Judge: AG tapes may be viewed

Wednesday, Nov. 3, 1999 | 11:21 a.m.

District Judge James Mahan said today he likely will allow a former state investigator a chance to view secret videotapes that may show the attorney general's office conducted an intelligence probe of top gaming regulators.

The investigator, Mike Anzalone, filed suit against Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa in February 1998 for forcing him to resign because he wouldn't participate in the probe.

Earlier this year, Thomas Biggar, a District Court discovery commissioner, recommended that Mahan give Anzalone the tapes and 900 pages of documents that reportedly refer to the intelligence gathering activities of Del Papa's office.

But at a hearing this morning, Mahan said allowing Anzalone to just view the tapes and not take possession of them would help preserve their confidentiality.

"I don't want them to be for sale on the Internet," said Mahan, who promised a written decision on the tapes and the possible release of the documents by the end of the week.

The attorney general's office has fought the release of the tapes, portions of which already have been leaked to the news media.

The tapes were made during a 1996 debriefing of Ron Harris, a convicted slot cheat who claimed to have knowledge of wrongdoing at the state Gaming Control Board.

Harris, one of the Control Board's electronics experts, was the subject of an intense criminal investigation. He ended up pleading guilty and cooperating against the former colleagues who had built the criminal case against him.

No other charges, however, were ever filed as a result of the information Harris provided.

Anzalone contends the intelligence probe was a spinoff of the Harris investigation, which contains more than 50,000 pages of documents.

Biggar has reported that he saw documents in the massive Harris file that show background checks were conducted on former Control Board Chairman Bill Bible, his friend, politically connected gaming lawyer, Frank Schreck, and employees who worked for Bible.

In August, Deputy Attorney General Bridget Branigan acknowledged in Biggar's courtroom that her office had gathered intelligence on regulators during the course of the Harris investigation. But she denied there was any illegal conduct on the part of the office.

At the time of the secret probing, Bible and Del Papa, were embroiled in a bitter political feud.

Del Papa, who withdrew from the 2000 Senate race in September, has denied investigating Bible.

But the former Control Board chairman, who now heads the influential Nevada Resort Association, the casino industry's political arm, has called for the public release of the Harris file, including the tapes, which contain unsubstantiated allegations about prominent Nevadans and gaming companies.

Bible has called Harris, listed in Nevada's Black Book of undesirables banned from casinos, one of the biggest threats ever to Nevada's gaming industry.

After cooperating with the attorney general, Harris received a seven-year prison term for his crimes. He was paroled in September.

Mahan today also promised a decision on whether to impose $3,500 in sanctions on the attorney general's office for stonewalling Anzalone's requests for documents.

He said he didn't want the taxpayers, who fund the attorney general's office, to foot the bill.

That, he said, would amount to a "painless sanction" against the attorney general.

Solicitor General Mark Ghan, who is defending Anzalone's suit, apologized in court today for the shoddy way in which documents were turned over to Biggar during the discovery process.

"I regret that errors were made," Ghan said.

He insisted, however, that there was no attempt to disrupt the case.

But Manno countered: "They brought this upon themselves, and now they're asking for forgiveness for what they caused themselves," she said.