Bible: Del Papa fished for spy

Thursday, April 6, 2000 | 11:16 a.m.

Former state Gaming Control Board Chairman Bill Bible accused Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa of trying to recruit a spy within his office in 1996 while the two state officials were at odds, records released this week show.

Unknown to Bible at the time, Del Papa secretly was investigating him and other top regulators under the cover of a criminal probe into the slot cheating activities of Ron Harris, a former Control Board electronics expert, the records show.

Bible had complained to state lawmakers at the 1995 Legislature that his office wasn't receiving competent legal representation from the attorney general's deputies.

His claim that the attorney general had resorted to cloak-and-dagger activities against him in 1996 surfaced in once-secret documents Del Papa made public Tuesday as a result of a court order.

The documents were turned over under seal late last year to Mike Anzalone, a former Del Papa investigator who is suing the attorney general for forcing him to resign because he wouldn't participate in the Bible probe. The Sun and KLAS Channel 8 persuaded District Judge James Mahan to unseal the documents, along with eight hours of videotapes made with Harris, who pleaded guilty and cooperated in the investigation in August 1996.

On June 5, 1996, Bible wrote a letter to Del Papa's top assistant, Brooke Nielsen, pointing out the reported spying incident.

He said Ralph Leyrer, a supervisor in his Tax and License Division, sent him a memo indicating that an investigator for Del Papa had asked his wife, Betty, whether she knew anyone at the Control Board capable of understanding slot machine computer codes being examined as part of the Harris investigation.

Leyrer told Bible that the investigator, Jeanette Supera, had said the person at the board had to be someone who "could keep his mouth shut about what he was doing and keep his involvement secret even from his supervisors."

"Initially, I dismissed Jeanette's call and request as being silly," Leyrer wrote in his May 28, 1996, memo. "But considering the nature of this investigation, I'm not so sure now. I am especially concerned about being approached by an employee of another state agency about the possibility of recruiting a covert operative within the GCB.

"It is hard to believe that at this late stage in this major investigation, the AG's staff would find it necessary to find an insider who could do covert work and also then make such a clumsy effort to set this up." he added. "But the fact remains that the call was received and the request was made.

"Is the AG's staff really so unprofessional? Or is something more going on that I am just too dumb to figure out?"

Bible voiced his concerns to Nielsen about Supera's contact with Leyrer's wife, who also was a state employee.

"If Jeanette Supera needs help reading the codes, why not just contact the board's Electronics Services Division instead of amateurishly trying to recruit an inside cover operative within the board," he wrote. "Spy vs. spy tends to give government a black eye."

Bible added: "If Jeanette Supera was not acting within the course and scope of her employment, I am concerned something more nefarious, perhaps along the lines of Ron Harris' conduct, may be going on."

Harris was accused of using the computer codes, a carefully guarded industry secret, to rig slot machines.

There was no response to Bible from Nielsen in the 900 pages of documents turned over this week.

But a two-page memo from Supera to Nielsen explaining the investigator's contact with Leyrer's wife was among the documents.

Supera acknowledged telling Betty Leyrer that the work in reading the codes "needed to be done quietly.

"By this I meant that I was concerned about outside sources gaining unrequired information about this case," she wrote.

While all of this was going on, Deputy Attorney General David Thompson, who was spearheading the probe of Bible and others, sent a confidential memo to Robert Swiatek, his then-chief investigator in Reno, voicing concerns that his office might be bugged.

"As a security precaution, would you please have my office checked for unauthorized communications monitoring devices," he wrote. "In accordance with our previous conversation, I prefer an agency unconnected with the state."

Thompson, a trusted Del Papa adviser, has received harsh criticism over the Bible investigation, which many have contended dredged up long-discarded allegations.

As part of the probe, the names of some of Nevada's political leaders were contained in a 21-page confidential intelligence report suggesting they could be bribed to influence gaming license applications.

Former Gov. Bob Miller, who was running the state when the December 1996 memo was written, and Sens. Harry Reid and Richard Bryan, both D-Nev., were among those mentioned. All three have condemned the report, which makes use of uncorroborated second- and third-hand sources of information.

Del Papa, after three years of denials, acknowledged for the first time this week that she investigated Bible.

She insisted, however, that her office did nothing wrong and conducted the Harris probe in a "thorough and professional" manner.

Unidentified sources accused Bible of taking "payoffs" in the just-released intelligence report, but Del Papa acknowledged the allegations never were substantiated.

At the same time, however, she said she turned over the report to the FBI at the end of March 1997.

That occurred as the rift between Bible and Del Papa heightened after the Harris videotapes mysteriously were leaked to ABC's PrimeTime Live.

Bible also was being considered for a prestigious presidential appointment to the National Gambling Impact Study Commission at the time.

Bible, now president of the Nevada Resort Association, the casino industry's political arm, ultimately was named to the nine-member panel, which completed its study of the spread of gambling across the country.

Nothing came of that check, Del Papa said.