Cooley Demands Details on U.S. Wiretap Inquiry

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley criticized federal authorities Wednesday for what he described as a failure to brief him on key aspects of an investigation into whether private detective Anthony Pellicano had listened in on private conversations by prosecutors.

As part of a broader investigation into alleged wiretapping by Pellicano, who has worked for a host of Hollywood stars and prominent attorneys, federal agents have questioned several Los Angeles prosecutors over the last year. The questions have focused on criminal cases in which Pellicano was involved.

Pellicano is serving a 27-month federal prison sentence for illegally possessing explosives found in the safe of his West Hollywood office.

According to sources familiar with the case, the federal investigators have suggested that at least two deputy district attorneys, a detective for the Los Angeles Police Department and an alleged rape victim were overheard on illegal wiretaps by Pellicano.

But federal authorities so far have declined to tell Cooley or his prosecutors precisely what conversations might have been intercepted, the sources said.

“The possibility that criminal investigations and prosecutions may have been compromised by defense teams through illegal wiretapping casts a shadow over Los Angeles County’s criminal justice processes,” Cooley said in a statement Wednesday.

“Such illegal wiretapping puts lives of innocent victims and witnesses in jeopardy. It impedes the ability of dedicated men and women in the district attorney’s office and in law enforcement to seek the truth,” he said. “It is time for straight talk by federal authorities on this troubling issue.”

Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, said federal prosecutors had no immediate comment on Cooley’s remarks.

In a written statement, FBI spokeswoman Laura Bosley said: “In any investigation, if and when the FBI were to uncover evidence suggesting that innocent victims or witness lives might be in jeopardy, immediate notifications would most certainly be made.

“Likewise, if and when the FBI might learn during an investigation that a criminal investigation or prosecution had been compromised, disclosures would be made as appropriate,” the statement said.

The eavesdropping allegations involving Cooley’s office appear to stem from a case in which John Gordon Jones, a wealthy Los Angeles businessman, was acquitted of multiple rape and kidnapping charges two years ago. Jones was accused of slipping drugs into women’s drinks, taking them to his mansion in his limousine and then raping them.

FBI agents investigating the case have interviewed dozens of people to determine if Pellicano, who was working for Jones’ defense, conducted illegal wiretaps on behalf of his clients.

Sources said FBI agents had interviewed LAPD Det. Timothy Marcia and Deputy Dist. Atty. Karla Kerlin about their investigation of Jones. A second deputy district attorney, whose identity has not become public, may also have been overheard on wiretaps, sources said.

In a court hearing earlier this year, Assistant U.S. Atty. Dan Saunders, who prosecuted Pellicano, said the government had received information that “a deputy district attorney ... prosecuting a case against a defendant who had retained the services of Anthony Pellicano found that she had been tapped or bugged.”

Investigators could not prove at that point that Pellicano had conducted the wiretap, Saunders said.

Daniel Davis and Ronald Richards, lawyers who worked for Jones, have acknowledged that the businessman himself was secretly recorded by Pellicano. Both lawyers said they had not authorized the recording.

Richards and Davis said the tapes they heard captured telephone conversations involving one of Jones’ alleged victims. The calls were apparently made by the woman from Jones’ home, according to court documents.

Officials with the district attorney’s office first contacted the FBI in November 1999, because they suspected that Pellicano had eavesdropped on conversations that Kerlin and Marcia had had with one of the alleged victims in the case, according to sources with the prosecutor’s office.

One of the alleged victims who had her telephone connected to a computer answering machine heard a conversation involving other people on her line, a source said. After receiving a call from an unknown man, she hung up the phone.

However, the source said, the answering machine, which was running, stayed on the line and picked up a conversation between two men in which one said: “Did you get all that?”

Both Kerlin and Marcia had also experienced problems with their home telephones and had noticed questions from the defense about information in the case that they had only just received and had discussed in telephone calls, according to sources familiar with the probe. Both Marcia and Kerlin declined to comment. Pellicano’s attorney Donald M. Re declined to comment.

Times staff writer Chuck Philips contributed to this report.