Salon.com News | The Greatest Vendetta on Earth One day in March 1997, Smith ordered a young gofer to gather up and destroy the tapes. At the same time, Smith asked him to go to his -- Smith's -- erstwhile girlfriend's house and bring back a Jeep he'd given her. But the gofer got his instructions mixed up and instead delivered the bag of tapes to Smith's girlfriend. ("He's a nice boy," Kaplan said of the young man in his deposition, "but rowing with one oar out of the water.")
Smith panicked when he heard what happened. But it was too late. The girlfriend had called the Fairfax cops, who launched an investigation. So did the FBI, three sources said. The tapes they found had recorded Smith's own voice telling Kaplan on the phone, "We have got to get, you know, the wires, man