Videotape in Edwards trial shows ex-congressman, cash

BATON ROUGE, La. - A 1997 videotape played Wednesday during former Gov. Edwin Edwards' racketeering trial shows a former congressman handling a bundle of cash in Edwards' office as Edwards discusses a deal "contingent on getting a license" for someone.

Prosecutors presented the tape of Edwards and Cleo Fields as they continued pressing their claim that Edwards extorted $400,000 from former San Francisco 49ers owner Edward DeBartolo Jr.

Edwards, his son Stephen, state Sen. Greg Tarver and four others have been on trial in federal court since Feb. 10. Prosecutors claim the men took part in a series of bribery and extortion schemes aimed at manipulating the licensing of casino riverboats during and after Edwards' fourth and final term, which ended in January 1996.

Fields, now a state senator, has not been charged.

The Edwards-Fields tape was long awaited but its link to the DeBartolo license was not immediately made clear. And it did not contain everything prosecutors had said it would when they gave opening statements to the jury in January.

Back then, they said the tape showed Edwards handing a bundle of cash to Fields. However, the camera the FBI had hidden in Edwards' private office in 1997 was not running when Edwards allegedly handed the cash to Fields.

An agent monitoring the meeting neglected to turn on the camera until after it had begun, according to testimony.

So, jurors only heard audio tape of the early part of the meeting - when Edwards allegedly handed the cash to Fields while saying, "That's all I had, before I could settle up with them."

Edwards also is heard saying, "Make sure that everybody involved is careful about how that's passed out or whatever. Because, as you know, that other guy is under very serious, serious, serious investigation."

Prosecutors say "that other guy" is Tarver, who is alleged to have worked with state gambling board member Ecotry Fuller - also a defendant - to help DeBartolo get the license.

The videotape made later in the meeting shows Fields fishing a bundle of cash out of his pocket. He asks Edwards for an envelope or a piece of paper to put it in. Edwards hands over a piece of white paper which Fields wraps around the cash before putting it back in his pocket.

Attorneys in the case have said the bundle contained $25,000.

Prosecutors are expected to explain the money's significance in more detail later; however, it was not known Wednesday whether Fields will be called to testify.

On tape, Edwards is seen and heard telling Fields "the offer was contingent on getting a license before they had to do an election" - an apparent reference to the possibility that an election would have to be held in the Bossier City area before DeBartolo could place his proposed Riverboat casino there.

Fields was a congressman in the mid 1990s who also made a bid to become Louisiana's first black governor since Reconstruction when he made a 1995 runoff. He lost, however, to a landslide by Mike Foster.

The court-ordered redrawing of congressional district lines cost Fields' his majority black district. He later ran for the state Senate and represents part of the Baton Rouge area in the Legislature.

Before the videotape was played, jurors heard audio tapes of secretly recorded telephone conversations in which Edwards talks with one state gambling regulator and about another one, in what prosecutors claim constituted his illegal efforts to win a license for DeBartolo.

"Without violating any confidences, should we be encouraged?" Edwards asks Ralph Perlman, a member of the state gambling board, in a telephone conversation recorded March 8, 1997.

"Yes," Perlman replied.

Perlman then told Edwards that making the choice on a licensee was "not going to be easy."

"I know you're going to do what is right," Edwards said.

Perlman responded that his decision was going to be based on what was best for the community and nothing else.

"I wouldn't have it any other way," Edwards said.

DeBartolo won the license in March 1997 but gave it up after being summoned before a federal grand jury.

While the conversation with Perlman indicated the DeBartolo license was not a sure thing, a later taped conversation between Edwards and his son Stephen, indicates that Edwards was anxious to collect from DeBartolo.

"I'm going to tell him just flat out... 'Look ... let me just lay it out ... I've enjoyed working with you, I appreciate your friendship, but we've come to the point now, where this thing is going to work, we have to have an understanding' ... and I want to tell him, and I want 1 percent of gross gaming revenue," Edwards is heard telling Stephen in a March 10, 1997, conversation.

An FBI agent testifying about the tapes noted that Edwards' travel logs show Edwards flew to San Francisco on March 12, 1997 - two days after the conversation with Stephen and one day before the gambling board voted to approve a license for DeBartolo. Prosecutors did not watch the meeting but said they now believe Edwards got $400,000 from DeBartolo.

The March 10 tape also indicates that Edwards was counting on support from two men who are now his codefendants - state Sen. Greg Tarver and gambling board member Ecotry Fuller.

Edwards tells Stephen he does not like working with Tarver.

"I'm scared if I don't he's going to get that black guy to put a clog in the wheels," Edwards said, an apparent reference to Fuller, a Tarver ally who is the only black man on the gambling board. "But I'm going to f------ do it, I'm going to tell him that it's no deal unless his man makes the motion. I'm not going to let him sit back and have the votes go forth by my people and then he votes for it."

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