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4.20.2001 00:05
Prosecutor
details showing
of secret tape
 In a letter to the federal judge in the case, Richard Rose explains he decision to show secret surveillance tapes on two occasions to friends and a relative.
BY TRACY BRETON
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE
-- Richard Rose, the lead prosecutor in the federal Operation Plunder Dome investigation, says in a letter filed in court yesterday that he showed portions of an FBI undercover videotape on two occasions to people outside the prosecution and defense camps -- something that violated a 1999 court order.
Rose says in his letter that sometime early last spring or summer, while at home, he showed portions of one secret tape to his best friend, Casby Harrison III, and Harrison's wife, Mary Sylvia Harrison, and that on another occasion, he showed part of the same tape to his sister.
He said he did so because he wanted to get "views about the events depicted on the tape" from people who had no connection to the government's investigation.
Rose says in his letter that the tape he showed his friends and sister was the same one that someone leaked to WJAR-Channel 10, which was played on the air recently. That tape purportedly shows Frank E. Corrente, the former top aide to Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr., in his City Hall office, taking a cash bribe from the government's star witness in Operation Plunder Dome, Antonio Freitas.
Rose denies in his letter -- which was sent April 9 to the judge who was then presiding over the Plunder Dome cases, and lawyers representing Corrente, Cianci and others indicted on corruption and racketeering charges -- that he or anyone else in the government camp leaked the tape to the media.
But he says that because he disclosed contents of the tape to the people at his house, he has reported himself to the Office of Professional Responsibility "for whatever disciplinary action that office may wish to undertake.
It was disclosed last week that Rose had played portions of the FBI surveillance tape to the Harrisons and his sister but since Rose refused to be interviewed about the situation, the circumstances surrounding the viewing were unclear.
Yesterday, the lawyers for Cianci, Corrente, and tow operator Richard E. Autiello, another defendant in the case, filed Rose's letter yesterday along with a motion asking a federal judge to conduct a hearing to determine who is leaking undercover tapes in the Plunder Dome investigation. The lawyers assert that the leaks -- which they say are continuing -- are depriving their clients of the right to a fair trial.
The lawyers also say that such leaks violate a court order issued by U.S. District Judge Ronald R. Lagueux that bars the government and the defense from disclosing the contents of any audio or video recordings
.
According to the order -- originally entered on June 17, 1999 -- the government was not to disseminate the tapes to anyone except defendants in the case. The defendants were also ordered not to disclose the contents of any of the tapes, except to "those deemed essential by counsel for the preparation of their client's defense."
C. Leonard O'Brien, the lawyer representing Corrente, said yesterday that that order by Lagueux was renewed on Nov. 9, 1999, two months after Anthony Annarino, the now-convicted city tax collector, was indicted.
In February -- before Cianci was charged -- O'Brien, who was representing Corrente on a previous indictment, asked Lagueux to investigate how Channel 10 had obtained the videotape it aired
.
The U.S. Attorney's office responded that the leaks were not coming from the government.
Rose says in his April 9 letter that he wants to "assure the court that the assertions in the government's response" to O'Brien's motion "were never intended to mislead the court in any way, at any time, about anything. The focus in the response was entirely on the issue arising from the public broadcast of Tape 113. Candidly, at that time, I had all but forgotten about my own actions in showing it to my friend and my sister."
While continuing to deny that the government had leaked any tapes to the media, Rose explains in his letter how and why he had come to show the tapes to the Harrisons and his sister.
"I was working at home one evening, reviewing various tapes, including Tape 113. A friend came to visit and we spent some time together. At some point in the evening, I played for him portions of Tape 113, asked him his opinion of what he saw, and specifically questioned him about how he viewed, that is, interpreted, the events depicted on the tape. My friend has advised me that his wife was also present, though I have no recollection of her being there. I certainly do not recall her being part of any discussion about the tape.
"In addition to being my best friend, the person to whom I showed the tape is an attorney who has served in government office and understands the duties and responsibilities of public service. I showed him the tape because I was generally interested in his views as someone who had no connection to the events depicted on the tape or the government's investigation.
"During this same time frame, I also showed a copy of the same tape to my sister," Rose wrote. "That too was in my home. Again, I hoped to elicit her views about the events depicted on the tape," Rose wrote.
Rose wrote the letter disclosing the unauthorized tape viewings after a private investigator hired by Corrente's lawyer approached Casby Harrison outside his Broad Street law office and asked him whether he had seen any of the Plunder Dome tapes. This occurred about two hours after the Cianci indictment was made public, according to the private investigator, Charles A. Galligan.
Harrison "stood silently for a moment in apparent shock," and when "asked to clarify the timing of the viewing . . . said . . . after a sustained pause, 'I am not saying anything,' " Galligan says, in an affidavit filed in court by the defense lawyers yesterday.
Harrison says that after this encounter, he alerted Rose, who notified his superiors. A week after Galligan's encounter with Harrison, Rose wrote his letter to Lagueux and the defense lawyers.
Yesterday's motion asks for a hearing to get at the source of the leaks to the media but it is unclear from the filing what remedies the defense is seeking.
"It would be premature" to ask for a specific remedy, O'Brien said, because the defendants do not know who is leaking the tapes.
"There's a violation of a court order. This is hurting us. We want to find out what's happening here with an eye toward stopping it. We won't propose relief until we find out who's responsible," he said.
The defense points out in its motion that leaked material continues to make its way to the airwaves. He pointed out that in the wake of the Cianci indictment, Channels 10 and 12 have broadcast reports that the government has a tape recording of a conversation between Mayor Cianci and Steven Antonson, who served on the city's Building Board of Review, and that the tape relates to a witness-tampering charge against Cianci.
In part of the indictment against him, Cianci is accused of extorting a free lifetime membership from the University Club, which in the past had refused to admit him, by holding up the club's building permits in 1998. The indictment alleges that Cianci tried to hinder Antonson from providing information to the FBI and to a federal grand jury.
O'Brien said yesterday that the defense hasn't been told by the government that a tape such as that described by Channels 10 and 12 even exists.
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