News agencies to get March 15 hearing

Friday, Feb. 25, 2000 | 11:38 a.m.

District Judge James Mahan Thursday gave the the Las Vegas Sun and KLAS Channel 8 permission to argue for the release of documents that reportedly show the attorney general's office conducted a secret intelligence probe of top gaming regulators.

Mahan set a 9 a.m March 15 hearing on a motion to unseal the documents after Dominic Gentile, the lawyer for the news organizations, argued that the public has a right to know whether Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa is "running a corrupt ship."

The attorney general's office filed a 12-page brief Thursday morning opposing the move by the Sun and Channel 8 to gain access to the secret documents and accusing the newspaper of "biased reporting of the facts in this case."

But Mahan, following a half-hour hearing Thursday, told Gentile: "I think that the interests of the clients you represent have not been adequately protected. I'm going to permit the intervention."

Afterward, Chief Deputy Attorney Richard Linstrom said Mahan gave his office "fair consideration" during the hearing.

"This is a close question on a legal technicality, and we'll be ready to go on March 15," Linstrom said.

Last week Gentile filed papers suggesting that Mahan improperly slapped a confidentiality order on the documents in December when he turned them over to a lawyer for a former Del Papa investigator suing the attorney general.

The ex-investigator, Mike Anzalone, contends he was forced to resign in February 1996 because he wouldn't participate in the intelligence inquiry, which stemmed from the criminal probe of ex-Gaming Control Board computer expert Ron Harris.

The 900 pages of documents turned over to Anzalone are believed to detail Del Papa's clandestine efforts to gather intelligence on former Control Board Chairman Bill Bible, a political adversary, and other prominent people.

In his motion, Gentile said Mahan failed to give the public a chance to voice legal objections before issuing what he described as a "gag order" on the documents.

"To exclude the public and the press from an opportunity to be heard on this issue runs afoul of the right of access to information that the First Amendment and the common law both recognize and protect," Gentile wrote.

On Thursday Mark Ghan, Del Papa's solicitor general, told Mahan he believed their were no grounds for the press to intervene.

"There really is no true First Amendment issue in this case at this time," he said.

But Gentile pointed out that the attorney general's office took the exact opposite position several years ago, when it argued to open disciplinary proceedings before the Nevada Supreme Court involving former Washoe County District Jerry Carr Whitehead.

Before he decided to allow the Sun and Channel 8 to intervene in the case, Mahan said he never intended to make his confidentiality order over the sensitive documents permanent.

He said he issued the order merely to prevent the documents from being circulated "willy nilly" during the discovery phase of the Anzalone lawsuit.

Gentile said in his papers last week that Discovery Commissioner Thomas Biggar, who reviewed more than 50,000 pages of documents in the attorney general's Harris file, concluded that Del Papa's office had done "mass snooping" and that the case "cries out for disclosure."

Biggar, who oversees the sharing of evidence in civil cases, recommended that Mahan make public the 900 pages of intelligence documents.

The attorney general's office had fought to persuade Mahan to keep Anzalone and his Phoenix lawyer, Christine Manno, from seeing the documents.

But Mahan decided that Anzalone and Manno had a right to them as long as the two didn't disclose what was on the documents.

Manno and some of those reportedly targeted in the intelligence investigation, including Bible, expressed their unhappiness with Mahan's decision in December.

Jeff German is the Sun's senior investigative reporter. He can be reached at (702) 259-4067 or by e-mail at german@lasvegassun.com.