Columnist Jeff German: What was Del Papa thinking?

Sunday, April 9, 2000 | 10:43 a.m.

Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa's admission that she secretly investigated former Gaming Control Board Chairman Bill Bible, her political adversary, has raised an interesting question.

At what point does a law enforcement agency decide to look into allegations of wrongdoing by a public servant?

It's a question that remains unanswered in this case, as we try to figure out why the attorney general went after the state's top casino regulator.

Last week Del Papa, after three years of public denials, finally acknowledged that one of her top deputies, David Thompson, indeed had tried to dig up dirt on Bible, a man of impeccable integrity and stature in state government.

Bible, it seems, had gotten on the vindictive Del Papa's wrong side after he complained to the Nevada Legislature in 1995 about the competency of the legal advice he was getting from the attorney general's office in his role as the casino industry's chief regulator.

Under orders from a district judge, Del Papa last week made public some 900 pages of documents that showed a criminal investigation into the slot cheating activities of a low-level Control Board employee somehow turned into a sweeping investigation of Bible and others.

The names of former Gov. Bob Miller, Democratic Sens. Harry Reid and Richard Bryan and prominent attorney Frank Schreck all were bandied about in a December 1996 confidential intelligence report that suggested without substantiation that they could be bribed to influence gaming license applications.

All four men naturally are furious with Del Papa for carelessly dragging their names through the mud.

After seeing many of the documents Del Papa released, Bible has come to the conclusion that the attorney general had no basis to investigate him under the guise of a probe into the slot cheating activities of Ron Harris, a lowly Control Board electronics expert.

Nothing in the documents turned over showed any connection between Bible and the slot cheating scam Harris pulled off.

But Bible was on the minds of Thompson and his chief investigator, Ron Wheatley, for nearly three years, as they dredged up old and unsubstantiated allegation after allegation about the former chairman. Most of those interviewed by Del Papa's dynamic duo were disgruntled licensees and former Control Board employees who had grudges against Bible.

There were people like Frank Romano, who was sought out in February 1996 very early in the clandestine probe. Bible was instrumental in revoking Romano's license in 1990 over the American Coin slot-rigging scandal.

As Romano was in the process of being bounced from the casino industry, he hired Charles Meacham, a private investigator from Florida, to throw some mud at Bible and his fellow board members. At the same time, Romano hired a lobbyist in Washington to bully Sen. Bryan, one of Bible's mentors, into pressuring the chairman to change his mind about revoking Romano's license.

Bible reported the lobbyist's attempt to unduly influence his decision in the Romano case to Del Papa's predecessor, Brian McKay. He also sent McKay a copy of an investigative report Meacham had prepared on the Control Board.

Bible said he was "ready and willing" to have McKay investigate the allegations, which as it turned out didn't even involve him.

McKay looked into Meacham's claims and found them to be baseless.

"I can recall receiving some information, referring it to the appropriate staff people at the attorney general's office and finding no merit to it," McKay said.

End of story? Not exactly.

Thompson and Wheatley apparently had a different opinion about the allegations than McKay.

Hence, we have the dirtying up of a well-respected public servant or two.