Hints of Hatred Flashed Under Friendly Veneer

She was in real estate, drove a canary-yellow Mercedes coupe and dressed to the nines. He was an airline flight engineer with a private plane. They docked their boat in Marina del Rey and had a swimming pool in the back yard of their $250,000 North Hills home.

But despite the trappings, there were hints that Chris and Doris Nadal weren’t typical yuppies from the heart of suburbia, according to neighbors and federal court records. A neighbor said she once spotted a portrait of Adolf Hitler in the entryway hall. Then there was the Nazi flag hung on a wall of the garage.

On Thursday, Christian Gilbert Tony Nadal, 35, was arrested at his two-story A-frame house as part of a sweep that federal agents said was aimed at heading off violence by white supremacists in Southern California. His wife, Doris Nadal, 42, was taken into custody as she drove to her job at a Century 21 real estate office.

Both were charged with possessing an unregistered machine gun and silencer.

An FBI affidavit supporting the couple’s arrests alleged that Chris Nadal sold a small arsenal of illegal weapons--more than a dozen machine guns, silencers and devices designed to convert legal semiautomatic firearms to illegal automatic weapons--to an undercover FBI agent.

Nadal was held without bail. His wife was released on $25,000 bond and returned home Thursday evening.

Nadal’s most recent transaction, a sale of five machine guns to the undercover agent, took place shortly before his arrest Thursday morning, authorities said.

Neighbors said they had no idea that the Nadals had anything to do with white supremacist or Nazi politics. But according to the affidavit by an FBI agent, Nadal referred to minorities as “mud people” at a March 15 meeting with a federal undercover agent and complained that they had “messed things up for legitimate gun owners because they do not know how to live like human beings.”

At an April 28 meeting with the agent, he drew a swastika on one of the $100 bills he received as payment for machine guns and silencers, the affidavit said. “Nadal said he has been putting swastikas on all his bills since he found the Star of David on a one-dollar bill,” the affidavit said.

On March 16, Nadal told the agent that a race war was brewing, according to the document. It might take 20 years, Nadal was quoted in the affidavit as saying, but if a race war did break out, “he would like to have a lot of people who have their act together to be with him.” Whites, he was quoted as saying, should not “fight among themselves,” as “that was the main problem of the white movement.”

Nadal also told the agent at a March 11 meeting that he was surprised someone did not “do”--meaning kill--South African black leader Nelson Mandela when Mandela was in Los Angeles. Nadal said: “Someone could do it and get away with it,” according to the affidavit.

Nadal was “very heavily involved in the trade of illegal weapons,” Assistant U. S. Atty. Lawrence Middleton said before a U. S. magistrate in Los Angeles Thursday, arguing for high bail. The prosecutor said Nadal sold the weapons for ideological as well as economic reasons.

Doris Nadal was less culpable and should not be considered as dangerous, prosecuting attorneys said.

Her colleagues at Century 21 Real Estate Inc. were surprised by her arrest. “I can’t imagine for a moment that she would be involved in anything like that,” said Gordon Gerrie, regional director of Century 21. “In my mind, she doesn’t have a prejudiced bone in her body.”

But according to the affidavit, when the undercover agent telephoned the couple’s home after buying several Sten-type submachine guns, it was Doris Nadal who asked him how he liked his new “toys.”

Also, it was alleged, she was present during another sale, remarking that one of the silencers he bought was so heavy, the agent would develop muscles carrying it around.

The couple estimated their monthly income at $8,000 in their unsuccessful requests for court-appointed lawyers. Christian Nadal was a flight engineer for Continental Airlines. A Continental spokesman said Thursday that Nadal had been suspended that day without pay.

About 20 FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and task force agents swarmed around the Nadals’ home about 8 a.m., blocking off a rear alley while they searched the two-story house until shortly before 3 p.m.

The home is surrounded by a spiky brick and wrought-iron fence. About eight cars--a Mustang, a Jaguar and assorted “muscle” cars--were parked in the back yard around the pool. Others were parked on the street, some with “For Sale” signs in their windshields.

During the afternoon, agents carried out several plastic bags and boxes of books. One title was visible: “Waffen SS.”

The Nadals lived only half a block from Theodore Briseno, one of the Los Angeles police officers charged--and acquitted--in the beating of Rodney King. Briseno’s wife, Kathleen, said she did not know the Nadals.

“No, I never met them,” she said, looking out from her doorway. “I just don’t walk down that way.”

Neighbors arrived home to discover notoriety had come to the corner of Kinzie and Swinton streets.

“They seemed so nice,” Lori Courtney said, “a well-dressed couple. But they rarely spoke. . . . They would not acknowledge me. They didn’t make eye contact.”

“We had no idea. It scares us to death,” said another neighbor, who wouldn’t give her name.

But Sharon Whitesell, who has lived across the alley for six years, said she recalled seeing a poster of Hitler and an upside-down cross hanging in the couple’s entry hallway.

Whitesell said her former husband and sister also talked about the Nazi flag they saw hanging in the Nadals’ garage.

“They’ve always been friendly with us, but of course, we’re white,” Whitesell said. “We weren’t going to go up to them and say, ‘So, are you Nazis?’ So we just steered clear of them. In this neighborhood, we don’t get close to our neighbors.”