Thursday, Jan. 16, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
IT'S BEEN DESCRIBED as a "war zone" in the middle of the world's busiest tourism thoroughfare.
The widespread spying on striking workers at the Frontier hotel-casino has become well-documented in recent weeks by former resort employees.
The former head of a Frontier surveillance squad and other ranking ex-employees have alleged numerous acts of espionage, dirty tricks and electronic eavesdropping during the course of the 5-year-old labor dispute.
Now, whistleblowers are shedding more light on suspicions that Frontier officials extended their intelligence-gathering activities far beyond the confines of the Strip.
Two ex-security officers -- Wayne Legare, who once ran the Frontier spy squad, and his supervisor, Bill Uhouse -- have alleged that Frontier guards frequently traveled to the Culinary Union's headquarters several miles away to steal their garbage.
Legare reported that discarded documents shedding light on the union's strategy were among the items recovered.
But garbage collecting wasn't the only covert operation in place outside the Frontier, according to ex-employees.
Mike Woods, the latest former security guard to step forward, says officers were recruited to follow union leaders and strikers to their homes with the hopes of collecting derogatory information on them.
"We were supposed to look for dirt, whatever it took to make them look bad," Woods says.
Legare says he videotaped strikers coming out of The Hard Hat bar at 1675 S. Industrial Road, which is near the union hall.
And Uhouse says security bosses once sent an officer to the Federal Communications Commission in Los Angeles to obtain the frequencies of the union's hand-held radios on the picket line.
Security officers, Uhouse adds, picked up nails they thought strikers had deposited on the Frontier parking lot and took them to the union's lot.
Frontier officials even once stole a radio from the picket line and listened to strike conversations, Woods alleges.
Woods says officers had standing orders to take any union property that fell into their hands.
"If we saw any of their equipment, we were supposed to snag it and we would get brownie points," Woods says.
Uhouse says he and others were asked to go out to the picket line in plain clothes to gather intelligence on the pickets.
Even Frontier General Manager Tom Elardi himself, Legare explains, would engage strikers in conversations with a microphone hidden in a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket.
Frontier officials also kept secret dossiers, complete with mugshots unlawfully obtained from Metro Police, on union leaders, the whistleblowers charge.
Elardi has denied wrongdoing, but refused to respond to most of the allegations.
But the latest alleged spying is raising the blood pressure of Culinary bosses.
"The more we find out, the more outraged we get and the more we're waiting to see the response of the appropriate authorities to all of this," says Culinary Staff Director D. Taylor. "So far, their silence has been deafening."
Though the FBI and State Gaming Control Board are conducting independent investigations, union leaders remain skeptical that Metro Police will take a close look at 75 criminal complaints striking Frontier workers filed against resort.
Most of the complaints related to alleged dirty tricks -- like stealing picket signs and provoking altercations with strikers.
Taylor says police, despite a promise by Sheriff Jerry Keller to investigate, have yet to interview any of the strikers who have knowledge of wrongdoing at the Frontier.
"The police refuse to act," Taylor says. "They think a gaming license allows you to break the law."
In a war zone, laws apparently are made to be broken.
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