A second, final report from a private investigator hired by the
city to discover who followed City Manager Ed Tewes in February
differs in small but significant ways from a City Council report
based on the original P.I. notes.
A second, final report from a private investigator hired by the city to discover who followed City Manager Ed Tewes in February differs in small but significant ways from a City Council report based on the original P.I. notes.
The report dated Aug. 18 by Kelly Jones of Esquire Inquiry, was released this week. It presents several “he said, she said” – or in this case “he said, they said” situations. The report also had been edited to remove phone numbers and other information.
Also, Brian Carey, the Santa Cruz man hired to follow Tewes, in a telehone interview Wednesday cleared up one question that has puzzled City Hall watchers since the “scandal” broke over the Fourth of July weekend.
One reason Tewes thought something was amiss during his February trip was the appearance of two cups of hot chocolate in his room – which he did not order, possibly showing the presence of two people in Tewes’ room.
Since, Jones discovered, Hyatt policy only allows orders for room service from the telephone in the actual room where the order is to be delivered, he, and councilmen Greg Sellers and Larry Carr surmised, they said in their report, that Carey had entered Tewes’ room to make the call.
That would be unlawful trespassing and move the event into the area of criminal intent. Tichinin has always claimed there is nothing illegal about keeping an eye on government employees and nothing illegal about Carey following Tewes
“I made the call from the white house phone by the elevators outside our rooms,” Carey said Wednesday. He denied ever entering Tewes’ room.
And why hot chocolate? Carey said, since he doesn’t drink alcohol any more, he thought of chocolate first.
Carey denies the implication that he was trying to “trap,” Tewes but was unclear about why he ordered two cups instead of one.
To date, city staff has been authorized to pay approximately $56,000 in bills related to the investigation. Carr and Sellers were authorized by the council to coordinate the investigation.
On July 28, the council authorized three contracts with the San Francisco-based law firm of Nielson and Merksamer related to the City Hall troubles: $25,000 for legal services related to the surveillance of the city manager; $50,000 for personnel issues; and $25,000 for miscellanous legal services.
To date, $31,897 has been paid in legal fees related to the three contracts.
Other bills associated with the situation and its aftermath are under review by Carr and Sellers.
The city has received invoices totaling between $24,000 and $25,000 for the private investigator’s work, Tewes said Thursday.
Chiefly, Jones claims that when he tracked down and interviewed the man identified by Tewes in a videotape and named in a Hyatt Regency staff e-mail, Carey told him he had followed Tewes before.
“He (Carey) admitted it was not the first time he had traveled to Huntington Beach, indicating he had done so on another occasion for the same purpose,” Jones said in his report.
A July 7 report by Councilmen Sellers and Carr, based on what Jones told them and on interviews they had conducted, made no mention of an earlier incident.
Later in the report, Jones said Carey told him the first surveillance was in August 2003. Tewes said last week that he was not aware of being under surveillance before the February 2004 incident.
On Wednesday Carey firmly denied following Tewes at any other time. Mark Bell of CC Investigations, who hired Carey to watch Tewes in Southern California, said there was only one incident. And attorney Bruce Tichinin, who has admitted hiring Bell, also denied any earlier surveillance took place.
Proof that an investigator had been set on Tewes in 2003 would have shot down Tichinin’s statements about why he had Tewes followed. Tichinin claimed recently that he and a business partner, Howard Vierra, had hired the investigator to find proof that Tewes and Leichter were having an affair. Both have denied an affair took place.
Proof, if it could be found, Tichinin and Vierra said, would show that Tewes might have influenced Leichter’s professional decision on whether or not they and Vierra – and a third partner, Randy Barbaglia – could build houses on the lower flanks of El Toro Mountain.
An eye-balled line drawn by the city planning department, before more technical methods were developed, and adopted in a General Plan Update, would forbid the houses.
However, David Bischoff, now retired as director of the department, told the council at a meeting in January that the line was incorrectly drawn.
