The Region - News from March 27, 1987

A confidential informant followed directions from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and secretly recorded a telephone conversation with an Orange County Register reporter who had written articles critical of county jail operations, according to court documents and notes made by a sheriff’s investigator. The notes showed that the informant called reporter Chuck Cook, now with the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, in 1982 to learn whether he was trying to persuade former inmates to lie about jail conditions. When it was determined Cook had done nothing illegal, the investigation was ended and no charges were filed. The documents and notes were among material that Sheriff Brad Gates was ordered by a court to give to an attorney for former Orange County Municipal Judge Bobby D. Youngblood, who is suing Gates in federal court for violation of his civil rights through alleged improper surveillance and harassment tactics.