Confessions of a ‘Known Opponent’

Forgive me if I indulge myself here--the writer’s version of spiking the ball in the end zone after a touchdown--but I’ve just been accorded one of the highest of honors.

The Nobel? Faugh! The Pulitzer? Puleez.

I made an enemies list.

My name is on a list of “Known Opponents” of Playa Vista, the development project for 1,000 coastal and wetlands acres in Playa del Rey, now without DreamWorks SKG, the Spielberg trio.

In six single-spaced pages, every one of them dated May 20, 1997, and marked CONFIDENTIAL, my name is listed near the top of Page 3. I’m a couple of spaces down from a 73-year-old naturalist and anthropologist named Tom Maxwell, and a couple of spaces ahead of a Native American activist named Rachel Noble.

On other pages are the Sierra Club, the Gray Panthers, those snakelovers of the Southwest Herpetology Society, Santa Monica Councilman Michael Feinstein, and L.A. City Councilman Nate Holden, who derided tax breaks for the project as a welfare program for billionaires.

Nearly 90 individuals and 88 groups appear under listings “Trespassed & Arrested,” “Trespassed & Eye Witnessed,” “Known Opponents” and “Known Groups Opposing Playa Vista.”

Alongside many of those names are addresses or phone numbers. A few names are accompanied by car license plate numbers; alongside the name of one Audubon Society and Sierra Club activist is what appears to be a description of the make and model of her car and its license number.

And next to one activist’s name and affiliations is this notation: “Daughter: Alana.”

Like mother, like child, I guess. Gotta watch those second-generation tree-huggers.

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This, I must tell you, is a youthful wish fulfilled.

Other kids daydreamed about winning the World Series or an Academy Award. Me, I wanted to be on the Nixon Enemies List. All the best people were.

When I grew up, I befriended two people who were actually on that list: Times cartoonist Paul Conrad, and Ed Guthman, a Bobby Kennedy aide and editor both here and at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“The Nixon people did things to those on the enemies list,” says Guthman. “We were just lucky they were a bunch of klutzes.”

Bruce Robertson’s name is on the Playa Vista list, both as “Known Opponent” and “Trespassed & Eye Witnessed.” He runs a private investigation firm, and he knows the techniques when he sees them, and boy, he says, has he seen them: Playa Vista demonstrators being videotaped, car license plates photographed as they picketed or handed out leaflets. Legal it may be, but justified?

So why was this list created?

To stop someone from waltzing in unchallenged and leaving turtle turds on employees’ desks over lunch hour? To make sure Playa Vista didn’t send me a Christmas card by mistake?

A Playa Vista spokesman said Thursday, “The list exists for security reasons.” He himself wasn’t there in 1997 and so “can’t tell you who put it together or what the thinking was.” He apologized if Holden, Feinstein and I are listed “inappropriately.”

Always alert for trespass and harassment, he added, particularly at special events, a shorter list, of about 25 names, was recently compiled for security guards. I’m not on that one.

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When I told fellow journalist Jill Stewart about the original list, she was wild with jealousy, having savaged DreamWorks and Playa Vista in the weekly New Times too recently to make that list. If someone is updating the list, please add Jill, or I’ll never hear the end of it.

But I worry--am I worthy?

I’m listed on the strength of one column that mildly rebuked the dreamers at DreamWorks, suggesting they build their studio downtown, which not only needs the boost but is already a favorite with filmmakers. I questioned the need for and the wisdom of building businesses, a studio and 13,000 homes with the corollary traffic on the last, biggest and best open space in that end of town.

It didn’t seem radical then, but it must have been enough.

*

I could get to liking this. Who else could I provoke into putting me onto a list? Maybe Wal-Mart, for filling orders for Viagra but refusing to honor doctors’ prescriptions for a morning-after pill? Or Mitsubishi, wanting to build the world’s largest saltworks on the shores of the Mexican coast’s richest whale sanctuaries?

Just be sure to spell my name right.

And in the meantime, Playa Vista, I’ll do what I can to live up to your expectations of me.

Patt Morrison’s column appears Fridays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com