Operation Greylord

by Terrence Hake

  Maybe there was a way to salvage the situation, after all. “You know, Jim, he’s going on vacation today,” I said. “You better get in there and pay him. Otherwise he’ll brood about it for a whole month and wish he had the money.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Costello said after a little reflection. “I owe you one, kid.” He straightened his suit. “Do you think I look all right?”

  “Not really.”

  “So what the hell.”

  Then he walked into the courtroom.

  In just ten minutes he was seeking me out. “Thanks, Terry,” he said. “I went in there and said, ‘I guess I fucked up last night.’ That was when I handed him the money. And Wayne says, ‘Yeah, but you were cute.’”

  “Right then and there?”

  “Right then and there. So we’re okay again. Christ, I was worried.”

  Greed had saved Greylord, and not for the only time.

  9

  THE BLACK BAG

  November 1980

  The bugging authorization was finally signed. So while Judge Olson was vacationing in early November, FBI contact agent Bill Megary sent me to spy upon the movement of courthouse employees no one paid much attention to: the court clerks, janitors, and women working at the switchboard directly behind Narcotics Court. “We want a profile of when they arrive and when they leave, how they get to work and how they get home,” he said. That way we could find an opening within their intersecting routines to plant the bug.

  Megary could stay relaxed and think clearly no matter how confused or uncertain I was, but I wondered how I would be able to keep tabs on everyone since I didn’t want to be caught loitering as I took notes, and I still had a full roster of defendants to prosecute. I kept wondering how often I could excuse myself for the washroom or claim I wanted to talk to one attorney or another before someone caught on.

  I went outside the courthouse and stood out of the way in the parking lot to memorize the license plate numbers of the cars that two of the switchboard operators drove. On the day of the bugging, an FBI surveillance squad would follow the autos, and the bus that the other switchboard operator took, to see if any of them turned back because they had forgotten something. The agents would also trail the conscientious judge filling in for Olson, Phillip Sheridan, when he left for home. The judges’ parking lot could be seen from a window in Olson’s court, and Sheridan would be the easiest to shadow since he drove a station wagon rather than a fancy car.

  During these preparations, I took Megary on two tours of the building to draw up a basic floor plan. On one of those days, a Saturday, we stumbled around the dank basement for hours while straining to hear if any custodian came down. But there wasn’t much evidence that janitors ever went in the basement. We had to walk through a puddle of water from a burst pipe, brush past cobwebs, and watch out for rats. When we left the basement, fellow prosecutor Linda Woloshin came out of weekend bond court and looked at me peculiarly because I was there on my day off.

  Act casual, I told myself. “Hi, Linda, meet Brian McFall,” I said, using Megary’s cover name. “He’s a lawyer from Maryland and wanted to see what the courthouse is like while he’s in town.”

  “Hi, Linda,” Megary said with his light East Coast accent, and shook her hand.

  “See you,” she said to me, without wasting a second thought on us.

  Lying was easier for me now than it had been just a month before, but I was apprehensive about eventually taking on major corruptor Bob Silverman. After a couple of weeks of doing unasked favors like a would-be protégé, I was still unable to guess what the fixer might be thinking about me. I always felt safe around Costello, Olson, and Cy Yonan. But with Silverman, I sensed actual physical danger. From his contacts with the mob and crooked cops, he had influence at every level of the justice system.

  One morning I saw Bob getting out of the one-seat shoeshine stand in the concourse. Having your shoes shined by an old black man everyone called J.C. was considered good luck just before opening and closing arguments. But I had never had my shoes shined there, partly to save money and also because I didn’t want to be thought of as ambitious. But as Bob stepped down, he motioned to me and said, “Why don’t you get up here, Terry.”

  My shoes didn’t need polishing that badly, but this was no time to jeopardize a potential friendship. Self-consciously, I climbed into the chair with a pretended carefree attitude. Bob talked to me all the time J.C. brushed and buffed, then handed him five dollars with a lordly gesture, no doubt confident that he now controlled one more prosecutor.

  Eagerly I phoned FBI agent Lamar Jordan with the news. “I finally got into Bob Silverman’s pocket!” I said.

  “Fantastic!” he replied. “How much did he give you?”

  “He bought me a shoe shine.”

  A protracted stillness ended with a “Shit!” Only then did I realize how silly I had sounded. “If Silverman ever does pay you money,” Jordan said, “I’ll take you to lunch.”

  Washington, D.C.

  Although my progress with Silverman was slower than the FBI would have liked, things were finally moving quickly against Olson and his entourage of fixers. Chief Criminal Court Judge Richard Fitzgerald, one of the few people who had been notified about Operation Greylord, stayed late in his office one evening to sign an authorization for me to tape conversations with Costello and Cy Yonan for ten days. This formality would let us use those tapes in state court if something went wrong and the federal prosecution had to be abandoned.

  Instead of reporting for work at the courthouse the next morning—a cool, windy day a little before Thanksgiving—I drove to O’Hare International Airport on as close to a cloak-and-dagger assignment as I have ever gone through. A ticket to Washington, D.C., had been purchased in my name even before Megary notified me that FBI Director William Webster wanted to talk to me. Making my flight more mysterious was that Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Reidy was sitting directly in front of me, but I was under orders not to acknowledge him in any way. Even when we landed at National Airport, I was not allowed to look for him.

  As I opened the cab door I was thrilled to say something I had wanted to say ever since I was a boy: “Take me to the Justice Department, Tenth and Pennsylvania.”

  As we neared the steps I could see Dan waiting for me. FBI supervisor Robert Walsh shook our hands just inside the lobby and drove us around the Capital. Seeing the white monuments for the first time, I indulged in a fantasy in which the FBI director would swear me in as an agent right there in his office.

  In the Justice Department cafeteria, Dan and U.S. Attorney Thomas Sullivan, who had flown in the day before, briefed me on what to say and, mainly, what not to say. I was to answer as succinctly as in court. Then I was ushered into a conference room and was face to face with Webster. The square-jawed man motioned to a chair and began with, “What’s going on in Judge Olson’s chambers, Leo?”

  It felt odd to be addressed by my FBI code name, Leo Murphy.

  I told Webster that Costello had given me eleven hundred dollars in various payoffs. “Costello, by my calculation, has said he has passed about seven thousand dollars to Judge Olson since late summer. Another attorney, Cy Yonan, so far has given me six hundred and fifty dollars for fixes.”

  “Your understanding is that there are other lawyers making payoffs to Olson?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know how much Olson is receiving from them.”

  “Do you think Costello is telling you the truth?” Webster asked.

  “Yes, sir. I think so. Everything I have seen and heard backs up what he has told me.”

  I could see the caution in Webster’s face. This investigation was bound to make national headlines, and Congress no doubt would accuse him of trampling on the separation of powers even if things went well. He could put up with all that, but I’m sure he did not want the Bureau to be embarrassed by a failure.

  There also was another reason for his pondering. Webster had been a federal judge in St. Louis, and
the hesitancy in his voice told me he had reservations about violating the sanctity of a judge’s chambers. He needed to share our certainty that the unprecedented bugging was absolutely necessary.

  When I finished, all he said was, “Thank you, Leo. You’re doing a good job. We’ll be in touch.”

  For the moment, I did not care that the subject of my becoming an FBI agent never came up. I was elated at just meeting the director. But flying back to Chicago, I thought over “We’ll be in touch” and wondered whether that meant his support or not.

  The day after my return, my ASA friend Alice Carpenter agreed to have lunch with me and Costello, although she never liked him. Jim called out a few words in Italian to the waiter and spoke to us about the days when he was an ASA in a suburban court. He said there was a regular schedule for bribes then: four hundred dollars for dismissing felony cases, one hundred for dismissing battery charges, and seventy-five for dismissing shoplifting. Caught unprepared, I flipped on the recorder just below table level and asked a few questions for future jurors.

  “Say, Jim,” I said, “what was the price for UUW (unlawful use of a weapon)?”

  “Hundred and fifty. Me, I like gun cases. Know why? Guys with guns always come up with the money.”

  Alice was glowering at him, but Costello seemed incapable of understanding that anyone would get upset about something that had been going on for generations. I sat back and wondered when the bugging authorization would come down.

  Infiltration Day

  I received my answer on the morning of November 26, the day before Thanksgiving. Agent Lamar Jordan gave me a call at home and drawled, “We’re going into Olson’s chambers this afternoon.”

  “What?” After weeks of impatience, I could not believe the moment had arrived.

  “Justice [Department] says go. You know what to do.”

  I was so excited it took me two tries to hang up the phone. What a great time to eavesdrop. When Olson returned from vacation on Monday, attorneys would be banging on his door to fix a month of cases they had not dared to try rigging with no-nonsense Judge Sheridan.

  I drove to the courthouse that crisp morning with a sense of purpose. By now I knew all the rhythms of the court world and could use them to steer more payoffs to the judge’s chambers. I spoke first to Costello and then to Yonan, offhandedly telling them I had decided not to take any more cash because I wanted to look clean when I left the State’s Attorney’s Office for private practice, which was part of the FBI’s plans for me. The reason for telling them this now was that it would force them to pay the judge in his bugged chambers and not me.

  As a pretext, I pinned my decision on the recent election of popular Mayor Richard J. Daley’s son Richard M. Daley as Cook County State’s Attorney, and said it would take time before I could trust the new administration. Yonan wished me luck and added, “If you want, you can use my phone until you’re set up, and I’ll give you all my misdemeanor work until you can get started.” Then he shoved one hundred dollars into my hand anyway. “Don’t worry about it,” he added, “I’m making money.”

  Yonan’s gesture went unnoticed by people walking by, but not by the police sergeant assigned to Olson’s court. From thirty feet away, John Janusz had sensed that I was being bribed and he wanted a cut even if it meant hinting at blackmail. When I went to the cafeteria upstairs, the tall, middle-aged officer with wire-rimmed glasses moved in line next to me, and I felt as if I were being watched by a vulture. “What’s that guy’s name you were talking to?” he asked, knowing full well it was Yonan.

  I answered as I paid for a Coke and turned away. Janusz followed me and said I should buy him a cup of coffee.

  “Are you out of change?” I asked, meaning: why should I buy you coffee?

  “Do you know in three weeks it’s going to be my fucking birthday?” he asked. “I sure hope everybody remembers it. Cy Yonan, boy, that fucker’s doing all right. He has another case coming up. You’ll be handling it, won’t you? You know, my sight’s pretty good now that I have new glasses. Hake, where are you going after work, to the bank?”

  Compared to Janusz, Costello was suave, and I was glad when I was finally able to shake off the greedy boor.

  That afternoon most of the courts closed early so everyone could get a head start on the holiday weekend. By four p.m. only Olson’s replacement, Judge Sheridan, and the three switchboard operators remained around Branch 57. As I loitered in the concourse just off the hall, I knew that the “black bag” people were standing by impatiently.

  Just as the three women left the room housing all the courthouse telephone wires, two agents dressed as repairmen entered the building. No one questioned them even as they opened the unlocked door to the switchboard room. Everything was going well, but no one could do anything further as long as the judge remained at work.

  Come on, come on, I thought. Sheridan took his duties seriously and stayed in his chambers to finish all the details. At last the door opened and I could hear his footsteps on the marble. I went to the nearby phone bank and dialed the FBI radio room. Using the code name for Sheridan, I said, “Phillips just left.”

  My message was radioed to the surveillance team assigned to follow the judge to ensure that he was not coming back to work. Then I walked to the parking lot across the boulevard on California Avenue and climbed into my car. Following instructions, I drove to a supermarket a mile away to meet Megary and phone the FBI again. That’s when things stopped going as planned.

  While I waited for the dispatcher to get back to me, I could hear exasperation as he spoke to agents on another line. The team that was supposed to follow the judge could no longer see his station wagon. I returned to the store parking lot and told Megary, “They lost him. What are we going to do now?”

  “That depends,” he said. “Do you think Sheridan will come back?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Let’s go ahead, then.”

  Megary went inside the store and made the call to start planting the bug. Minutes later the two bogus workmen brought their tool kits into Olson’s chambers. By then I had switched to Megary’s car. Inside was an attractive female FBI agent ready to pose as my girlfriend. Our plan was that if anything went wrong, I would rush in with her and claim I had forgotten something. The two of us would then somehow create enough confusion for the two black bag experts to slip away.

  But as Bill drove us down the working-class side streets around the courthouse, there was an unsettling quiet on the FBI radio. Not total silence—every now and then a click or a bit of static told us the radio was working—but I edgily thumped my fingers on the armrest.

  “Don’t worry,” Megary said, “no messages just means that everything is going well.”

  Then we heard: “We arrived at Mr. Chambers’ residence and no one is home.”

  This meant the break-in experts had entered the chambers without encountering anyone. In the unnerving quiet, I could picture the men removing a panel in the switchboard to splice wires, and then crouching at Olson’s desk to install the tiny microphone. But I kept thinking of everything that could go wrong. Suppose they had forgotten to lock the door? All it would take would be for one cleaning lady, one janitor, or one fixer to happen upon them.

  An hour passed as we killed time by zigzagging across streets surrounding the courthouse, then two hours, then nearly three. We didn’t ease the tension with small talk. Megary was good at waiting, but I wasn’t. I was so tense my muscles were aching. At last the stillness was broken by a test message—“One, two, three.”

  The female agent looked at me but didn’t know what to say. Provided all went well for the next few months, we were setting criminal justice history. But if for some reason the operation fell apart before we could get evidence from the chambers, all of our work would be just a stack of reports on a shelf in Washington as if nothing had happened. Unless, of course, the fixers caught on.

  The black baggers, notified by agents in the radio room that their test
had been received, said, “We’re going to leave Mr. Chambers’ residence now. Let’s get the turkey ready.”

  “Now what?” I asked Megary.

  “You go home, and tomorrow have a nice holiday with your folks. Starting Monday, we’re all going to be busy.”

  My tension was replaced by exhaustion, but this time it was a good kind of exhaustion, like sinking into a cloud.

  There was no holiday weekend for FBI agent Jim Hershly. Using my many hours of taped conversations, often with tediously long moments of stillness as I waited for someone to come back to me, the Texan prepared extracts so agents assigned to monitor the conversations would know the voices of Costello, Olson, Yonan, Silverman, and a few other crooked lawyers. The agents needed to listen in on recordings as they were being made so they could verify that the evidence tapes had not been tampered with in any way. Even then, it was virtually impossible to tell Silverman’s voice from Olson’s on the tape.

  Dan Reidy, as the architect of Operation Greylord, put Megary in charge of the listening post in the downtown FBI offices and told him to turn off the equipment whenever the conversations were about official business. That would keep us from being accused of violating a person’s right to privacy. Megary also instructed the monitoring agents about code phrases I had picked up, such as when Costello would say “open the drawer.”

  Early on December 1st, Jordan met me at the planetarium parking lot and gave me a transmitter no larger than a pocket calculator, activated by screwing in a small rubber antenna. “Use this to signal us when someone is going into the chambers,” he said. The device was unable to send any verbal messages, but its beeps would be picked up by an agent in a car parked near the courthouse. Three beeps, Code Black, meant a target was entering the chambers. A single tap on the button, Code Red, was a Stop! because the fixer was leaving or there was trouble. Two beeps, Code Green, and the agents should resume monitoring. The agent in a car on the street about two hundred feet from the side windows of the courtroom would radio these codes to the listening room ten miles away.