Ex-agent gets boost in suit vs. Del Papa

Discovery Commissioner Thomas Biggar has opened the door for a former state investigator to pursue allegations in District Court that Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa once conducted a secret intelligence investigation of top gaming regulators.

Del Papa has repeatedly denied launching an intelligence probe. But at a hearing last week, Biggar, who oversees the sharing of evidence between litigants before cases go to trial, said he was keeping alive the possibility that an inquiry existed.

He held the hearing to inform Mike Anzalone, a former Del Papa investigator suing the attorney general, that he is entitled to internal office documents that may support his allegations.

Anzalone has charged in his suit that he was forced to resign in February 1996 because he wouldn't participate in an intelligence investigation of former Gaming Control Board Chairman Bill Bible, current Chairman Steve DuCharme and ex-member Gerald Cunningham.

The probe is believed to have started in December 1995 when Del Papa assigned Deputy Attorney General David Thompson to the criminal investigation into the slot cheating activities of Ron Harris, who worked as an electronics expert for the Control Board.

Harris pleaded guilty in August 1996 and agreed to cooperate with the attorney general's office. Videotapes of Thompson's debriefing of Harris were leaked to ABC News, which aired excerpts on "PrimeTime Live" in March 1997.

At last week's hearing, Biggar said Harris leveled allegations during the debriefing "against almost everybody that he could think of ..."

Harris raised "accusations against all the prominent gaming attorneys, people in the gaming industry and members of the board," he said.

Amid the furor over the release of the raw tapes to ABC, Del Papa was forced to disavow the claims made by Harris, who later was sentenced to seven years in prison.

The videotapes, which heightened a rift between Del Papa and Bible, are part of nearly 50,000 documents in the attorney general's Harris file that Biggar has been reviewing behind closed doors.

At the hearing, Biggar said some of the questions Thompson asked Harris on the videotapes were relevant to Anzalone's suit, and he suggested he would be turning over portions of the tapes to the former investigator.

"I forget now if the opening ensemble of the investigation was discussed on ABC television or not," Biggar said in a transcript of the hearing. "But the opening question that we're here to discuss allegations of corruption involving members of the Gaming Control Board ... would tend to give an indication that the investigation covered more than that of Mr. Harris' criminal background or criminal participation.

" ... And it would seem to me that with that kind of wide-opened question, the investigation was going beyond Mr. Harris' activities."

Deputy Attorney General Bridget Branigan told Biggar it was her understanding the probe had expanded to a review of whether Harris had any accomplices.

But Biggar said the tapes and records he saw could be interpreted differently by Anzalone and his Phoenix lawyer, Christine Manno.

"They're going to argue, ah-hah, well, with that kind of question, you were just out to get Gaming Control Board members, not just, you know, acquaintances of Mr. Harris," Biggar said. "So, anyway, I'm just telling you that that kind of information is probably going to come out."

Biggar plans to hold another hearing May 10 to decide what to turn over to Anzalone, who has left the state and remains unemployed.

During the hearing, the transcripts show, Solicitor General Mark Ghan, who works for Del Papa, complained that the attorney general's office repeatedly has been "bashed in the Las Vegas Sun" since the suit was filed more than a year ago.

"Self-bashing today," responded Biggar, who is considering the possibility of sanctions against the attorney general's office for its delays in responding to Anzalone's requests for documents.

Manno, meanwhile, has filed papers asking District Judge Nancy Saitta, a former Del Papa deputy, to remove herself from presiding over the trial.

Manno said District Judge Mark Gibbons, who had the case before it was reassigned to Saitta, is willing to take it back.

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