Thursday, March 27, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Assembly Minority Leader Pete Ernaut, R-Reno, said today he plans to look deeper into the attorney general's office after a SUN report that the office conducted a more far-reaching probe of the State Gaming Control Board than previously disclosed.
A former investigator with the attorney general's office who put together most of the criminal case against the probe's key witness, convicted slot cheat Ron Harris, and two ex-enforcement chiefs at the Control Board have criticized the attorney general's handling of the investigation.
The ex-investigator, Mike Anzalone, charged that the prosecutor in the case, Deputy Attorney General David Thompson, was constantly throwing "conspiracy theories" at him during the secret Control Board probe, which did not result in the filing of any charges.
And one of the former enforcement chiefs, Ron Asher, said he got the impression Thompson "could see a snake under every rock" when Thompson questioned him last spring about alleged high-level misconduct at the board.
Anzalone said he believes he was forced to resign because he wouldn't help Thompson dredge up discarded allegations against the board. He said his Las Vegas superiors described the investigation as an "intelligence" probe, a characterization Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa has strongly denied.
Ernaut said today he was "reserving judgment" on the latest developments in the Harris case until he learns more.
"We need to look into (this) matter in a serious in-depth way," he said. "As critical as I have been of the attorney general's office in their handling of the Harris case, I just can't believe in my heart that the top law enforcement agency in the state would go to this measure."
Ernaut previously has called for a legislative probe into the attorney general's handling of secret videotapes it began making with Harris before he pleaded guilty to four counts of slot cheating in August 1994.
Copies of the tapes wound up in the hands of ABC News, which aired portions in a March 12 "Prime Time Live" broadcast.
Del Papa has denied her office was the leak to ABC, and she has said Harris' allegations could not be substantiated.
Del Papa, meanwhile, acknowledged for the first time in a letter to the SUN Wednesday that Harris had leveled allegations of wrongdoing at his former colleagues before his videotaped statements.
She did not say when he began providing information, and she also for the first time indicated that "others" had made serious criminal allegations. But she would not say who else cooperated.
The SUN reported Wednesday that the Control Board investigation took shape after Thompson was hired as a full-time deputy in December 1995 to prosecute Harris.
Del Papa called the story in her letter a "fictional account of a very serious affront to the integrity of gaming regulation and law enforcement."
And she described Anzalone as an "obviously disgruntled former employee" whom she forced to resign after losing confidence in his abilities.
At the same time, Del Papa wrote a letter to Anzalone this week maligning a SUN reporter.
Anzalone today stuck by his story and said he wasn't surprised to see Del Papa criticizing him.
He said Del Papa warned him in a telephone conversation earlier in the week that his name would be dragged through the mud.
"She's doing what she said she would do," Anzalone said. "She's attacking me to take the heat off of her."
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