Chicago Corruption Probe: Patrick Fitzgerald 'Here We Go Again'

John Kass of The Chicago Tribune reports:

The guys who don't believe in fairy tales sat against the wall in their federal orange jumpsuits Thursday. They're the freshly charged inspectors and contractors in the federal government's undercover sting called "Operation Crooked Code."

"Basically, here we go again," said U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald, noting that political corruption continues in Chicago.

Particularly at City Hall, which, like a fish, rots from the head down.

Thursday's indictees slouched and stared and whispered with their criminal defense lawyers. They looked away from their families, and though cameras aren't allowed in court, I can tell you what they did not look like.

They don't look like people who would ever think of Chicago as Camelot and magical swords handed up to reformers from the Lady of Lake Michigan. They're not national political pundits, to believe in fairy tales.

They work out of City Hall. They don't clap their hands for Tinkerbell to save the Lost Boys.

Those charged Thursday are not the big guys, they're not politicians from Grand and Harlem, like the Banks family, the first family of Chicago zoning. And they're not top developers like mayoral favorite Tommy DiPiazza, a tough guy who reaches into Rush Street and has connections to Rayjo—Raymond John Tominello, the top Chicago Outfit bookie from the mayor's Bridgeport.

In political terms, they're medium fries. They're who the feds must step on to get higher up the food pyramid. And don't think Fitzgerald and investigators from the FBI and the other federal agencies, including the U.S. Postal Service, aren't trying to climb on up.

The guys in the orange jumpsuits know that too. And they know that the first one of them to jump on the federal witness bus gets the best seat. As they sat there against the wall, they refused to glance at each other, even talk, though they were inches away from folks with whom they'd allegedly split money. That ostentatious refusal to make eye contact with each other told me something: Though they hadn't flipped, they were most likely wondering which one of them would flip.

As the odds clicked loudly in their heads, one fellow, the allegedly corrupt architect chewing his fingertips, sat next to the 36th Ward's guy from the Banks family's Department of Zoning, who looked away. I just imagine the calls being made out to the 36th Ward, for example, and guys on the other end talking in euphemism, coyly, with plenty of hard vowels.

Though they were definitely sad and tired from being rousted by federal agents early Thursday at their homes, it wasn't difficult to picture them in happier times.

I imagine them in their street clothes on some Saturday morning, in pressed jeans and loafers and knit shirts, flashy watches, smelling of too much Paco Rabanne. The whole crew sauntering in to some diner, at Grandma Sally's or Dapper's or the Blue Angel, a couple of them taking that last lung full of smoke in the parking lot, before crushing the butt outside the door.

They talk about horses, cars, they use pens to write numbers down on paper napkins. These are guys who wanted to make moves, guys who see the mayor's friends and family getting rich on deal after deal, and figuring, probably rightly, why not make a score?

Over at City Hall, Mayor Daley was blabbing on and on, as he usually does in corruption cases, not taking any responsibility for anything, since he's only the mayor. He ignored the fact that city Inspector General David Hoffman had to go to the feds with his investigation because Daley made it clear he wanted Hoffman isolated and politically finished, since Hoffman had initiated the last Department of Buildings investigation a year ago.

He was told that Hoffman had said Operation Crooked Code was an example of systemic corruption at City Hall.

"Well, I don't know about that. I can't answer that," Daley said. "But again, it was through the inspector general and the Building Department working together to uncover this."

If I hadn't known Daley put himself on war footing with Hoffman—whose only political crime was to oppose corruption at City Hall—I might have believed him. Nice story, but the reality is that Daley tried to shrink Hoffman's budget to the size of a chickpea.

"I don't know if it's systemic," Daley said of corruption, "but you can't indict everybody about that. It's not everybody. You know that."

What will you do to change anything?

"Well again, what you are trying to do is you do everything," Daley said. "You are trying to put GPSs on people. You are trying to go after the developers, the contractors, whoever wants to bribe the system. Yeah, it takes two to tango. It takes two people, both the public employee or the private sector. They are both going to get caught. It's as simple as that, but it's really regrettable."

"It's appalling," Daley said. "How can this take place?"

The guys in the jumpsuits don't believe in fairy tales, mayor. And neither do the taxpayers.

Another great one by John Kass.