Chicago Public Radio reports:
Chicago Alderman Bernard Stone today defended his reputation while a political underling is under investigation. This week, prosecutors charged Stone's ward superintendent with absentee ballot fraud. The charges stem from Stone's aldermanic re-election bid last Spring. Today, Stone said his political enemies instigated the probe.
STONE: The motivation is to…obviously caste some shadow of doubt on my reputation, and some shadow of suspicion upon my ward organization.
Here,again we must quote Alderman Stone at the funeral of his best friend the late
Alderman Roti of Chicago Mafia fame:
"Our skyline should say 'Roti' on it,'' Stone said at the funeral. "If not for Fred Roti, half the buildings in the Loop would never have been built."
Here's how the
New York Times described Alderman Stone's best friend(Fred Roti) and Roti's superior in the Chicago Mob(Pat Marcy) when they got indicted in 1990:
Revealing what Federal prosecutors described as a "movable feast" of public corruption, in which government officials are said to have conspired to fix everything from zoning cases to murder trials, a Federal grand jury here brought a wide range of criminal charges against five men today. The defendants include a former Cook County Circuit Court judge, a State Senator and a longtime Chicago city Alderman.
The charges, included in three indictments, were announced at a news conference by Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, William S. Sessions.
The indictments are the result of a Federal investigation, code-named Operation Gambat, which the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Fred Foreman, said would continue to focus on official corruption in Chicago's First Ward, which includes the city's downtown area.
This is at least the third major Federal inquiry into official corruption in the Chicago courts and political system within recent years. Operation Graylord, a sweeping investigation into corruption in the Cook County courts, has resulted in the convictions of more than 70 people, including 15 judges, since the mid-1980's. Operation Incubator has obtained about a dozen convictions or guilty pleas, including those from five members of the City Council and a former aide to the late Mayor Harold Washington. 'Fixed' Murder Trials
Among the accusations are that two of the men were involved in efforts to fix two separate murder trials. In both instances, the murder defendants were acquitted by judges, who heard the cases without juries.
In the first murder case, prosecutors say Pasquale Marcy, a 77-year-old official in the First Ward Democratic organization, fixed the 1977 murder trial of Harry Aleman, who was accused of killing a teamsters' union steward, by paying $10,000 to the judge assigned to hear the case. In the second, Mr. Marcy and Fred Roti, the First Ward's Alderman since 1969, are accused of having accepted $75,000 in exchange for fixing the trial of three men accused of a 1981 murder in the city's Chinatown neighborhood.
Just think,Bernie Stone's worried about his reputation.Few people can say they've eaten more meals with two "made members" of the Chicago Mob than Alderman Stone.
