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Saturday, July 17, 1999

Cisneros judge likely to allow some tapes
Defense had tried to suppress tapes, which former mistress Jones admits she altered
By Michelle Mittlestadt
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The federal judge presiding over former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros' approaching conspiracy trial indicated Friday he is likely to allow jurors to hear Cisneros' voice on tape recordings made by his ex-mistress.
   But U.S. District Judge Stanley Sporkin's comments, at the end of a 13-day pretrial hearing on the tapes' admissibility, suggested only a qualified victory for prosecutors trying to use as evidence 26 of the 88 tapes recorded by Linda Jones.
   Fretting that some of the tapes bear signs suggesting they could have been heavily edited, Sporkin told the government's special prosecutors he would not let them introduce all 26 recordings. "Some of this is going out, as far as I'm concerned," Sporkin said.
   The recordings are central to prosecutors' case that while under consideration for a Cabinet post in the Clinton administration, Cisneros conspired with Jones and two aides to conceal details of his more than $250,000 in payments to her. The trial is set for September.
   Sporkin, whose official decision will come in a written ruling, said he remains skeptical of the defense's argument that none of the tapes are admissible because all are copies, in some cases altered, of since-destroyed originals.
   "I can't buy your argument in total, and I can't buy their argument in total," Sporkin told a prosecutor as both sides wound up their arguments.
   'Powerful evidence'
   During the marathon hearing, which had been scheduled to last only two days, Cisneros' legal team labored on several fronts to quash the tapes, which lawyer Brendan Sullivan acknowledged Friday may carry special weight with jurors.
   "Tapes, as we all know, are very powerful evidence," Sullivan said.
   The recordings, made as the relationship soured, captured conversations in which Jones and Cisneros discussed his financial support as well as his characterization of the payments to the Clinton transition team and FBI agents conducting his Cabinet background check.
   Cisneros revealed during his background check that he gave Jones financial support after their extramarital affair became public in 1988, costing her marriage and career as a political fund-raiser. But prosecutors contend he falsely told the FBI he never paid her more than $10,000 annually.
   The 18-count indictment against Cisneros alleges he paid her more than $264,000 between 1990 and 1993. He has pleaded innocent.
   Jones' credibility on trial
   Independent Counsel David Barrett's office has acknowledged that four of the 26 tapes were edited by Jones, who testified she feared legal repercussions if she didn't scrub the recordings to delete passages where she threatened to expose her financial arrangement with Cisneros if the money flow stopped.
   Jones said she also deleted some sexually suggestive passages and those dealing with uninvolved parties.
   The Cisneros team, which undertook an all-out assault on Jones' credibility, said the judge should throw out the tapes because he has no independent means of verifying whether her depiction of the editing is accurate.
   Under cross-examination, Jones admitted she misrepresented the tapes as unaltered originals to the FBI, Internal Revenue Service, a Texas court and her own lawyers.
   "You can't rely upon the liar, the government's chief witness," Sullivan told Sporkin on Friday. "She's been proven a liar hundreds of times before you."

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