The settlement payment to detective Kenneth Kamakana, a decorated 29-year HPD veteran who has specialized in organized crime and narcotics trafficking cases, must still be formally approved in a full council meeting next month. The amount was confirmed by two people with direct knowledge of the settlement who asked not to be identified because final action has not been taken.

The $650,000 settlement figure is dwarfed by an estimated $2 million in legal fees and expenses the city has paid in defending itself in the suit, filed by Kamakana in November 2001.

Police Chief Lee Donohue and Capt. Milton Olmos, who were named as individual defendants in the case, have denied wrongdoing and the city’s settlement will contain no admissions of liability toward Kamakana, as is standard in the settlement of civil lawsuits.

Approval of the settlement by the full council is considered a foregone conclusion because yesterday’s preliminary approval was made by the council’s executive matters committee, which includes all nine members of the City Council.

City Corporation Counsel David Arakawa, who briefed the executive matters committee on the proposed settlement in executive session yesterday morning, warned those present not to talk about the case until the final vote is taken next month.

Councilmember Romy Cachola, chairman of the executive matters committee, declined to discuss the case yesterday.

Kamakana’s attorney William McCorriston could not be reached for comment.

Much of the settlement payment is to go toward Kamakana’s legal expenses. He filed the lawsuit after he was transferred out of the department’s Criminal Intelligence Unit, which investigates high-profile cases such as organized crime and terrorism. The transfer occurred shortly after Kamakana contacted the FBI and reported evidence of wrongdoing in the CIU.

Federal officials who reviewed Kamakana’s allegations about improprieties in the CIU took no action against police officers, although they did consider filing obstruction of justice charges, according to sworn testimony from an FBI agent who was questioned in the Kamakana lawsuit.

Agent Dan Kelly said some prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office here wanted to pursue criminal charges, but others did not.

"My understanding is that it was not a unanimous decision, but the decision was that criminal offenses or criminal charges would not be pursued in the matter," Kelly said in a sworn deposition.

The deposition was one of hundreds of documents originally filed under seal in the Kamakana lawsuit and later opened to the public after The Advertiser argued that there was no legal basis for keeping the records confidential.

City attorneys filed repeated motions to keep many of the records sealed and repeatedly fought judicial orders to open the records to public view.

Last week, the city filed new objections to unsealing more records in the case, threatening to appeal the matter to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Advertiser staff writer Treena Shapiro contributed to this report.