Is Somebody Listening at Cerritos College?

No one at Cerritos College claims to have found a single covert listening device, never mind any secret tapes made with such a gadget.

Just the same, many college employees take seriously the lingering rumors that wiretaps infest the community college campus like so many . . . bugs.

Any time they want to hold a private discussion behind closed doors, some staff and faculty members insist on unplugging the nearest phone. The more cautious among them speak in hushed voices, as far as possible from the telephone--certainly not into one and preferably outdoors.

Despite firm denials by college officials and phone company representatives that such an intricate system of eavesdropping is even possible, the rumor persists that someone somewhere is recording everything within earshot of campus phones.

Some say the wiretapping rumors at Cerritos date back a decade, but earlier this year, the climate of suspicion reached a “fever pitch,” said board of trustees member Dorothy Carfrae.

In March, Carfrae, a vocal critic of the college administration, called for a campuswide investigation to settle the matter once and for all.

“If [college employees] are not going to be afforded privacy within the workplace,” Carfrae said, “at least let them know [it].”

*

A committee assigned to investigate the phone system was formed by college President Fred Gaskin. However, the probe seems to have stalled, in part because its leaders cannot figure out the best way to get to the heart of the matter.

The delay only inflames campus conspiracy theorists, some of whom are ready to welcome an investigation by the district attorney’s office.

Meanwhile, a group of teachers have taken it upon themselves to draft a resolution for the board of trustees that would condemn wiretapping anywhere on campus. The document was first presented before the Faculty Senate last Tuesday..

“I think people are just paranoid,” said Carmen Garcia, a veteran switchboard operator at the Norwalk campus and co-chairwoman of the phone investigation committee. “Anywhere you work, just about, there’s always rumors of wiretapping.”

While the rumors predated Gaskin’s arrival in May 1993, the latest version can be traced to the summer of 1994, soon after the installation of digital phones in selected campus offices.

Then-Police Chief Don LaGuardia noticed what he considered to be a dangerous defect in the new system: The voice recorder hooked up to his dispatchers’ headsets continued to record office chitchat even after the phones were hung up.

“In essence, the entire campus is bugged!” he warned in a memo to Gaskin that has since been widely circulated.

LaGuardia advised the president to install switches that would deactivate idle phones. Gaskin ordered the devices, called mercury switches, for the Police Department, his top aides and himself. “I didn’t think anything of it,” he said.

Not one faculty or staff member was given one of the devices, which cost about $50 apiece. And though Gaskin had his own removed several months ago, some have never forgiven him for the oversight.

A closer look at the campus’ digital phone network shows that it would have made no difference, said Scott Cullen, a sales representative for Ericsson Inc., the company that built and installed the system.

As he told Gaskin’s investigation committee in late April, the probable culprit behind the police chief’s alarm was the department’s voice recorder.

Cullen explained that the phones used by the Police Department, administrators and some staff are digital and, with the exception of the handset itself, virtually impervious to wiretaps. For that reason, he said, workers had to hook a recorder directly to police dispatchers’ handsets to monitor incoming calls.

Since only the police phones are wired to a recording device, he said they alone need mercury switches. He said that installing such switches elsewhere on campus remains “a waste of time.”

*

To reassure employees, he suggested installing digital phones campuswide. He also advised anyone who suspects that a phone is bugged to inspect the handset for signs of tampering.

Gaskin says there is no logic to the rumors, but adds that it is hard to lay them to rest.

“It’s like boxing a ghost,” he said. “Who is listening and where are they listening and how did they get the equipment?”

Gaskin said he will ask the committee to finish its investigation and hold a public meeting to discuss the findings as early as this week.

Some committee members, however, suspect that their efforts to get the truth will never be accepted by everyone. Perhaps the only way to quell the controversy, joked committee co-chairwoman Garcia, “is to take the phone away from everybody.”