5 ‘Independent Advisers’ Join Bradley Probe

Councilman Michael Woo on Tuesday announced the appointment of five “independent advisers” who will join with a City Council ethics committee next week to question City Atty. James K. Hahn about his investigation of Mayor Tom Bradley’s financial affairs.

Among the advisers were a former state Supreme Court justice, a former U.S. Justice Department official and a community college chancellor.

Calling the appointments “a clear break with council tradition,” Woo said the action sends out “a very clear message that the council is treating . . . issues of conflict of interest in a very special way.”

Hahn and members of his staff are scheduled to appear before the Ad Hoc Committee on Governmental Ethics on Oct. 4 and 5 to explain how they reached the conclusions contained in a 1,165-page report on Bradley’s finances released two weeks ago.

Suit Against Bradley

As a result of his six-month investigation, Hahn filed a civil lawsuit against Bradley for failing to disclose major personal stock holdings, but declined to press criminal charges. However, Hahn said in the report that Bradley had shown “indifference” to ethical concerns in recent years.

The advisory panel members will be permitted to question Hahn and his staff and offer recommendations, but will not vote on any proposals that might emerge, Woo said.

The appointees, whom Woo described as “distinguished individuals who have a reputation for integrity,” are:

* Cruz Reynoso, a former California Supreme Court justice who now is a special counsel to the law firm of Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays & Handler. He was defeated at the polls in 1986 along with then-Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and another member of the court’s liberal majority.

* Ed Guthman, a journalism professor at USC and former national editor of The Times as well as former editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

* Donald G. Phelps, chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District.

* Ralph Erickson, a deputy U.S. attorney general during the Nixon Administration and now a partner in the law firm of Jones, Day, Reavis & Poague.

* Robert Dallek, a professor of American history at UCLA who has just completed the first volume of a biography of former President Lyndon B. Johnson.

In another development Tuesday, city officials released an investigators’ transcript that indicates that Bradley business partner Juanita St. John, the head of an Africa trade task force under scrutiny for possible misuse of city funds, had a longer political relationship with the mayor than previously reported.

According to the transcript, St. John told city attorney investigators that she met Bradley through a fund-raiser, had given a fund-raiser for him herself and had known him since his days as a city councilman. That would mean that St. John’s ties to the mayor went back several years before her appointment to run the task force, a Bradley pet project created in 1978.

Deputy Mayor Michael Gage, after checking with Bradley, had told The Times that the mayor recalled only one chance encounter with St. John before the task force was formed.

Deputy City Atty. Kevin Ryan said inconsistencies in the accounts of the Bradley-St. John relationship were not considered significant because other evidence suggested that Bradley did not personally choose St. John for the job.

A police and district attorney’s office investigation is continuing into St. John’s handling of $180,000 in unaccounted for city funds.

St. John told city investigators that she has filed annual reports on the nonprofit task force with the federal government. But an Internal Revenue Service spokesman said Tuesday that the task force has never filed required financial statements and faces penalties of up to $5,000.

The mayor’s office declined to comment on the St. John transcript. St. John’s attorney, Richard Hirsch, declined comment.