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6.9.2001 00:54
FBI document
a 'time-bomb,'
defense claims
• Defense lawyers argue that release of an affidavit that includes such chapters as "Money Laundering Needs To Be Done Right" could prejudice potential jurors.
BY TRACY BRETON
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE
-- Lawyers for Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. and others indicted with him in the Operation Plunder Dome corruption case are trying to block the release of an FBI affidavit that was used to get a search warrant for City Hall offices, saying that it is so one-sided and inflammatory that it would taint the jury pool in the case.
Lawyers for Cianci and his codefendants assert in a memorandum of law filed yesterday in the public court record that the affidavit was purposely crafted by the government as part of a "pre-planned stratagem to influence the potential jury pool." They call it "a kind of time bomb roughly calibrated to explode during pre-trial proceedings."
The lawyers for Cianci and three of his codefendants -- Frank E. Corrente, Artin H. Coloian and Richard E. Autiello -- say the 95-page FBI affidavit is filled with new information that has remained out of the public domain to date. They describe it as "a particularly virulent brew of opinion, hearsay and totem pole hearsay, all salted with the partisan commentary of the affidavit's author, Agent W. Dennis Aiken."
Release of the affidavit in the pretrial stage of the case -- as The Providence Journal is requesting -- will result in a "media feeding frenzy . . . days, if not weeks, of front-page coverage," the defense lawyers predict. This could ruin the defendants' chances of getting a fair and impartial jury to hear the case, the lawyers assert.
They say some of the material in the affidavit may be inadmissible at trial and that its release would harm others -- people who are mentioned in the affidavit but who have never been charged in the case and who have privacy rights at stake.
The memorandum says that the affidavit crafted by Aiken is written in a way unlike others normally submitted in criminal cases. The defense lawyers say that the Operation Plunder Dome affidavit "is stitched together in storybook format, replete with evocative chapter headings" such as "Money Laundering Needs To Be Done Right,"
"
Corrente,
"
"Absolutely They Know What The [Expletive] I Mean,
"
and "The Only Thing Cianci Worries About Is Money."
"It purports to give verbatim or near-verbatim recitals of multiple interactions between a government informant and several city officials, particularly Joseph Pannone and David Ead (two former officials on the city's Board of Tax Assessment Review). These two individuals pose at length about their access to corridors of power, the venality of their superiors and the alleged interactions they have had with several of the named defendants in this case, all of which conveniently occur off-stage," the defense lawyers say.
The defense lawyers say they would not be able to rebut what's in the affidavit because of the sweeping gag order that has been issued in the case.
They say they have no objection to releasing parts of the affidavit that deal with two City Hall employees already convicted in the case, Anthony E. Annarino Jr., and the late Rosemary H. Glancy -- but that they do object to the release of other material in the affidavit.
The defense arguments opposing The Providence Journal's motion to gain access to the affidavit -- which was presented to a judge two years ago to get a search warrant for city government offices -- was part of a raft of legal memoranda entered in the public court file yesterday by the federal judge who is presiding over the Plunder Dome case, Ernest C. Torres.
Torres has scheduled a hearing for June 20 on the newspaper's motion to unseal the search-warrant affidavit. The U.S. Attorney's office is not objecting to the motion.
There were other developments in the case revealed for the first time yesterday in the legal memoranda that was put in the public record:
• The U.S. Attorney's office has submitted more than 50 pages of legal arguments and 31 exhibits to Torres in an effort to disqualify Cianci's lawyer, Richard M. Egbert, of Boston, from representing him in the case.
Exactly why the government is trying to oust Egbert from the case has been the subject of secret court filings to date. But a hearing on the government's motion is scheduled for June 26 and Egbert says in court papers that "it is clear that the government [has been] preparing a full-scale assault on the defendant's counsel of choice." Egbert also claims that the government's pleadings to disqualify him contain "various misstatements of fact."
Egbert, at Cianci's recommendation, was hired by the city last year to represent it in a $20-million civil rights/wrongful death suit filed by the estate of slain Providence police officer Cornel Young Jr.
More recently, the city paid Egbert $31,328 to defend Cianci in a now-settled civil racketeering and whistleblower's suit filed by Christopher J. Ise, a city planner who said he paid a $5,000 bribe to get hired. That allegation is now part of the criminal case against Cianci.
• The U.S. Attorney's office says the restraining order that has frozen all of the money in the Friends of Cianci bank accounts should remain in place. If it is lifted, prosecutors say, the mayor will spend all of the money in his campaign accounts before he is tried, leaving nothing to be forfeited to the government in the event of his conviction.
The government says that if there are outstanding bills to be paid, there is nothing to prevent the mayor from forming a new campaign fund and collecting money to pay its bills. The frozen funds, the government says, were acquired "through a pattern of racketeering."
Despite its position on keeping the campaign funds frozen, the U.S. Attorney's office said in court papers that creditors who are owed money could attempt to get paid from the funds if the debt was incurred before the restraining order was issued April 3. Documentation must be submitted to the U.S. Attorney's office showing it is "a legitimate campaign debt."
Torres has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday on whether to modify the restraining order to let the campaign organization pay its bills.
• Judge Torres's recent appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the leak to WJAR Channel 10 of a secret undercover videotape in the Plunder Dome investigation stemmed from a request for one made last February by C. Leonard O'Brien, the lawyer for Corrente, after the television station aired the tape. Corrente is seen on the tape in his City Hall office, purportedly accepting a cash bribe from undercover informant Antonio R. Freitas. The government objected to the request for appointment of a special prosecutor, saying an investigation into the leak "would most likely be futile" since reporter Jim Taricani could probably not be compelled under law to reveal his source.
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