LAST week U.S. District Court Judge Gary A. Feess moved to let the Los Angeles Police Department impose financial-disclosure measures for gang and narcotics officers.
Some people, once appointed to the U.S. District Court bench, believe they become all-knowing and infallible - gods in robes. Nobody on the federal bench exemplifies that arrogance more than Judge Gary Feess.
His ruling, based on a few years spent as a federal prosecutor and subsequent work as a federal judge, denied the Los Angeles Police Protective League a temporary restraining order against the financial-disclosure requirement, substituting his opinion for the judgment of others who actually have detailed knowledge of police work and human behavior.
District Attorney Steve Cooley, for example. Cooley has 27 years of experience in the D.A.'s Office as a prosecutor and law clerk and nearly six years as a reserve officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, and he once headed the D.A.'s Special Investigation Section prosecuting police corruption. He provided the court a sworn declaration that financial-disclosure forms would have no value in deterring police corruption.
Yet Feess contemptuously impugned the testimony of this law enforcement professional whose expertise dwarfed that of Feess.
Given Feess' threadbare experiences in this area, one would think he could cite real-life evidence that financial-disclosure programs work. However, he didn't. Because he can't. In real life, police agencies recognize that financial-disclosure programs don't work.
Nor does turning to the federal agencies help Feess' case. In fact, a 1995 executive order by President Clinton, mandating the same type of financial-disclosure program for federal agencies and contractors, has yet to be implemented. Why? Well, the U.S. Security Policy Board, tasked to implement the executive order, heard from numerous experts who testified there was no precedent suggesting a financial-disclosure program would work.
The use of financial disclosure as an effective tool to fight corruption was examined two years later by a congressional commission headed by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The commission concluded financial-disclosure programs neither stop nor identify corruption. It found the sweeping financial disclosure employed by the CIA had never been evaluated for its effectiveness - a statement true to this day. The commission further recommended that the plan to extend disclosure requirements be abandoned.
If Feess read newspapers or did any simple research, he would be aware of the failure of the CIA's financial-disclosure program. CIA Agent James Nicholson, the highest-ranking agent convicted of treason, received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Russia and filled out the financial-disclosure forms. (He was caught by a random polygraph exam.) In another notorious incident, CIA agent Aldrich Ames received over $2 million from the Soviet Union while dutifully filling out - falsely - the financial-disclosure forms. It was the Ames incident that motivated President Clinton, who appointed Feess to the bench, to issue Executive Order 12968.
Indeed, 13 years after Clinton's order, the FBI has yet to implement EO 12968 even after the headline-making cases of Robert Hansen and Earl Pitts, FBI agents who committed treason for financial gain. If financial disclosure worked, the FBI would mandate it.
As one commentator wrote: "Agents willing to betray their country are no more inclined to fill out a financial disclosure form honestly than they are to turn themselves in." Words of wisdom and common sense to most people. But not likely to impress a certain federal judge.
Tim Sands is president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League.
