Corrupt Governor Update, V

File under: Why it is so much better to fight downhill.

One of traits shared across most high-level criminal investigations is their maddeningly slow pace. To get to the top of the corrupt pyramid, investigations usually have to grind their way through acres of paper and move from one low-level mope to another; squeezing, taking notes, sifting information, and them moving on to the next low-level mope like a vintner forced to check and harvest his crop one grape at a time.

This was what happened 2-3 years ago within the sprawling, hydra-headed City of Chicago corruption scandal known as “Hired Truck”:

U.S. details city cover-up
Mayor's aides destroyed evidence of patronage, feds allege

By Dan Mihalopoulos, Laurie Cohen and Todd Lighty, Tribune staff reporters
Published April 11, 2006


Aides to Mayor Richard Daley shredded documents and erased computer files to try to cover up how they guaranteed City Hall jobs and promotions for applicants with political or union clout, including city workers who "did not know what they were doing," federal prosecutors said Monday.

The government laid out its case in the greatest detail yet, exactly one month before four Daley aides are scheduled to go on trial for allegedly playing broad roles in the "massive fraud" scheme. Prosecutors said the scheme was designed to circumvent a federal court order restricting political hiring and reward campaign workers for the mayor and his allies.

City officials acted to conceal the hiring scheme since the 1990s, authorities said. The alleged cover-up efforts clash with the defense strategy of the Daley aides, who said last week that the mayor's office fielded political job recommendations in a widely known and completely legal process that was an open secret at City Hall.

The federal government has granted immunity from prosecution to at least five current or former city officials for testifying in the case against Robert Sorich, Tim McCarthy, John Sullivan and Patrick Slattery, the new records show.

Government witnesses said officials in the mayor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs would tell city supervisors whom they wanted to hire from lists of applicants, often with no regard for their true qualifications for the jobs. Daley's patronage chief Sorich and other city officials then would tell the Personnel Department to make sure that unqualified candidates were nonetheless placed on a list of those who were eligible for City Hall openings.

Sorich, McCarthy--another Intergovernmental Affairs official--and Slattery have ties to the Daley family's political power base, the 11th Ward Democratic Organization run by the mayor's brother John. Slattery and Sullivan both worked for the Streets and Sanitation Department.

The new 98-page court filing also outlines new allegations about the roles that the pro-Daley Hispanic Democratic Organization and its leaders played in winning city jobs for HDO's members.

"Individual A"--identified previously as former Intergovenmental Affairs director and HDO Chairman Victor Reyes--arranged for the promotion of an HDO member to mason inspector in 1995 even after a Sewers Department official told Reyes that the worker was suspended for showing up late and leaving early, according to the filing.
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Then as now, elected officials flouted their shock and outrage and spoke in blunt, Apocalyptic, come-to-Jebus terms about kicking ass and changing the way bidniz gets done:

Will Daley surrender?
Comments

July 24, 2005

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter

Aldermen who once cowered at his feet are now talking openly -- at least among themselves -- about his political survival and possible replacements.

A City Hall Cabinet filled with stand-ins for those who have walked the plank are afraid to say a word or make a move for fear they, too, could be thrown overboard.

With every new indictment, cooperating witness or scandal-induced headline, efforts to recruit blue-ribbon replacements become infinitely more difficult.

For a mayor who, not too long ago, was riding the waves, Richard M. Daley suddenly finds himself captain of a sinking ship.
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Then as now, Patrick Fitzgerald was in the thick of it:

…
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald added more water last week when he charged Daley's patronage chief and others with close ties to the mayor's Bridgeport power base with presiding over a "massive fraud" in the last decade -- complete with sham interviews, altered test scores and color-coded charts of clout-heavy sponsors -- to rig city hiring in favor of politically connected applicants.
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And because there’s always more than one rat’s nest in the shithouse, I predict that just as happened three years ago, the current freakshow will yield at least one, perfect "We'll, of course you know about the heroin ring, right?"-moment:

City worker seized as heroin ring boss

By Matt O'Connor and Dan Mihalopoulos, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune staff reporters Laurie Cohen, Gary Washburn and Ray Gibson contributed to this report
Published June 9, 2005 See DOJ press release on indictments

A veteran employee of the city's troubled Department of Water Management was arrested Wednesday on charges he headed the Chicago distribution cell of a Colombian heroin-trafficking ring while making $30 an hour in his city job.

George A. Prado was captured on wiretaps two weeks ago threatening to kidnap and possibly kill a courier who had about two pounds of heroin confiscated by police after a traffic stop, authorities alleged.

Two other city employees, Prado's brother-in-law, Anthony C. Ritacco, and Michael D. Hart, also were charged with heroin trafficking, which often took place during weekday hours when they were supposed to be at work for the city, officials said.

Another city Water Management Department employee turned informant after being arrested while possessing more than 100 grams of heroin earlier this year, according to the charges, but that employee hasn't been charged yet in the FBI-led investigation.
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Because the Second Law of Political Thermodynamics predicts that process of sweating down low-level stooges with dire warnings of “Tell me every fucking detail of every filthy thing you were involved in right now and I can save you. Withhold anything and when we find out -- and we tapped everything, dumbass, so we will find out -- we’ll throw your ass under the fucking jail” always exhumes some hilariously entertaining, collateral scandals that will make battle-hardened 20-year veteran crime beat reporters drops their awesome Manny’s corned beef sammiches and say “What the fuck?!”

The difference this time around?

This time, the U.S. Attorney’s office has already very publicly captured the commanding heights and doesn’t have to slog its way uphill an inch at a time anymore.

This time they already have a genuine kingpin, caught unambiguously, nuts-in-vice, on tape; a man whose whole craven persona suggest will sing like the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir to buy himself a better deal, or at least a nicer cell.

Which means that, for once, the Good Guys will have the Law of Political Gravity on their side as they work their way swiftly and remorselessly down-slope.