AG’s office: Allegations of probe ‘frivolous’

Thursday, Feb. 22, 2001 | 11:23 a.m.

Allegations that the Nevada attorney general's office conducted an unlawful intelligence probe of top gaming regulators are "frivolous" and not supported by facts, a top deputy for the office said Wednesday.

In a 17-page brief, Senior Deputy Attorney General Patrick King urged District Judge James Mahan to dismiss a lawsuit leveling the claims brought by Mike Anzalone, a former investigator with the office.

King said Anzalone and his Phoenix lawyer, Christine Manno, repeatedly have mixed "fabrication with distorted facts" during the three-year suit and should not be allowed to continue what King described as a "fishing expedition."

"To further allow plaintiff to subject these defendants to this frivolous unsupported lawsuit would be a travesty of justice, a license to plaintiff to harass public servants and abuse the judicial process," King said.

The attorney general's office also should be protected from an "out-of-state attorney who has no regard for Nevada's code of Professional Responsibility and freely fabricates facts and claims, and attempts to use the press to extort money from the people of the state of Nevada."

Last week, Manno, who has been personally attacked throughout the bitter litigation, filed a 67-page brief alleging the attorney general's office committed "governmental abuse at its most egregious level" by conducting the intelligence investigation of the gaming regulators.

Anzalone filed suit against Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa and her office in February 1998, charging that he was defamed and forced to resign because he refused to go along with the secret probe.

The former investigator, who now lives in Florida, alleged that Deputy Attorney General David Thompson, who spearheaded the probe, once asked him to obtain the bank records of former state Gaming Control Board Chairman Bill Bible without a subpoena.

But King submitted testimony from Anzalone's sworn deposition in the case in which Anzalone acknowledged that Thompson never instructed him to "do anything illegal or against public policy."

King also said a just-released sworn affidavit by Gary Wright, another former investigator for the attorney general's office, supporting Anzalone's claims was based on "inadmissible hearsay" and should be stricken from the record.

Wright alleged in his affidavit that Thompson also wanted him to obtain Bible's bank records without a subpoena.

Thompson has denied seeking Bible's records unlawfully.

The attorney general's office contends Anzalone was asked to resign because he was impeding a broad investigation into the slot-cheating activities of former Control Board electronics expert Ron Harris.

In August 1996, several months after Anzalone was removed from the investigation, Harris pleaded guilty and cooperated in the probe, which had turned its attention to the Control Board employees who had built the case against the electronics expert.

Prior to gaining the help of Harris, Thompson also secretly began pursuing allegations that Bible and other higher level regulators had taken bribes.

Bible, who had been pushing the hardest to prosecute Harris, had clashed with Del Papa during the 1995 Legislature over her failure to provide solid legal assistance to the Control Board. The two have been at odds since then.

Del Papa denied investigating her political foe for three years until April, when a 21-page "confidential intelligence report" was made public in the Anzalone case.

The report, written in December 1996 by Del Papa investigator Ron Wheatley, suggested that Bible and Nevada's highest ranking officials -- then-Gov. Bob Miller, Sen. Harry Reid and then-Sen. Richard Bryan, all Democratic colleagues of Del Papa -- all could be bribed on gaming matters.

Thompson turned over the report to the FBI at the end of March 1997, but the FBI said last week there was insufficient evidence in the document to launch an investigation of the prominent officials.

Del Papa, who said she never saw the report before it was turned over to the FBI, has now acknowledged that her office conducted "limited" background searches on Bible, who now runs the influential Nevada Resort Association. But she has denied conducting a full-fledged investigation.

Bible has accused Del Papa of having no legitimate basis to investigate him.

Mahan has scheduled a 1:30 p.m. hearing Monday on the attorney general's motion to dismiss the case.