In Nevada, Tapes Reveal No People — Only More Chaos“A partial review Thursday of surveillance video from a parking garage where a woman said the Republican candidate for governor assaulted her did not reveal the presence of either person, nor of an attack,” the AP reports.
“The cameras filming an area in front of the first floor elevators showed neither [accuser Chrissy] Mazzeo nor [Rep. Jim] Gibbons [(R-NV)],” the news organization said, “only black-and-white images of elevator doors and the occasional appearance of a security guard and a white cat.”
These tapes, of course, are the same ones that first did not exist, then did exist, and whose fluctuating realities have been blamed entirely on a security guard named “Aaron.”
Gibbons’ lawyer, Don Campbell, turned over a copy of the surveillance recordings to the AP yesterday morning, and said he expected the organization to dupe the tapes and distribute them to other outlets. Chaos ensued, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
“I thought about this and couldn’t think of any better plan than that,” Campbell said.
More after the jump.
Ah, the saga continues:
But the look of surprise on Hennessey’s face hinted at the developments that would unfold throughout the day. By evening, no copies of the tapes had been provided to other media, the AP had released only a short segment taken from one of the 26 camera angles on the two tapes, and the news organization had returned the tapes to Campbell after he asked for them back.
Tom Tait, Nevada news editor for the AP, said his organization thought it was getting only copies of the tapes and never agreed to copying and distributing them to other media. The situation was further complicated by the antiquated format of the security video, which required a hard-to-find system to properly view the footage.
“We didn’t know what we were being handed, and we didn’t unilaterally enter into a pool situation,” Tait said, referring to the arrangements sometimes entered by media organizations to use one as a conduit for distributing information to other media entities.
The AP spent most of the day trying to find a multiplexer video machine to view the tapes, which are unreadable on regular VCRs.
Each tape contains 24 hours of coverage — from about 1:30 a.m. Oct. 13 to about 1:30 a.m. the next day — condensed into eight hours of footage. One tape includes 11 camera angles, and the other has 15 angles. A multiplexer enables each of the camera angles to be viewed at once. . . . The AP eventually found a machine, but it could show only nine camera angles.
The paper noted that Las Vegas police “watched all the footage on a department multiplexer,” but declined to share the machine with the AP or other news organizations, “because of the ongoing investigation.” For the same reason, they declined to discuss what was on the tapes.
However, they appear to have discussed the tapes with Gibbons’ counsel, Campbell. “Detectives assured him that the tapes had not been tampered with,” the paper reported.
