Columnist Jeff German: LV gets undeserved black eye over tapes

Friday, Aug. 13, 2004 | 5:45 a.m.

Jeff German's column appears Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays in the Sun. Reach him at german@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4067.

WEEKEND EDITION

August 14 - 15, 2004

After her week from hell, Las Vegas FBI chief Ellen Knowlton has a new appreciation for the awesome power of the press.

But I'm not sure her respect for the Fourth Estate has grown.

Knowlton and her colleagues in local law enforcement found out what it's like to be on the wrong end of a misguided media blitz. They learned how easily a competitive press can be led astray and how quickly reputations can be harmed when reporters rush into print without getting a story right.

Hopefully, it was a lesson for the media, too.

It explains why Knowlton appeared shell-shocked during a news conference Thursday while disclosing the existence of just-discovered videotapes of Las Vegas casinos confiscated from the New York apartment of a Pakistani man under investigation for possible terrorist ties.

Knowlton candidly admitted that she called the news conference to avoid a repeat of the four-day media battering her office received for failing to promptly disclose two similar tourist-like videotapes of Strip casinos that were made several years ago. Those tapes, one found in Detroit and the other in Spain, were taken from suspected al-Qaida operatives and became part of a terrorism case in Detroit in 2003.

The Associated Press, an international news service that goes out to 1,700 newspapers and 5,000 television and radio outlets, created a media firestorm when it moved a story on its wire last Sunday suggesting federal and local authorities in Las Vegas were informed of the tapes prior to the Detroit trial, but failed to seriously consider the potential terrorism threat they posed.

The allegations were prompted by Richard Convertino, a Detroit federal prosecutor who has been reassigned and put under investigation for misconduct in the Detroit case.

The gist of the AP story was that Detroit prosecutors sent an FBI agent to Las Vegas to share information about the tapes in March 2003, a month before the trial of four suspected terrorists. The agent, however, was supposed to have received the cold shoulder here from law enforcement authorities and casino executives who feared the tapes could have a harmful impact on tourism.

It was an outrageous claim to make without giving the other side the benefit of a response.

AP tried to get comments from the FBI and the U.S. attorney here, but was told a gag order in the Detroit case prevented them from talking. The wire service, however, went with the story.

The result was a steady stream of unflattering headlines across the country in newspapers that picked up on the story without doing their own reporting.

The story was a sensational story, all right, but it turned out to be wrong.

On Tuesday the gag order was temporarily lifted in Detroit so that Knowlton and her agents could defend themselves.

What we learned was that Las Vegas authorities had actually received the two videotapes six months prior to the Detroit FBI agent's visit. They shared the tapes with the appropriate casinos and then determined that, without any corroborating intelligence, the tapes posed no threat.

That shot down the premise of the AP story.

The next day even the Associated Press began poking holes in its report. By that time, however, the reputation of local authorities had been damaged.

It caused Knowlton to take no chances with the fresh videotapes of Las Vegas that agents confiscated from the Pakistani man in New York. A total of seven tapes, including five with hours of Las Vegas footage, arrived at the local FBI office at 10 a.m. Thursday.

By 2 p.m., after FBI agents and police had viewed the tapes, which haven't been transcribed into English, Knowlton was holding the news conference.

The new tapes also may never turn out to pose a credible threat to Las Vegas, but Knowlton has learned her lesson.

I wonder if the press has.