Audit Finds No Illegal Acts by LAPD Unit : Police: But ACLU finds fault with review of operations of the Anti-Terrorist Division.

The Los Angeles Police Department does not keep secret intelligence files on local politicians and others they consider unfriendly to the LAPD, according to an audit released Tuesday.

However the audit, which was approved by the Police Commission and sent to the City Council, was sharply criticized by the ACLU because the examiners only reviewed files kept by the department’s Anti-Terrorist Division.

“In terms of public accountability, the audit is not especially useful,” said Paul Hoffman, legal director for the local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The in-house LAPD review, which covered the activities of the department’s Anti-Terrorist Division for 1989 and 1990, comes after allegations this summer that Chief Daryl F. Gates and others in his top command gathered intelligence on political figures.

But the audit, conducted by the Police Commission staff, “found no evidence undercover officers or civilian informants are involved in improper or prohibited activities.”

“I have to tell you that I saw nothing in the files that was improper,” said Ann Reiss Lane, a police commissioner who served as chairman of the audit committee. “And I personally reviewed everything.”

Much of the audit team’s work consisted of spot-checks and random inspections of the division files on the seventh floor of Parker Center. But Lane said the group did not review materials kept in Gates’ office. “That was not part of our charge,” she said.

When the allegations of police spying on political figures surfaced during a feud over Gates’ tenure at the Police Department this summer, the chief fueled speculation when he said, “The only files are in my head . . . and I’ve got a lot of those.”

Commenting on Tuesday after the Police Commission approved the audit of the Anti-Terrorism Division, Gates said the department keeps no secret files.

“We never did,” he said. “I don’t know where all that talk came from in the first place.”

Annual audits of the intelligence-gathering division were mandated in the settlement of a lawsuit filed by a coalition of community groups in the early 1980s. The groups had learned that the LAPD’s former Public Disorder and Intelligence Division (PDID) had infiltrated their organizations and spied on liberal political activities.

The last audit, for 1988, is similar to the new review in that it found only minor, administrative problems with file keeping.

The new audit concluded that some Anti-Terrorist Division staff members had exceeded the five-year limit for working in the unit. The review also found “one reported violation” of the division’s work guidelines.

“The investigator received a suspension and was removed from ATD for failing to follow his supervisor’s instructions to turn in parts of a closed file to the custodian of records,” according to the audit.

For the most part, the 33-page document cited the audit’s procedures and listed sketchy details of 24 instances where “it is believed that ATD did avert significant disruptions” and other crimes.

Those instances included assisting in the protection of foreign dignitaries visiting Los Angeles and helping an outside law enforcement agency conduct an attempted murder investigation involving a member of an ideological organization.

In addition, the audit quoted the division’s commanding officer as saying he was “not aware of any ATD personnel using unauthorized or illegal methods of obtaining information.”

“It’s obvious the Police Commission as a whole doesn’t spend a lot of time looking into this,” Hoffman said. “I’ve read this thing and it really doesn’t tell you very much. You obviously can’t judge from this audit exactly whether in fact what they are saying is true.”

Instead, he said, the public must rely on the Police Commission’s audit, even though the commission itself ultimately oversees the Anti-Terrorist Division.

“One of the difficulties is that this is an inherently secret organization,” Hoffman said. “I’m not confident the abuses found in the past have been ended completely. But I just don’t have the means to find out the true facts about it.”

The City Council’s Public Safety Committee is expected to review the audit.