Secret tape recordings by Donohue sought

By Jim Dooley
Advertiser Staff Writer

Newly unsealed court records suggest that Honolulu Police Chief Lee Donohue secretly tape-recorded telephone conversations he had with law enforcement officials, including the head of the local FBI office.

If Donohue was taping telephone conversations, records about that activity should be made public, said Jeff Portnoy, the attorney representing The Advertiser in efforts to unseal records in a lawsuit filed against the Police Department and Donohue.

"There apparently were secret tape recordings by Lee Donohue and we're going to fight like crazy to get this material released to the public," Portnoy said.

When the chief was questioned under oath in April 2002 about allegations made by Detective Kenneth Kamakana in a lawsuit filed against the city, Donohue produced a tape recording of telephone conversations he had with local FBI officials Myron Fuller and Fred Wong, according to a transcript of the deposition.

It's clear from the deposition transcript that the conversations concerned Kamakana, but almost all of what was said has been edited out of the transcript. The editing was done on the orders of attorney Clyde Matsui, appointed by federal Magistrate Judge Leslie Kobayashi to review the city's claims that release of some information in the court records would compromise criminal cases, expose the names of confidential informants or jeopardize the safety of police officers.

In Hawai'i, it is not illegal to record telephone conversations, even if one of the parties doesn't know they are being taped.

Matsui ordered that 13 pages of Donohue's testimony, which apparently concerned his telephone taping activities, be blacked out of the copy released to the public.

Another document released last week shows that the city gave Matsui a 90-minute audio cassette of conversations taped by Donohue from September 1999 to March 2000 and a shorter one labeled "Conversations with Fuller 2/2000." Matsui ordered the Fuller tape turned over to Kamakana and his lawyers, but not the longer one.

"On it are a number of conversations, with various persons, none of which ... is even remotely relevant to this case," Matsui ruled.

Portnoy said he believes some or all of the tapes, or the questions and answers about them, should be made public. "We've seen so far that much of the information the city claimed should be confidential was embarrassing to the Police Department," Portnoy said.

Donohue's representative said the chief will not answer questions about the case because the Kamakana lawsuit is pending.