There Was a Conspiracy to Oust Him, Daryl Gates Says in Book : He Says Bradley Aide Coached Testimony Against Him at Christopher Commission, but Deputy Mayor and Ranking LAPD Officers Deny Claims

In an apparent bid to force Police Chief Daryl Gates from office, Mayor Tom Bradley’s top aide allegedly coached other high-ranking members of the Los Angeles Police Department to deliver testimony damaging to the chief before the Christopher Commission in the wake of the Rodney King beating, Gates charges in his new autobiography.

The detailed assertion, contained in “Chief: My Life in the LAPD,” was strongly denied Monday by the principals involved, Assistant Police Chief David Dotson and Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani.

The allegation represents the most serious of a number of broadsides in the book, often written in vitriolic or salty language, against Gates’ past and present foes.

“Chief,” which goes on sale Wednesday, is primarily a passionate, combative defense of the LAPD and of Gates himself. But it is leavened with self-criticism as well as an admission of police foul-ups, notably in the Hillside Strangler investigation. In addition to recent controversies, the book covers a number of historical events, including Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination and the Watts riots.

During the aftermath of the King beating last year, according to Gates, Fabiani telephoned Dotson “numerous times” in the weeks leading up to Dotson’s appearance before the blue-ribbon commission. In widely publicized testimony, Dotson said he was personally fond of Gates but asserted that the chief’s ineffective leadership had hamstrung the LAPD.

Several months after the fact, Gates writes, he learned of the cooperation between the mayor’s office and Dotson from Dotson’s estranged wife, Larryette. According to Larryette Dotson, she overheard at least one conversation between Fabiani and Dotson.

“In the weeks prior to Dotson’s appearance before the Christopher Commission, Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani telephoned Dave at home numerous times,” Gates writes. “The two men spoke again the night before Dave testified, according to Dotson’s estranged wife, who told me this months later. She overheard Fabiani and Dave going over what he would say, even to the point of indicating his affection for me. Dave made notes on index cards from this conversation, and Mrs. Dotson brought them in to us.”

On Monday, Dotson bluntly denied that he consulted with Fabiani or anyone else in City Hall before delivering his testimony. The claim is “absolutely, unequivocally untrue,” Dotson declared.

“Everything I told the Christopher Commission was out of my head and my heart,” he added. “It was the truth as I believed it to be. It was not the product of any discussion with any other human being.”

Dotson, who is off duty and seeking a stress leave rather than accept a demotion to deputy chief ordered last week by Gates, says his estranged wife has made numerous false accusations against him and that the chief knows that. Larryette Dotson and her attorney could not be reached for comment.

Fabiani also flatly denied speaking with Dotson about Dotson’s testimony to the Christopher panel. “It’s unfortunate that (Gates) seems to have spent more time talking to Dotson’s wife than to Dotson, who is his assistant chief and could have helped him prepare for the riots,” Fabiani said Monday.

A spokesman for Gates’ publisher, Bantam Books, said the chief would not comment further Monday about the assertion.

In the book, Gates also charges that another former high-ranking LAPD official, retired Assistant Chief Jesse Brewer, “struck a deal” with City Hall in return for testimony critical of Gates. However, he does not report why he is suspicious of Brewer.

Brewer, one of Gates’ former LAPD assistant chiefs and now a mayoral appointee to the city Police Commission, said Monday he had no conversations with the City Hall officials about his testimony.

“I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about,” Brewer said. “Ever since since I’ve known him, he’s always accused everyone of conspiring against him.”

Although the testimony of Brewer and Dotson was widely reported last year, Gates has not previously revealed the purported evidence of a conspiracy orchestrated from City Hall. However, he has come under fire for conducting bitter internal feuds with his top commanders--including Dotson--that some officials claim hindered the LAPD’s ability to prepare for the riots that occurred after the King verdict late last month.

Also in the book, the chief accuses Mayor Bradley of “creating his own Tammany Hall” and bringing to the city “a rat’s nest of impropriety.”

Bradley’s press secretary, Bill Chandler, responded Monday: “Los Angeles residents are tired of Gates’ inflammatory rhetoric that simply boosts the outgoing chief’s own ego at the expense of the welfare of the city. Gates and his ghost writer have sensationalized and distorted the truth in this absolute work of fiction.

“It’s hard to believe anyone has any interest in the chief’s fictional account of history,” Chandler said.

Gates makes all the allegations in the autobiography’s final chapter, devoted to the controversy that erupted last year after the notorious videotaped police beating of King. However, the book was written and printed before the recent riots that followed the acquittal of the four officers accused of beating King. An advance copy was supplied to The Times by Bantam Books.

The book, written with journalist Diane K. Shah, seems likely to stand as Gates’ final word on his career before his retirement next month. Bantam Books has suggested that a chapter on the riots may be added in a subsequent edition.

In addition to Bradley, those singled out by Gates’ pen include City Councilmen Mark Ridley-Thomas, Michael Woo and Zev Yaroslavsky. He accuses all three of seizing on the King controversy “to make a name for themselves, whatever the cost to city harmony.”

Gates also reveals that in a reconciliation meeting with Bradley on April 9, 1991, about a month after the King incident, he called on the mayor to resign or retire. But then, he confesses, he realized he was acting like a “jerk.”

As he has done in other forums, Gates is critical of the Christopher Commission report, labeling it a “travesty” issued by a body of lawyers and others who did not understand policing.

“Chief” spans Gates’ life from his poverty-scarred childhood in Glendale to events late last year. Highlights include:

* Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner is “a political animal” who sought to gain maximum advantage from the King furor, Gates writes. He was especially miffed by Reiner’s “grandstanding” regarding attempts to charge officers who stood by and watched while King was beaten.

* The American Civil Liberties Union, Gates contends, has changed from a group that he once respected into an organization of “self-serving hypocrites” as opportunistic as some of his political enemies.

* Through its network of “helpful contacts” at airports and motels, the LAPD learned not only of the movements of mob figures but also of prominent people whom the mob might attempt to influence. Gates writes that he once told longtime MCA Chairman Lew Wasserman, “We knew every time you boarded a plane for Las Vegas.” On the other hand, Gates maintains that files kept by a controversial police intelligence division were almost worthless, containing mainly newspaper clippings.

* The LAPD had no cops protecting U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy when he was assassinated in 1968 because Kennedy’s staff demanded that the “police not even come close” to the senator while he was in Los Angeles. Kennedy’s staff did not want him associated with police in any way because of the political climate of the time, Gates asserts.

Kennedy, a presidential candidate, was gunned down moments after claiming victory in the California Democratic primary. Although a jury found Sirhan B. Sirhan, a lone gunman, guilty of the crime, some have maintained that Kennedy’s death was the result of a conspiracy. Gates disputes the conspiracy theory, however.

* Gates also dismisses longstanding assertions that actress Marilyn Monroe was murdered because of her connections to the Kennedy family. Monroe’s 1962 death was officially labeled as due to a drug overdose by her own hand, and Gates argues that a police investigation and an autopsy tend to support that ruling. He concedes that Robert Kennedy, then U.S. attorney general, was in Los Angeles the day of Monroe’s death but that police “paid no attention to where he went or what he did.”

Some critics have contended that Monroe died because Kennedy broke off an affair with her and that Kennedy might even have played a role in her death. Gates says he believes Monroe died of an accidental overdose, although she may have committed suicide.

* President John F. Kennedy received poor protection from the Secret Service, in Gates’ opinion. When Kennedy visited Los Angeles in early 1963, Gates was horrified to see that the service had ignored “high ground security” by not placing guards on rooftops. Several months later, Kennedy was assassinated by a sniper firing from an upper-story window in Dallas. Protection was better for President Lyndon B. Johnson on a later trip to Los Angeles, the chief says, but he alleges that Johnson was so drunk that he could barely walk.

* Legendary Police Chief William Parker also had a drinking problem, according to Gates. Parker often went home so drunk that he slurred his words and had trouble climbing stairs, says Gates, who served as Parker’s personal driver.

* Regarding the Hillside Strangler, Gates was embarrassed that Kenneth Bianchi, one of two men ultimately convicted in the case, was first arrested by police in Bellingham, Wash., in 1979: “The little old burg does a job we should have done with all our expertise, with all our fabled skill as detectives, with this huge task force.”

* He concedes that police were as slow to react to the 1965 Watts riots. “Belatedly, we understood the police would have to be deployed in force,” he writes of Watts. “Not two officers to a car, but four. Four officers, four shotguns.”

* On personal matters, Gates discusses the failure of his first marriage because of his preoccupation with work, the drug addiction of his son, Scott, and his own youthful brushes with the police. He joined the force, he writes, because in the late 1940s he had debts and needed a job--and as a young man, he never wanted to be a “dumb cop.”