An FBI surveillance videotape showing Santa Fe's police chief and his brother was nothing more than a "witch hunt," Capt. Gary Johnson said Thursday.

"I think it was an attempt by the FBI — I don't know if the U.S. attorney was involved — to discredit the chief and remove him from office," Johnson said.

The video shows Gary Johnson and his brother, Chief Eric Johnson, searching a Santa Fe motel room in January 2003, after they were lured by a tip from the FBI that drug dealers had abandoned cash there.

The federal agency in late February 2007 gave the videotape to a member of the city Police Department, who turned it over to City Hall officials, said Frank Katz, city attorney.

City Manager Galen Buller then ordered the Police Department's Internal Affairs Division to investigate, Katz said. The investigation was recently completed, and the tape was released to the public Friday.

Mayor David Coss said Friday that the FBI apparently believed the videotape showed a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects against illegal searches and seizures.

Katz said Eric Johnson was exonerated by the investigation, though Katz refused to comment on whether Gary Johnson, who remains both a captain and head of the department's Investigations Division, was disciplined. Asked why he could comment on the outcome of Eric Johnson's involvement but not Gary Johnson's, Katz said. "Because there was no discipline (in Eric Johnson's case)."

Gary Johnson said Friday that city officials have ordered him not to comment on whether the Internal Affairs investigation determined if his behavior shown on the videotape was a Fourth Amendment violation or not. However, he added that he's received no paperwork indicating disciplinary action.

Sources who requested anonymity said the investigation determined Gary Johnson violated the Fourth Amendment though his punishment would likely amount only to a written reprimand and a possible suggestion to attend a class.

The videotape, which can be viewed on the New Mexican's Web site, was shot by FBI agents at the Courtyard By Marriott hotel on Cerrillos Road on Jan. 24, 2003. More than an hour and four minutes into it, there is a knock at the door, and a male voice says, "Security." A few seconds go by before another knock, and a male voice says, "Security, sir."

Another approximately 15-20 seconds go by before the sounds of the door opening are heard, but not seen, and Gary Johnson's voice says, "Hello?" Gary Johnson doesn't immediately appear on the videotape, though he can be heard in another part of the room, possibly the bathroom.

About a minute later, Gary Johnson can be heard dialing his cell phone. "Hey," he says. "It looks like the guy split. ... Yeah come here. ... I'm here at the room. ... Yeah. ... OK, bye."

Not long after, Gary Johnson — who was a lieutenant at the time — and Eric Johnson — who was a sergeant — enter the video frame dressed in plain clothes and begin looking through the closets. Gary Johnson then reaches into a garbage can and says, "There's a (lot) of cash here." Gary Johnson puts the money back, then asks his brother to look under the bed.

Eric Johnson looks under the bed and says, "Nope." The two use flashlights to look in drawers. Eric Johnson then makes a cell phone call and says, "Hey. ... No nothing at all. ... OK," and the two leave.

Darrin Jones, an FBI spokesman in Albuquerque, said Friday that the videotape was indeed made by FBI agents in the course of an "inquiry." He declined to specify the target of the inquiry or why it was undertaken. The information gathered was turned over to the U.S. Attorney's Office, which declined to take any action, Jones said.

"At that time, it was turned over to the Internal Affairs department at the city," he said. Asked why the FBI apparently sat on the videotape for more than four years before providing it to the city, Jones said, "I don't think (that time frame is) correct to begin with. There was not that much time."

When other law enforcement agencies are involved, it's not unusual for the FBI to turn over information its agents gather to those agencies, Jones also said.

Gary Johnson, who said he hasn't been allowed to view the videotape, said the incident began in January 2003 when he received a phone call from a law enforcement source in South Carolina he'd spoken with before. That source told him that two drug dealers who smuggled drugs through New Mexico had been somehow spooked in Santa Fe and abandoned their hotel room, leaving behind a large amount of cash.

Gary Johnson said he went to the hotel with his brother and two other detectives. Gary Johnson said he doesn't remember if hotel security or a front desk clerk let him in to the room, but he didn't have a key to it. After searching the room and finding the cash, Gary Johnson said he left two detectives behind in another room to keep tabs on the alleged drug dealers' room, then began calling contacts at other city hotels to try to find the men.

One of those sources told him he thought a group of men was dealing drugs, Gary Johnson said. So he and other officers went to that room and ended up busting the men, who had cocaine and a firearm, he said.

Asked if he thinks he violated Fourth Amendment rights, Gary Johnson said, "In my interpretation, no. This was abandoned property is what I'd been told, and there's an exception to the Fourth Amendment for abandoned property."

Katz said, theoretically, that if a guest is staying at a hotel, a police officer must have the guest's permission to the enter the room or have a search warrant signed by a judge. If the room is abandoned or unoccupied, the front desk can let law enforcement officers into the room, he said.

Asked why he thinks the FBI turned the tape over to the city in the first place, Katz pointed out the action occurred in the midst of another FBI investigation into two Santa Fe police officers who were alleged to have stolen money from drug dealers. The charges were dismissed against one of the men, Sgt. Steve Altonji. The other, Detective Danny Ramirez, pleaded guilty to one felony count of theft for leaving $5,000 in cash at a drug dealer's home during an arrest so the man's grandparents could hire him a lawyer.

Said Coss: "My gut tells me that something was going on in the police department in the early 2000s that attracted the attention of the FBI. Was it law enforcement behavior? Law enforcement practice? Personalities? Politics? I don't know, but I inherited it."

Gary Johnson said he thinks the FBI investigations in 2003 and 2006-2007 proved one main thing. "The only thing that came out of this whole FBI investigation was not cops taking money, but cops leaving money," he said.

Contact Jason Auslander at 986-3076 or :jauslander@sfnewmexican.com.