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4.10.2001 00:45
Prosecutor played
secret videotape
to friends, sister
BY TRACY BRETON
and MIKE STANTON
Journal Staff Writers
PROVIDENCE
-- Richard Rose, the lead prosecutor in the federal Operation Plunder Dome investigation, showed portions of an FBI undercover videotape to his sister, a close friend and the friend's wife last summer.
Rose disclosed showing the tape in letters he sent yesterday to U.S. District Judge Ronald R. Lagueux and defense lawyers representing Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. and five others indicted last week on corruption and racketeering charges.
The people who viewed the tape were Rose's close friend, lawyer Casby Harrison III, former assistant legal counsel to Gov. Bruce Sundlun; Harrison's wife, Mary Sylvia Harrison, who is the director of the Rhode Island Children's Crusade; and Rose's sister.
Casby Harrison, contacted by The Journal at home last night, said, "I think it was the wrong thing to do -- but not a fatal mistake."
Thomas Connell, spokesman for U.S. Attorney Margaret E. Curran, confirmed last night that Rose had sent the letters to Lagueux and the defense lawyers but declined to answer questions about the circumstances of the disclosure -- or why Rose had waited from last July until yesterday to acknowledge that people other than those involved in the case had viewed any of the secret tapes.
"Richard Rose on Monday provided to the court a letter disclosing that on one occasion, he had showed portions of a Plunder Dome surveillance tape to a friend, that friend's wife and to Rose's sister. Appropriately, copies of that letter were also given to defense counsel," Connell said. "We will not comment further on that letter except to address it in court as the court deems appropriate."
Richard M. Egbert, the Boston lawyer representing Cianci, confirmed last night that he received a copy of a letter from Rose yesterday but refused to discuss its contents. Egbert said he planned to meet today to discuss the letter with lawyers representing others who were arraigned last week on a 30-count corruption indictment.
Harrison, in an interview from his home, said that he and his wife saw just one tape, for about 10 minutes, after dropping by Rose's house one night last July for a 30-minute visit after having been out to dinner. He said he remembers seeing the government's star witness in Operation Plunder Dome, Antonio Freitas, and Frank E. Corrente, Cianci's former top aide who is now facing corruption charges, talking on the tape.
But he said he did not know if it was the same tape that was leaked to WJAR-Channel 10 and played on the air recently. That tape purportedly shows Corrente in his City Hall office, taking a cash bribe from Freitas.
Corrente's lawyer, C. Leonard O'Brien, has asked Judge Lagueux to investigate how a local television station obtained videotape it aired of Corrente allegedly accepting a bribe.
In a motion filed after the tape was aired Feb. 1, O'Brien said that the tape was prejudicial to his client and violated a "non-disclosure order" that the court issued last Aug. 8 barring lawyers involved in the case from releasing any video or audio recordings to anyone other than those parties directly involved in the case.
Connell said last month that the WJAR tape did not come from "government sources" -- meaning federal prosecutors or the FBI. "The voluminous amount of material was supplied as part of the normal discovery process to interested counsel in this case," Connell said. "Once that material is furnished, then it's no longer under the exclusive control of this office."
Corrente was originally indicted last June 29.
Harrison said he saw the tape at Rose's house the following month. He said that Rose has put in long hours on Operation Plunder Dome and was reviewing tapes when Harrison and his wife dropped by.
"He was working, and we interrupted him, and the tape was cued up [in the VCR]," Harrison said. "Richard might have even had the remote in his hand. We didn't see that much -- minutes, not hours."
It was the only time that he ever saw any of the tapes, Harrison said.
Harrison said that neither he nor Rose ever discussed whether it was appropriate for the Harrisons to view the tape.
"We didn't have that kind of discussion," Harrison said. "It was no different than pressing the 'on' button on your TV."
Rose, reached at home last night, declined comment.
Corrente was indicted again last Monday on additional charges in an indictment that also names as defendants Cianci; Cianci's chief of staff, Artin H. Coloian; Cranston businessman Edward Voccola; Richard Autiello, a member of the Providence Towing Association; and Joseph A. Pannone, former chairman of the Board of Tax Assessment Review.
Last Monday -- around the same time that the Cianci indictment was made public -- Harrison was leaving his law office at 807 Broad St. when he was confronted by a man who identified himself as a private investigator hired by Corrente's lawyer, O'Brien.
The investigator asked Harrison if he had seen any of the Plunder Dome tapes. Harrison says that he didn't respond, and that the investigator left without giving his name.
Harrison said that he told Rose, who in turn alerted his superiors at the U.S. Attorney's office. Consequently, Harrison said, Rose sent a letter to Cianci's lawyer, saying that he had shown some of the tapes to Harrison and his wife.
Harrison and Rose are both prominent black lawyers in Rhode Island. Harrison said that he first met Rose late in the 1980s. They became closer friends in the early 1990s, when Rose interned during law school at a Providence firm where Harrison was working. They subsequently became, and remain, close friends and golfing buddies, Harrison said.
Asked how he would explain why he watched the tape, Harrison replied: "I would ask people to re-read the Bible, and the story of [Sodom and Gomorrah]. God tells somebody not to look back, and they did, or they would turn into [a pillar of salt]. But curiosity got the better of them, and that was the end of them."
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