LAPD Unit Said to Have Spied on Actors, Athletes

Under orders from Chief Willie L. Williams, Los Angeles police investigators began searching files on Friday in the department’s Organized Crime Intelligence Division to determine whether the unit spied on an array of well-known politicians, actors and sports figures in what has become yet another embarrassment for the Police Department.

Though City Hall officials praised Williams for his swift action in shutting down the division and ordering the searches Friday morning, he was condemned by many rank-and-file officers, who accused the new chief of distrusting them and of being too cozy with the city’s liberal politicians.

In an effort to be reassuring, Williams met Friday morning with the 45 officers assigned to the special intelligence unit and advised them that the division will remain under lock and key until internal LAPD investigators conclude their probe of the spying allegations, contained in a book by a former member of the unit.

Williams told reporters that the meeting was “one of the most difficult meetings I’ve had in 30 years of law enforcement.”

“They felt that here again, as has happened many times in the past 18 months, they were being painted with a broad brush because of what they felt were unfounded allegations,” Williams said of the officers. “

Williams sealed the OCID offices at Los Angeles International Airport and at the department’s Central Division station on Thursday after Mayor Tom Bradley’s office provided him with an advance copy of former OCID Detective Michael J. Rothmiller’s book, scheduled for release today.

The book--”L.A. Secret Police: Inside the LAPD Elite Spy Network”--is a sweeping personal account of Rothmiller’s life with the LAPD, focusing on the super-secret intelligence unit but also including accounts of a department rife with brutality, racism and lying.

The former detective, who left the department nine years ago, said that the OCID had all but forsaken its responsibility for tracking gangsters in favor of cultivating often scurrilous gossip about politicians, movie stars, athletes and other police agencies.

Some of those targeted in the inquiries, according to Rothmiller, included Rock Hudson, Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Muhammad Ali, Tommy Lasorda, Frank Sinatra, Connie Chung, Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, former California Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp and former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.

In one passage, Rothmiller wrote that Police Chief Daryl F. Gates and an assistant chief reportedly wanted to know if Van de Kamp was gay after learning that he kept a home that they thought was in Laguna Beach, a gay enclave. Six officers who were assigned to spy on the house turned up nothing.

As news of the disclosures spread across the city, some of the alleged targets reacted with disgust and humor.

Van de Kamp, for instance, joked: “This is all very loony. . . . This would be like something out of a “Police Academy VI” movie. This is all very funny.”

Within the LAPD on Friday, many police officials accused Rothmiller of being a disgraced cop with a grudge, trying to profit from the department’s troubles since the police beating of Rodney G. King.

“He’s hyping a book and destroying our intelligence function,” said one high-ranking police official.

Rothmiller, an 11-year LAPD veteran, was suspended in 1983 after Internal Affairs Division investigators alleged that he faked an attack on his life to “extort” a disability pension from the city. A state workers’ compensation judge, however, later reinstated Rothmiller, ruling that the LAPD had suppressed evidence and “investigated and harassed” the detective.

Rothmiller resigned rather than face an administrative hearing on the misconduct charges.

Rothmiller said Friday that he believes the public would not have taken him seriously had he published his allegations nine years ago--although he did provide some of them to the ACLU in a publicized deposition in 1983 when controversy was swirling around the department’s now-disbanded Public Disorder Intelligence Division, which was also accused of improper spying.

“Quite frankly,” he said, “I don’t even know how a book of this nature would have been received a few years ago. But a lot of things have changed in L.A. and within the LAPD. I just think it was time.”

Summing up the allegations in the 246-page paperback, co-authored by Ivan G. Goldman, the former detective wrote: “OCID was conducting massive operations against non-criminals for no other reason than to try to embarrass them or pressure them sometime in the future. . . . Pickings were good.”

The book says that “OCID had files on everything and everybody who counted.” Much of the covert information was gathered by a two-detective “sphinx-like” political team, Rothmiller wrote. These detectives would sometimes be joined by other detectives to form “quiet teams” for larger political investigations.

He contended that the investigations of political figures helped Gates remain in office during the clamor for his resignation after the March, 1991, beating of King.

“Agents spent countless man-hours stalking City Council members in preparation for just such an emergency,” he wrote.

“Because of OCID, the LAPD had secret files on (a) gay council member hiding in the closet and on (a) council member who was sleeping with an aide. The department had intelligence files on questionable deals and campaign funding and a mountain of other embarrassing, sticky business. As soon as someone declared candidacy, a full-scale investigation began.”

Rothmiller also alleged that the division set out to prove that former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., was gay by eavesdropping on his car telephone conversations and conducting surveillance of his Fairfax District apartment, where the walls were said to be “painted black in the then-preferred manner of sadomasochistic freaks.” Rothmiller said nothing was proved.

Aides to Jerry Brown at the Democratic National Convention in New York said he would have no comment. But his father, former Gov. Edmund (Pat) Brown--another alleged OCID target--said it “would be shockingly bad” if the LAPD spied on his family.

“To waste taxpayer money on a family like the Brown family whose life is public, I sure hope that was not going on,” he said.

Files were also amassed on nonpolitical celebrities such as boxer Sugar Ray Leonard, baseball pitcher Sandy Koufax and assorted church prelates who Rothmiller said were “fair game.”

Rothmiller wrote that he was ordered to collect information on “such notables” as Mayor Bradley, City Councilman Richard Alatorre and Hollywood mogul Dino De Laurentiis.

Rothmiller, in a news conference at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, described the OCID as the palace guard of the Police Department, digging up damaging information on “anybody that wielded political power or any influence or anybody that was well known within the Hollywood circuit.”

It did not matter if the targets of the investigations were considered friend or foe, Rothmiller said, because “a friend can become an enemy overnight.” He alleged that the information was used in the same way former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reportedly used damaging information to manipulate public officials.

He also commended Chief Williams for shutting down the OCID. But he cautioned against a witch hunt, saying that, “there are a lot of good people within that division and I don’t want them hurt or stepped on because of a sweeping change of personnel.”

He even defended the squad. “I think this unit is definitely needed in Southern California,” he said, “but the thing is they have to stay on track and get away from political information-gathering unless the politician is suspected of wrongdoing.”

Many police officials contend that Rothmiller lacks credibility and that his book should not be taken seriously.

“We had a good case for terminating this guy,” said one official, who helped investigate Rothmiller for the Internal Affairs Division. Some police insiders characterized Rothmiller as a “stoolie” for the American Civil Liberties Union, which for years had pushed for Gates’ departure and reform in the LAPD.

Gates, in a telephone interview with CNN, called Rothmiller a disgruntled former employee.

The former chief said the OCID was created in 1957 to gather information on organized crime figures. “That’s what they’ve been doing and they have a very fine record of dealing with organized crime, of dealing with the Mafia in this area,” Gates said.

And he questioned Williams’ decision to lock the doors at OCID.

“I think it’s kind of a Draconian reaction, given the fine record of OCID over a long period of time,” he said. “And it just may be that it’s out of an abundance of caution that he’s doing this kind of thing, but I can tell him this -- that’s the way you destroy morale very quickly.”

Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California, said Friday that Rothmiller contacted her last fall and that she met twice with him in lengthy sessions to discuss his book project.

In those meetings, she said, Rothmiller described his allegations and said he needed help finding a publisher.

“We thought he was credible,” she said. “We knew about many of the incidents he talked about, but we didn’t have proof before. So we decided the best thing to do was to help him get the book published.”

She said she got Rothmiller in contact with a literary agent she knew, and “they took it from there and went to Simon & Schuster.”

Ripston said she also strongly urged Police Commission President Stanley K. Sheinbaum to meet with Rothmiller which, according to the book, finally occurred on March 19, at the same time the commission was selecting a successor to Gates.

Sheinbaum, along with fellow Commissioner Ann Reiss Lane and ex-Commissioner Reva Tooley, met with him at a Cerritos restaurant for 2 1/2 hours.

Neither Sheinbaum, Tooley nor Lane could be contacted Friday. But Rothmiller, in his prologue, describes what was discussed at their meeting.

The commissioners, he said, worried that OCID had bugged their homes and offices and that there were “two moles planted on their staff who were direct pipelines to the chief.”

“All too often,” Rothmiller wrote, “the chief and his cohorts seemed to know what was going to happen before it happened. And when the commissioners inquired about just what OCID was up to, they got standard textbook answers.”

In fact, the commission violated its own guidelines set up in 1985 by failing to conduct an annual review of the OCID files that it had required of itself to ensure the division was not involved in improper activity.

“There has not been an audit since I’ve been here,” said Richard Dameron the commission’s executive officer who has been on the staff since 1986. “I know there was some consideration given to the procedures and what would have to be done. But I don’t think there was anything ever concrete done.”

At City Hall, officials led by Bradley pledged support for Williams’ investigation.

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky called on Williams to expand the scope of his investigation to include other intelligence-gathering arms of the department, including Administrative Vice Unit and the Anti-Terrorism Division.

“While it may be of interest to some people in government who is sleeping with whom, who is frequenting what nightclubs and what are the various proclivities of public persons,” Yaroslavsky said, “that is not the business of government and not what taxpayers want their Police Department to be doing.”

Councilman Woo went a step further, urging an investigation to be conducted by a group outside the LAPD.

“This is not the FBI, this is not the CIA; thank heavens Los Angeles no longer has a police chief who thinks he is J. Edgar Hoover,” Woo said.

But Bradley said he believes an internal probe by Williams is appropriate.

“The City Council and I will provide Chief Williams with the support he needs to continue this investigation wherever it may lead.”

Times staff writers James Rainey and Andrea Ford contributed to this story