zucchet told the lobbyist that he doubted the police would go along with changing “no-touch.”

Inzunza, Zucchet and Lewis, along with Malone, were charged last year with extortion, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud that could result in prison terms of three to four years.

Lewis subsequently died of complications from liver disease.

Cowan is charged with lying to the FBI.

The Las Vegas-based Galardi, who is expected to be a key prosecution witness, and D’Intino both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

In his opening statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Cook charged that the councilmen raised a number of “sham” issues before the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee to try to get “no-touch” on the agenda.

The defendants were indicted Aug. 28, 2003 – three months after FBI agents raided offices at San Diego City Hall and three strip clubs owned by Galardi.

Pancer told jurors his client never took bribes but did believe that the time of police officers was better spent patrolling neighborhoods than monitoring strip clubs.

Jerry Coughlan, Zucchet’s lawyer, said in his opening statement that Galardi complained “often and very harshly” about Zucchet’s failure to get the “no-touch” ordinance repealed.

The federal trial – expected to last three months – enters its fourth week on Monday.