Detective: Cochran Is The One Who Is Lying

LOS ANGELES - He wasn't supposed to say anything about Johnnie Cochran Jr.'s calling him a liar to the O.J. Simpson jury, but Detective Philip Vannatter did anyway.

"It's nonsense. It's lies. It's ridiculous," the veteran Los Angeles Police Department investigator said yesterday, hours after Cochran referred to him as a "devil of deception" in his closing argument.

With that response, however, Vannatter brushed off further queries, saying he was obligated under an internal gag order to remain silent.

A respected investigator, Vannatter awoke yesterday to hear that he was a big liar. And that he was not unlike ex-LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman, who was heard in tapes using racial epithets and bragging about police brutality.

Cochran told the jury that Vannatter and Fuhrman were the "twin devils of deception."

At least three things Vannatter did during the course of the Simpson case are at issue for Cochran: Why did Vannatter bring a vial of Simpson's blood to the crime scene? Did he lie when he testified that Simpson was not a suspect when police searched his mansion without a warrant hours after Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered? Why did he display a "reckless" disregard for the truth - Judge Lance Ito's words - when he eventually wrote a search-warrant affidavit for Simpson's house?

Meanwhile, public-safety officials plan to activate Los Angeles' Emergency Operations Centers, anticipating possible street

violence, as soon as the jury begins deliberating.

"There is no indication right now that anything is going to occur, but we would be remiss as a response entity if we were unprepared," Assistant Police Chief Bayan Lewis said yesterday.