Gallegly vs. the FBI : Politics: Federal documents dispute the GOP congressman’s claim that he never filed complaints against 4 FBI agents later cleared of wrongdoing.

When the FBI investigated four Los Angeles agents in 1987 and 1988 for allegedly threatening Rep. Elton Gallegly and conspiring to thwart his reelection, the Simi Valley Republican maintained that he had never registered a complaint against them.

But documents recently released by the FBI say the internal inquiry was indeed conducted because Gallegly made repeated accusations against the agents to high-ranking FBI officials. The records also disclose that the agents were cleared of any wrongdoing.

Moreover, the FBI documents quote Gallegly asking the agency to time its inquiry so as not to interfere with his 1988 primary election.

Gallegly prompted a yearlong probe when he called the Los Angeles FBI office after three agents visited him to seek his support for a bill to increase overtime for some federal employees. Gallegly’s remarks during that phone call, and during subsequent calls, letters and interviews over the next eight months, have become the subject of intense dispute.

Gallegly said publicly that he initially called only to inquire whether the agents reflected the FBI’s official position on the overtime bill. The FBI record, however, says he complained that the agents had been intimidating and unprofessional.

The documents also say that an irate and accusatory Gallegly later contacted top FBI officials at least seven times in 1988 to assert that a fourth agent, Gregory L. Mercier, and unidentified other FBI agents were conspiring to prevent his reelection. About the same time, Gallegly stated publicly, “I have never filed a complaint against any FBI agent.”

The FBI concluded there was no evidence to support Gallegly’s claim that the agents had acted improperly or had violated a law prohibiting federal employees from working to influence the outcome of an election. The agency determined that the veteran agents had exercised their right to free speech as private citizens.

The flap, which caused outrage in national law-enforcement circles when parts of it were revealed in 1988, is contained in FBI investigative files obtained by The Times through the Freedom of Information Act and other sources. The voluminous record sheds considerable light on the bitter controversy, particularly on the conduct of Gallegly, 46, a former Simi Valley mayor and real estate broker in his second term in Congress.

It also provides a behind-the-scenes look at a rare occurrence in an agency that strives to remain apolitical and is mindful that Congress controls its purse strings: a spat between a congressman and FBI agents in his district. “It just doesn’t happen,” said one bureau veteran not involved in this case.

In interviews last week, Gallegly stood by his original statements. He said he had never filed a complaint or made allegations that FBI agents had behaved improperly or engaged in a conspiracy to prevent his reelection. The FBI documents, he said, were not correct.

“The only complaint I had was with the bureau for allowing this thing to get out of control,” Gallegly said. “I ended up the victim.”

Gallegly was renominated by an overwhelming margin and easily won reelection in his suburban 21st District, which includes southern Ventura County and parts of the western and northern San Fernando Valley. He is seeking a third term.

It was midway through Gallegly’s relatively uneventful first year in office when three FBI agents came to see him on Sept. 4, 1987. They were seeking his support on a bill to raise overtime pay for federal law-enforcement officers, including 9,600 FBI agents. Gallegly refused to support the measure, which he called “an open checkbook” that could cost taxpayers $2 billion a year.

The bill was subsequently passed and signed by President Bush in November. The Congressional Budget Office estimates it will cost $80 million a year; the White House Office of Management and Budget puts the figure at $101 million.

Two of the men, Larry Langberg, then a 19-year FBI veteran, and Brent Braun, an agent for 10 years, had known Gallegly socially. Langberg’s wife had been a paid Gallegly campaign staffer. The third was John Callaghan, a 22-year veteran.

Gallegly later publicly described the meeting in his Thousand Oaks district office as cordial. But six weeks after it occurred, he telephoned Richard T. Bretzing, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office. Gallegly asserted that the agents had been threatening and unprofessional, said Bretzing, who filed a memo on the Oct. 16 phone call. The call and a follow-up letter from Gallegly prompted the initial inquiry.

Such an administrative review by the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility can result in a range of punishment, including dismissal.

Letters to Newspapers

When the matter became public seven months later, Gallegly said in a letter to newspapers in his district that he had contacted Bretzing “to learn if the agents were speaking for the bureau.”

Last week, Gallegly’s version changed. He said the agents “did represent to me they were there with the agents association, not the bureau.” He said he telephoned Bretzing because Langberg had called Paula Sheil, a Gallegly congressional aide, at her home to inform her that many agents were unhappy that Gallegly was not supporting the overtime bill.

“What I really wanted from Bretzing was an opportunity to communicate with all the agents my position on the issue,” said Gallegly, emphasizing that this was his chief concern throughout the controversy. “I wasn’t sure that more than one side was being expressed.”

Gallegly said Bretzing asked whether the agents had visited him on their own time or bureau time and whether they had come in their own cars. Gallegly said he was unable to answer these questions but, from that point on, he felt that he “was being used by some people in the FBI to break up” the agents association. “That was Richard Bretzing’s goal,” he said.

Bretzing, who has since left the FBI, called Gallegly’s assertion “absolutely ridiculous.” He said he had asked a series of routine questions after Gallegly, “who was very upset,” called to complain that the three agents had made “demands and threats.”

“He felt the visit to his office by the agents was inappropriate,” Bretzing said. “That was why he was calling.”

In January, 1988, FBI investigators preliminarily concluded each of the men had taken the day off from work and driven his own car to the session. The inquiry found that the agents’ visit constituted “no misuse of authority or bureau property on the part of these agents or inappropriate behavior. . . . This was a legitimate exercise of their constitutional rights as citizens.”

Only the first chapter of the probe was closed, however, and the agents were not told of this recommended finding.

The issue flared again on May 10, 1988, a month before the June 7 primary election. Angered by what he maintained was Gallegly’s unfair treatment of his colleagues, Mercier, a 12-year FBI veteran from Newbury Park, returned Gallegly’s campaign leaflet with a note scribbled on it:

“Here is your flyer. Keep it!! I wouldn’t vote for you again in a million years!! I am a Special Agent with the FBI, and as far as we are concerned, you are worthless!!”

Gallegly promptly called John E. Otto, the bureau’s executive assistant director in charge of law enforcement, the FBI records say. Gallegly said he’d been told that Mercier and other agents, whom he did not identify, planned a letter-writing campaign against him because he did not support the overtime bill, according to Otto’s memo about the conversation.

Dispute Now Public

Otto wrote that Gallegly told him “he does not want to preclude anyone’s exercise of their constitutional rights; however, he does not want to see federal government employees attempting to get around the Hatch Act in a conspiratorial manner.”

The Hatch Act was passed in 1939 to prevent elected officials from recruiting federal workers to campaign for them. It prohibits government workers from participating in certain kinds of political activities, including campaigning for or against a candidate for office.

It does not, however, prohibit federal workers from expressing their opinion about a candidate.

In a May 10 memo, Otto wrote that, during a second conversation that day, “Gallegly also asked if it was at all possible the bureau could promptly conduct this administrative inquiry in view of the potential damage to his campaign that might be caused” by Mercier and others.

Otto noted that Gallegly said he was opposed in the Republican primary by “a Korean immigrant who has spent an estimated $400,000 on his campaign so far.” Real-estate developer Sang Korman, who also is running against Gallegly this year, spent $391,591 on the 1988 race. Korman won 13% of the vote.

Otto “reassured the congressman that our administrative inquiry would begin immediately,” the memo states.

Later, when the matter became public and was the subject of several newspaper stories, Gallegly denied that he had complained about Mercier. He told The Times that he had only mentioned the returned flyer in jest when FBI officials asked whether he had received any communication from agents.

“There was no investigation on this letter that I know about,” the now-defunct Los Angeles Herald Examiner quoted Gallegly as saying. Gallegly reiterated last week that he was unaware of any official probe.

FBI records say Los Angeles bureau investigators interviewed Mercier and Langberg, who denied any wrongdoing or knowledge of a conspiracy. The investigators concluded on May 16: “There is no evidence of a conspiratorial act” by the agents to defeat Gallegly; those who vocally opposed him “have done so individually and as private citizens.”

On May 26, the friction spilled into public view. A letter by Pam Mercier, Gregory’s wife, appeared in the Camarillo Daily News blasting Gallegly for opposing the overtime bill and for his ostensible role in triggering the investigation of the four agents.

“I don’t think that Rep. Elton Gallegly should be reelected,” Mercier wrote. “Mr. Gallegly is not a friend of the FBI.”

Gallegly called the FBI that day, the agency’s records say. Deputy Assistant Director David G. Flanders, who took the call, reported in a memo that Gallegly “was obviously upset. His first words were, ‘It’s very difficult for me to be objective in this matter.’ ” Gallegly said Pam Mercier’s letter was “evidence that FBI agents had conspired against him.”

The lawmaker was particularly disturbed by her assertion that he had filed a complaint against the four agents, according to the FBI records. “I never filed a complaint with the FBI,” Gallegly is quoted as saying.

Flanders reported that he told Gallegly that the lawmaker had indeed called the FBI to complain about the lobbying by the three agents and the purported conspiracy against him.

Discloses Source

“It was pointed out to him,” Assistant Director William A. Gavin wrote in a memo summarizing the conversation, “that, in essence, these two contacts of the FBI were complaints against FBI personnel, which were handled as such.”

Gallegly then asked “that nothing be done for 10 days, until after the election,” the memo says.

During the May 26 discussion, Gallegly refused, as he had before, to disclose his source of information about the alleged conspiracy, the records say. Although the term “conspiracy” is attributed to him repeatedly in the documents, Gallegly denied last week that he ever used the word; he said that was the FBI’s allegation.

Citing Gallegly’s refusal to reveal his source as well as his request that no action be taken before the June 7 primary, Gavin recommended that nothing further be done. He also wrote that any FBI contact with Pam Mercier “would give the appearance of infringing on her freedom of speech.”

Gallegly later publicly denied that he had complained to the FBI about Pam Mercier’s letter. “How can you complain about a wife?” he told a reporter.

Gallegly said last week he did not recall asking the FBI to refrain from taking further action until after the election. But if he did so, he said, it was because he was frustrated that his role in the events was being misconstrued.

“If you’re just going to continue doing this baloney, don’t do anything,” Gallegly said he recalled feeling at the time. “I don’t have to fool with it anymore.”

The day after his conversation with Flanders, Gallegly launched a public counteroffensive.

He sent a three-page letter to newspapers throughout his district characterizing himself as “the target of a bitter and politically motivated attack by a handful of FBI agents.” He cited Pam Mercier’s letter as an example.

And, he wrote, “I have never filed a complaint against any FBI agent.”

Following his June 7 primary victory, Gallegly continued to press the matter.

On June 16, at the lawmaker’s request, Otto and another FBI official met with Gallegly in the congressman’s Washington office. Gallegly said he had waited until after the primary to have the meeting because “he did not want it interpreted as being connected with his campaign efforts,” according to the FBI report of the meeting.

Here, apparently for the first time, Gallegly revealed his chief source of information about the alleged conspiracy.

Gallegly said that Thomas E. Sheil, a former FBI agent and longtime friend, had told him that various agents, possibly including Gregory Mercier, had called retired agents in Gallegly’s district and urged them not to vote for the congressman. Gallegly said Sheil told him that two ex-agents in Thousand Oaks had received calls from members of the FBI Agents Assn. asking them not to put up campaign signs for Gallegly in their front yards.

Sheil’s wife, Paula, is employed in Gallegly’s Thousand Oaks district office and had worked in Gallegly’s real estate business for many years.

The following day, Gallegly telephoned Otto again to inform him of a call Gallegly received from a Herald Examiner reporter who had spoken to Gregory Mercier. A half-hour later, Gallegly called Bretzing at the FBI’s Los Angeles office and told him he believed that Mercier was on a “self-destruct mission” because the agent, a lawyer, had told the News Chronicle of Thousand Oaks that he was sick of the FBI and was going to practice law.

Suspected Leak

On June 20, Gallegly reached Otto again when the executive assistant director was traveling on business in Louisville, Ky. The FBI deleted much of the record of their conversation from documents released to The Times but did disclose that Gallegly said he believed someone within the FBI was talking to the press about the controversy.

As a result of this conversation, Otto directed investigators to ask Mercier if he was the source of information given the Herald Examiner reporter about “the FBI’s sweeping for electronic eavesdropping devices” in Gallegly’s office. Gallegly said last week that such a sweep took place, apparently due to a threat, but he said he could not recall the details.

FBI investigators, meanwhile, were uncovering information contradicting Gallegly’s account.

They interviewed two retired agents whom Gallegly said Sheil had approached about the lawn signs, Richard D. Rogge and James G. Keenan. Each said he had not been contacted by representatives of the FBI Agents Assn. or anyone else about opposing Gallegly’s reelection, the FBI records say.

Rogge told investigators he had declined Sheil’s request to put a Gallegly campaign sign on his lawn without giving a reason. He said the only pressure he received regarding Gallegly’s reelection campaign came from Sheil.

Rogge, a financial contributor to Gallegly’s campaign, said Sheil was so insistent that, had Sheil persisted, Rogge “would have placed the sign in his yard against his own wishes.”

Keenan told investigators he was aware of the FBI agents’ disagreement with Gallegly on the overtime issue. But he, too, said he had declined to display the sign of his own volition. Sheil provided a similar version of the events.

“It was not Tom Sheil who told the congressman that Messrs. Rogge and Keenan would not place the campaign signs in their yards because of a concerted effort on the part of current agents” to thwart Gallegly’s reelection, the investigative report said.

Rather, “it was probably assumed by Mrs. Paula Sheil that there was an adverse effort afoot,” the investigators wrote on Aug. 1.

In the end, no one “has offered any knowledge of efforts of agents directed against Congressman Elton Gallegly,” the investigators concluded. “No concerted effort is afoot to oppose Congressman Gallegly’s bid for reelection.”

The recommendation to close the inquiry gradually worked its way through the FBI hierarchy. Mercier said he was informed orally in October, 1988, that he had been cleared. The other three agents were reportedly told on Jan. 9, 1989--more than a year after the investigation began.

In the meantime, the flap had provoked outrage in the ranks of the FBI Agents Assn. nationwide. Craig Dotlo, former association president, said 160 to 170 members of Congress had been contacted about the overtime pay bill by agents in their districts “and there has not been this kind of controversy” anywhere else.

Issue Called ‘Political’

Gallegly said last week that the entire issue amounted to “pole-vaulting over cow pies.”

He said the matter was political when it arose in 1988, and its re-emergence less than two months before this year’s June 12 primary is politically motivated as well. He said any suggestion that he had sought to restrict anyone’s freedom of speech was “poppycock.”

An FBI spokeswoman said the bureau will not discuss the investigation.

Callaghan and Braun declined to comment on the new disclosures. Braun has since left the bureau for reasons unrelated to the Gallegly matter.

Langberg, 47, who is now president of the 4,800-member FBI Agents Assn., said: “There’s a thing in this country called freedom of speech. I feel not only a right but an obligation to let my elected representatives know what I think on issues, which is precisely what this group did.”

Mercier, 40, said the investigative documents show that Gallegly “grossly misstated the facts to serve his own cause.” He added that Gallegly’s charges had clearly “impugned my character as a law-enforcement officer.”

Nevertheless, Mercier said he continues to write to Gallegly to express his views on law-enforcement issues.

“He’s my congressman,” Mercier said. “What else am I going to do?”

WHAT WAS SAID

‘I never filed a complaint with the FBI.’

--Rep. Elton Gallegly

‘It was pointed out to’ Gallegly ‘that, in essence, these two contacts of the FBI were complaints against FBI personnel, which were handled as such.’

--William A. Gavin, assistant FBI director