Editorial: Revealing Del Papa’s deception

Wednesday, April 5, 2000 | 9:36 a.m.

After more than a year of stonewalling, Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa has released about 900 pages of records and eight hours of videotapes from the secret investigation her office conducted of top state gaming regulators and prominent Nevadans. An ex-employee of hers, investigator Michael Anzalone, had sought the records in a wrongful termination lawsuit. The Sun, along with KLAS Channel 8, intervened in Anzalone's lawsuit to have the records released. The Sun believed the public had a right to know whether Del Papa engaged in a politically motivated investigation.

Two weeks ago District Court Judge James Mahan ordered Del Papa to release the records. Rather than appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court and risk further humiliation, Del Papa released the records Tuesday. She said in a statement that her office performed its statutory responsibility to investigate allegations of criminal conduct by state officials during the course of their duty. But her continued insistence that she did nothing wrong confirms this was more than a temporary lapse in judgment. Del Papa's contention that she was required to investigate criminal allegations omits an important qualifier: whether the accusations were credible. Some of the allegations made by informants were so outrageous that any prosecutor worth his salt would find them laughable and dismiss them.

The fact is that this was a secret probe of innocent people, an investigation that Del Papa initially denied even existed. The main reason Del Papa fought so fiercely to keep these records from public view wasn't, as she contends, to protect innocent people wrongly named in a criminal investigation. No, this was an effort to protect her own hide, because she didn't want the public to know how far she would go to damage her adversaries.