Sheriff Gates’ Records Had Tapes of Election Opponent

Despite a sworn declaration by Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates that he “has not created or maintained files” on former election opponent George Wright, audiotapes of a 1981 college classroom lecture by Wright ended up in the sheriff’s investigative files, it was learned Thursday.

The tapes, the latest and perhaps most significant development in a dispute over alleged surveillance by Gates on his political enemies, were turned over by Gates’ lawyers March 26 to an attorney for former Municipal Court Judge Bobby D. Youngblood. In a civil rights lawsuit against the sheriff, Youngblood and others alleged widespread spying by Gates on his opponents.

Gates said in the declaration filed in the Youngblood case that “the Orange County Sheriff’s Department does not and has not created or maintained files concerning Bobby D. Youngblood, George Patrick Bland or George Wright, other than which have already been produced.”

“Neither I nor my department has conducted any surveillance of or have monitored the activities of . . . George Wright,” Gates stated in the declaration. “Nor is it the custom, policy or practice of this declarant or of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department to surveil and/or monitor the lawful activities of citizens of this county because of their political criticism of myself or my department.”

County officials acknowledged Thursday that the Wright tapes were not turned over to Youngblood’s attorney with other evidence months earlier. But they denied that turning over the tapes was the primary reason for settling the lawsuit. The April 2 settlement provided payment of $375,000 to the plaintiffs.

Orange County Counsel Edward N. Duran, whose office also handles the defense for the county and Gates, said his attorneys “always tell our clients to turn over all the material to me and let me decide what should be withheld,” Duran said. He said the tapes may have been lost or misplaced.

“I was going to check into it . . . but before I could do it, the settlement offer was made and discussed and accepted by all the parties,” Duran said.

Duran said there may be legitimate reasons for the tape recording. “They might have been investigating somebody else. . . . They may have been at a lecture taping it because they were going to talk to somebody else.”

Gates and Eric L. Dobberteen, the attorney who turned over the tapes, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

John Oskins, the county’s risk management director, said the suit was settled after considering the cost of a two-month trial and the possibility of losing. “The tapes were just something more they could point to,” Oskins said.

But Youngblood’s attorney, Michael Cisarik, said Thursday that he thinks the Wright tapes “had a whole lot to do with” the settlement.

Wright, a Rancho Santiago College police administration instructor and co-plaintiff in the lawsuit, was dropped from the case by a federal judge after Gates’ Feb. 6, 1985, sworn declaration that he had not maintained files on the instructor.

The settlement came just two weeks before trial was to begin in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

Wright, a former policeman, said that even though he is no longer a plaintiff, he will get $88,000 of the settlement, which has not been finalized. Wright was incensed that the tape recording was made in “the last bastion of open debate . . . the classroom.”

“The reason they were in there (was that) I had just declared I might be interested in running for sheriff in 1982,” said Wright, who had run against Gates in 1978.

Oskins also said he learned of the tape immediately before the settlement and understands that it “may have been done by an informant or something like that.”

He said that “at this point in time, I don’t want to go into” the reason the tapes were turned over on the eve of trial, which was set to begin on April 14.

County Counsel Duran, whose office also was involved in defending the Youngblood lawsuit, said Thursday that he also learned of the tapes’ existence when they were turned over to Youngblood.

U.S. District Judge John G. Davies on Dec. 15, 1986, had ordered Gates to release two large boxes of confidential surveillance reports and audiotapes to Youngblood to prepare for trial. Davies, who had privately reviewed the material, said at the time that it could be “a source of embarrassment to people.”

Wright said he has listened to the tapes and recalled that at the end of that lecture on the use of Mace, he told students: “ ‘When you go down to vote for sheriff in 1982, be right, vote Wright.’ I used my name a couple of times.”

But Wright said the only justification for the taping would have been if he were “under investigation for a crime. But he (Gates) swears in the declaration I wasn’t.”

Within days of turning over the tapes, county officials approved an out-of-court settlement, agreeing to pay a total of $375,000 to Youngblood; to co-plaintiff Patrick Bland, a candidate for sheriff in 1982, and to Cisarik. But Cisarik said an undisclosed fourth party also would receive a portion. Wright said Thursday that he is the undisclosed party.

Also among intelligence files turned over earlier by Gates was a secretly tape-recorded telephone conversation with an Orange County Register reporter who had written articles critical of the operation of County Jail.

That recording, according to court documents and investigative notes obtained by The Times, was made by an informant instructed to telephone reporter Chuck Cook and determine whether he was trying to persuade former inmates to lie about conditions in the jail, which is operated by the Sheriff’s Department. Cook no longer works at the Register.

“Chuck Cook and myself will go to the civil rights division of the (U.S.) Justice Department and see if we can get something done there,” Wright said Thursday.