Operation Greylord (2 page)

June 1980

There had to be a way of infiltrating the systemized corruption in Chicago courts, of sneaking through the wall that had protected shysters and judges for more than half a century.

In the early 1970s, three people in the New York City District Attorney's Office were convicted of taking fifteen thousand dollars to quash a weapons charge against an undercover agent posing as a street criminal. But the evidence had been gathered by having agents commit perjury before a grand jury and judges. A shocked appeals court sided with the defense and held that the investigators had allowed their contempt for bribers “to spill over into disdain for all participants in the system.”

The Justice Department realized that any future investigation of corruption in the United States would have to work within the integrity of the system as a whole, and that meant never tape recording in courtrooms and grand jury chambers. It absolutely needed a mole, like me. But initially I had gotten nowhere despite weeks of trial and error.

The Justice Department had shown me a list of people almost certainly on the take, and Narcotics Court Judge Wayne Olson was one of the most notorious for taking bribes in drug arrests. Although murder is worse than drug peddling, most killers don't have the connections and money that cocaine dealers have. Bug-eyed Olson had been canny enough to protect himself from investigations for years, yet I had to get evidence against him if I was to reach any more important judges.

Knowing Olson's volatility—in a fit of temper he had once accidentally killed a man—the chief judge of the criminal courts kept him in the lowly job of deciding whether evidence in hundreds of drug arrests was
strong enough for trial. This allowed Olson to arrange regular payoffs from defense attorneys, who sometimes even stood in line to pay their respects. They were bound to relay any suspicions to Olson. How could I fool them all? All I had been told was, “Don't worry, Terry, you'll find a way.”

I could tell early on that some judges were in with the fixers from the way they continually ruled for the defense, and I was sure everyone at the marketplace of justice was laughing at my naïveté behind my back.

During this hazing period, I was doing my best to look as if I had already come around. My contact agent had offered a few suggestions—mainly that I grow a mustache and wear flashy clothes. I thought my mustache only made me look like someone trying to look tough, and I stuck to my conservative suits. If I was going to change my public life, I would need to keep enough of the real me to remember who I was.

One way I came up with for making myself look less like a choirboy was being seen shaking hands with defense lawyers. I also pretended to look the other way as attorneys paid off court clerks for favors, and from time to time I went to bars and restaurants with Olson. But so far no one had made me an offer.

In fashionable society long ago, you were not accepted until someone introduced you to the proper circles, and so it might be in the underworld of courthouse payoffs, I thought. What I could use was an established fixer who would go up to Olson and say something like, “This guy is all right.”

I wondered who among the dozens of lawyers working in the gray aging courthouse might take me under his wing. I considered each of the attorneys standing beside their clients or riding with me in the elevator. The one I needed would have to be a small-timer who was both dishonest and yet trusting.

The person who kept coming to mind was loud-mouthed James Costello. He was held in such low regard that no one ever took him seriously, and yet I probably never made a better choice in my career. Jim stood six foot three, and his unwieldy hair looked like a fright wig. Derisively called “Big Bird” after the Sesame Street character, Costello could be friendly and abrasive at the same time. He never tried to hide the vestiges of the tough South Side neighborhood where he grew up. Although Jim wore dark glasses to seem professional, he spoke like a street punk and kept pushing himself where he wasn't wanted.

About all I knew at the time was that if Jim happened to be scraping for clients, he would slip twenty dollars to a court clerk for the names of people who were due in court but did not have a lawyer. Even clerks assigned to decent judges would sell the lists. With a photocopy under his arm, Costello would inch his way through the crowded first floor hallway by Narcotics Court and boom out the names.

Suspects posted ten percent of their bonds to be freed until their preliminary hearing, and the amount was refunded when their case ended. But hallway hustlers like Costello charged that ten percent for what amounted to a few minutes of routine work.

Most of the defendants waiting outside the court were African-American, and Costello thought he had a natural rapport with them. He would adopt a white man's imitation of black speech, glad-hand a few, and say things like “Hey, my man, how yuh doin'?” Sometimes he would address men he had never seen with a black handshake and ignore their look of scorn or bewilderment. Jim thought he was cool. Others thought he looked ridiculous.

Jim would practically press himself against a potential client and rapidly say, “You got a lawyer? You got one now. I'll handle your case and you pay me your bond, and that'll be my fee. Is it a deal? Don't worry, you'll beat this thing, I know the judge. Just don't say anything, leave it to me.” All his hustling was done inches from a wall sign stating: SOLICITATION OF BUSINESS RELATING TO BAIL BONDS OR TO EMPLOYMENT AS COUNSEL IN THE COURTHOUSES IS PROHIBITED.

Unlike some fixers, there was no disillusion behind Costello's corruption. He had wanted a place at the feeding trough from the beginning. Rather than being ashamed about prostituting his law training, Jim mistook his success in getting clients off for legal skill.

One look at Costello working the hall suggested that all he cared about was a fast buck, but there had to be more to it than that. Without realizing it, I had already taught myself the first lesson in undercover work: sizing people up and sensing what they really wanted out of life, and using that against them. What he really wanted—and never in his life would obtain—was respect. Fellow attorneys knew Jim as a loser, but I saw him as someone badly in need of a buddy.

Jim had built a practice, such as it was, largely by reaching people before they learned that the Chicago Bar Association customarily
assigned a lawyer for defendants who could not afford an attorney of their choice but could post nominal bond, disqualifying them for a public defender. From time to time a defendant slipped by these hallway hustlers and appeared in court on his own. It fell upon the judge to assign the bar association lawyer to any unrepresented defendant. When the bar association-designated lawyer wasn't around, Judge Olson would send the accused to Costello or one of the other attorneys paying him off.

Bonds for drug charges typically started at one hundred dollars. Costello would pick up half a dozen clients a day. The bond checks would be mailed to him by the clerk's office. After deducting the legal ten percent for court costs and then the bailiff's illegal cut, he could take in more than five hundred dollars a day. But his net profit depended on how much went to the judge. All this kept Costello scrambling for a quick turnover, even if it meant pleading clients guilty when elements in their case could have brought an acquittal. In fact, a successful hustler could earn more than one hundred thousand dollars a year with just “bullshit cases.”

This was pretty much about all I had been able to turn up on my own, and I was disheartened to feel that so far I was letting down all the people counting on me.

April 1980

Two months earlier, I had been called at work in a police station and asked to report to the FBI offices downtown. As I walked in, wall photos of all past Chicago office special agents in charge seemed to look down at me, and I wondered how I could measure up in the eyes of the three Justice Department officials scrutinizing me at the long oval table.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Sklarsky had a friendly yet no-nonsense way about him. But doing most of the talking was another assistant U.S. Attorney, Dan Reidy, who I would learn later was the architect of Operation Greylord. He had an interesting face, with his dark brown hair and reddish mustache. Studying me but hardly saying a word was tall and thin Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Lassar. All three would be important to me over the next three years.

My responses to their formal questions were so dry and brief that I could tell they wanted someone with more experience—and preferably
someone who looked unscrupulous, rather than a young man of medium height with reddish-blond hair, unlined features, and a soft voice. Other lawyers had told me I looked like a choirboy.

Reidy asked if I had ever been offered a bribe. No, I said. What would I do if I were offered one? I would report it to the head of my division, I answered. Did I know anyone who took bribes? No. How did I know about the bribery? It was just common talk, I replied. Scuttlebutt.

As my scrutinizers asked about my personal goals, their eyebrows lifted when I let out that I had in law school applied for a special agent position at the FBI. From then on, the interview became more relaxed. “You will have to wear a wire” if I passed a second interview, Reidy said in his steady voice. That sounded exciting, but it hardly seemed like
me
.

Eventually he got around to outlining what we were all in this room for, and my heart started beating faster. “We want you to take bribes to drop cases. You must agree to testify in court after the arrests are made, and that will mean public disclosure of your role.”

“But what about my safety?” I asked, suddenly feeling a little weak-kneed. “I mean, after my initial complaint and the State's Attorney's Office wanted to do something like this, a few people tell the State's Attorney's Special Prosecutions Unit was talking to me.” I remembered how a fellow assistant state's attorney—who later became a judge—saw me starting to open the door of the special prosecutions office and told me I would not want to rat on my colleagues.

“And just how secret is all this going to be?” I asked the officials.

“That's nothing you have to worry about, Mr. Hake,” Reidy assured me. “We won't allow any information about the investigation to come out until we are absolutely ready. We will even give you a code name for all the FBI files to guard against internal leaks.”

“Suppose they find out anyway?” I wasn't thinking about myself so much as my family and my new girlfriend, Cathy. I had every reason to believe our relationship was going to last.

“We will do the best we can to protect you,” Reidy said. “It's an understandable concern, but crooks generally don't mess with federal witnesses. Besides, attorneys and judges are not the sort to go around killing people.”

Maybe not, I thought. But some of those lawyers had crime syndicate ties from their clients or took out mob loans, and rumor had it
that a few of them were heavily into cocaine. I could imagine a fixer mentioning he would like to see me dead, and one of his friends doing him a favor.

“The best way to ensure your safety is to keep your mouth shut and not tell anybody, not even your family or your girlfriend.” It seemed that Reidy was reading my mind. “We're going after some pretty smart guys. Just a worried remark from somebody might make them suspicious.”

Indeed, the possible danger seemed remote at the time. But another concern was troubling me. “When someone from the State's Attorney's Office talked to me about going undercover, he said I wouldn't be able to practice law for about five years.”

“Well, he was wrong,” Reidy said. “You probably won't
ever
be able to practice law in Cook County again. There is no way of getting rid of everyone who is crooked, and the ones still left would fight you all the way.”

“So I won't be a trial lawyer anymore,” I said, as if to hear myself say it. Here I was, in my twenties and yet seeing all my dreams of prosecuting major cases evaporate.

“Not in Cook County,” Reidy stressed. “Do you think you can live with that?”

This was the make-or-break moment, but I couldn't back out now. I wasn't raised that way. All I could think about was my mentor, Mike Ficaro, the corpulent assistant state's attorney who swore me in as a lawyer in a rubble-strewn vacant lot on a cold, windy, rainy Halloween evening three years before.

“How much does Ficaro know about this?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Sklarsky broke in, “and don't tell him. You're only going to be effective as long as you can keep quiet about this.”

That was it. They were asking me to pose for as long as needed as someone I would have scorned, and now all we were doing was sitting around a table as if chit-chatting. We shook hands, and the three officials told me to take as long as I needed to think it over. As I got up to leave, Reidy had an afterthought. “Terry,” he said, “did you tell anyone about the undercover project the State's Attorney asked you to participate in?”

“Just my mother,” I replied, too ashamed to admit that I had also mentioned it to my closest friend in the prosecutor's office. If these important men knew I had confided in someone within the court system,
they might call the whole thing off. But wouldn't there be serious consequences if they ever learned I had held something back?

“And I told *Mark Ciavelli,” I hastily added. “He's a friend of mine in the State's Attorney's Office.”

Mark and I had gone to movies and restaurants together to ease the tension of our work in the felony review section, where we worked in police stations to inform detectives whether their arrests were strong enough for felony charges. As we sat in Mark's car, I let him know that someone high up in the State's Attorney's Office wanted me for an internal investigation.

Mark threw me a startled glance, but I hastily added that I had backed out. “You did the right thing, Terry. Nobody likes a squealer. Anybody who goes around spying on other lawyers can just throw their career out the window. The other guys would cut you out of everything, you wouldn't get any cooperation.”