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BREAKING – Sheriff Bamonte headed for OK Corral – gunfight imminent (Murder and corruption Spokane, WA)

To All:

Former Sheriff Bamonte of Pend Oreille County, WA just strapped on his guns again and is headed to the OK Corral. A gunfight is imminent to rid Spokane of the incestuous and insidious evil ongoing criminal enterprise/conspiracy that has so systemically infested this town for the last 100 years.

Sheriff Bamonte is a “Sheepdog” as I too am and we will not allow a robbery to occur in plain sight in our presence. We will alert the flock and defend it from predators that would seek to prey on it. If you are not aware Sheriff Bamonte is a legendary “cop’s cop.” Read the bestselling book by a NYT reporter that chronicles a murder case solved by Sheriff Bamonte, Breaking Blue:

In 1935, the Spokane police regularly extorted sex, food, and money from the reluctant hobos (many of them displaced farmers who had fled the Midwestern dust bowls), robbed dairies, and engaged in all manner of nefarious crimes, including murder. This history was suppressed until 1989, when former logger, Vietnam vet, and Spokane cop Tony Bamonte discovered a strange 1955 deathbed confession while researching a thesis on local law enforcement history. Bamonte began to probe what had every appearance of widespread police crime and a massive cover-up whose highlight was the unsolved murder of Town Marshall George Conff. The fact that many of those involved, now in their 80s and 90s, were still alive made it imperative that Bamonte unravel this mystery. The result is Breaking Blue, a white-knuckle ride through institutional corruption and cover-up that vividly documents Depression-era Spokane and an extraordinary case that few believed would ever be brought to light.

Mind you I was recently was told of this story that I have since confirmed by another retired member of SPD. Sheriff Bamonte was formerly a SPD motorcycle cop before he went onto to be the Sheriff of Pend Oreille County, WA. He was off duty working extra duty traffic control when he heard the radio call go out of a shooting/robbery at a Downtown department store. Bamonte jumped on his motorcycle and rode against traffic to the department store. He ran into the store with his gun concealed behind his leg. He ran up the down escalater to the 2nd floor where the shooting was reported to have occurred. As he ran up the escalater he met a man running down. There was a brief encounter with the man ID’ing himself as store security and said he could point out the suspect. They both then ran back down the escalator onto the main floor. The store security person pointed to the suspect as he was nearing an exit door and said, “That’s him.” The suspect was wearing a trenchcoat and upon hearing the shout turned and leveled a gun at the approaching Bamonte. Bamonte brought his gun up at hit hip and fired striking the suspect on the bridge of his glasses. The man was looking sideways at Bamonte when Bamonte’s shot struck him between the eyes. The round thus did not fully penetrate the shooter’s brain but left him permanently disabled. This suspect had just shot dead a store clerk on the 2nd floor in this aborted robbery.

Will the citizens of Spokane once and for all back Sheriff Bamonte and others to rid this evil from our midst? Or will they sit idly by as they have in the past, cowed in fear of this evil in our midst. Now is the time come to the aid of Sheriff Bamonte and take back the government that WE THE PEOPLE empower from the clutches of this evil that is sucking on the public treasury like some lowly river leech.

Ron the Cop

UPDATE I:

I have great respect and admiration for Sheriff Bamonte and Sheriff Knezovich. I should disclose I became a ardent supporter and campaigned on behalf of Sheriff Knezovich after hearing him on the Mark Fuhrman Radio Show when he was running for sheriff against Cal Walker. I continue to maintain contact with him. I still have confidence in Sheriff Knezovich and Chief Kirkpatrick. I believe that they are between a rock and a hard place. Having worked political corruption cases in the past I’m more convinced that the Sheriff and the Chief just don’t have the in place resources to root out this evil in town. And even if they did there would be conflict of interest issues. The feds are the best to handle this but unfortunately they are not very transparent, keep things very close to vest, and work in the dark. Their investigations can run many years before any results are apparent if any. Sheriff Bamonte has a differing opinion and believes at least the Savage case can be pursued at the state level. I’m on the fence and could go either way depending how engaged the feds really are on these cases. I have yet to make up my mind.

Chief Kirkpatrick referred the Savage case to the feds because the feds had just taken on a review of the RPS bond fraud with the recusal of US Attorney Jim McDevitt. The Savage case could perhaps have been handled at the state level with the assistance of the Washington State Patrol and the Washington Attorney General’s Office with the convening of a state grand jury if they had been asked to come into the Savage case by either Sheriff Knezovich or Chief Kirkpatrick and or jointly. I’ve met with Sheriff Knezovich and spoken with him on the phone he has assured me that the feds have been giving him regular updates and that they would have an answer one way or another before the statue of limitations runs out on the Jo Savage First-Degree Manslaughter case under Wasington State Law. The RPS fraud and Savage cases are currently under review by the US Attorney’s Office in Seattle now that US Attorney Jim McDevitt has recused himself and were reassigned to the Seattle Office. Two Assistant US Attorneys are now reviewing the documents that Tim Connor of Camas Magazine and former Council member Cherie Rodgers provided to US Attorney Jim Mcdevitt who subsequently recused himself because of his employment with the law firm of Preston & Gates that was involved in the issuance of the RPS bond (See Camas Magazine, “McDevitt’s Fingerprints”).  Michael Ormsby of Preston & Gates who was without precedent publicly castigated by the IRS last year for his involvement:

This is the same Michael Ormsby that the IRS took the unprecedented action of castigating publicly in implicating him in the RPS bond fraud as reported in Bond Buyer for, “. . . incompetence and disreputable conduct”[My emphasis]. The Bond Buyer mistakenly reported though that the tax-exempt status of the RPS bonds was preserved in this settlement. In fact the tax-exempt status was disallowed and the IRS got its back taxes of . . . through a secret deal with Preston & Gates [Note: I had an amount of these taxes previously but can no longer stand by that number]

I told Sheriff Knezovich I had the brass to believe with what I know I could make the Jo Savage case if I had a cooperative local prosecutor however the white collar crime aspect of this case would definitely make it much stronger. Local DA Tucker’s past performance and practice leaves a lot to be desired in handling cases of this magnitude. This is the FBI’s specialty. I’ve said all along from my read of the IRS report, Camas Magazine documents, papers of O. Yale Lewis, Attorney Mark Schwartz’s letter to the then Mayor Powers withheld from Council, I would have impaneled a federal grand jury a long time ago to secure and compel the testimony of reluctant witnesses and to once and for all review all the evidence to determine if any federal criminal indictments are warranted. To do anything less in my opinion would be a travesty of justice.

With that said my main concern is that Sheriff Knezovich and Chief Kirkpatrick may be putting too much trust in the feds. Will they commit and actually engage on these cases? The feds at times march to different drummers, suffer from multiple layers of bureaucratic inertia and are sometimes like pushing Jello up hill. The feds could be rustling the papers and letting the game clock run out. There is an upcoming presidential election that may replace sitting US Attorneys. Sheriff Knezovich and Chief Kirkpatrick may have expressed their concerns in private to the feds but they need to assure the public that they are watching the feds to ensure the feds don’t dump these cases. I concur with Sheriff Bamonte a year is a long time to go for the principal witnesses in the Jo Savage murder case not to be interviewed and their testimony obtained for the record. That’s assuming they haven’t been called in secret before a fed grand jury. I find this somewhat unlikely as our spider web probably would have signaled witnesses were being called to testify and or interviewed. I know sometime us cops can be pains in the butts as victims and demand a lot. However with what is at stake in these cases the spotlight needs to be put on the feds to ensure they do their job.

There is no doubt in my mind that a successful case of negligent homicide re the Savage death can be brought at the State level regarding the actions and omissions related to due diligence and lack of ordinary care of the owners of the RPS parking garage that were the direct cause of her death. This could perhaps be done by the State Attorney General’s Office with the investigation done by the Washington State Patrol if requested. Such an investigation could parallel and dovetail with the federal organized crime investigation.

To excise the incestuous, insidious, and embedded evil of this ongoing criminal enterprise/conspiracy from our midst it’s going to take the full resources of the federal government. My words of caution to both Sheriff Knezovich and Chief Kirkpatrick are that they don’t get left in the train station if the feds tarry too long and let the state statue of limitations lapse on the Savage case. Yes the feds can get around statue of limitations issue by a showing that this whole matter is the result of an ongoing criminal enterprise/conspiracy which would remove the time limit for bringing a case but this would require jumping through many more hoops which may not be necessary if they pursued these cases in a timely fashion.

Ron the Cop

*****

I received this email from Larry Shook of Camas Magazine in answer to an email from Sheriff Bamonte:

Dear Sheriff Bamonte: Thank you for providing me with the letter below that you wrote to Spokane Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich concerning the death of Jo Ellen Savage in the River Park Square parking garage. As you note, I have previously requested that you keep me informed of your efforts to bring about a first-degree manslaughter investigation into Ms. Savage’s death. I appreciate your doing so.

You also make a “formal” request of me to respond to this letter to Sheriff Knezovich and to certain of the material referred to in the letter. Because of the gravity of your efforts, their relevance to my reporting, the significance of the contents of this material, and in order to create as broad a record as possible, in honoring your request I am also copying my response to various public officials and to individuals whose actions are at issue in your investigation. I am also blind copying this e-mail to many citizens whom I know are concerned about the Cowles family’s conduct in Spokane.

Your recent letters to Sheriff Knezovich, and Mayor Verner’s 11/02/07 e-mail to you, in which she acknowledges Spokane’s “powers that be,” are included as attachments to this e-mail. I have done this in order to assist recipients in forming their own conclusions. All recipients of this correspondence are naturally free to distribute it as they choose. Because of the extraordinary public interest at issue, I encourage wide distribution of this material. I believe that not only the citizens of Spokane, but also those of the region and nation, need to be made aware of the public corruption you are helping to expose. As former Spokane Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers said of Spokane’s public corruption, “It’s a kind of cancer.”
Cancer spreads.

Let me begin by saying that in more than 30 years experience as a journalist, I consider this body of correspondence (your letter to Sheriff Knezovich, Mayor Verner’s 11/02/07 e-mail to you, and Mr. Cowles’s letter to you) to be one of the most illuminating public records I have ever seen. This is because of: 1) The evidence of public corruption in Spokane that it contains; 2) The evidence it contains that the mayor of Spokane is well aware of this corruption; 3) And the attitude toward this corruption on the part of Spokesman-Review publisher Stacey Cowles, one of those most implicated by the evidence. Mr. Cowles is so implicated because of the role played by his newspaper in misleading the public about the multi-million dollar River Park Square fraud and the circumstances of Ms. Savage’s death.

You write that you do not know how to respond to Mr. Cowles’s June 5, 2008 letter to you “without insulting his integrity or memory.” I’m afraid that I don’t either.

In his letter to you, Mr. Cowles writes: “There is zero evidence of any member of the Cowles family ‘controlling’ City Hall or any of the men or women who work in it as elected officials or employees.”

I don’t know why Mr. Cowles put “controlling” in quotes, unless it was an attempt to give the word some strangely narrow or technical connotation meant to evade the extraordinary evidence that it was his family’s extraordinary influence over Spokane’s city government that caused the scandal surrounding the River Park Square “public/private partnership.”

Mr. Cowles’s letter to you is so fundamentally at odds with the documented record that I consider it nothing less than sophistry of the most transparent kind. I’m not going to respond to that sophistry in great detail because of the magnitude of the absurdity involved. I actually liken Mr. Cowles’s letter to you to denials that the Holocaust took place. Instead, I invite you, and all others who might be interested, to compare Mr. Cowles’s letter to you to the published reporting at www.camasmagazine.com.

This needn’t take a lot of work. For a quick comparison of Mr. Cowles’s characterization versus the published record, click on “Archives” at the Camas Web site. Then click on “The Ultimate Archive” and download it onto your computer as a pdf. This is an 800 plus-page searchable document that contains all Camas reporting, plus links to the massive documentation behind it.

As an orientation in using the search function, key in, for instance, “Editor & Publisher.” That will bring up the article, “Cowles Conflict-of-Interest Draws Censure,” page 463. The article contains a harrowing warning by Seattle Times publisher Frank Blethen that the Cowles family’s media abuse represents a threat to democracy in America. Go to the end of the article and click on the link to the July 15, 2002 Editor & Publisher magazine editorial called “Slapp-Happy Spokane.” There, you will read the Bible of the American newspaper industry censuring the Cowles family for suing elected officials for having the nerve to criticize the Cowleses for improperly leveraging some $100 million of the public’s money to re-develop their shopping mall.

Again, let me emphasize that you don’t have to read all, or even much, of Camas’s reporting and support documentation in order to evaluate Mr. Cowles’s statements. Instead, take just a few minutes and review the 15-page table of contents and thumbnail summary of each article. You’ll read entries like:

“Schwartz Files Released. March 23, 2002. A Former City Attorney Tried Unsuccessfully to Block Excessive Cowles Profit-Taking.” That story, on page 289, describes secret efforts of former city attorney Stan Schwartz. Not only did the public never get to learn of Mr. Schwartz’s concerns, Mr. Schwartz left city government as River Park Square was sinking into its securities fraud scandal. He went to work for the Cowles law firm of Witherspoon Kelley, where, as he informed his former City of Spokane colleague Dennis Beringer, the city’s former real estate manager, he works extensively with Betsy Cowles on real estate deals. Obviously, Mr. Schwarz’s employment change has the appearance of a thank you and reminder from the Cowles family: Thank you for helping us with our excess profit-taking. Remember to keep your mouth shut.

And: “Document of the Week. August 7, 2003. City bond counsel gave advice to the Cowles family.” That story, on page 577, describes how former City of Spokane bond counsel Roy Koegen told Cowles public relations representative Janet Gilpatrick that he had advised Stacey Cowles how to use the Cowles newspaper to manipulate public opinion concerning the River Park Square securities fraud case. Gilpatrick wrote a memo about her conversation with Koegen to Betsy Cowles and other Cowles public relations personnel. “‘If Talbott knew…it would be a very bad thing,'” advised Gilpatrick. “‘He is very, very concerned that his handprints are not on any of these ideas,’ she wrote. ‘And if [then-mayor John] Talbott knew he had any contact with ‘the family,’ it would be a very bad thing.'”

Yes, a very bad thing, indeed.

“The family” Ms. Gilpatrick referred to, of course, is the one that the current mayor of Spokane, Mary Verner, clearly suggested to you in her 11/2/07 e-mail constitutes the “powers that be” in Spokane. This is “the family” that actually runs Spokane, in other words.

What Koegen, Betsy Cowles and Stacey Cowles and their public relations firm did is a veritable onionskin of misconduct. What it comes down to is that the bond counsel charged with protecting Spokane’s taxpayers, in blatant violation of his legal, moral, and ethical responsibilities, conspired with the beneficiary of a bond sale that violated federal tax rules to fool the public about the truth. This resulted in a multi-million-dollar fraud that will take Spokane’s taxpayers a generation to pay off. Meanwhile, Mr. Koegen, with the blessings of the Washington State Bar Association, still practices law.

A mere glance at the Camas table of contents reveals that these two incidents typify the hidden connivance that took place between the Cowles family and city officials in defrauding the public of an extraordinary amount of money. That connivance, as I report in “Death by Parking” at www.girlfromhotsprings.com, may also have contributed to the death of a patron of the Cowles parking garage. This connivance is why the first RPS special counsel, O. Yale Lewis, immediately found evidence of a conspiracy between the Cowleses and city officials to misappropriate public funds.

I will remark on two additional comments from Mr. Cowles’s letter to you. “There is no evidence of Cowles family media control; this too is a populist myth used by those who need us as a bogeyman,” he writes.

Contrast that with the picture of Cowles media conduct that emerges from the story “All In The Family,” page 102, a national prize-winning article, and “Camas Investigation Wins National Prize,” page 692, at www.camasmagzine.com. The latter story concerns a 10-part reporting package called “How The Spokesman-Review Subverted Democracy in Spokane, Washington.” Because you mention that you are in the process of bringing a class action lawsuit against the Cowleses and their co-conspirators, you might find this reporting especially useful. For the purposes of your litigation, a pragmatic alternative headline could easily be: “How The Cowleses Used their Newspaper to Pervert Justice and Defraud Taxpayers in Washington State’s Second-Largest City.”

You might also wish to contrast Mr. Cowles’s denial of his family’s media control with the articles, “‘The Stench That Won’t Go Away’ How The Spokesman-Review’s credibility crisis turned deadly,” and “A Newspaper Monopoly Town: An old Harvard economics thesis foreshadowed
the River Park Square controversy” at www.girlfromhotsprings.com. In these various articles, you will see that Cowles editorial personnel do not share Mr. Cowles’s sanguine view of his family’s media conduct.

Also contrast Mr. Cowles’s statement about his family’s media control with the facts surrounding the Mark Fuhrman Radio Show. Mr. Fuhrman had hosted several programs that frankly addressed the River Park Square scandal. The Cowles family entered into a partnership that purchased the radio station broadcasting the Fuhrman Show, fired Fuhrman, and hired his producer, Rebecca Mack, to begin broadcasting a new radio show from the offices of the Cowles newspaper. The change was promoted with a color photo of Ms. Mack on the front page of The Spokesman-Review. A simple comparison of Ms. Mack’s non-Cowles programming with her Cowles-funded programming should prove informative for jurors of a class action lawsuit.

Also contrast Mr. Cowles’s statement with the fate of Tom Grant. See “Requiem for a Reporter” at www.camasmagazine.com.

Contrast it, too, with the evidence contained in the request made by former Camas senior editor Tim Connor and former Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers for the U.S. Department of Justice to launch a criminal investigation into River Park Square’s public corruption. (See “Indictments Sought” at www.camasmagazine.com.)

Finally, Mr. Cowles’s reference to assistant U.S. attorney Jim McDevitt deserves special attention. “If we endorsed Jim McDevitt, it was because he’s a talented, independent-minded and capable attorney,” Mr. Cowles wrote you.

But the evidence is clear that Mr. McDevitt played a crucial role in the RPS fraud. He was an attorney for the law firm that represented the seller of the RPS garage municipal bonds used to pay the Cowleses an exorbitant price for the facility. (See “Hocus-Pocus” at www.camasmagazine.com.) Mr. McDevitt, in compliance with a request from RPS developer Betsy Cowles, helped suppress the news that nearly half the money needed to pay off the bonds was lost before the bond proceeds were released to the Cowles family. That cover-up virtually guaranteed the garage’s bankruptcy with the attendant fiscal disaster it visited on Spokane.

As with Mr. Koegen’s conduct, it is hard to adequately summarize the magnitude of Mr. McDevitt’s wrongdoing. Suffice it to say that he was instrumental in illegally transferring $26 million of a bond sale that violated federal tax law to Cowles real estate companies. (It was an illegal transfer, because federal law required that prospective investors be informed of the lost revenue. Spokane taxpayers, who would be making up for the massive revenue deficit with precious funds meant to maintain Spokane’s streets and pay for Spokane’s police and fire protection, had a legal right to know, too; and public officials who conspired to hide the lost revenue from Spokane’s citizens are part of the public corruption that permeates RPS.) But the Cowleses wanted investors kept in the dark about that lost revenue. And they also wanted the people of Spokane—their own neighbors whose money they were effectively stealing—kept in the dark. They wanted them lied to. And, with his illegal silence, Mr. McDevitt went along with that request.

That was “talented, independent-minded and capable” lawyering of Mr. McDevitt, as Mr. Cowles sees it. The Cowles newspaper ran a flattering story heralding Mr. McDevitt as the “perfect choice” for U.S. attorney for Eastern Washington.

“Thank you for helping us steal,” is what that story basically said. But the story went beyond that in its menacing impact. It said, “Here is the kind of immoral, illegal conduct that Cowles media will publicly celebrate as commendable when it furthers the family’s enterprise.” That’s why I compare Mr. Cowles’s letter to you to Holocaust denial. As history records, at the heart of the Nazi madness was the ability of Nazis to convince themselves that they were good people doing a difficult thing.

Mr. McDevitt’s subsequent appointment put him in the perfect position to cover up the RPS robbery, and his role in it. As U.S. attorney for Eastern Washington, he was able to ensure that there would be no federal criminal probes. The RPS securities fraud that is costing Spokane taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, and the circumstances leading up to Jo Savage’s tragic death, are matters that the “perfect choice” for U.S. attorney for Eastern Washington has diligently ignored.

For details of Mr. McDevitt’s “talented, independent-minded and capable” legal conduct, see “McDevitt’s Fingerprints,” “Indictments Sought,” “Jim McDevitt’s Non-Disclosure,” “McDevitt v. Ethics Rules,” and “Under the Influence” at www.camasmagazine.com.

Within the “McDevitt’s Fingerprints” package you will find the entire Spokesman-Review article about Mr. McDevitt’s appointment to assistant U.S. attorney. I urge you and all other recipients of this e-mail to study it carefully and compare it with the record of Mr. McDevitt’s conduct made available by the Camas reporting. I believe this is a valuable exhibit of how the Cowles family uses its media to reward those who assist it in its corrupt practices.

Please note that this e-mail is being copied to Stacey Cowles, his editor, Steve Smith, and certain Cowles reporters. I do this in order to test Mr. Cowles’s assertion that perception of his family’s media monopoly is a “populist myth.” If Cowles media were an honest enterprise, pledged to serving the public interest, under the published ethical standards of journalism, Cowles personnel, beginning with Mr. Cowles himself, would vigorously pursue the facts as they are presented in this correspondence. Failure to do so, I believe, exposes Mr. Cowles and his family as cynical exploiters of the public and those in the family’s employ as little more than indentured servants in an enterprise of massive public corruption.

The recent hiring of former Fuhrman Show producer Rebecca Mack is one of the most poignant examples of this I have seen. As former Los Angeles Police Dept. Detective Mark Fuhrman’s colleague, Ms. Mack was as gutsy as Det. Fuhrman himself in discussing Cowles corruption. When the Cowleses put Ms. Mack’s smiling picture in a banner atop the August 6, 2008 edition of The Spokesman-Review it struck me as one of those stranger-than-fiction ironies history is so famous for. It was exactly a year-to-the-day earlier that Ms. Mack and Det. Fuhrman had questioned a nervous Jim McDevitt on their radio show about his complicity in the RPS fraud. And now here was Ms. Mack being publicly paraded as the newest Cowles editorial property. All things considered, for me at least, it was like seeing a POW paraded by her captors.

Jo Savage’s death underscores the brutality of this situation. In his letter to you, Mr. Cowles comes close to blaming Ms. Savage for her own death by “crashing” through and “testing” a barrier put there to save her. Had the Savage death gone to trial, the full cynicism of Mr. Cowles’s interpretation would have been brought to life. Jurors would have been presented with the evidence you cite of the Cowles family’s indifference to public safety. They would have been able to gauge for themselves the impact of Ms. Savage’s death on her loved ones, beginning with her son Jesse. But that didn’t happen, and it leaves Mr. Cowles free to disparage Ms. Savage for the carelessness on her part that claimed her life. Of course, Ms. Savage should have known, as any reasonable patron of the Cowles garage should know, that those barriers aren’t really barriers. They aren’t actually capable of holding cars in the garage and protecting drivers’ lives. That seems to be Mr. Cowles’s argument. And he makes it with full knowledge that none of the indentured servants who work as reporters for him will challenge him by actually reporting on the facts.

Naturally, a grand jury would have found all of this evidence—and the evidence produced during the RPS securities fraud trial–informative. But through the selective reporting and reward and punishment of their media, what Mayor Verner acknowledges are “the powers that be” in Spokane have apparently succeeded in dissuading public officials from serving their constituents and calling for a grand jury.

A class action jury will no doubt find all of this evidence informative. The evidence suggests to me that such a trial will prove historical in the most literal possible sense.

Sheriff, you made a “formal” request of me to respond to your recent correspondence. In trying to honor your request I have let this response run on too long. As you can see, it could go on much longer. The evidence suggests to me that River Park Square, and “the powers that be” in our community, represent a bottomless pit of corruption.

I will close by saying that, again based on the evidence, I certainly understand your frustration with the response of Spokane Mayor Mary Verner, Spokane Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick, and Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich to your multiple requests for them to discharge their duties as prescribed by the Revised Code of Washington. I confess that the long delay on the part of federal investigators in responding to your first-degree manslaughter complaint and the Rodgers/Connor fraud complaint also causes me great concern. Your class action lawsuit will produce a long list of witnesses, elected and appointed officials among them, whose testimony, coupled with the considerable discovery this litigation will entail, will help the public finally understand what was done to it, how much it cost in money, and how much it continues to cost the citizens of Spokane, Washington State, and the nation itself.

Sincerely, Larry Shook
Attachments: Cowles letter to you and two letters from you to S

July 30, 2008

Hi Larry:

As you are aware, we are working on a major history book of this area. One of our chapters will cover public/private collusion, fraud and corruption involving the Cowles family. My research substantiates that this political corruption goes back over 100 years, but the most blatant and costly organized corruption in the history of Spokane involves the RPS scheme.

For your own journalistic research purposes, you asked me to keep you posted on my documentation concerning my efforts to seek justice in the public’s best interest. As such, I am enclosing copies of letters I mailed to Sheriff Knezovich on July 23, 2008 and July 30, 2008. As you know, I have been disappointed with the integrity level of our governmental leadership and, consequently, have been documenting much of the evidence of corruption that I have found. Also, as a result of correspondence I have generated to this point in my documentation, I have concluded that there appears to be an ongoing cover-up by public officials who have been and continue to be party to this criminal conduct.

I have advised you on a number of occasions that your reporting in Camas Magazine and on your Girl From Hot Springs web site concerning the RPS scandal is an important source of information for our project. Consequently, I have written Spokesman-Review Editor Steven Smith five letters and publisher Stacey Cowles two letters asking both of them to identify anything in your writings that is not accurate or truthful. Editor Smith replied to one of my letters stating: “Mr. Bamonte – I stand behind my previous statements without qualification or equivocation. And, as always, you may quote me.” That response did not answer my questions and was obscure to me, as I did not know what “previous statements” he was referring to. Mr. Smith has made no statements to me concerning my requests that he provide me with documentation of errors in your reporting.

Stacey Cowles has e-mailed a response to both of my letters. His first response was a non-response similar to Mr. Smith’s. I am enclosing a copy of his second response, which I ask that you take a look at and comment on. To this date, I have not responded to that e-mail as it both ignores my request to document errors in your reporting and makes assertions of facts completely at odds with your reporting, and the facts as I have been able to independently learn them. Although I appreciate the time Mr. Cowles took to formulate his response, I don’t know exactly how to respond without insulting his integrity or memory.

For example, his company took delivery of the Walker Condition Assessment Engineer’s final report issued June 14, 1996. This report documents the deteriorated condition of the garage and the dangerous lack of safety repairs. It specifically addressed the concern that the pre-cast panels used to keep cars from falling out of the garage were in need of replacement or repair, stating some have deteriorated “so far as to threaten the immediate stability of the panels.” In fact, it was a failure of one of these panels that caused the death of Jo Ellen Savage. Ten years later, when Jo Ellen Savage’s car bumped one of these very panels and was pulled by the lip of that panel over the side of the garage to her gruesome death four stories below, the recommended repairs from this report had still not been completed. Adding to evidence of the Cowles family’s reckless disregard for public safety is the fact that following Ms. Savage’s death and months after, throughout the summer of 2006, other than securing a piece of plywood in place of the panel that had pulled Savage to her death, repairs were still not made. Cars were allowed to still park directly below the exact location of the failed pre-cast panel. Moreover, mall patrons were permitted to dine in an outdoor seating area directly beneath these dangerous panels.

Also, there was the Jacobson & Associates, Inc. Report, an engineering report completed in 2003 for the purpose of assisting with the appraisal work required to sell this garage to the city. This report scathingly condemns the condition of the garage and strongly accentuates that the recommendations in the Walker report were not followed. (It should be noted that the RPS garage was not a new garage. It was built in 1973-74.) The 2003 Jacobson Report again greatly emphasizes the dangerous condition of the parking garage and blatant disregard of the known and immediate recommended repairs – repairs that were recommended, but ignored, as needing immediate attention in 1996. Page three of this report specifically brings to the attention of all concerned that the recommendations concerning the dangerous conditions outlined in the 1996 Walker report had not been performed stating: “These findings are serious and indicate an imperative for actions to repair, restore and protect it as a safe low life-cycle cost facility.”

Based on these two reports, had the owners of the parking garage followed their recommendations, Jo Savage would not have been killed as a result of the known dangerous conditions that were recklessly left to exist.

Another glaring example exists of the Cowles family’s long-standing knowledge of the hazard that killed Ms. Savage. On May 18, 2006, the Spokesman-Review published a photo of a barrier failure that had occurred in 1990. That failure was almost identical to the one that took Ms. Savage’s life 16 years later. There simply is no way of reconciling the evidence to fit Mr. Cowles’s version of the facts. In view of this, I consider certain statements Mr. Cowles made in his June 5, 2008, e-mail to me to reflect some of the most callous disregard for human life that I have ever encountered in my 25-year law enforcement career. Mr. Cowles’s statement in his e-mail response to me: “. . . a woman tragically, but neglectfully crashes her car off a parking deck that owners ensured met nationally accepted building code requirements and was considered safe by 3rd parties before that instant. We did not advise the driver to test our barriers, nor did we have the obligation to tell her not to. . . .” The eyewitness accounts clearly show Ms Savage was not neglectful nor was she intentionally risking her life to test the garage’s safety. Also, according to the accident report, there was only minor scuffing on her front bumper where it came in contact with the wall panel. That disrespectful statement by Mr. Cowles directly flies in the face of the facts as they truly exist and suggests that he feels no remorse that Ms. Savage died as a direct result of his family’s neglect of a well-documented public safety hazard.

Among the most brazen points Mr. Cowles makes in his response to me was his following statement: “I don’t know why Bill Pupo or Nick Dragisich would recommend against City inspection of the garage, except that they may have felt it wasn’t worth the time or expense. You should ask them.” I have mailed copies of the Berringer report to Editor Smith, Publisher Cowles, Chief Kirpatrick, Sheriff Knezxovich and Mayor Verner. In his report Mr. Berringer provides evidence that Betsy Cowles ordered Pupo not to inspect the garage. This was extremely upsetting to at least 15 city employees who were aware of this and a direct violation of the cities building inspection policy. When I provided the Mayor and Steve Smith with this information, I asked Mr. Smith to conduct a journalistic investigation into Mr. Berringer’s allegations, which he did not respond to. They were obviously ordered not to inspect the garage because the previous reports strongly suggested the garage would not pass inspection. If as Mr. Cowles stated, “they may have felt it wasn’t worth the time or expense,” That would be a major news story. Why are all other construction projects required to be inspected, but not the Cowles because it wasn’t worth the time or expense. Had it been inspected by the city as required, it wouldn’t have passed an inspection as attested to by the previous private inspection reports and the barrier failure that took Ms. Savage’s life. Incidentally, I checked the city records and the RPS parking garage that Ms. Savage died in was not inspected by the city.

Although the lack of response by Editor Smith and Publisher Cowles to my inquiry concerning the Camas reporting suggests they cannot find anything untruthful or inaccurate in your reporting, I have a policy, as a former law enforcement officer and current writer/publisher/historian, to exhaust every effort to learn the facts. As such, please accept this e-mail as a formal request for you to respond to my (attached) letters to Sheriff Knezovich and (attached) June 5, 2008, e-mail response from Publisher Stacey Cowles.

This request is doubly important to me now, as the filing phase of a class action litigation to be brought against the Cowles family and certain city officials who may have acted illegally is approaching. Because of evidence contained in your reporting, I am now concerned that these “ultra vires” acts may also apply to the unlawful death of Jo Ellen Savage in the RPS garage on April 8, 2006. I am further concerned that current public officials are implicated in this wrongdoing because of their failure to perform duties imposed on them by law. If discovery in the class action suit proves such illegal activity on the part of public officials, they will be pursued individually, not as representatives of the public. This is because the public, whose trust they have betrayed, are not responsible for any illegal acts they may have engaged in.

Further, in my June 23, 2008, letter to Sheriff Knezovich, I released a November 2, 2007, e-mail to me from (then councilwoman) Mayor Verner. In that e-mail, Ms. Verner stated: “This reply contains confidential information, please treat this as a confidential communication.” Based on her statements within that communication I was left with the impression she possessed integrity, understood the RPS fraud, was aware of the city’s control by the Cowles family and would take action if she were elected.

Since Ms. Verner’s election to the highest office for the city of Spokane, I have learned her rhetoric to me was disingenuous. Since she took office, I have provided her with substantial evidence regarding unethical and criminal actions by city officials. She has not responded to any of this. Up to that time, I honored her request of confidentiality as I felt her interest was to serve the public. Since that time, she has proven to be part of a continued cover-up. For me to conceal the evidence of her criminal knowledge, as she expressed in her e-mail, would make me a party to this continued malfeasance by her and other public officials.

Sincerely,

Tony Bamonte

I’ve been rather busy lately and haven’t posted some recent info here. I will post other new information shortly. If you too believe that the Lewis documents should be made public please send an email to Mayor Verner and the City Council to the addresses listed in the header of my email to the City Clerk.

Ron the Cop

Date: Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 8:43 PM
Subject: Formal Demand Letter for Release of the O. Yale Lewis Documents from City of Spokane
To: “Pfister, Terri” <TPfister@spokanecity.org>
Cc: Mayor <Mayor@spokanecity.org>, jshogan@spokanecity.org, mallen@spokanecity.org, bapple@spokanecity.org, scorker@spokanecity.org, afrench@spokanecity.org, nmclaughlin@spokanecity.org, “Rush, Richard” <rrush@spokanecity.org>,

ORIGINAL SENT BY
Certified US Mail

July 22, 2008

Terri Pfister, City Clerk
City of Spokane
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
Spokane, WA 99201

Re: Formal demand for public release of O. Yale Lewis documents received by Mayor Mary Verner on behalf of City of Spokane

Dear Ms. Pfister:

Attorney O. Yale Lewis was retained by former Mayor John Talbott to unravel the RPS fraud and to seek redress on behalf of the citizens of Spokane. Lewis is the source expert for public/private joint venture legislation in the State of Washington. Lewis sent Mayor Mary Verner a package of documents relevant to the RPS bond fraud that was withheld from Council prior to its voting on the RPS “bailout” package. Lewis’ action was prompted by certain statements that succeeding bond counsel Laurel Siddoway made on her website, http://correctingcamas.com. Siddoway was hired as the special bond counsel after Lewis when the then Mayor John Powers was elected to office. Siddoway and her husband Doug Siddoway were large contributors to Power’s mayoral campaign. Michael Ormsby of Preston & Gates who was recently publicly castigated by the IRS for his actions in the RPS bond fraud was Power’s campaign treasurer. As I reported before:

This is the same Michael Ormsby that the IRS took the unprecedented action of castigating publicly in implicating him in the RPS bond fraud as reported in Bond Buyer for, “. . . incompetence and disreputable conduct”[My emphasis]. The Bond Buyer mistakenly reported though that the tax-exempt status of the RPS bonds was preserved in this settlement. In fact the tax-exempt status was disallowed and the IRS got its back taxes of some $8M through a secret deal with Preston & Gates [Note: Re $8M IRS settlement this is my understanding I’ve heard from sources]

These documents were either withheld by Mayor Verner upon the advice of and or intercepted by the City Attorney’s Office that is now alleging an attorney/client privilege to preclude their release. The City Attorney’s Office is also saying that Talbott and Rodgers are no longer entitled to receive them as they are now out of office. See Lewis’ letter of January 10, 2008:

. . . From my perspective, Siddoway’s treatment of the 2000 litigation which I conducted at the direction of the City Council, former Mayor John Talbott and City Manager Henry Miggins deeply flawed. The same would be true of statements that I was replaced and/or terminated as Special Counsel because Hendricks & Lewis’ fees and costs were excessive.

. . . I suspect . . . much, if not all of the other material that is attached to this letter will be new to you [Mayor Verner]. Although I assume you realize that much of the material on Siddoway’s website is highly specious, I think you will be shocked not only by how wrong her assertions are about the claims she “dropped” and the reasons she gives for “dropping those claims, but also by how apparent it was from the outset that the Powers/Siddoway strategy would implode with devastating impact on Spokane taxpayers. . . [My emphasis]

City Council member Steve Corker, former Mayor John Talbott, and former City Council member Cherie Rodgers were — as you presumptively know — extensively involved in reviewing, directing and supporting the 2000 litigation Ms. Siddoway and former Mayor Powers have been so publicly hostile and dismissive. Consequently, I think each of them should also have the opportunity to review this material, which I would like to share with them unless you direct otherwise.

As Brunt reported previously in his S-R article of June 7, 2008, on withholding the Lewis documents from Talbott and Rodgers:

In his letter to Verner, Lewis asked for city permission to hand over the full packet to Corker, former City Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers and former Mayor John Talbott. City attorneys decided against providing all the records to Rodgers and Talbott. . .

Dalton said the city didn’t release all the documents to protect its right of attorney-client privilege and prevent further lawsuits.

Rodgers filed a records request for the information in April. She argues that because she was a City Council member while Lewis was working for the city, the city can’t use attorney-client privilege to prevent her from getting the documents. She was the client and should have been shown the letters then, she said. Craven noted that Rodgers is no longer on City Council.

“Do you stay (a client) forever because you were on the City Council?” Craven said.

Rodgers said Craven told her in a phone conversation the city would not give her the full packet.

“He said it’s no big deal, it’s just two attorneys trying to figure out who’s the smartest,” Rodgers said. “I said, ‘Now you just make me more curious than ever.’ “

Said Craven, “It’s obvious to everyone, and it always has been, that there were two strategic visions by the lawyers who represented the city.”

The City Attorney’s Office is asserting an “attorney/client” privilege as well as to prevent future lawsuits in refusing to release a majority of the Lewis documents. In my opinion no such privilege now exists. The City Attorney’s Office categorizes these documents as posturing between attorneys. In light of former City Attorney Jim Craven’s letter that recently became public to the Mayor Verner and Council as reported by Brunt in his S-R article of July 4, 2008, I believe otherwise. In my opinion Craven’s letter is a “backhanded” threat that sends a chilling message to Council members by suggesting personal liability was possible if these documents were released by any individual Council member. Craven is banking that there will be no Council majority to release the Lewis documents.

I believe this assertion of an attorney/client privilege by the City Attorney’s Office is nothing more than a sham to cover the criminal acts of others including the City Attorney’s Office. I believe the City Attorney’s Office can’t blanketedly mark all of these documents “Top Secret.” The City Attorney’s Office must review each document and cite legal reasoning/justification why each warrants such a privilege. There is past pattern and practice by the City of Spokane to withhold critical RPS documents from the public and was sanctioned by the courts for violating the state public records act. From the Center for Justice website:

Tim Connor & Rhubarb Sky LLC v. City of Spokane, superior court no. 01-20366-5-8: Public records suit against city for illegal withholding of documents concerning River Park Square. Court found city committed multiple violations of the state public records act and awarded penalties, costs and attorney fees. Center for Justice was co-counsel with Hagens Berman LLC, a major plaintiffs’ class action law firm.

Spokane Research & Defense Fund; Rhubarb Sky LLC v. City of Spokane, court of appeals no. 21729-9 -III: Center for Justice intervened in SRDF’s action for public disclosure against city, which sought documents also withheld from Camas. As co-counsel with Hagens Berman and Towsley, Brain, Stephens PLLC, Center for Justice appealed adverse superior court and appellate court decisions to supreme court arguing that illegally withheld documents were first sought by Tim Connor and Rhubarb Sky. Court reversed unanimously and remanded case to superior court. Case settled in late 2006 with apology from City of Spokane and payment of penalties, costs and attorney fees.

As I expressed in my recent letters to US Attorney Jeffrey C. Sullivan (See attached copies) as a stakeholder in the Municipal Corporation of the City of Spokane, I am the ultimate client/victim of this $100M RPS bond fraud. Lewis’ work was paid for at taxpayer expense. If in fact the RPS “bailout” is a “done deal” then there is absolutely no reason why the Lewis documents should remain confidential other than concealing the criminal activity of certain complicit parties.

Mayor Mary Verner is now attempting to close the books on the RPS bond fraud. Mayor Verner was quoted by S-R Reporter Jonathan Brunt [July 4, 2008]:

Mayor Mary Verner said a proposed ordinance aimed at preventing financial ordeals similar to the River Park Square deal should put an end to official city discussion of the controversial real estate project.

“With the passage of this ordinance, I would feel that it’s effectively closed,” Verner said last week. . .

Since receiving a stack of documents about the city case against River Park Square in January from the city’s former counsel on the River Park Square matter, Verner had declined to say if she thought the records revealed new information that could put the issue back into court. But last week, Verner said she doesn’t support further legal action involving the partnership between the city and the mall’s developer, the Cowles Co., which owns The Spokesman-Review. . .

The city and Cowles settled the main River Park Square case in 2004. Other cases involving the deal lingered until early this year. Verner, a former councilwoman, voted in favor of the 2004 settlement and said last week that nothing she’s seen since has changed her mind that the settlement was the best decision.

I find it incredulous that Mary Verner and Craven flew all the way to Seattle to meet with Lewis for five hours and learned nothing new. I for one based on the totality of the circumstances of the RPS bond fraud will not let Mayor Verner off the hook so easily. I want to read these Lewis documents and determine if there is indeed nothing new here. Yes I understand the rationale to keep such documents in confidence as it would be an impediment for full and frank discussions between the Council and its counsel. I however believe in the RPS matter there are compelling reasons why these documents should be made public that trump any attorney/client privilege and or future litigation that may be asserted in refusing to release them.

As I quoted Spokane residence Dick Adams letter to the editor and Larry Shook in my letter to US Attorney Jeffrey C. Sullivan:

Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Letters to the editor

Secrets got city into trouble

Councilmen Apple and Corker were sent letters from former City Attorney Jim Craven recently. Subject: O. Yale Lewis documents. Craven’s letter is a veiled attempt to intimidate both Corker and Apple. They both had copies of the Lewis documents and knew what was opined. Craven is warning them not to hand out these documents to anyone. The hidden Lewis documents were reported in The Spokesman-Review by staff writer Jonathan Brunt. Brunt is still attempting to obtain the documents through the state public disclosure law.

The City Council should be reminded that clandestine meetings and secrets, like those about the Lewis documents, caused the RPS scandal in the first place. Our city has new RPS secrets again. I would have thought wasting several hundred thousand dollars for hiding public documents from Camas Magazine might have taught our officials at City Hall a lesson about public disclosure and openness in local government. It appears history is about to repeat itself. More RPS secrets. Apparently nothing was learned from past mistakes and reckless spending of taxpayer money.

Didn’t Mayor Verner promise the public her administration would be transparent?

Dick Adams

Spokane

And as expressed by Larry Shook of Camas Magazine to Mr. Adams regarding his LTE:

Thank you very much, Dick. Obviously, the controversy surrounding the Lewis documents goes to the heart of Spokane’s deeply embedded public corruption resulting from the Cowles family’s control of city government. Never was that control made more obvious than in the River Park Square scandal, as discovery in the RPS securities fraud case, the IRS investigation, and Camas reporting showed. This is a perennially terrifying subject to many people, and Mayor Verner appears to have joined the ranks of the terrified. As you know from the meeting you and former Mayor Talbott had with Mayor Verner, much is at stake in exposing how the RPS securities fraud case against the RPS developer was settled. That settlement clearly reveals the Cowles family’s continuing influence over City Hall. I’m very hopeful that the Lewis records will be made public, because I suspect they might shine some light on Spokane’s plight. Best wishes, Larry Shook

The RPS’s contorted and convoluted financial package was the direct result of the RPS developers refusal to give a “letter of credit” backing the $23M HUD loan which was normal practice. This HUD loan was used to leverage the whole RPS redevelopment project. While I have issues with the HUD loan being used in this manner, my chief complaint was that the associated risks were not borne equally and in fact the City’s CBDG money was put in line before any collateral of the developers’ should the deal become insolvent. The RPS fiasco in essence was a gift/conversion of public funds to private entities. I’m outraged and will not excuse this reckless behavior of those responsible who failed to act with due diligence on behalf of the citizens of Spokane. Neither do I wish to subsidize this robbery committed in broad daylight as explained in this WSJ article:

Why No Outrage?

Through history, outrageous financial behavior has been met with outrage. But today Wall Street’s damaging recklessness has been met with near-silence, from a too-tolerant populace, argues James Grant

By JAMES GRANT
July 19, 2008
“Raise less corn and more hell,” Mary Elizabeth Lease harangued Kansas farmers during America’s Populist era, but no such voice cries out today. America’s 21st-century financial victims make no protest against the Federal Reserve’s policy of showering dollars on the people who would seem to need them least. . .

Now began one of the wildest chapters in the history of lending and borrowing. In flush times, our financiers seemingly compete to do the craziest deal. They borrow to the eyes and pay themselves lordly bonuses. Naturally — eventually — they drive themselves, and the economy, into a crisis. And to the scene of this inevitable accident rush the government’s first responders — the Fed, the Treasury or the government-sponsored enterprises — bearing the people’s money. One might suppose that such a recurrent chain of blunders would gall a politically potent segment of the population. That it has evidently failed to do so in 2008 may be the only important unreported fact of this otherwise compulsively documented election season. . .

It is my professional opinion that both elected/appointed City officials, their contracted employees and others are complicit in this bond fraud and the subsequent compounding of the first fraud with the RPS bailout. It is my opinion that former members of the City Attorney’s Office are complicit in this fraud. I would strongly caution that subsequent members of the City Attorney’s Office do not become civilly and criminally liable themselves by compounding these crimes committed by this ongoing criminal/enterprise conspiracy in Spokane by withholding the Lewis documents. In my opinion there is now probable cause to believe that certain crucial information was withheld by City staff and or its contracted employees from the City Council in its deliberations before voting on the RPS “bailout” e.g, Attorney Gary Ceriani’s memo to Attorney Laurel Siddoway, Attorney Mark Schwartz’s letter to the then Mayor John Powers recently released saying Siddoway “emasculated” the City’s fraud case, and now apparently certain information from Lewis was also withheld.

It’s a moot point to seek recovery from myself i.e., suing the City for damages. On the other hand if a conspiracy to commit fraud can be shown was perpetuated by elected/appointed and or contracted employees that the citizens of Spokane put in positions of trust and power with the aid, counsel, or inducements of others, then those complicit have no grant of governmental immunity. All complicit persons are then both personally civilly and criminally liable. As I’ve expressed before based on my read of the IRS report disallowing the tax-exempt status of the first RPS bonds, Camas Magazine reporting/documentation, Attorney Gary Ceriani’s omnibus statement in his civil SEC bond fraud case on behalf of the original institutional bond investors, and other sources, it is my opinion based on my training, education and experience, as a career criminal investigator:

In a series of quasi public/private development projects in Downtown Spokane, there is a clear pattern and practice where “tainted” public financing was used to enrich the pockets of a group of individuals at the expense of the public treasury. . .

The principals of this conspiracy and or its surrogates, have systemically co-opted and or corrupted governmental officials both elected and appointed including the sitting US Attorney for the Eastern District of WA The normal political and governmental controls have failed because of being so thoroughly co-opted and/or corrupted by this incestuous, insidious, and malignant ongoing criminal enterprise.

If the Lewis documents that would evidence such fraud occurred are kept “secret” by those complicit how do WE THE PEOPLE that empower them to govern hold them accountable either civilly, criminally and or at the ballot box?

As a stakeholder in the Municipal Corporation known as the City of Spokane, I demand the Lewis documents be immediately released to me. Accordingly, I hereby formally request that if the City persists in withholding the Lewis documents, I be provided with a formal legal opinion/analysis by the City’s legal staff detailing why these documents are legitimately protected from public disclosure under the doctrine of attorney client privilege and or potential future litigation. As part of this legal opinion I request that every document in the Lewis file be identified. Further, please provide a general description of each document and cite the precise legal analysis that justifies its withholding. I also request that Mayor Verner, as the city’s chief executive officer and an attorney herself, stipulate her agreement with this formal legal opinion. The reason for this request is my belief that O. Yale Lewis, the city’s first RPS special counsel, would not have presented this material to Mayor Verner and requested its release to former elected officials if he believed that his records qualified for legal privilege that made such distribution improper. If the formal legal opinion I request is not immediately forthcoming I will appear before the Council and request the issue of release of the Lewis documents be agendized for a future Council meeting where this can be publicly debated and followed by a vote on the record. If this fails I will consider pursuing release of the Lewis documents via civil litigation, including the assessment of bad faith penalties for their improper withholding. Similarly, I will seek the assistance of the Washington State Bar Association to assess whether the city’s attorneys (including Mayor/attorney Verner and Councilman/attorney Joe Shogan) have breached their professional duties by withholding these documents.

Sincerely yours,

Det. Ron Wright (Retired)

Attachments: Letters of June 17 and July 8, 2008 to US Attorney Jeffrey C. Sullivan

cc: Mayor Mary Verner
City Council

 [Ed note:  Edited from original that was mailed to include HTML links]

June 22, 2008

Tracy Thorleifson, Senior Counsel
Federal Trade Commission
915 Second Avenue, Suite 2896
Seattle, Washington 98174

Dear Tracy,

I left you a voice mail last week regarding an investigation I’ve been doing in Spokane. This involves the Cowles Co “stranglehold/company town nature” it maintains on this town. Currently the US Attorney’s Office in Seattle has two cases now under review by two AUSAs since the US Attorney in Spokane was forced to recuse himself. One is the River Park Square (RPS) bond fraud (a $100M swindle) and the death of Ms. Jo Savage in the RPS parking garage. Former Sheriff Bamonte and I both believe the death of Savage was a negligent homicide amounting to First-Degree Manslaughter under WA law from the negligence of the owners to do ordinary maintenance after repeated warnings (Read “Girl from Hotsprings” left side rail on www.camasmagazine.com). Both of these cases have Cowles Co involvement. I believe that because of McDevitt’s involvement with the law firm of Preston & Gates this is the reason why no federal case ever gained any traction into the criminal activity of the Cowles Co. McDevitt was heavily involved in this bond fraud (Read “McDevitt’s fingerprints” in the Camas Magazine’s archives) The IRS had a strong criminal case but fell on its sword and got their back taxes through a secret deal with Preston & Gates but never pursued it criminal prosecution. Why?

The Cowles Co also owns the paper of record in town, The Spokesman-Review (S-R). I just sent a complaint letter to US Attorney Jeffrey C. Sullivan regarding my opinion that the S-R is nothing more than an instrumentality of this ongoing criminal enterprise/conspiracy to conceal its criminal activity. This is done by its active self-censorship of its own stories and through its intimidation/extortion of the other media in town that it doesn’t own. I believe the Cowles Co was responsible for the cancellation of the Mark Fuhrman Radio Show as it was exposing very damning information directly adverse to its interests. There is prior MO by the Cowles Co to silence a TV reporter that was doing hard hitting reports. I’m in the process/preparing filing a FCC complaint regarding the Cowles cross-media ownership in Spokane that it wields as a lethal weapon. As I mentioned in my letter to US Attorney Sullivan I’m also considering filing a FTC complaint regarding the antitrust, unfair business practices, and predatory business practices by the Cowles Co to maintain its unfair competitive advantage in this market to commit and conceal its criminal activity.

Hopefully the US Attorney is now looking seriously at these cases. I don’t think the FBI is doing much yet as it’s waiting for marching orders from Seattle. As in the Mitch Gold [*] case we jointly worked, the involvement of the FTC was the critical factor in getting the FBI to finally take out Gold’s organization. I tried to shop the Gold case to the FBI Cobra Task Force in Orange County but they were turning a deaf ear. It wasn’t until I discovered that the FTC had an active case, gave you my information, and with your efforts were able to cause the FBI to seriously look at the Gold organization. Perhaps the FTC can also play a similar role in this case to excise this evil from our midst. As I said in my letter to US Sullivan:

The local and state criminal justice resources for a number of reasons can’t or won’t excise this evil incestuous, insidious and malignant ongoing criminal enterprise from our midst. The full resources of the federal government are what are needed to dislodge this ongoing criminal enterprise/conspiracy to restore a normal civil culture, business environment, and political/governmental environment in Spokane.

I’m including my letter to US Attorney Sullivan on the enclosed CD in MS Word .doc format that has HTML links to the source documents I reference. Further I’m including the collective works of Tim Connor and Larry Shook award winning investigative journalists of the Camas Magazine. They have been on this story for over seven years. I’m also including the Fancher Report written in the 70’s that is as true today as it was then as to the ruthless nature of the Cowles Co over the last 100 years. Tim Connor recently wrote an excellent primer on the RPS bond fraud that in part laundered a $20M HUD loan into the project without the usual open letter of credit by the developer. See Pieces of Sunshine he wrote for the Center for Justice, Spokane, WA (http://cforjustice.org/2008/06/20/pieces-of-sunshine/ See attached PDF but go to the original for HTML to source documents) The Fancher Report is THE source document for any FTC complaint. The Cowles Co was able to use its political influence to remove it from the FCC’s divestiture list then to force divestiture of the S-R and/or KHQ-TV. The Cowles Co needs to be forced to divest its stranglehold on the media in Spokane from its other business interests. Because of its criminal activity in public/private development projects there is an inherent conflict of interest by its self-censorship and/or squelching of news adverse to its business interests.

In my letter to US Attorney Sullivan I cite two instances where the Cowles Co wielded its power to squash adverse news. Further its my opinion Cowles Co fingers were in the works to silence Mark Fuhrman. Since my letter I now have two more sources where the Cowles Company eliminated alternative newspapers by predatory marketing tactics. Here’s one. I can’t reveal the source yet for the same reasons that Fancher encountered when he did his report.

The above is a poor resolution of one of the covers of the “Spokane Natural” , an underground “hippie” newspaper in Spokane from June ’67 until 1971 when Cowles squeezed out their advertisers by telling them if they bought ads or did interviews from me . . . the Review would not run their ads or their promos. This cut out WWP, the Crescent, The Bon Marche, and every hotel and restaurant, auto repair, print shop and dentist in town. We were left with a couple head shops and a few independent clothing stores that were small and wanted our “hip” audience. They could not carry the paper for long.

That cut off our blood, since subscriptions never cover the cost of ink, paper and staff.

We . . . did a photo-essay on riverfront properties in 1969 with shit coming out of all the mostly Cowles owned properties along the Spokane River through downtown. The outfalls were spectacular at low water flow in late summer, right after the dinner rush, around 7 pm. Water coming out of pipes from all over, shit, foam, towels, toilet paper, you name it, I took the pictures of the flowing pipes standing in the nearly dry river bed, with the building and businesses in the background. We ran it.

Within one year . . . my boss and friend was hassled and shut down.

I know this is not your area of specialty but could you share this information with others in your office that this is their specialty? Is this a case that the FTC would be interested in pursuing? What do I need to do to finesse this information that would increase the likelihood that the FTC would take on this case. What would I have to do to file a formal complaint?
Sincerely,

Det. Ron Wright (Retired)

[*]

Fraudulent Fundraising Operation Banned from Future Fundraising and Telemarketing Activities

Defendants Were Part of the FTC’s “Operation Missed Giving” Sweep

Network of Deception (Orange Co Register – Note: Read “Inside a Boiler Room” and Right side rail “Raid Report”. The detective mentioned is none other than infamous Ron the Cop)

 HT Becky Kramer of the Spokesman-Review

See my email I sent to S-R Reporter Beck Kramer :

 A very good article on the significance of the IEP, the Spokane River, and the Rathdrum Aquifer and the number of diverse special interests all competing to make money including the Cowles Co.  Between you and Jonathan Brunt the ghost of “Oliver Staley” must be walking the halls of the S-R newsroom.  I’m really surprised that some of your quotes did not get cut by editors.  The key is how to equitably share the costs of sanitary sewers among all who discharge into the river.  In the past in my opinion some of these entities have unfairly transferred this burden for infrastructure to the public.

You may be interested in this latest email I sent to S-R Editor Steve Smith about following the S-R new code of ethics re conflict of interests with its owners in stories it runs.

Read my comment re the Spokane Valley re “Sewer Wars.”  You might want to re the article by that name by Larry Shook that I linked to.

Ron the Cop

S-R Editor Steve Smith rails about Tim Connor & Larry Shook – maliciously?

Inland Empire Paper objects to new discharge deadline

Becky Kramer
Staff writer
June 8, 2008

An ambitious plan to clean up the Spokane River is drawing fire from Inland Empire Paper Co., which says it won’t be able to meet strict new wastewater discharge limits by the state’s 10-year deadline.

The newsprint plant’s objections concern other parties at the negotiating table, who fear this late development could derail the long-awaited cleanup.

Inland Empire Paper sells newsprint to customers across the West. It is owned by Cowles Co., which publishes The Spokesman-Review.

The plant was counting on innovative treatment technology and a 20-year timeline to reduce discharges of phosphorus and other compounds that contribute to algae blooms and oxygen-deficient dead zones in Long Lake, Inland Empire President Wayne Andresen said Friday.

Read More 

HT Center for Justice, Spokane, WA

Award winning investigative reporter Tim Connor of Camas Magazine wrote this article about the recent convening of the State’s Sunshine Committee in Spokane.  Connor testified before the Committee on his personnel experiences in seeking documents regarding the RPS bond fraud.  This is an excellent read that serves as a primer on how the fraud was perpetrated by those involved.
Ron the Cop

*****

Pieces of Sunshine

River Park Square souvenirs for Washington’s “Blue Ribbon Committee” on public records exemptions.

By Tim Connor

One of the more colorful inter-generational touchstones in my family is a salty Texan who passed away just a few years ago. His name was Chuck Cole and he was a fixture at Washington State University’s Murrow School of Communications long enough to shove both my uncle and me into our careers as journalists.

Professor Cole posed as a curmudgeon. But at heart he savored good reporting and, without betraying any notion that he could be easily impressed, he loved good reporters. He tried to teach his students to write well and quickly, get their facts straight, and do interviews without embarrassing themselves.

His specialty was public affairs journalism, the grinding art of reporting on government.

Journalism bends toward the “he said, she said” form. But Chuck Cole wanted us deeply engaged in the essence of the craft. Don’t be satisfied with official explanations, he insisted, find and write the truth. He taught this in the way football coaches exhort offensive linemen on hot August afternoons and I will not distract you, here, with his mild profanities. His basic admonition was that there’s often a world of difference between the reality that presents itself in press releases and the actual truth of the matter. And when it comes to covering government, there’s nothing as useless to a reader and a voter as a reporter who is content to be just a good stenographer.

There was an empty seat next to mine a week ago Tuesday, and I wished he could have filled it.

I was at Spokane Falls Community College, to offer testimony for the so-called “Sunshine Committee.”

I now work for the Center for Justice, I explained, but I was there to speak for myself, as the lead reporter on Camas Magazine’s burrowing investigation (2000 thru 2004) into the River Park Square fiasco.

Three days before the Sunshine Committee came to town I made a decision: I would try to show more than tell. Rather than making just another impassioned plea for open government, I would share some of the nitty-gritty details of how lawyers working for the City of Spokane had tried to exploit a serious crack in the state’s public records law, and explain how this effort cost Spokane taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.

There were a couple reasons for this, but the main reason is that absent specifics, the opposing sides in this argument tend to talk past one another. Each has a legitimate point to make. Yet, frankly, my side has been losing the argument because public agencies and their lawyers (no surprise here) are better positioned to effect public policy than are journalists.

The other reason, of course, is that I’m just one of those people who won’t shut up about the River Park Square debacle and what it demonstrates about a peculiar sort of corruption to which Spokane seems especially vulnerable. On this, I would note, the federal Internal Revenue Service seems to agree with me. Spokane’s public records problems (it lost two cases and settled a third) were an extension of what the IRS, four years ago, termed the “particular relationship” that the city had with Cowles family companies in which “public deception” was used to disguise the city’s complicity in the “extremely flawed” RPS transaction.

There are devils in the details of how open government closes down to protect public officials from the public. Working with lawyers at the Center for Justice and a Seattle law firm, we had captured several on paper. Like a kid with fireflies in a mayonnaise jar, I wanted to show them to the Sunshine Committee.

The Sunshine Committee exists because of Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna. To his credit, McKenna took notice that when voters created the state’s public records law by initiative in 1972, there were only ten exemptions to the requirement to produce requested records. Today, there are more than 300, so many that no one is actually sure just how many ways an agency can get around producing a requested document. McKenna found that unsettling and he went to the legislature to request a “Blue Ribbon” committee that would meet regularly to examine the proliferating exemptions, and make recommendations on which to eliminate or modify. The committee was formed last year and is chaired by Seattle City Attorney Thomas Carr.

Read More 

To All:

A new day is dawning in Spokane as a free people struggle to be free.  The truth seeks to be free.

This is a case of media malfeasance where a regional paper in my opinion has become an instrumentality in an ongoing criminal enterprise/conspiracy to conceal its criminal acts from public scrutiny. This criminal enterprise/conspiracy has successfully plundered the public treasury of $100 millions of dollars through successive quasi public/private projects in Spokane. If the public was informed it would hold its elected/appointed accountable.

This letter was faxed off yesterday to US Attorney Jeffrey C. Sullivan in Seattle as well as to his two Assistant US Attorneys.  Sullivan’s Office is currently reviewing the documents of the RPS bond fraud that former councilperson Cherie Rodgers and award winning investigative reporter Tim Connor gave to US Attorney Jim McDevitt in Spokane.  McDevitt had to recuse himself because of his prior involvement with the firm of Preston & Gates.  The Seattle Office is also reviewing the Jo Savage manslaughter complaint made by former Sheriff Bamonte.
You can download my letter to US Attorney Sullivan and read it with HTML links to referenced source documents:

Sullivan Complaint Letter

Ron the Cop

*****
June 17, 2008

Jeffrey C. Sullivan, US Attorney
United States Attorney’s Office
700 Stewart St., Suite 5220
Seattle, WA  98101-1271

Re:  The RPS Bond Fraud & Jo Savage Manslaughter cases in Spokane, WA.

Summary:

The RPS Bond Fraud & Jo Savage Manslaughter cases in Spokane, WA, have been reassigned to your office for review since the recusal of US Attorney Jim McDevitt. I believe based on my training, education, and investigative experience that these are part of an ongoing criminal enterprise/conspiracy in Spokane.   There is group of individuals at different times have acted individually and or in concert together to commit criminal acts with the knowledge and approval of this group headed by the Cowles Co. This criminal enterprise/conspiracy has successfully plundered the public treasury of $100 millions of dollars through successive quasi public/private projects in Spokane. The Cowles Co, its surrogates, have systemically co-opted and or corrupted governmental officials both elected and appointed including the sitting US Attorney for the Eastern District of WA, Jim McDevitt.  The normal political and governmental controls have failed because of being so thoroughly co-opted and/or corrupted by this incestuous, insidious, and malignant ongoing criminal enterprise/conspiracy.

Further The Spokesman-Review (S-R), which is owned by the Cowles Co, is an instrumentality of this ongoing criminal enterprise/conspiracy to conceal its criminal activity from public scrutiny. There is an inherent conflict of interest between the Spokesman-Review which it owns and the Cowles Co business and real estate interests. This is done by the S-R’s active self-censorship of stories and censorship of comments in the S-R blogs that would be highly detrimental to this ongoing criminal enterprise.  This is uncharacteristic of a paper of record that normally would be a driving force of public opinion. The Cowles Co has also subverted the fundamental regulatory scheme of the public airwaves by FCC that it holds in trust for the public to ensure diversity of programming content especially in local news production.  The public once so educated and so informed would hold their elected/appointed officials accountable for their criminal acts. In this letter I’m enclosing direct evidence that goes to the heart of the S-R being an instrumentality of this ongoing criminal enterprise/conspiracy.

Read More

SEE RELATED POST:

S-R – ‘Counsel’s RPS strategy faces criticism’ by Jonathan Brunt

SENT BY
Certified US Mail

[Note: Original sent my email on 06-09-08. This is a MS Word Doc. Slight changes have been made for format readability. Several slight grammar tense errors as well as typos have been corrected. Instead excerpts I have attached the entire Camas Magazine articles I referenced as PDFs. These PDFs do not have active HTML links. Go to the originals at Camas Magazine’s archives for the HTML links to other referenced Camas documents]

June 9, 2008

Jonathan Brunt, Reporter
Spokesman-Review
999 West Riverside Ave.
Spokane, WA 99201

Re: ‘City’s RPS strategy faces familiar critic’ by Jonathan Brunt

Dear Mr. Brunt:

Whether you realize it or not your article has opened the door to unraveling this Gordian Knot of the RPS bond fraud by an ongoing criminal enterprise headed by the Cowles Co e.g., Betsy Cowles, that uses the S-R as a cover for its criminal actions. I see where the S-R has printed a correction regarding Mayor Verner ‘s statement as to the, “. . . guarantee [of] payment of the federally backed loan,” and not as originally reported, “. . . Cowles Co. to guarantee payment on the bonds.”

Mr. Brunt the issues surrounding the collaterializing of the RPS HUD loan are the key to unraveling this fraud. As I provided you the information regarding the recently disclosed O. Yale Lewis documents, I have more information that will help you set the record straight on the RPS HUD Loan fraud. As I previously wrote in an email, I would also strongly encouraged a read of Attorney Mark Schwartz’s letter at the end of these released documents as to Laurel Siddoway’s claim of innocence in the RPS “bailout” settlement. In my opinion this bailout was a compounding of the first fraud. Further as I wrote to City Clerk Terry Pfister it is my strong belief that the public has the right to know the substance of what is contained in these Lewis documents currently being withheld on the basis of an attorney/client privilege as proffered by the City Attorney.

As I explained in my email to Ms. Pfister:

Dear Ms. Pfister,

Thank you for your update regarding my PDR for the Lewis documents. I see that S-R Reporter Brunt received his copies re his PDR on the Lewis documents and they are now posted on the S-R website. I’m assuming these are all the Lewis documents that are available for release. If not please let me know and I will come into your office to review them. I do know that there was a letter sent to several of the council members by the City Attorney Office regarding the release of these documents. I requested this letter and I don’t see where it is among the redacted documents.

Of course I differ re the determination of the City Attorney to withhold these redacted documents as a matter of attorney/client privilege. If the Spokesman-Review does not pursue them I may initiate legal action to obtain them. In my opinion the citizens of Spokane are the “true” clients. The withholding of these documents interferes with the citizens’ ability to hold their governmental accountable for potentially criminal acts. In reality former Mayor Talbott, former City Councilperson Cherie Rodgers, and Attorney O. Yale Lewis will not sue if these documents are disclosed. The only ones likely to support their withholding from public disclosure are the ones that have potential criminal liability in the apparent ongoing criminal conspiracy regarding the RPS bond fraud. This includes Ms. Laurel Siddoway who is captioned in many of these documents. This is especially apparent in the now released letter from Attorney Mark Schwartz. In my discussions with Mayor Talbott, Mr. Lewis was retained to unravel the RPS bond fraud and to make whole the citizens of Spokane. Mr. Lewis’ charge was not to provide criminal defense for city officials or their contract employees that were complicit in this fraud. In my opinion the interest of the publics’ right to know to hold their government accountable when there is reasonable cause to believe that they were defrauded in the RPS project in an ongoing criminal conspiracy, trumps any potential attorney/client privilege in documents in the possession of and paid for with taxpayer funds of those complicit in the fraud. The citizens of Spokane after all are now saddled with a new indebtedness of approaching $100M.

Please kindly forward my email to the City Council and the City Attorney.

The S-R has never reported the following information which goes to the very heart of the RPS bond fraud and the collateralizing of the RPS HUD loan. See the following excerpts from Camas Magazine reporting regarding “Inside Job: The Paper Trail” (07-15-2002). I specifically call your attention to the “confidential” memo from City Attorneys Jim Sloane and Stan Schwartz, – “Confidential, 6-page memo from city attorneys Jim Sloane and Stan Schwartz to Mayor Jack Geraghty and city council.” I would also call your attention to, “Stan Schwartz confirms to HUD that Cowles Guaranty only comes into play after all CDBG funds are spent.”

You can term it anyway you like but Mr. Schwartz mislead the Council with regard to collateralizing of this loan. Mr. Schwartz omitted from his presentation to the Council that the City’s CDBG annual allocation of $4.5M per year would come first before any Cowles Guaranty would kick in on any loan default. It is interesting to note as a tangential matter that Mr. Schwartz is now representing the Cowles Co real estate interests in the Spokane Valley and has been retained by the City in its condemnation action against Glenn Cloninger’s property across from the Convention Center. How coincidental. In my opinion there is nothing that happens in this town that is coincidental. Watch the videos of this Council meeting on the Camas website and decide whether Mr. Schwartz mislead, misrepresented, or in fact lied to the Council based on his previous confidential memo with Mr. Sloane to the Council.

And lastly Mr. Brunt I direct you to this article by Camas Magazine, “The Missing Man” [See selected excerpts attached]. In this article it clearly shows the specific intent and cavalier and brazen attitude of Betsy Cowles. It is as if she believed the public treasury was her own personal checkbook in her memo which has been called the “divide and conquer” memo. In this memo she demonstrates the extent to which she would go to conceal these secret negotiations from the public that she was indeed “robbing” them. The RPS bond issuance was a fraud through and through by the players involved as evidenced by this memo and other Camas documents that stand alone on their face. The IRS in as much said this was a fraud in its ruling disallowing the tax-exempt status of the RPS bonds as I described in my latest letter to S-R Editor Steve Smith:

. . . My operating hypothesis is based in part on my read of the IRS ruling disallowing the tax-exempt status of the first RPS bonds and as reported by Camas Magazine in ‘The Casino was Rigged‘. Based on the IRS report I don’t know why the IRS didn’t pursue criminal fraud charges against those involved. My speculation based on my experience is that IRS knew that pursuing such a criminal case was a losing cause based on the relationship of the current US Attorney for the Eastern District of WA, Jim McDevitt, and his previous personal relationship with the RPS bond fraud and with his former colleague Attorney Michael Ormsby at the law firm of Preston & Gates.

I asked independent investigative reporter Larry Shook of Camas Magazine to provide an analysis of your article in light of his own research. Shook’s complete reply is attached. Here are key excerpts:

My view is that the story in question leaves unreported one of the most significant aspects of the RPS controversy. Namely, the documented conspiracy between City of Spokane officials and the Cowles family to keep secret the refusal of the Cowles family to meet federal guidelines in providing collateral for the $23 million HUD loan. As evidence of this conspiracy, please see the memo that Cowles Publishing Co. chairwoman and RPS president Betsy Cowles wrote to RPS project manager Bob Robideaux on 3/9/95. In it you’ll note Ms. Cowles’s acknowledgement that there will be no letter of credit. You’ll also note her stated intention to keep secret her plan to use the $23 million HUD loan to subsidize construction of the new Nordstrom building. You’ll find this memo linked to the story “Missing Man” at http://www.camasmagazine.com. . .

“The evidence is clear that both Betsy Cowles and her brother Stacey, the newspaper’s publisher, were deeply involved in trying to maneuver the River Park Square garage deal through city hall at the time [an important] October 23, 1996 story was published. Behind the scenes at the same time Boggs’s story was being purged of the unwelcome Walker cost estimates, the Spokane city council was reeling from the sticker shock caused by the Cowleses’s asking price.

“That hidden drama is recounted in a memo Stacey Cowles wrote to his sister on the same day, October 23rd. In the memo Stacey Cowles relayed political intelligence on the council’s deliberations that had been gathered by ‘Karen’—probably Karen Valvano, then-president of the Downtown Spokane Partnership. Mr. Cowles was chairman of the DSP’s board of directors.

“Laurent Poole did an incredible amount of damage,” Mr. Cowles wrote. Poole, an executive with the Sabey Company, had recently made a presentation to council members. The Sabey Company then operated the Northtown Mall and was complaining, among other things, that the proposed RPS garage deal was an unfair and unwise public subsidy to a competitor. . .

Clearly, this may be important evidence of the ongoing conspiracy you allege. That The Spokesman-Review has never reported on this (and a great deal of other) damning evidence lends further credence to your charges both of the newspaper’s role in this conspiracy and the self-censorship Spokesman-Review personnel impose upon themselves in ignoring and even suppressing aspects of the RPS saga that incriminate their owners. That the 6/7/08 story perpetuated suppression about the Cowles HUD collateral appears to satisfy at least one textbook example of self-censorship. . .

Whether federal criminal investigators will ever subject this evidence to meaningful scrutiny remains to be seen. Given the damning conclusions reached by the IRS concerning RPS (please see “The Casino was Rigged” at http://www.camasmagazine.com), so far government at all levels is at least as implicated in the aura of self-censorship surrounding RPS as Cowles employees are themselves, in my opinion.

As in my first letter to S-R Editor Steve Smith I painstakingly detailed the elements of a criminal conspiracy and put him on notice regarding his character assassination of me:

Investigative reporters and criminal investigators share many common tools and techniques. In one way we differ is the manner we pose probative questions to potential witnesses and suspects. We all seek the truth and ultimately serve the public. I won’t restate my operating hypothesis outlined in the Brunt email but I will say from my review of the Camas Magazine documents there is a clear pattern and practice in a series of public/private projects in Downtown Spokane where “tainted” public financing was used to enrich the pockets of a few individuals at the expense of the public. Based on my training, education, and investigative experience this is an ongoing criminal enterprise where individuals at different times have acted together in concert to commit criminal acts and/or individually carried out with the knowledge and approval of this group. This by definition, Mr. Smith, is a criminal conspiracy.

In my review of the circumstances and evidence I believe there is reasonable cause to believe a similar MO is apparent in the STA Transit Plaza Project. I don’t know who burned out whom in the Zukor Building arson fire or in the District 81 Building arson fire but some of the same individuals clearly economically benefited from these fires. Generally if anyone aides, abets the principals in the commission of these acts, with criminal knowledge personally benefits, conceals information and/or impedes the investigation is criminally liable. As a criminal investigator I most assuredly would be asking probative questions to seek the truth. I would in a heartbeat use as a “hammer” as any cop would who wasn’t green behind the ears, that Captain Hanna was killed fighting the Zukor Building fire. I would make it very clear this was an arson/murder fire and further ANY involvement could bring criminal liability for murder under the general felony/murder rule. This applies as well to the Savage death in the RPS Parking Garage that both former Sheriff Bamonte and I believe was a negligent homicide arising to the level of a first-degree manslaughter in Washington.

Other than Mr. Smith’s being totally incompetent and or totally oblivious to the canons of “journalism of verification” as I rather doubt, there is little else to infer than he’s part and parcel of this ongoing criminal enterprise. He continues to marginalize and dismiss the collective of works of Tim Connor and Larry Shook. He regularly impugns publicly as captured in the latest S-R Ombudsman’s Column my character and professional integrity. This is now done with malicious intent to harm after warned by Tim Connor as Mr. Smith wrote:

I suppose I might misremember, and if that is the case, I do apologize. I certainly had no intention of libeling them.

Insulting them, marginalizing them, ridiculing them, well yes, that is often my intention with Connor/Shook.

Mr. Brunt I see this as important “new” news that has never before been reported by the S-R. Will you ask the probative questions? Will you report it? And more importantly if you are not allowed to report this “new information” that is so adverse and damning to the core interests of the Cowles Co, this will be a further affirmation of my operating hypothesis regarding the S-R being part of this ongoing criminal enterprise:

. . . S-R is nothing more than an instrumentality of the Cowles Co’s ongoing criminal enterprise to cover it’s criminal activity. This is done by it’s active self-censorship of stories and censorship of comments in S-R blogs. This information is highly detrimental to the owners that would otherwise inform the public. The public once alerted, educated and informed would hold their elected/appointed officials accountable for their criminal acts who have been systemically co-opted/corrupted by this ongoing criminal conspiracy

As I expressed in my latest letter to S-R Editor Mr. Smith this is not my opinion alone but is shared by Spokane veteran KXLY radio icon Mike Fitzsimmons:

We know firsthand in Spokane about what can happen. The River Park Square story in Spokane, was deliberately and unethically under-reported by the Spokesman Review and one television station in our community, to protect the family that owned the mall and the media outlets. Imagine what might have been possible had this local media powerhouse controlled many more sources. The public might not have learned about this fiasco at all.

I look forward to reading your follow-up story. I trust Mr. Cowles, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Graham will abide by the S-R’s new Code of Ethics and obtain an outside editor to handle this developing story because of the very apparent Cowles Co conflict of interest.

Sincerely,

Det. Ron Wright (Retired)

Attachments:

Camas Magazine Excerpts: “Inside Job . . . “ & “Missing Man”
Email from Larry Shook

cc:
Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich, County of Spokane, WA
Mayor Mary Verner, City of Spokane, WA
City Council, City of Spokane, WA
US Attorney Jeffrey C. Sullivan, Seattle, WA
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kurt Hermanns, Seattle, WA
Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Westinghouse, Seattle, WA
Agent Frank Harvill, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Spokane, WA
Sgt. Ken Wade, Washington State Patrol, Spokane, WA
Chief Anne Kirkpatrick, City of Spokane, WA
Acting City Attorney Pat Dalton, City of Spokane, WA
Sheriff Bamonte (Retired), Spokane, WA
Breean Beggs, Center for Justice, Spokane, WA
Cherie Rodgers (Former Councilperson), Spokane, WA
Larry Shook, Spokane, WA
Mayor John Talbott (Former), Spokane, WA

SCROLL FOR UPDATES:

S-R Jonathan Brunt’s B-1 “above the fold” article ran in Saturday’s S-R [June 7, 2008] on the O. Yale Lewis documents. See the two emails below I’ve sent to him regarding his story.

Finally the door creaks open in Spokane on its “dark little secret.”

Ron the Cop

*****
Email I

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: rocketsbrain
Date: Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 6:24 AM
Subject: Great Work! Mr. Brunt – ‘Counsel’s RPS strategy faces criticism’
To: Jonathan Brunt

Mr. Brunt,

Hey a great job in getting a lot of stuff out in the open in one article. I hope we will see more refreshing articles in the near future. Perhaps a status check with the US Attorney’s Office in Seattle? I hope the S-R will continue to press for the remaining docs. I don’t buy the atty/client privilege. It’s a dodge to protect certain city officials and others from complicity in the RPS bond fraud and a ongoing criminal conspiracy. The people are the client here and deserve to see these documents to hold their elected/appointed official accountable for this bond fraud.

In my opinion Siddoway tanked an excellent bond fraud case that Gary Cerrani put together that the city bought out and should have pursued to trial. In my opinion so what if the LLC/foundation tanked. If fraud could be shown from the start or at least when the bond escrow was allowed to close without full disclosure of material facts to the institutional bond investors and the public, the the LLC could be pierced and all the assets of the developers to make the citizens whole again would be on the table.. While it’s a moot point re the public recovering from itself (The City) those who City officials were criminally involved would have no grant of governmental immunity and would be personally liable for their criminal actions. You may know that Siddoway and her husband were large contributors to Powers campaign and the infamous Mr. Ormsby was Power’s campaign treasurer. I think it was more of a case of Powers firing Lewis because of what he found would be so damning to those who were involved in the RPS bond fraud.

Mind you the Siddoways are alleged to have pressured KXLY to get rid of former reporter Tom Grant who was biting hard on RPS. Siddoway is their first amendment counsel. General Manager Herling confirms that were taking a $100K hit not being on the Cowles’ “buy list.” See the response from Tom Grant below. Further I find the recent purchased of KGA and the axing of Mark Fuhrman Show to be very suspicious and have the same “fingerprints” and M/O. Read Mike Fitzsimmons comment in my letter to Mr. Smith re the S-R’s past coverage of RPS. It is my speculation that there is a Cowles “straw investor” in the Mapleton LLCs family tree and or other quid pro quo in exchange. I’m currently researching this angle. Perhaps you should ask Rebecca Mack what she knows? The coincidence here is just too convenient to be ignored as Mark Fuhrman was onto to the Lewis angle when he was canned. The light bulb went on for Mark the Monday before he was canned on Wednesday. It was first on the Fuhrman Show where Verner during the her campaign made the commitment to me ( a caller to the show) to consider bringing back O. Yale Lewis. In my investigative experience there are no “coincidences” in criminal conspiracies.

Just read the IRS ruling re the tax-exempt status of the first bonds in my recent response to Mr. Smith, this is the best explanation of the facts I’ve seen re the RPS bond fraud. They said, “The casino was rigged.” As I said I don’t know for the life of me why the IRS didn’t pursue the RPS case criminally to set a precedent in public corruption re these quasi public/private projects. In essence the players screwed the pooch. My speculation as I explained in my email to Mr. Smith is that McDevitt was the finger in the dike and the IRS new that pursuing it criminally would be a losing proposition. Perhaps you should ask them and also confirmed they got their back taxes through the back door from Preston and Gates.

Anyway a crack in the door into this Gordian knot. There is hope for the S-R after all. This was a breath of fresh air.

Ron Wright

Email from Grant after my interview with Herling:

On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 5:55 AM,

Tom Grant  wrote:

My thoughts… On Fox. We knew KXLY and Fox were negotiating. Q6 was never in the picture, as far as we knew, until the moment they told us the news operations was being shut down.

Not only were Siddoways active in Powers’ campaign, Doug Siddoway clearly crossed the line when he advised me to drop a story both as a Powers worker and as our attorney. Doug also worked as KXLY attorney, on occassion.

While Herling may not have perceived any pressure from Siddoway regarding the RPS story, I did. At one point, shortly before I left KXLY, I was called into a meeting with Herling, Powers, the News Director, and the HR person. I can’t remember exactly what the meeting was about, except that when I saw them all there I felt a great deal of pressure that my reporting was causing problems.

I believe the Siddoways were influencing KXLY’s coverage of RPS after Powers took office. There is no question in my mind that management (Herling? Siddoway? The station GM? The News Director acting on his own?) decided not to cover RPS in any meaningful way after Powers took office.

Tom

Counsel’s RPS strategy faces criticism

Jonathan Brunt
Staff writer
June 7, 2008

The Seattle attorney who originally represented the city of Spokane in the contentious River Park Square issue is accusing his successor of misleading council members with a failed legal strategy that’s costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

O. Yale Lewis stopped representing the city in 2001 after a dispute over his fees.

Lewis mailed more than 50 documents to Spokane Mayor Mary Verner earlier this year on the matter and said he did so in response to a Web site maintained by the attorney who lead the case after Lewis, Laurel Siddoway.

Last month, Verner and former City Attorney Jim Craven flew to Seattle to meet with Lewis. Verner has declined to give details about the meeting.

[…]

*****
Email II

Mr. Brunt,

I just scanned the PDFs of the Lewis docs on the S-R server. This may well in fact save me the $28 or so to get them from my own copies of my piggyback PDR with the City:-).

Just in passing I think the billing dispute with Lewis is a over wrought. Seems to me the City got a very good deal considering what was at stake.

Also the very last letter in these files is very illustrative. I don’t know what Atty Mark Schwartz’s relationship is to this case. I don’t know what prompted his letter to former Mayor Powers. I see where he concurs with my position that Laurel Siddoway gutted an excellent civil fraud case when even the Washington Supreme Court unanimously held in favor of the “case in chief” of Lewis’s appellate filing that is essentially the civil fraud perpetuated by the “developers” and others et al.

I appreciate Mr. Smith has now realized the value of obtaining outside counsel re matters of RPS as Mr. Swinton was up to his “eyeballs” in this deal whether there was a true legal conflict of interest or not. He’s the primary mover of the “confidentiality” agreements. I hope you will avail yourself of this outside counsel. This counsel needs to advise you re the merit of Siddoway’s case once she in my opinion gutted the heart of the case and essentially rendered it moot which in effect CYA’d those government officials and others complicit in this fraud. Had these facts been exposed in a civil trial I don’t doubt that criminal indictments would have soon followed.

*****

UPDATE I:

My reply to City Clerk Terry Pfister re my PDR request for the Lewis docs:

Dear Ms. Pfister,

Thank you for your update regarding my PDR for the Lewis documents. I see that S-R Reporter Brunt received his copies re his PDR on the Lewis documents and they are now posted on the S-R website. I’m assuming these are all the Lewis documents that are available for release. If not please let me know and I will come into your office to review them. I do know that there was a letter sent to several of the council members by the City Attorney Office regarding the release of these documents. I requested this letter and I don’t see where it is among the redacted documents.

Of course I differ re the determination of the City Attorney to withhold these redacted documents as a matter of attorney/client privilege. If the Spokesman-Review does not pursue them I may initiate legal action to obtain them. In my opinion the citizens of Spokane are the “true” clients. The withholding of these documents interferes with the citizens’ ability to hold their governmental accountable for potentially criminal acts. In reality former Mayor Talbott, former City Councilperson Cherie Rodgers, and Attorney O. Yale Lewis will not sue if these documents are disclosed. The only ones likely to support their withholding from public disclosure are the ones that have potential criminal liability in the apparent ongoing criminal conspiracy regarding the RPS bond fraud. This includes Ms. Laurel Siddoway who is captioned in many of these documents. This is especially apparent in the now released letter from Attorney Mark Schwartz. In my discussions with Mayor Talbott, Mr. Lewis was retained to unravel the RPS bond fraud and to make whole the citizens of Spokane. Mr. Lewis’ charge was not to provide criminal defense for city officials or their contract employees that were complicit in this fraud. In my opinion the interest of the publics’ right to know to hold their government accountable when there is reasonable cause to believe that they were defrauded in the RPS project in an ongoing criminal conspiracy, trumps any potential attorney/client privilege in documents in the possession of and paid for with taxpayer funds of those complicit in the fraud. The citizens of Spokane after all are now saddled with a new indebtedness of approaching $100M.

Please kindly forward my email to the City Council and the City Attorney.

SCROLL FOR UPDATES:

Just wondering? As in the banners of the Media Mythbusters site and blog say:

“When in doubt, tell the truth.” — Mark Twain

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.” — John F. Kennedy

I guess S-R Ombudsman Dr. Becky Tallent failed to read my prior letter and current letter to S-R Editor Steve Smith cautioning him about his reckless and now malicious accusations against Tim Connor, Larry Shook and me. Dr. Tallent apparently was just parroting Mr. Smith’s accusations against us without verifying the sources and references. So much for the hallowed principal of the MSM – journalism of verification. This could put both of them in the hot seat with Stacey Cowles [Cowles Co and publisher of the S-R] if he has to break open his checkbook. Funny this is how David Laird described me in his “apology” thread referred to by Dr. Tallent:

I first met Rocketsbrain last week during the Gathering, and to be utterly candid, nothing prepared me for such a cogent, clear-eyed police investigator. Having served with some degree of dignity and irreverence on both sides of the Blue Line, I immediately knew here was an investigator of the first mark, a man in whom I could trust. That certain knowledge perhaps distorted my memory about the banishment, because to some degree, we have both lived in the same world of studying white collar crime for decades. I am hoping eventually that Rocketsbrain will be able to rejoin us, for I value his insight and acumen more than words can describe.

Ron the Cop

*****

Sunday, June 8, 2008

OMBUDSMAN: Faulty complaints stymie corrections

Becky Tallent
June 8, 2008

Accuracy is a two-way street.

During the past month, I have been asked to look into several issues involving reporting accuracy in The Spokesman-Review. What I have most often discovered is that the reader has either misread or misunderstood the context of the article. Because of this, the readers actually gave me inaccurate or incomplete information to check.

That is fine as long as we can get it straightened out. After all, that is a major part of what I do here: help you as readers understand issues plus the how and why things are done in newspapers.

But one case stands out, in part because it involves blogs, the bit of cyberspace where many people now receive much of their information. In Monday’s Community Comment blog, a banned blogger’s posting was accidentally admitted and then removed.First, how is a banned blogger accidentally admitted? David Laird, a reader who is the blog’s co-administrator, said he found a post in a “hidden” file within the blog’s system. As for how the post made it into the hidden file, Laird called it “a great mystery.”

“I didn’t know it had been marked hidden until some of the folks in the discussion happened to comment on it,” he said. “Since, at that point, I had not remembered that (the blogger) was banned, I immediately un-hid it and wrote a message to Steve (Smith, editor of The Spokesman-Review) and the IT guys asking why it was marked hidden. We still do not know who originally marked it.”

Very shortly thereafter, he was contacted by Smith, reminded that the blogger is banned and the post was removed. Laird said he is unsure who exactly removed the post, but it was gone not long after he had recovered it and placed it in the blog.

Despite the posts criticizing Laird for removing the message and even for his apology, the fact is the blogger was banned for repeated unsubstantiated allegations against the newspaper and the Cowles family, which owns it. The banned blogger’s sense of accuracy in the situation is put off balance by an apparent agenda against the newspaper and the Cowles family. Smith is absolutely correct: If any of us would make these same allegations against anyone, it would be considered libel (if in print) or slander (if verbal). As a result, the man has been banned from the paper’s various blogs. [Ed Note: See Smith’s actual comment in the blog thread below]

What is interesting in this case is that Laird took immediate action and wrote an apology to the site community, taking responsibility for restoring the post after it had been removed. Laird, his co-administrator Jeanie Buchanan and I are talking, working on communication and to prevent any future such gaffes on Community Comment.

What I admire about Laird’s and Buchanan’s actions is their rapid response in explaining what happened to their virtual community with a great deal of facts and detail one might not expect in most virtual communities. It was a fair and accurate explanation, despite criticism of Laird and The Spokesman-Review from at least two bloggers through posts on Tuesday and Wednesday in Community Comment.

That brings up the question about accuracy in blogs: When do we know if what a blogger is telling us is true or not? That’s the problem with cyberspace; accuracy may be in the mind of the blogger, but it may not be true or accurate in reality.

So what should readers do if they suspect any area (print or electronic) of The Spokesman-Review is not accurate? Smith said via e-mail that company policy is clear: We correct our mistakes as quickly as possible. Readers can contact Smith or Managing Editor Gary Graham by phone, e-mail or regular U.S. mail to complain about any inaccuracy.

“When we have verified that an error has made it into print, on the Web, etc., procedures call for us to make an immediate correction in Accuracy Watch and, sometimes, in another location,” such as the opinion page if the mistake is in an editorial, Smith said.

“Those responsible for the error fill out a tracking form that goes to Gary Graham,” he said. “The form helps us to track individuals who are making too many mistakes and also identify institutional problems that might be contributing to mistakes.”

Graham said the newspaper published 36 corrections in May, with eight situations involving misidentification, such as titles and relationships. While the May-to-May numbers show a drop (36 this year compared with 40 last year), he said the overall number of corrections is up slightly, 206 published corrections this year compared with 197 for the same time last year.

So, to paraphrase classic television: Keep those cards, letters and, now, e-mails coming in about accuracy. In addition, let’s all strive for more accuracy in our conversations with each other so we have a clear understanding of the issues at hand.

*****
Excepts of S-R Editor Smith]s comments in S-R’s Community Comment Blog:

I’ll speak to the RBT case specifically because it sparked this debate.

RBT was banned not because of his views re: RPS. He was given space on these blogs to express those views when the comments were relevant to any actual RPS discussion. He wasn’t even banned for hijacking non-RPS threads to vent his outrageous conspiracy theories.

I finally pulled the plug on him when he accused — and still maintains — the Cowles family of arson and murder for incidents that occurred some 30 years ago give or take. (At the time, Stacey Cowles would have been 12 years old, give or take.) Of course there is nothing behind these accusations, first aired publicly by the Connor/Shook duo and repeated by RBT as if they were his own.

If any of us had leveled such accusations against anyone in the community, it would be libel (in print) or slander (if verbalized). That was it for RBT.

[…]

Good afternoon,

Messrs. Connor and Shook take issue with my assertion that they aired publicly the belief that the Cowles family may have deliberately burned down two downtown properties, one fire leading to a firefighter’s death.

They believe I have libeled them.

I clearly recalled that they aired these views on the Fuhrman show in the weeks before Fuhrman was dumped, singly or together.

I suppose I might misremember, and if that is the case, I do apologize. I certainly had no intention of libeling them.

Insulting them, marginalizing them, ridiculing them, well yes, that is often my intention with Connor/Shook.

Now that I have apologized to them, how about my apologies for the slanders, libels, accusations, false assertions and accusations of ethical misdeeds that are part and parcel of their anti-Spokesman agenda.

Whoa, that isn’t going to happen. Apologies, for these two, go only one way.

steve

Posted by Steven A. Smith | 3 Jun 4:09 PM

*****
Award winning investigative reporter Tim Connor of Camas Magazine who Smith refers to above responded in this thread with this comment [Ed Note: Formating slightly adjusted for readability]:

So, this is what Mr. Shook and I get from the esteemed editor of the Spokesman-Review. An apology in the form of an assault weapon. It’s actually worse than the double-backhanded apology Smith bestowed on my friend and colleague Tom Grant last fall. Remember that one?

Posted by Steven A. Smith | 21 Nov 10:38 AM

Good morning,

I received the following from Tom Grant, former local TV reporter, Daily Planet editor and candidate for mayor (against Jim West).

He takes issue with my post characterizing his journalism career in Spokane. I won’t dispute his version of events. And I do apologize to Grant for any errors of fact. As I told Grant, his reputation in Spokane is not my business or concern. The conspiracy nuts who look for RPS behind every shrub are my business. One note, I didn’t mine any private data for info on Tom Grant’s application to KHQ. That was well-known in the broadcast community at the time.

The problem here is that Mr. Smith, as the editor of a good-sized American newspaper, is supposed to setting an example for his readers about how to engage in civil discussion. That’s what American journalism is supposed to be about. It’s why we have journalism ethics rules. It’s why we’re supposed to check facts before we publish. You know, just like it says in the SPJ Code ethics. So, now we have Mr. Smith lying about me based on his foggy recollection of what Mr. Shook and I, or Mr. Shook, or me, said on a radio last years. Well, I didn’t saying like what he attributed to me. It’s a lie and if need be, S-R contributer Rebecca Mack can easily attest to it. She was in the studio with me that day when I was on the Fuhrman show. Nothing like what Mr. Smith reported happened. It’s pure fiction.

But rather than do the honorable thing and admit his mistake and apologize, he jokes about it, and admits that he sees his purpose to continue to try to marginalize Mr. Shook and me.

But the rules of the trade for journalists are these. If you’re crack on somebody the way Mr. Smith cracked and me, Mr. Shook, and Mr. Grant, you’d better get facts straight. For the record, I have tried for four years to engage Mr. Smith in the facts of the River Park Square story. I’ve sent him countless original documents to support the facts in my RPS reporting. He has accused me, in the past, of falsifying facts in my work. That’s a very serious charge for any journalist to make about another journalist. You should be willing to back it up with facts. Mr. Smith isn’t willing to do so. He seems only willing to engage in character assassination and marginalization. He quite literally, over the past four years, has not assumed the burden of challenging a single fact in my Camas reporting.
I think as much as how he’s handled Mr. Grant, Mr. Shook and myself, Steve also revealed himself, brilliantly, in an interview that Bill Richards did when Richards was investigating the S-R’s RPS coverage. You can find my story on the interview, by going to the Camas Magazine website at www.camasmagazine.com. Look in the package of stories on the Washington News Council report (“The Verdict’) and open and read the piece entitled “Right in Your Face.” Much of that piece is a word for word transcript of Richard’s interview with Smith regarding how Smith handled the evidence that Betsy Cowles edited S-R copy on a key RPS garage story. It speaks volumes about Steve and just how indifferent he is to the facts.

Tim Connor

Posted by Tim Connor | 3 Jun 7:22 PM

UPDATE I:

Larry Shook of Camas Magazine sent this demand letter to Stacey Cowles as S-R Editor Steve Smith’s employer and publisher either to show where Mr. Shook has said what Mr. Smith has alleged or issue an immediate retraction and apology to him. I too was caught up in Mr. Smith’s recent accusations. Mr. Shook demanded an action by the end of the business day.

Ron the Cop

*****

From: Larry Shook <lwshook@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 10:47 AM
Subject: Immediate correction request
To: staceyc@spokesman.com
Cc: Steve Smith <SteveS@spokesman.com>

Dear Mr. Cowles: On 6/3/08 I sent Spokesman-Review editor Steve Smith the two e-mails copied below. The first was sent at 11:57 a.m. and the second that evening at 7:22 p.m. Both of those e-mails were copied to you and others. Their purpose was to request a timely correction from Mr. Smith and The Spokesman-Review of libelous statements Mr. Smith published about me in a Spokesman-Review publication: namely Mr. Smith’s blog on The Spokesman-Review’s Internet platform. Because I have had no response from Mr. Smith to date to my requests for immediate corrective action, I assume he does not intend to comply.

Therefore, I now formally request that you, as Mr. Smith’s publisher and employer, immediately instruct him to immediately comply with the requests contained in the below e-mails. Timeliness is extremely important to me in this matter. I consider both myself and the community (because of the public interest value of my work) to have been seriously and intentionally injured by Mr. Smith’s attacks. Because of the importance I assign timeliness, I request that you let me hear from you by the end of this business day whether you intend to comply with the request that I hereby make of you.

Clearly, Mr. Cowles, I am trying to understand whether your newspaper editor’s admitted intent to libel me (“Insulting them, marginalizing them, ridiculing them, well yes, that is often my intention with Connor/Shook”) has been done with the active support of you and Cowles Publishing Co. or, if not, whether you will take the prompt corrective action I here request for the third time.

Thank you. Sincerely, Larry Shook

6/3/08 11:57 a.m. e-mail
Steve:

Ron Wright just forwarded me an e-mail exchange containing a recent blog posting of yours. In your blog you wrote:

“I finally pulled the plug on him [Wright] when he accused — and still maintains — the Cowles family of arson and murder for incidents that occurred some 30 years ago give or take. (At the time, Stacey Cowles would have been 12 years old, give or take.) Of course there is nothing behind these accusations, first aired publicly by the Connor/Shook duo and repeated by RBT as if they were his own.”

With that statement you appear to be accusing me of accusing “the Cowles family of arson and murder.” Are you? If so, please provide me with the basis for your assertion. I request you provide me with the specific statement of mine to which you refer.

If you have no specific statement in mind, please provide me with whatever specific factual basis supports your allegation. If you have neither, please retract this accusation on your blog site immediately and copy me with the retraction.

Thank you. Sincerely, Larry Shook

6/3/08 7:22 p.m. email
Steve: Ron Wright just forwarded the below blog posting to me, which you apparently published this afternoon.

“Good afternoon,

Messrs. Connor and Shook take issue with my assertion that they aired publicly the belief that the Cowles family may have deliberately burned down two downtown properties, one fire leading to a firefighter’s death.

They believe I have libeled them.

I clearly recalled that they aired these views on the Fuhrman show in the weeks before Fuhrman was dumped, singly or together.

I suppose I might misremember, and if that is the case, I do apologize. I certainly had no intention of libeling them.

Insulting them, marginalizing them, ridiculing them, well yes, that is often my intention with Connor/Shook.

Now that I have apologized to them, how about my apologies for the slanders, libels, accusations, false assertions and accusations of ethical misdeeds that are part and parcel of their anti-Spokesman agenda.

Whoa, that isn’t going to happen. Apologies, for these two, go only one way.

steve

Posted by Steven A. Smith”

This posting does not address my earlier request for retraction, which I now reiterate.I earlier wrote that “you appear to be accusing me of accusing the Cowles family of arson and murder. Are you? If so, please provide me with the basis for your assertion. I request you provide me with the specific statement of mine to which you refer.

“If you have no specific statement in mind, please provide me with whatever specific factual basis supports your allegation. If you have neither, please retract this accusation on your blog site immediately and copy me with the retraction.”

Not only do I not consider your latest posting a retraction, I consider it to contain a new libel. You now write: “Insulting them, marginalizing them, ridiculing them, well yes, that is often my intention with Connor/Shook.”

With that remarkable admission you appear to be confessing to actual malice.

You further accuse me of “slanders, libels, accusations, false assertions and accusations of ethical misdeeds.” If you have actual evidence of this misconduct you have a professional duty to publish it to substantiate your accusations. If you have no such evidence but publish your accusations for the purpose of insulting me, that is malicious conduct on your part that requires immediate redress.

Therefore, I now make two specific new requests of you.

1. Please obtain a transcript of the Fuhrman show in which you recall my accusing members of the Cowles family of murder and arson. Please post immediately the specific comments made by me upon which you base your accusation.

2. Please provide me with a list of the specific “slanders, libels, accusations, false assertions and accusations of ethical misdeeds” you accuse me of. If you cannot produce such list, please retract your accusations immediately.

I will just note that if I am guilty of misconduct as egregious as what you accuse me of–charging your employers with murder and arson, slandering, libeling and falsely accusing them, they will be as interested in the facts of this alleged misconduct as I am.

I think you will agree that arguing with someone who acknowledges that insult is his intent is a futile undertaking. On the other hand, I assure you I do feel a moral obligation to apologize for the misdeeds of which you accuse me, if you can show me specifically where I am guilty of them. I will also gladly correct any reporting errors which you apparently feel I have made. Obviously, however, I can’t do that without knowing exactly what you are talking about. Again, because you have published these accusations, I request that you publish your specific documentation of them or immediately publish your unqualified retraction of them. I consider you to be both legally and ethically bound to take these steps.

Please be clear about the formality of my requests. I’m not sure what, if any, legal and ethical sanctions you might face because of your conduct, but I do wish to make a clear record of it and my response. Sincerely, Larry Shook

*****

I was just copied with this reply to Mr. Shook from Mr. Smith at 4:36 PM 06-11-08, This battle has just been enjoined. I should note that S-R Attorney Duane Swinton is none other than the same attorney who is the subject of previous posts at FOF and also is complicit in the original RPS Bond Fraud:

BREAKING – Tim Connor appeals WSBA ruling on Duane Swinton

Ron the Cop

*****
Mr. Shook,

Your letter to Stacey was copied to me. Although he did not receive your e mail, I shared it with him and with our legal counsel.

I have previously responded to your concerns in a Community Comment post.

There is nothing more to be said or done.

I have taken the liberty of copying Stacey on this response as well as our lawyer, Duane Swinton.

Thanks for writing.

Steve Smith

FYI – This latest round started in a dust up at David Laird’s S-R Blog Community Comment.

UPDATE:  My previous letter to S-R Editor Steve Smith of April 11, 2008, can be found in this previous post:

UPDATE – S-R Editor Steve Smith bans RBT from all S-R Blogs

Ron the Cop

*****

Dear Mr. Cowles:

Please see my attached letter I just forwarded to Mr. Steve Smith, Editor of the Spokesman-Review. I’m just amused by Mr. Smith’s comments. I rather suspect that such comments by other S-R editors and reporters would result in a trip to the woodshed. Such shooting from the hip remarks would incur potential liability for libel suits that you would ultimately have to sign the check for.

Sincerely,

Ron Wright

*****

[Ed Note: This is slightly edited from the original that was posted earlier. A couple of spelling errors were corrected and dead HTML links were corrected]

ORIGINAL SENT BY
Certified US Mail

June 5, 2008

Steve Smith, Editor
Spokesman-Review
999 West Riverside Ave.
Spokane, WA 99201

Re: Your comments in S-R Blog “Community Comments” on June 3, 2008

Dear Mr. Smith:

I too take exception with your comments as have Tim Connor and Larry Shook. Mr. Smith It was refreshing for once you chose not to use your normal terms of endearment e.g., wackaloons, nutsos, crazies, and little green men, in referring to others and me who have contrary opinions to yours regarding the Cowles Co & RPS et al. As I emailed David Laird the host of Community Comment:

OK to be perfectly clear I didn’t accuse anyone of anything. I said, “. . . if the shoe fits – wear it.” I said as a career investigative professional I would sure use the murder of SFD Fire Captain Hanna as a hammer in asking probative questions that no one seems to be asking in this town other than a few whom Smith attempts to marginalize with his broad brush characterizations. Mr. Smith will not debate the facts or attempt to correct where Connor and Shook are in error

I told Mr. Laird I too would be sending you a letter to clarify where you have mischaracterized my previous comments in support of your recent remarks in the S-R Community Comment Blog thread:

. . . I finally pulled the plug on him when he accused — and still maintains — the Cowles family of arson and murder for incidents that occurred some 30 years ago give or take. (At the time, Stacey Cowles would have been 12 years old, give or take.) Of course there is nothing behind these accusations, first aired publicly by the Connor/Shook duo and repeated by RBT as if they were his own.

Mr. Smith may I remind you of my previous letter of April 11, 2008 where I sought to clarify your previous accusations about me:

We are under no obligation to provide space to someone who flatly and without the least bit of evidence, disregarding the laws of fairness, decency and common sense, accuses our owners of manslaughter, arson and murder and the rest of us of being accessories.

To be as factual as possible, neither Larry Shook nor Tim Connor to my knowledge have made any mention of arsons and murders as this relates to the Cowles family with the exception of the death of Jo Savage in the RPS parking garage. These arson fires were a tangential discussion that first arose on the Mark Fuhrman Radio Show. If my memory serves me correctly, it was a caller to the Fuhrman Show that first brought up the subject of the arson fire at the District 81 building. This caller was an employee of the school district and worked in this building. He was at the building the morning of the fire. He said there was a fire started in the basement as well as on an upper floor. It was later that on the air Mark Fuhrman asked Larry Shook about the District 81 fire. It was during this conversation Mr. Shook as an aside mentioned his personal knowledge of the arson fire at the Zukor Building (Note: Zukor clothing store in the Jamieson building). I can’t recall if Mr. Shook made any mention of SFD Captain Hanna who was killed fighting this fire or any linkage to the Cowles family. This is when I first learned of these fires and undertook my own independent research.

As Mr. Shook expressed in an email to me:

You’re tapping your training and experience as a law officer to serve as a proxy for the law here, just as the law contemplates citizens do. What you are doing is generous and noble, and the public is indebted to you. It’s especially important in this case, because a public safety officer–a fireman–died doing his job. Spokane owes it to Capt. Hanna, and to itself, to care about his death. Capt. Hanna was murdered. God help this community if that’s okay with it.

To be honest this does stick in my craw from where I’m from. In my experience the death of a police officer or a fireman would be an all out 24/7 investigation. During my police career at my department there were six officers murdered I personally knew let alone at surrounding agencies. There were no stones left unturned to find and hold those accountable who were responsible and those who aided and or abetted in these deaths. I find such a commitment strangely lacking in this town especially investigative reporting by the Spokesman-Review.

As you know both former Sheriff Bamonte and I concur upon the review of the Camas documentation believe the Savage death should be thoroughly investigated and if warranted, prosecuted as a negligent homicide. Under Washington State Law this would be First-Degree Manslaughter. The information contained in Sheriff Bamonte’s complaint was sufficient to warrant the review now underway by two Assistant US Attorneys in the US Attorney’s Office in Seattle. This occurred since the recusal of US Attorney Jim McDevitt and reassignment of these related cases to the Seattle Office. Sheriff Bamonte was recently contacted by federal investigators in response to his complaint.

Mr. Smith your most recent references of arson and murder are apparently from my comments and opinions from my own independent investigation and research of the STA Transit Plaza Project and the preceding arson/murder fire at the Zukor Bldg where the STA Transit Plaza now sits. It was during this research I confirmed the death of Captain Hanna in the Zukor arson fire as it was reported in the S-R from the archives of the Spokane Public Library. Captain Hanna’s death is also documented at the Spokane Fire Department’s web site under, “Line of duty Deaths.” I am also researching the arson fire of the District 81 School Administration Building where Nordstrom’s is now located at RPS. Mind you these two major fires occurred within a year’s time of each other. I have compiled the ownership title transfers on these properties before and after these fires. I’ve also compiled documentation that reveals the STA official build out costs of the STA Transit Plaza and the Assessor’s current value of this property and building are substantially different. Further from the recent public debate, it is apparent that the STA Transit Plaza was poorly located in the first place. Whether by coincidence or not some of these owners have associations with others who were involved in other “suspect” public projects in Downtown Spokane. I have filed several public document requests with the City of Spokane to review the police/fire investigative files on these fires and the Jo Savage death.

As I said in my last letter to you in clarification to your email banning me from all S-R Blogs:

If your were referring to my recent email to S-R Reporter Jonathan Brunt regarding the STA Transit Plaza and the Zukor Building arson/murder fires, I meant what I said, ” . . . if the shoe fits – wear it.” . . .

Investigative reporters and criminal investigators share many common tools and techniques. In one way we differ is the manner we pose probative questions to potential witnesses and suspects. We all seek the truth and ultimately serve the public. I won’t restate my operating hypothesis [* and reference link] outlined in the Brunt email but I will say from my review of the Camas Magazine documents there is a clear pattern and practice in a series of public/private projects in Downtown Spokane where “tainted” public financing was used to enrich the pockets of a few individuals at the expense of the public. Based on my training, education, and investigative experience this is an ongoing criminal enterprise where individuals at different times have acted together in concert to commit criminal acts and/or individually carried out with the knowledge and approval of this group. This by definition, Mr. Smith, is a criminal conspiracy.

In my review of the circumstances and evidence I believe there is reasonable cause to believe a similar MO is apparent in the STA Transit Plaza Project. I don’t know who burned out whom in the Zukor Building arson fire or in the District 81 Building arson fire but some of the same individuals clearly economically benefited from these fires. Generally if anyone aides, abets the principals in the commission of these acts, with criminal knowledge personally benefits, conceals information and/or impedes the investigation is criminally liable. As a criminal investigator I most assuredly would be asking probative questions to seek the truth. I would in a heartbeat use as a “hammer” as any cop would who wasn’t green behind the ears, that Captain Hanna was killed fighting the Zukor Building fire. I would make it very clear this was an arson/murder fire and further ANY involvement could bring criminal liability for murder under the general felony/murder rule. This applies as well to the Savage death in the RPS Parking Garage that both former Sheriff Bamonte and I believe was a negligent homicide arising to the level of a first-degree manslaughter in Washington.

[*] [Note: My operating hypothesis is based in part on my read of the IRS ruling disallowing the tax-exempt status of the first RPS bonds and as reported by Camas Magazine in ‘The Casino was Rigged‘. Based on the IRS report I don’t know why the IRS didn’t pursue criminal fraud charges against those involved. My speculation based on my experience is that IRS knew that pursuing such a criminal case was a losing cause based on the relationship of the current US Attorney for the Eastern District of WA, Jim McDevitt, and his previous personal relationship with the RPS bond fraud and with his former colleague Attorney Michael Ormsby at the law firm of Preston & Gates.

This is the same Michael Ormsby that the IRS took the unprecedented action of castigating publicly in implicating him in the RPS bond fraud as reported in Bond Buyer for, “. . . incompetence and disreputable conduct.” The Bond Buyer mistakenly reported though that the tax-exempt status of the RPS bonds was preserved in this settlement. In fact the tax-exempt status was disallowed and the IRS got its back taxes of some $8M through a secret deal with Preston & Gates.]

I’m sure both Mr. Connor, Mr. Shook and I would be very forthcoming to immediately correct any errors or misstatements of facts that we have made. Your attempts to discredit and to marginalize us, our credentials, credibility, veracity, and thereby our professional opinions would be better served if you would debate the facts.

It would be refreshing for once if you as the editor and as an advocate of “journalism of verification” of a major regional newspaper would debate the facts. Instead you attempt to marginalized those who would ask legitimate probative questions to hold their government accountable. Why Mr. Smith? In my opinion this is a fundamental responsibility of our free press as empowered by WE THE PEOPLE to hold those whom WE CHOOSE to govern accountable.

With this in mind when will the S-R be reporting the following stories:

The significance of the O. Yale Lewis Documents now in possession of the City of Spokane

Mayor Mary Verner recently met with Attorney O. Yale Lewis who was retained by former Mayor John Talbott to investigate the RPS bond fraud but was fired with the election of former Mayor Powers (Note: Michael Ormsby was his campaign treasurer)

Both the RPS cases et al and the Jo Savage manslaughter case are now under active review by the US Attorney’s Office in Seattle since their reassignment after the recusal of US Attorney Jim McDevitt which was the direct result of the Mark Fuhrman Radio Show.

Federal investigators have recently contacted former Sheriff Bamonte regarding his complaint regarding the death of Jo Savage in the RPS parking garage

A comprehensive story – more than the S-R’s brief mention of Tim Connor’s recent appeal of the WSBA’s initial ruling re S-R Attorney Duane Swinton. This would be informative to the readers regarding certain confidentially agreements that Mr. Swinton was apparently involved in that withheld certain material information from both the defrauded RPS institutional bond investors and the citizens of Spokane.

What does the STA plan to do with it’s rumored $58M cash reserve that it appears to be rolling over from year to year? Why was the STA’s Draft Transit Development Plan 2009-2015 pulled back from the public libraries before the last election? Why is the STA using Michael Ormsby even on a temporary basis in view of the IRS’s findings. Why haven’t we heard that the City of Spokane received a $260K grant from the state to study a rail trolley system in Downtown Spokane, the City has spent $160K of these funds to evaluate if the bridges can sustain the additional weight, and the remaining $100K will be used to educate the public on the need for the trolleys? I have nothing against light rail but the current gas powered trolleys are running near empty. Yes, rail trolleys would provide a nice added ambiance to Downtown Spokane. On the other hand the current ridership and density won’t sustain rail trolleys without heavy public subsidy. These trolleys would only benefit a few property owners at public expense.

“Spokane Valley the new Chinatown” or perhaps “Sewer Wars in the Valley.” The Spokane Area has an unprecedented resource, the Rathdrum Aquifer. In the future clean water will become more important and more valuable than oil. The EPA has designated this aquifer as a “sole source” and has required sanitary sewers be installed to protect it. The game afoot now is who is going to pay for this sewer infrastructure and will those costs be equitably borne by developers and residents alike including the Cowles Co and its Inland Empire Paper plant?

Speaking of the Spokane Valley, why is the Chief of Police strongly discouraged from appearing on local talk shows to speak directly to the people. To me this flies in the face of community orientated policing philosophy. Is there a move afoot to create a new Spokane Valley PD perhaps against the wishes of the people who elected Sheriff Knezovich overwhelming in all precincts? Why?

I see that Dr. Kim Thorburn has announced her candidacy to run for County Commissioner against incumbent Todd Mielke. The apparent “bums rush” given Dr. Thorburn is what attracted my interest to Spokane politics in the first place since arriving here a year ago. I’m finding it hard to reconcile the “cover story” of the Board for her termination. While I don’t agree with her with some of her political views, I’ve learned from many sources they have found her to be the consummate public health professional. I’ve often wondered if the location of the public health building in the middle of Kendall Yards had more to do with her dismissal than anything of substance. There is a rumor circulating that there are “deep dark secrets” in her personnel file that would explain her dismissal. Further she was offered a “turn key” building by the project developers to move the public health building. I don’t know if these rumors are true. With my research so far on public development projects in this town I wouldn’t trust either developer promises as far as I could throw them. Perhaps Dr. Thorburn was seen as a “roadblock” to this project as she would have made sure the publics’ interest and equity were protected – a rare commodity in this town? I would like to be informed. Will someone ask the probative questions?

I as a reader of the Spokesman-Review, the paper of record for Spokane, I would be interested reading about these stories. Something tells me I will have to rely on the New/Alternative media to be informed. There is a common element in the under-reporting and or no coverage of these stories. The commonality is the Cowles Co and its associates. As Spokane veteran KXLY radio icon Mike Fitzsimmons recently observed in his blog:

The long-standing ban on newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership was engineered with good reason. Too much influence over public opinion in any community is unhealthy, and in most U.S. communities, newspapers already have tremendous power to shape public viewpoints. We know firsthand in Spokane about what can happen. The River Park Square story in Spokane, was deliberately and unethically under-reported by the Spokesman Review and one television station in our community, to protect the family that owned the mall and the media outlets. Imagine what might have been possible had this local media powerhouse controlled many more sources. The public might not have learned about this fiasco at all.

And as I confirmed in a recent meeting with Steve Herling the General Manager of KXLY, they were not on the Cowles Co “buy list” when former KXLY Reporter Tom Grant was doing reporting on RPS. They were taking a significant hit in lost ad revenue. This was contained in a past email sent by Mr. Herling. Mr. Herling did say he was able to replace this lost ad revenue and that he did not feel pressured to remove Tom Grant. Mr. Herling said he didn’t consider this fair, but the Cowles Co was free to place its ads where it pleased just as he could refuse to run ads:

From: Steve Herling
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2001 2:34 PM
[…]
Subject: Re: Tom Grant

We do not agree with that assessment. RiverPark Square alone is testament to our ability to forgo ad dollars for truth. We have been off their “buy” list for over 2 years costing us hundreds of thousands of dollars because we supported the reporting, whether Tom Grant or any of our staff (yes there were other of our reporters on RPS than Tom). We never have shied from the truth for dollars and we’ve proven it. We have reported negative news about car dealers and taken the hit….Tom simply is uninformed about our busniness practices. We only spent $3,000 on the personal grooming consultant (TV is a visual medium and we want our people to look their best) not the $10,000. And that expenditure took nothing away from our journalism budget. We hope to have an exciting announcement soon of a replacement for Tom. It does make a difference to me if you watch. Remember KREM, KAYU and KHQ are getting all of the RiverPark Square advertising budget. If I lose you too I have really been penalized for doing the “right” thing.

You Sir, are in check again. I’m afraid your time is now limited as checkmate nears. In Alice’s world, Through the Looking Glass, or in the world of The Wizard of Oz, you have been unmasked either as the “Red Queen” or as the “little man” behind the curtain shouting in the megaphone. You Sir, are nothing more than a schoolyard bully tolerated by your handlers but I feel you are now more of a liability than an asset in protecting the family jewels.

Sincerely,

Det. Ron Wright (Retired)
Riverside PD, CA

CC:

Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich, County of Spokane, WA
Mayor Mary Verner, City of Spokane, WA
City Council, City of Spokane, WA
US Attorney Jeffrey C. Sullivan, Western District of Washington, Seattle, WA
Agent Frank Harvill, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Spokane, WA
Sgt. Ken Wade, Washington State Patrol, Spokane, WA
Chief Anne Kirkpatrick, City of Spokane, WA
Acting City Attorney Pat Dalton, City of Spokane, WA