Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2006 | 7:24 a.m.
U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons' top campaign consultant has past financial ties to the company that turned over to police surveillance videos from the night of Gibbons' encounter with a woman who accused the gubernatorial candidate of trying to force himself on her sexually.
Rogich Communications Group, whose chief executive, Sig Rogich, is a campaign consultant to Gibbons, has been a lobbyist for Crescent Real Estate Equities, which says it gave police videos from inside a parking garage where the alleged battery occurred.
The connection between Rogich and Crescent adds another twist to the evidence slowly emerging in the case. Rogich's company confirmed that it has represented Crescent in the past. The Rogich-Crescent link is part of a web of connections among Rogich, Gibbons, Crescent and Jones Vargas, the law firm that represents Crescent.
Media reports have said the newly revealed recordings show nothing, which Gibbons and fellow Republicans have called proof of his innocence.
Security experts interviewed by the Sun on Monday, however, said the videotapes could show nothing and still be inconclusive, depending on the way the 11 security cameras in the garage are linked to the video recorder. Parking garages rarely have all cameras recording at the same time, these experts said. Instead, the cameras are usually set up in rotation, with one camera feeding the video recorder at a time.
The timing of the discovery of the tapes and the circumstances by which their existence became public have raised a new round of questions - which none of the principals would answer on Monday.
The authenticity of the recordings is being challenged by the accuser, Chrissy Mazzeo, and her attorney, Richard Wright. Police requested the tapes the night of the Oct. 13 incident but say they were told by a Crescent security officer that none existed.
The connections between the businesses and individuals involved on Gibbons' side in the case includes a Clark County zoning matter. Rogich Communications, which does public relations and lobbying for high-profile clients, was retained through Jones Vargas to represent Crescent in an attempt to receive a zoning variance two years ago, a spokeswoman for Rogich said.
Rogich Communications is a tenant of Crescent at Hughes Center.
Kirk Lenhard is the Jones Vargas attorney representing Crescent who turned the tapes over to Metropolitan Police. He gave $1,000 to a Gibbons' campaign fund in 2003, when Gibbons was considering a run for U.S. Senate. The firm also held a fundraiser for Gibbons that spring.
One of Lenhard's partners is Joe Brown, the Republican National committeeman who sat behind Gibbons during an initial press conference denying Mazzeo's allegations.
Jones Vargas and its attorneys have given thousands of dollars to Gibbons and his wife, Dawn, over the course of their political careers. (Jones Vargas attorneys have also given to Democrats.)
These connections can be explained, in part, by the small political culture of Las Vegas, where a few influential firms, such as Jones Vargas, and individuals, such as Rogich, gobble up clients with overlapping interests.
Gibbons' lawyer, Don Campbell, who has not returned repeated calls from the Sun, said in an affidavit that he learned about the tapes from a "Crescent representative" last Saturday, before their existence was known to the public.
Campbell filed suit Monday in District Court to compel Metro to turn over the tapes, saying Gibbons wants voters to see evidence he believes absolves him.
Metro and the district attorney's office are opposing the release of the tapes.
Campbell also said in the affidavit that he contacted Sheriff Bill Young a day after learning of the tapes and asked him for copies, but the sheriff refused upon the advice of legal counsel.
Wright, a Democrat who has contributed to the campaign of Gibbons' Democratic opponent, state Sen. Dina Titus, described Campbell's efforts as comedic.
"This is like a 'Saturday Night Live' skit," Wright said. "The potential suspect (Gibbons) is suing police to get access to the evidence. Have you ever heard of anything that stupid?"
Although suspects are entitled to see the evidence against them, it would be highly unusual if that occurred during a police investigation.
Mazzeo said during a 911 call that police should check videotapes in the parking garage across from McCormick & Schmick's, where she, Gibbons, Rogich and three other women were drinking. She claims she and Gibbons went down a small stairway into the garage and walked toward the nearest elevator, where Gibbons pushed her against a wall and sexually threatened her. The brief encounter ended, Mazzeo said, when she fled.
Gibbons told police that Mazzeo tripped near the entrance of the garage, and he caught her from falling. He says she misunderstood his helping hand.
The existence of the tapes raises all kinds of new questions.
Police initially relied on the statement from a Hughes Center security officer who said the cameras inside the garage were working but not turned on at the time of the incident.
But on Thursday, sources close to the investigation say, Lenhard passed 14 hours of videotapes from that evening to the police.
The discovery of the tapes could go far to bolster Mazzeo's claims - or cast serious doubt on them.
Among the 11 cameras inside the garage is one that would appear to capture any pedestrian coming or leaving from the staircase closest to the restaurant.
Another overhead camera is aimed at the elevator on that ground floor. That camera is far enough back from the elevator that it appears able to capture images off to its side.
If Mazzeo's version of the incident is accurate, both the stairway and the elevator cameras could have captured her and Gibbons.
But not necessarily. Roger Schmedlen, who runs a security consulting firm in Michigan and has served as an expert witness in more than 60 court cases, said most videotape security systems used by stores, apartment complexes and other businesses do not have each of the cameras recording at the same time.
Most systems employ "sequencing" or "video switching," in which the images from each camera in a given structure will be recorded for a short period of time - say, anywhere from five seconds to a minute - and then the system will switch to have another camera record. If, for instance, the 11 cameras were on 30-second sequences, any one camera would record for 30 seconds, then go dark for five minutes.
Thus, it's possible if not probable, Schmedlen said, that Gibbons and Mazzeo could have walked by the field of vision of one camera, and then stood within the field of a second camera for several minutes - and their images would not be there because those cameras weren't recording at the time.
Roy Bordes, whose Orlando, Fla.-based company designs security equipment, offered another possible explanation.
If the cameras in question are more than a few years old, he said, they could have been malfunctioning at the time of the incident. Specifically, he said that if they've been in the same position all that time, an image sometimes gets "burned in," and that that's the only image the camera will show.
"If an image has been burned in, a tank could roll by and the camera wouldn't capture it," said Bordes, a vice president of ASIS International, a trade group for security professionals.
It is also possible that the tapes have been doctored - but both Schmedlen and Bordes suggest that is difficult to do without leaving a trace. If police have doubts about the tapes' authenticity, they said, they could take the tapes to the FBI or to a private forensic database firm.
Because the police investigation into the tapes has been minimal, and Crescent has declined to answer almost every question posed by the Sun over the past two weeks, it is difficult to know exactly what types of tapes have surfaced, and just how credible they are.
Lenhard referred calls to Crescent spokeswoman Jennifer Terrell. She would say only that "we confirmed that there was a tape and that we turned it over to police as soon as it was requested."
Answers to these questions could arise now that Mazzeo has agreed to press ahead with a full investigation and potential criminal case. Mazzeo spoke to police Monday and signed a statement asking them to pursue the case.
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