The Daley Cover-Up

John Kass of the Chicago Tribune reports:

If there's anything that qualifies as a white paper--one of those lengthy political policy reports--it's the 292-page tome released Wednesday by special prosecutors with Regular Democratic Organization roots.

They investigated the torture of suspected criminals by former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge in the 1980s. The victims were minorities, some confessed under torture and were later sentenced to death, prosecuted by a Cook County state's attorney who had big political ambitions.

And the conclusions?

Mayor Richard Daley was not to blame for not investigating, though he was Cook County state's attorney for much of the period. Back then, he campaigned for mayor as the law-and-order candidate. But don't blame him, said special prosecutors Edward Egan and Robert Boyle.

"We accept his explanation, but would not do it the same way he did," Boyle said.

That's nice. I mean, it's nice for the mayor. He's got pressures--federal pressure, budget pressure and political pressure. He just installed pliant Ald. Todd Stroger (8th) as the Democratic Party's candidate for Cook County Board president, without appearing to pull any strings for Todd, now referred to openly as Urkel.

Black votes are vitally important to white Democratic bosses like Daley, as important as water to a man alone in the desert, because without black votes, there's nothing. So in the white paper, blame was not applied to the mayor. The authors found others to blame, including former Chicago Police Supt. Richard Brzeczek.

"They spent four years and almost $7 million to say it's Brzeczek's fault," Brzeczek told me Wednesday. "Years ago, when they appointed Democratic sycophants to investigate this, I said they'd blame me, and they did. I'm not a Daley guy. This whole thing is about covering Daley's [posterior]."

Flynt Taylor is director of the People's Law Office, which fights wrongful convictions. He's no fan of Brzeczek's. But on this point, Taylor agrees.

"I'm not absolving Brzeczek," Taylor told me. "He was superintendent when Jon Burge was active. But he at least passed on the information about Burge to Daley, and Daley, as state's attorney, did nothing. This paper is nothing but a major effort to deflect blame from where it belongs. The man who should be blamed is Daley."

The amazing world of white Democrats in Chicago.