Informant’s Call to Reporter Was Secretly Taped

Acting on directions from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, a confidential informant secretly tape recorded a 1982 telephone conversation with an Orange County Register reporter who had written articles critical of the operation of the sheriff’s jail, according to court documents and investigative notes.

The tape recording was made by an informant who was instructed to telephone reporter Chuck Cook and determine whether he was trying to persuade former inmates to lie about conditions in the jail, according to the notes of Sheriff’s Department intelligence investigator Randy Blair.

According to Blair’s notes, copies of which were supplied to the Times by Cook, the investigation was terminated Dec. 17, 1982--the day after the telephone conversation--when it was determined that Cook had done nothing illegal. No charges were ever filed.

A transcribed account of the tape-recorded interview and Blair’s notes are among investigative material that Gates was ordered to provide to an attorney for former Orange County Municipal Judge Bobby D. Youngblood, who is suing Gates in federal court in Los Angeles.

Trial Set for April 14

In a 4-year-old civil rights lawsuit against Gates, Youngblood alleges that the sheriff used improper surveillance and harassment tactics against him for political purposes. Trial is scheduled for April 14.

Youngblood’s attorney, Michael Cisarik, declined to comment on the taping incident.

“There’s no evidence that I’ve ever done anything but try to get people to tell the truth,” Cook said Thursday. “No reporter is going to ask somebody to lie about something like that.”

Cook, who left the Orange County Register in February, 1985, is now an assistant city editor for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner.

Register Editor N. Christian Anderson said Thursday that “it would be an incredible coincidence” if the taping of Cook’s conversation were not related to his stories on deaths in the jail for the Register.

The “reaction to the series of stories from the Sheriff’s Department was rather negative,” Anderson said.

“I find a great deal of danger (in the taping) if in fact there was not . . . a specific crime for which Chuck was being charged,” Anderson said. “If it was a fishing expedition, it is incredibly dangerous.”

According to Blair’s notes, the confidential informant, later identified as Richard Wilder, was directed on Dec. 15, 1982, to telephone private investigator Pat Bland and Cook “using the ruse of having information on mistreated OCJ (Orange County Jail) inmates for the purpose of verifying information that Bland . . . and possibly Cook were contacting inmates and soliciting them to commit perjury.”

Bland is also a plaintiff in the Youngblood suit against Gates.

State law permits police or their agents to tape record their telephone conversations with others if they are investigating a crime.

Gates’s office referred calls to his attorney, who did not return a call Thursday from the Times.

A transcript of the taped conversation was filed March 9 by Youngblood’s attorney as an exhibit in pretrial motions.

According to the transcript, the informant told Cook that he knew of former inmates with complaints about the jail. Cook told the caller that “the FBI is really wanting some names to talk to and the Grand Jury is.”

Cook also said: “I have a real ethics problem. . . . I can’t talk to the uh, you know, because we don’t feel like we should be an investigative arm for the law enforcement people.”

No Further Contact

Sheriff investigator Blair wrote on Dec. 17, 1982, that after listening to the taped conversation he concluded “neither subject gave verbal indications they were involved or would suborn perjury regarding these potential complaints.”

Blair advised the informant to have no further contact with Bland or Cook “until further notice” and noted that the investigation was “terminated.”

“Things like this shouldn’t happen,” Cook said Thursday. “The only thing that I was trying to do and did successfully was write the truth about the deplorable conditions in the jail and people dying and botched autopsies.”

Cook said he has asked the civil rights division of the U.S. attorney’s office to investigate the incident. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office said Thursday that the office’s policy prevented him from confirming or denying that an investigation has been requested.