but my mother and father kept having babies, and they were all girls. now, we all had boys' nicknames. i was bill. [laughter] >> your nickname's bill? >> yes. >> that is hilarious. >> yes. but, you know, as safe as we could be in the situation we were in we felt safe and comfortable there. and i feel like my father -- he wanted us to have an education. he knew that education was the key to a better life. but i really think he thought all of us would come right back home and try to work from there. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. up next on booktv, jeff cohen and john chase report on the political ascendancy and demise of rod blagojevich, former governor of illinois. the authors utilize several resources including fbi phone transcripts to examine the

former governor's actions that led to his impeachment. this is about an hour. [applause] >> well, hi. i'm sure everybody can hear me, but i'll scoot closer. thanks very much for having us out. we appreciate the book stall bringing us in. most people don't realize it's actually the last bookstore in the northern suburbs of chicago. um, that's actually a joke. [laughter] but anyway, we're really happy to be here. this is, actually, our first signing event for this project, so it means a lot to have people out and, um, to hear about the work. so, um, and thanks for the introduction, sara. she's left. >> in the back, i think. >> so, basically, that's -- by way of background, that's where this begins for us is john was more on the political side with the paper since the late '90s, i was on the kind of a crime beat at first, and then i moved to 26th street which is the

criminal courthouse in chicago and then from there to federal court. and our careers sort of merged, not surprisingly, around rod blagojevich sometime after '02, '03, in that range and certainly by '05 and '06. um, so the project was sort of just our attempt to preserve this story and kind of tell a piece of city history and, um, and try to -- i don't know if we've cut through all the sensationalism -- >> it's still a little sensational. >> but to try to give a balanced look and really wipe the slate clean and kind of tell the blagojevich story from the ground up, kind of just restart it and eliminate a lot of the things that were, um, making headlines at the time. and so that involved, you know, more than 100 interviews, and it involved us getting a lot of

recordings that the feds made that weren't even made public in either trial and to try to kind of start over, tell the full narrative arc of rod's life. so sort of part biography, part history. you get both trials, a lot of new tapes. so, you know, hopefully, we were able to do the story justice. >> yeah. and, yes, thanks to the book stall for having us. we really appreciate it. and it is our first sort of official book signing, so it's nice to have friends and family here. um, as well as people who are just interested in the topic. so, yeah, as sara mentioned in the our introductions i was working for the chicago tribune, i started in 1998 covering politics, and then in 2002 they asked me to cover jim ryan's campaign, and jim ryan was the republican running against rod blagojevich. but as part of that i was covering blagojevich as well

because he was going to be the winner as we, you know, as polls could sort of were showing. and so then after that, after he got elected, um, they moved me, the tribune moved me to the thompson center. and as everyone down state knows, down state illinois knows, rod blagojevich didn't work -- was not governor from springfield, the state capital. he governed from chicago and, more specifically, his house. [laughter] and so i became sort of a de facto reporter for the tribune covering his administration. and pretty soon on it became clear that there was a lot to look at. um, and, and so in 2005 and 2006 especially when rod blagojevich was running for re-election there was a lot of heat ramping up on the federal investigation side, and that is where jeff and i, sort of our careers merged. um, and then, you know, there

was a lot of reporting and a lot of people, obviously, followed that coverage. and so after the arrest, um, we got the opportunity to write this book or was offered the opportunity to write the book. and we wanted to see it all the way through. and i remember there was actually a few people saying you should try to get this book done before the trial because you'll sell more copies, and it's true, it may have. but to me, it was actually more important to get the whole story out there in one volume. and to be that book that told the story, and in 20 years when some high school or college student wants to know something about what was the deal with the rod blagojevich thing, like, that was crazy, and they could actually pull a book, you know, off the shelves or buy a book at the book stall, um, and, you

know, learn about it from, you know, from start to finish. and so we really did decide to, you know, hit the reset button on that and start from the beginning. so rod blagojevich's career as a, as a, um, politician, as a young kid coming up through the chicago neighborhoods and just sort of telling a true chicago story of politics and, you know, meeting a guy like -- [inaudible] who was one of his first guys he was trying to, um, come up through politics with. oh, okay. thanks. um, that was, you know, that was important. um, to tell that whole story. so that was, that was sort of how it all began, and then we just from 2009 through, you know, the end of 2011 we worked on it pretty much on our own time. we till work at "the chicago

tribune" -- we still work at "the chicago tribune" and still wanted to -- still doing that work and sort of did it at nights and weekends and things like that and put it together. >> nobody has worse blagojevich fatigue than we do. [laughter] so really, so it's sort of a promise to people who think they're still somewhat interested in the topic. we did try to just retrace the entire story. and part of that was as we were putting it together, you try to decide, you know, what -- how to open it and where to start. and we really decides on more or less a chronological format because it let us get back to rod's roots in chicago. and the goal there was by understanding where he came from, we thought a lot of the shenanigans that go on later, in later years make more sense when you understand that he was is a city kid and how he came up in the neighborhoods, how he gets involved really in board-level politics in chicago and

ultimately dick mell's organization. and when you understand that those are his roots, understand that he was a guy who knew the angles, then you don't take what happened when he was governor sort of in a vacuum and think to yourself, you know, how could this ever happen because you have an understanding of sort of what his chicago dna is. >> right. >> and so that's -- part of the story was really more the kind of thing john handled having covered the politics, and i hooked in later. >> yeah, and there was a lot. in covering him in those six years before all the trouble happened there was a lot in my notebooks that never found its way into the newspaper because it just didn't have a place in the newspaper. and then stuff that i learned later on when we were just reporting, reporting for the book itself of interesting stories, you know, everything from, you know, from his just sort of obsession with suits. i mean, which some of this came out in the trial, and the guy spent, you know, tens and

twenties of thousands of dollars a year on suit, more than he spent collectively on their nanny, patty and rod. that in clothing that they spent. and, you know, there's an interesting story, interesting, i mean, stories of his, you know, his hair. [laughter] and his obsession with his hair. like, you know, everyone talks about, like, you know, it's fake, is it gray, whatever. and one of the stories that we have in the book is this story of a guy who was a big fundraiser for rod, and he was taking him up to, farther north than here for a fundraising event, and then, you know, rod left his hairbrush up there. and this guy lived in indiana. and so at, like, 5:00 at night -- this is hours after the event was over -- rod made the guy go all the way back up north when he was practically back in

indiana just to pick up the hairbrush and deliver it back to him to his doorstep, you know? things like that which don't really find their way into a newspaper story but are interesting, they are, they do show the kind of person rod blagojevich was or is. and so it felt like it was important to, you know, maybe that's not an important, super important story, but it is, you know, a telling story of what kind of a guy he was. so it was good for us to be able to sort of lay out that whole, the whole scene for everybody and really sort of show -- and the other one dynamic that i learned about in just doing the reporting, um, that i sort of thought was the case but, you know, a lot of people were, um -- after the whole case crumbled down on rod blagojevich and people were a little more free to talk, um, you heard a lot, you know, more truthful stories out of the people who know him best. and one of the things he was,

you know, his -- there is this tragic element to the whole story for him. he was this sort of nobody kid, he really did come from a bad neighborhood. not a bad neighborhood but, you know, a working class neighborhood. and he made himself governor. but he did it on the backs of, you know, like he married patty mell who was, ultimately, dick mell's daughter. and he, and dick mehl was the one who made him a political person, who helped him with his success. and dick mell never let him forget it. and rod blagojevich had a huge, even before any of this happened, had a huge chip on his shoulder, and he in this constant prodding from dick mell about you're nobody without me really just sort of built that chip. and rod blagojevich -- because of that, rod blagojevich sought

out the likes of chris kelly and others who were beholden just to him. and these are fundraisers for rod blagojevich who also got into serious trouble, as many of you probably would know. and that sort of led to this whole spiral downward for him. and it's, you know, i'm not, i'm not blaming tony and chris for rod blagojevich. he created this world for himself where he wanted only people who were beholden to him and loyal to him for this fundraising machine. and so anyhow, those were some of the stories we felt were important to tell in this book to just sort of lay out the whole personality as well as the investigative side of things. and then, of course, the courtroom drama that, you know, that we observed, and jeff especially observed, on a daily basis. >> yeah. i think in putting this together some of those early years it was even an education for me because

i had come in, you know, sort of much later in the story. when you hear tales of how dick mell helps establish his career and he gets a leg up, but then at the same time he's resentful that he needs the leg up to begin with. you really kind of get an idea of who this guy is. he's constantly, you know, fighting to get tohe next level, but he's angry about people having to help him get there. so even for me at a late stage it really helped me to see the guy who develops when i pick up the story in '05-'06. so i was at 26th street, and i was having some success there in doing things that reporters do in building sources and, um, you know, talking to investigators and understanding criminal enterprises and how these kinds of things come together. and so the paper said, well, why don't you go to dirksen because we've got this --

>> brewing thing. >> yeah, a real brewing situation. and so i was sent there to kind of try to figure out what the fbi was up to with blagojevich and what the different targets were about and how they might, um, you know, finally come to a conclusion. um, so was there anything just in the early years that -- do you want to just begin by -- >> yeah. you know, i guess the book starts off with this guy who a lot of people may know, and he was -- when rod blagojevich was between first and second year of law school, no, second and third year of law school, he, the alderman is croatian. rod blagojevich is serbian. but in america those two communities, those two nations and cultures don't always get along overseas, but in america

they got along, especially in chicago. rod's dad knew somebody who knew the alderman, so he decided i'm going to go try and get a job with the city law department. and rod blagojevich told these stories from time to time, but then in trying to retrace a lot of that -- that was one of the things i tried to do -- he meets with verdolyak who at that time this was the late '70s, early '80s, he's becoming this monster politician, the most powerful man, alderman in chicago. and, you know, veldolyak sees him and gives him a job, and then blagojevich comes back to him and says, well, hey, you know, i know this is crazy, but if there's anything i can do for you, just let me know, you know? it's, like, some 24-year-old kid saying to verdolyak, you know, if i can help you out. so he sort of likes this, though, and takes him for a walk

down the hallway of city hall and says, well, we'll make you part of the family when you get out of law school. so it was sort of, it was a good, i felt, introduction because, you know, people knew veldolyak was up to whatever he was up to and was doing whatever, whatever he could to remain in power. so it was, it was an interesting way to sort of, we felt like, to start the story, and it does sort of get to this whole idea of rod blagojevich is a chicago story. so for us that was, that's always -- that's a theme that sort of we try to keep throughout the whole book is, you know, the guy became a national laughingstock because he's on, you know, the celebrity aparen, and patty blagojevich was on i'm a celebrity, get me out of here, and hanging out with john salley in the jungle. ..

>> i, you know, i do believe they were in love, are in love, and sticking through everything they've been through, i can't

imagine that would be a sham. they met. they fell in love. before rod knew it, you know, dick was offering him, you know, positions to move up with his ward office, and then eventually, state rep seat opened up, and he got him elected. there's no denies he made rob blagovich, again, another pure chicago story. >> john did a good job stitching the campaigns together, and you can see each step of the way how rod rises up the food chain, and all the while, interesting that no matter where he is, he's looking to take the next step, and he's fix sated on where he can get, who can take him there, and make that play instead of paying attention to the thing he's bustelected to.

-- just been legislated to. >> i heard that from the former staffers. his job was to get elected, and that's all he cared about, and so the two things to do for that are be a good fundraiser and campaigner which he was. i think if he walked in here right now, he'd be immensely personable and you'd say, hey, he's not a bad guy. he's a nice guy. he has humor and everything. >> even jurors were like, come on, rob. >> right. that was his skill was being a great personality. something's wrong with my microphone. is thatted good -- is that good now? i won't touch it. >> things came apart investigative -- >> around 2004, 2005 when the

feds get interested in tony resco who rob establishedded -- establishedded as a key fundraiser. there's an investigation that begins with a tip from the ceo of edwards hospital. she's dealing with the facilities planning board because edwards hospital wants to open up a new facility in the western suburbs, and she very quickly starts to feel the squeeze from some of the guys who were a part of the scheme because they want -- >> including this guy. >> yes, on the board, and so people in his circle want to ceo, pam davis, out of edward, to hire a certain contractor to build the facilities so there's sort of backing into this, and the hitch, of course, is that the contractor agreed to pay a kickback if he gets the deal,

and so they come up with a plan where the guys are trying to get pam davis to hire the contractor, are going to meet in a restaurant, and he'll happen to be there, and on the way out, he'll elbow the contractor saying he's a good job, he'll do a good job, he worked for us before ect., and she'll get the message. rather than getting the message, she was communicating with the fbi letting them know the fix was in on this thing. she was wearing a wire in her bra at the time, and she catches this. at that point, agents are already up on the phones, and so we left a lot of that in there, the back and forth, you get to hear the talk about the schemes in realtime, and that works in the narrative because you get an idea of how this came about as we go. we left a lot of the mechanics in the story.

you hear in regular coverage of the case, well, you know, they corrupted two or three state boards. well, what's that mean, how do you corrupt a state board? we left a lot of the back and forth and how they talk about people they've put on the boards, how they plot to deal with companies that are trying to do business with the boards just as an example. one of these is the teachers' retirement system here in illinois that handles all the retirement money for all teachers in illinois that are not cps, not chicago, but everybody else. you have a lot of inestment firms that want to handle that money. you're talking about allocations by 10, 20, 50, $200 million at a time. it's good to have it prewired, someone wanting to take the retirement money, and if they can tell the investment firm

they'll get the approval if they pay a finders' fees, and often, those fees are bogus, but that's what makes it go. we left that in there. you can hear how they make the play, and we used recordings from the rezko case, and you see how that builds towards some of the later stuff with blago blagojevich. >> there's a lot to play out with his personality and the corruption. he's listening to the likes of rezko and chris kelly, who is pictured here, who ended up committing suicide a couple years ago amid all the pressure and the mounting investigation, and, you know, he got to the stage, again, i think a lot because of this chip on his shoulder and the obsession with fundraising where that was really the only job he felt he

needed to do, and so -- these were guys who were willing to help him in that regard. they were willing to pressure state contractors and people looking for state contracts, and others to give money to friends to the campaign fund, and that's what rod cared about. he was not necessarily putting money in his pocket per se, you know, in the old-fashioned way where it's literally going in his own personal bank account, but there was this immense pressure for the guys to fundraise, and in return, they get their state contracts and the trs benefits where -- or the, you know, investments i should say, where then they are able to make money. you know, it's all sort of a

political and a business give and take. i had an interview with him, asking questions, friends who were in business, and i'm like how, you know, isn't it a coincidence the good friend of rod blagojevich's good friend, business partners, ending up in these oasis where subway restaurant was one, franchise owner, and he's, like, well, that's business. that's what you do. these are my friends. these are people i trust. he didn't get -- and i think business people a lot of times didn't get the difference between business and politics and government, you know? with government, it's above board, and not that giving friends is, but when politics is

involved, and i don't think they got that. >> really becomes rod's undoing because once rezko's convict and realizes the show is over for him, to try to avoid a longer prison sentence, he cooperates. one of the things he tells investigators, one of the good friends of rod's and is a lobbyist, he -- rezko tells the feds that he was involved in a deal at the illinois health facilities planning board for a health system called provina, and basically says that help communicate what the going rate was to get it through the board, and so the feds subpoena him for the information related to the deal with the board, and wyma

realizes he's in trouble, and so he starts to think about cooperating, and just as he's doing that, he's in a fundraising meeting with rod where rod goes off the rails talking about, you know, doing things for children memorial hospital, but in exchange for that, he wants a $50,000 donation from the ceo of the hospital system, and he's talking about, you know, projects to improve the tollway, but he wants money from the road builders, and he realizes that he's basically screwed for -- he's about to talk to the feds about problems, and here's he is witnessing this. >> clearly going over the line. >> he explaps this, and they want him to raise a wire. he refuse, but he allows investigators to listen to the voice mails, and they take the information that rod is trying to make as much money as he can

before the end of 2008 when new ethics legislation was coming down. they were able to convince the judge to plant bugs in the campaign office. it's a bugging operation, and they catch enough from that to turn around and get a judge, and then a few days later to permit them to wiretap rod's phones. >> that's the beginning of the end. luckily, we were able to get basically any recording of blagojevich including stuff that was not played in the trial. >> yeah, two things. that's a friend of blagojevich, and that's john walking out of that meeting where the bugs were had been planted. >> right, first day the bugs were up. >> might be why he's peal there. i think he was going through a lot, and the second thing was

the tapes, blagojevich, as i'm sure everybody knows, heard 500 times saying play the tapes, i'll be exonerated. that was a major goal of ours was to get all the tapes of rod blagojevich talking and put him in context, and would that, you know, we were not looking to exonerate or find him guilty again, but looking to put the whole thing out there, and so we felt like that was really important to actually, even though -- i guess we're not playing all the tapes, but they were all there in the full and proper context. >> new things do pop out at you when you put them in order. even ones we heard before. >> right. when we went through again, drafts, like, wow, okay. in court they mix them all up because they are just focusing on one topic, and so they jump

from a conversation in october to a conversation in december. >> we also overlaid it to where we knew he was and other things he was doing, and so when you put it in that chronological order, layered the right way, you see how he was thinking, how he makes each movings and he thinks he's playing chess and everybody else is playing checkers, but he may be playing basketball, i have no idea. it was just really interesting to put that all together and, you know, hopefully reveal things. as john said, a lot of attention was given to the project, i think a month ago, because there's one tape where he actually relates a story where he thinks that rezko is involved in giving obama some illegal walking around cash. you know, some of that, we left

it in order basically as rod says it trying to provide context, but really just let you see what is brain is or isn't doing. we want to get to questions. >> i know we probably talked too long, but happy to open it up to questions and i see one -- don't all go at once. there's a boom microphone over there. >> i apologize for being late, but what is this taped for? >> c-span for booktv. >> then i won't ask that question. >> no, no, no, go ahead. >> hopefully they'll edit it out. i was going to say thank you for coming. really is a pleasure to have you. >> thanks. >> in the interest of full disclosure, i used to work for ryan back in the day when you could say you did before any of this stuff startedded. i got out in any event.

i wanted to ask a question related to the culture of politics in illinois which was the point to rezko, what's the big deal? this is how it's done. kind of this culture and come police sit and how it's done. but i want your comment on what andy shaw said a year ago when he was interviewed on wbez, after chris kelly committed suicide, michael scott, and he was asked the question why is it that these officials in the throes of scandal take their lives and some don't like rod blagojevich and george ryan, and andy's comment, i thought resinated, and i wonder if you saw it as well. the difference as i see it is, chris kelly and scott michael had consciouses, all be it late, but, like, oh, you got me, i cannot take the guilt. i cannot face the jerks in federal building for three

months in a row. i won't put my family through it up like rod and george who don't think they did anything wrong. why take your life if you didn't do anything wrong. i'm wondering if you can speak to how both the culture of the illinois politics merges with the personality of, you know, if i've done good things, can you forgive the bad stuff, and, you know, we -- it's a terminal at the airport on the way to colorado saying free rides for seniors, i'm a good guy, and you think, wow, what a narcissist. did you find that as ale, and could you comment on that? >> want me too? >> sure. >> seven part question. [laughter] >> one through three, and i'll do four through seven. >> as far as the culture, i'm asked quite a bit, you know, in different parts of the country, especially what is going on in chicago and illinois?

how do you guys keep voting for over and over again, and my answer is i think this project helps review this. people don't realize that a lot of times we're really begin a choice between two relatively bad outcomes, and a lot of times we don't get a chance to vote for people until they've already come up and graduated through this system. rod blagojevich wasn't, you know, born in an easting basket and suddenly just arrived on scene. he came up through zig, and we got to vote for him because they came up in the organization, and because he was the best at this kind of thing; right? once you produce -- we're not saying every candidate out there, you know -- >> right. >> your favorite candidate, i'm sure is fine, but the, a lot of times, that system produces a lot of different personalities

is what i'm trying to say, and so i think people reagent to pressure in all different ways. certainly in this case they did, and i think chris kelly and john can speak to this, but chris kelly had a lot going on in his life aside from this case, and some of the issues related to, you know, gambling and whatever else he was into, i think it was the last straw for him. he had family problems also. his family had completely disintegrated. this was not, you know, this was not a group of bad things happening, but as far as rod, you know, we didn't get to the end of the project and decide what personality disorder he has, but he certainly has a place in his head where he can go, i think, where the very, very best liars out there are people who convince themselves while they speak what they say is true, and he has that gift. i think when he says he's innocent, he's coming from a

place where he literally thinks he did nothing wrong, and that's why he's good at getting people to believe him. >> honestly, i think it's a skill politicians have. well, i may be -- the people you mentioned who committed suicide, and i don't know whether they developed a conscious at the end of the life. i don't think that's the case with chris kelly m i think what jeff said is accurate. he was -- his -- he created a world that just crumbled on top of him, and that's why he was -- it was too painful for him to go on apparently, but i think with most politicians, they have that l ability, not that they are all liars, but they have the ability to compartmentalize things. that's a skill, a political skill, too, saying, okay, this is one bad thing going op, but i can do -- i can't do a, b, and

c, but i can do x, y, and z. i think that's definitely one of the things that why maybe a politician would be able to just sort of pursue forward. he or she is thinking of the four talking points that get them there. this appeal, these issues related to the appeal, and then, you know, the next day in prison, and i'm in the going to be washing pans in prison, but teaching kids, you know, about shakespeare because that's the last thing we heard from him. i think, you know, that's how they are built, and that's, you know, people who are attracted to politics and being political figures, i think, are built that way, and so that's, you know, that's as much as i can get in rod blagojevich's head without beginning crazy. >> so thanks for writing the book, i'm excited to read it. my understanding is that at the time that blagojevich ran for

re-election, you had a fair hi full notebook with these things in it, and the republican operatives who had pretty full files too, but a lot of that did not come out. i wonder why you chose to sit on it or you did sit on it because the feds were, i mean, following him around then. i'm wondering why that election, you know, is weighted on the illinois citizens at the time it was? >> i would say, actually, it did come out. a lot of it did come out. i was not sitting on anything. i mean, there's a -- it's tough to get stories in the newspaper, especially when you write about a governor. i mean, you better be 100% sure of what you are writing about that it's accurate, but there was a story -- there were numerous stories, stories about -- and it was not just the tribune, but sun times and newspapers and tv stations, you know, across the state. there was an ongoing hiring investigation in 2005.

we wrote about that for one of more former colleagues, ray gibson's here, he helped work on those stories for a year where there were massive questions about them circumventing state hiring laws where they are giving -- giving jobs to people who didn't deserve, quote-on-quote "civil service," that's more of a federal thing, but basically civil service jobs, the most qualified people, not the people with political connections. we wrote about that a year before the 2006 election. as part of that, we actually wrote a story about the fbi investigation of a 15 -- $1500 check, and some may remember the story, was money literally in blagojevich's bank account where a friend -- and this is in the book -- where a friend, a long friend from his

time growing up. his name is mike, they called him lou nova because he was a good boxer. his wife got a state job. right after she got the state job, mike writes amy blagojevich, then 7-year-old daughter of rod and patty's a, $1500 check for her birthday, just weeks after this, and the fbi investigated that. the fbi questioned mike's wife. they questioned mike. they were, you know, pulling papers on his personal finances. that was all in the newspaper in september of 2006, two months before that -- before, you know, he was running against judy. he was under assault. i actually had -- >> rezko was indicted too. >> rezko was indicted. >> which i think they made a point to do. >> a month before the election

so there was no secret there were about, you know, 500 red flags up there in 2006 when voters were given the choice of judy or rod, and this is one of the points we make. >> well, yeah, and they were puzzled too at the federal courthouse. >> right. >> you mentioned -- [inaudible] a couple weeks ago, a reporter came out with -- maybe you were scooped. she came out with a book about blagojevich. is it covering the same territory? does it have the same tone? have you read it? >> i have not read it, but i've been busy so my understanding is it's a more -- i mean, what she said was it's more of a --

putting together her blog postings together and it's more based on the trial. that was one of the things we tried to do with this was go beyond the trial. it's an important part, but people read stuff about the trial so that was one of the things we were really trying to do with "golden" to show the full arc of the guy's life opposed to just the trial. >> sir, in the back, i think. >> yeah. >> so my understanding is blagojevich, for some reason, didn't totally fund all the time fully the teacher retirement system fund. do you know about that? then you guys also know what's going on with the teacher retirement fund system since blagojevich is no longer around and how that's handled? are you guys continuing to follow-up with the corruption that existed before blagojevich, and you've discovered, like, what happened with chris kelly and stuff like that, have you followed up to see if that's still continuing or did it stop

at their deaths? >> go ahead. >> well, we did follow, i mean, all the tenacles, and there was a statewide revamp of the boards, a lot of the blagojevich appointees were asked to leave or quite a few resigned. in terms of what is done now, i have not followed them closely real recently. >> [inaudible] such a continuing sowter of frustration and of -- especially with what's happening now? >> yeah, i'm not sure, i mean, i have not done a full, you know, top to bottom search recently of trs's leadership, but i know we are constantly looking at them, and to your first point which is trs's massively underfunded, part of a massive problem in state government of underfunded

pensions, they're a big one, but not the only one. pensions, i mean, that is thee problem the state of illinois government is facing right now is under funded pensions. it's just -- it's because of blagojevich. it's because, i mean, right now they are trying to deal with it. before him, governor ryan, just everybody's been kicking the can down the road on the issue, and so the tribune and other papers have, i mean, and the legislatures allegedly going to address it. they were supposed to address it this spring, and shockingly, they didn't because it's an election year, and now they are going to address it after the election so we'll see, or they say they'll address it after the election. it's a majorly important issue. trs is not the only one. it's every pension that the state controls because they don't -- they have not been funding it. they've been borrowing from it. they have not been paying in, and when they borrow from it,

they don't pay back. that's the simplest terms -- they don't pay back. the way the system's set up now, there's no way to catch up unless you do a total revamp of how it's p -- it's funded. >> after you listened to all the taped in order and put that in context with everything else that's going on, what's the most surprising thing you learned? >> the most surprising thing that we learned? you know, for me, i think it was just -- it was sort of a volume thing, and the fact that he's literally having no off switch seemed like from the time he woke up until he passed out on the phone. it was just scheme after scheme. not in a criminal context necessarily, but 100 miles per hour. i thought, well, we're going to get all the -- we'll going to get all the tapes now. they obviously minimize the recordings when it's -- when

rod's obviously oring a pizza or whatever it is, but what they captured, on and on a goes. some of the more off the wall things gathered. one point he's joking about can he name halle berry the senator so he ha a chance to have sex with her. stuff like that where you hit pause and say what did he just say? at one point, he revealed people remember the rezko-obama house deal which was controversial for obama and mr. gibson helped break that story. he is on the phone with an adviser saying, well, patty was almost the agent on that deal. what do you think of that? the person he's talking to says what did you just say? you know, things like he voted -- talks about his voting record. a lot of republican votes in there. he voted for george hw bush and thinks rage p is his model.

he talked about voting for bush, and he says, you know, if you tell anybody that, i'll wait a bit and find a way to fire you. you can hear the personality. >> yeah, i mean, what jeff said is right about the volume. he does -- it's more rod blagojevich talking crazy talk, but for these people, it was -- they talked to four, five, six, seven times a day for periods anywhere from a couple minutes to an hour. this was their daily lives, like, this is their existence in working for rod blagojevich. for me, e -- i came away he would be the worst boss to work for. >> he'll call somebody at seven in the morning, and be like, are you busy? well, i was about to workout, and then blagojevich launches into a 40 minute dialogue. >> or read the paper and complaining about stuff. he's very much a needy guy, and

at this point in his career, else, he was never going into work. he was always just working from his basement, you know. his routine was he'd wake up, you know, see the kids off to school or whatever, go for a run, you know, come back, make some phone calls, and then maybe go out and lift weights or -- while lifting weights make phone calls. the halle berry call was literally while he's lifting weightings. you hear the clanking in the background. on that one, i mean, to me it was, you know, amusing, but it was really telling of what's going on in his head. he really thought he had something to give away, and he could literally trade it for something. not that he was serious about the bear ri thing, but he was -- berry thing, but he thought of it something that was his, and not the public. that got to me, offended me a little bit. >> people ask, did you hear

anything that was good for him? not really. it was more you hear him creating kind of parallel arrangements, but it really feels like he's trying to set up a bunch of options so that at the end he can pick one. he really gets in trouble because he winds up sending his brother to the guy who he believed was the person to pass the jesse jackson, jr. money for an appointment. he took that extra step to carry that one out. sir? >> what was his relationship with -- since mel made blagojevich, marrieded to his daughter, any way that mel could prevent blagojevich from self-destruction? >> that mel could have prevented blagojevich? blagojevich wouldn't listen to him anymore. i mean, that's one of the things we try to get in the book. a lot of people might remember there was a big blow up between rod blagojevich and dick mel

when rod blagojevich was governor, and specifically it was over a landfill deal that involved dick mel's coz p of dick mel or a relative, and rod blagojevich says i'm standing up to this. i won't let me father-in-law have an insider deal. they had a bad relationship going back ten years earlier than that. maybe not ten, six to eight years earlier. there was a constant attention between the two of them since blagojevich became congressman. that's back to the point that i tried to make earlier that he had a chip on his shoulder. when he was down in springfield, they called him the representative's son-in-law, and then when he went to congress, he was congressman's son-in-law. things like that drove rod blagojevich crazy, and that was what steered him towards the chris kelly and rezko's of the

world to create independence for him, and so the big blow up at the end of big, no doubt about it, but it was not the first time, and blagojevich was absolutely not in any mode to listen to anything dick mel would have told him, you know? pretty much from the time he became governor. even, you know, he was not listening to dick mel taking his advise, taking his council, op anything at that point. if he was, would dick mel have given him the right advice? that's another question too. dick mel has been making a career as a chicago man, and he's done well for himself, but, you know, he's a chicago aldeman. he had a few, you know, questions raised about him too, but, you know, who knows what he was trying to tell him. there was just really extreme bad blood there at that point.

>> can you talk about -- [inaudible] >> yeah, sure. yeah. he developed -- a great political skill -- developed a real ability to remember things. he, as a kid, would study -- and i talked to him about this one time -- on the campaign trail in 2006 when he would associate -- he didn't have a great meme mememorization, but he associated the president related to something weird. it was a mind trick he had. he -- and he was able to do that all the way through school and in college and so he was not a good student. he was a b and c and d student. he was almost kicked out of law school twice, but on the stump,

on the campaign trail, he would remember people. he would go, jeff cohen, i remember you, you lived in oak park. there's one editor or one reporter where a reporter, bob sector, editor of ours at the paper, and every single time, hey, bob sector, how's oak park? he somehow associated him, but he doesn't live in oak park. had if he it wrong, but it was like a computer thing, like literally push a button, and it was, like, binge. it was a way he got through life. when he got it right, people were like, wow, the governor remembers me, where we met, remembers all of this stuff, and it's, you know -- bill clinton has a similar skill to that from what i understand. it's a great political skill. >> and it was funny, too, because he tried it in the second trial with the jury.

>> oh, yeah, right. >> where he listened closely in voir dire as they talked about the backgrounds and their professional lives and whatnot, and when he spent, you know, a week on the stand, he went through and tapped one thing for every juror, and one, you know, one guy said he was from boston, and massachusetts came up, and he carried on about how beautiful it was and how much he loved it, and there's a church director on the jury, and showing a photo of the library, and that's where i keep all the bibles, right there, and the jury really caught that, and afterwards, you know, a lot of reporters from the paper, including saint sinclaire who is also here, worked to interview jurors who made the decision, and they caught up on that, and backfired making them feel like they were manipulated, but on the trail is works well.

>> on the trail, is works great, but in the courtroom, it's a dynamic. >> people caught on. >> people caught on. >> yes, sir? >> patty blagojevich, do you feel she broke federal laws? if so, why didn't the government go after her? [laughter] >> well, good one. >> well, it's really hard to say in terms of whether she broke laws. i mean, if you wanted to take the widest look at what happened, you can probably come up -- just taking with what the government presented at trial. you could come up with charges for her if she knowingly was in on, or, you know, allowed herself to be placed on real estate deals she was not a part of so rezko got the money. she's on tape yelling stop that. getting people from the tribune fired, and you really do hear her helping rod come up with

some of the plans and decide which ambassadorship would be best for him. could you come up with a conspiracy charge for her? i mean, you probably could. i think part of the reason they didn't charge her was he was their main target. he was the elected officer. she was not. they did not want to create for the jury a situation where nay felt like they were taking both parents from the girls. they didn't want to create a sympathy situation. they were able to use evidence of things she had dope to make the case against rod, and mostly that dealt with money moving to the family, and so i think they felt like they got their flesh and the person they were after was really him. >> that is the important thing. he was the elected official. he was the guy we all voted for or had the opportunity to vote for, and so, yeah, i think that

that's generally how the fbi works on those sorts of things, and the attorney's office. they are not, you know -- again, in this sort of investigation, they are looking to go after legislated officials if they are up to no good. >> yes? >> i was wondering the dynamic between the two. grown up with a powerful father and kind of knows the ins and outs and almost a great training guide for him and they're kindred spirit and desired to be both narcissistic. do you think she was more of master mind on some of the ways and maybe the ways to hide money or through her businesses, the way that it's all gone o he's not the mental giant of the group. she might have been the master mind a lot? what's your thoughts on that? >> yeah, i don't know if she was the master mind. she's on, i mean, and, you know, when you read the book, you see

her on these tapes a lot. i mean, she was the person he talked to more than anybody about all sorts of stuff. i don't know -- she definitely grew up in a politically -- i mean, dick mel is a very smart guy, and i'm sure just through osmosis she, you know, got politics and understood politics and probably why she married somebody involved in politics and was interested in it. you don't really hear her, you know, saying this is what we have to do. she's generally, you know, listening to him, and then reacting, and offering advice. i can't say i ever, you know, see her as being thee person, you know. there's also, you know, there's a definite -- jeff's got a story, lady mcbeth element. >> well, she was definitely a sounding board for him at the

very least. >> yeah. >> that revolve around plans for the family talking about taking an ambassadorship and going to india or whatever, she's in on the discussions. there's a tape where he's talking about sort of the state they are at in their lives and the fact he has to run for president, and he says i feel i let you down. did i? she says what? shut up and focus. get back to work. >> right, right. >> we're in this together. there's quite a few recordings where they talk about, you know, places they can go, and she's helping him understand plays that he has with the swap for the scene and what that can get them. >> you think that blagojevich knew that what he was doing was wrong or still feels innocent? >> i still feel he probably feels he's innocent or at least that he didn't do anything that nobody else has done in their

life. that would be, you know, gog back to whenever those previous question about that mind set in his head, that -- that's my feeling. >> to me, i think the key piece of evidence is the one thing mentioned earlier, and a lot of covering of trials over the years. there's usually one thing somewhere along the line that's a real tell in terms of what was going on. this is what the feds triggered on too. he tried to argue when he talked to people on the phone about sending jesse jackson, jr., to the senate, he was trying to scare the washington establishment helping him pull you have a deal with the madigans here in illinois. he was talking with power brokers making it feel -- telling people he wanted to make people feel jacksonfuls -- jackson was a pick. that's all well and good, and as

he came around at the end of cross-examination of rod said, well, there's a call where you send your brother to the guy you think is the bribe guy. you send your brother to the guy you know offered 1.5 million for the jackson pick, and you send your brother to a meeting at a coffee shop with him telling him to agent like the whole world is listening. you know, you got to keep this under wraps because whatever the reasons are. he's not only phone for that. he's sending his brother to a guy who he thinks will give him money for a pick. what's he doing there? >> okay. >> thank you very much. >> thanks to the book stall for having us. we're around to sign books or answer more questions if you want. >> thanks to booktv too.

>> yes, thanks. >> thanks. [applause] >> two months left before the election, and in many ways, this is the time the book was designed for because as we enter the last few months, this is when the election really gets going, and, to me, one of the great untold stories of this is not just obama versus romney. it's obama versus carl rove, and he's been behind the scenes the whole time, and he's put together over $1 billion that will be spent in the last two months, and we, in new york here, you're not going to see much it. it's spent in the battleground states.

he's become king of the super pacs. he has -- when you put together his money with the money that romney has raised and the republican national committee, it's a total of about $1.8 billion. to put that in perspective in 2008, mccain had $375 million to spend. this is a factor of five, and you're going to start seeing it coming out now. the other thing i wanted to discuss about him is who is he really? what does he do? he's a political operative. how does he operate? what does he really do? i talk to a couple of sources about that, and one who is one of his victims says there's a dark and terrible beauty about what he does. i had another source through the former cia agent named larry johnson who told me, you know, the cia can learn a lot from carl rove, and the way he has

deniability and all of these operations that he does. he's both very, very visible. he has something like a 70% name recognition in the united states. that's up there with justin bieber, but we don't really know what he does. most people don't. when you go back over history, and you look at the things that are starting to unfold in the election, he has deniability at a one level after another. to me, the story became interesting in a way because i think most people thought carl rove was finished in 2008 when the bush presidency started to come to an end. he was forced out of the white house in 2007. he was the prime target in the two biggest scandals of the bush era, the claim affair and the united states attorney scandal. bush left the white house with a 22% approval rating, the lowest

in the history of the united states, and even top republican strategists like ed rollins said the brand was tainted forever and no one would want to work with rove, and the fact of the matter is he was back working again within a matter of weeks. it became evident to me in early 2010, about a year after obama took office, three things happened. the first was from the -- came from the united states supreme court, and i think no person in the united states, that i can think of, has benefited more from the supreme court than carl rove. two decisions. one in 2000, obviously, was bush v gore, putting his candidate in the white house, and, two, in 2010, the citizens united decision. that opened the flood gates for

contribution, unlimited contributions, and in many cases, from secret sources with no transparency whatsoever, that is just unprecedented in history. the second thing that happened was michael seal running the republican party, and he was sorting running into a ditch, and he couldn't raise a dime. it came in early 2010, you may recall there was a revelation in los angeles that the republican national committee had been intertaping its dore -- donors at a lesbian bondage theme strip club, and as a party of family values, it didn't work well. they didn't raise a dime. this gave rove the opening. in april, he had a lunch chon at his house in washington, d.c. on

weaver terrace. it was cohosted by ed gilispe, former chair of the rnc. they had two dozen people over, and they came away with tens of millions of dollars giving them four times the amount of money as the entire republican party. rove was effectively establishing an apparatus giving him an enormous amount of power and authority with no responsibility. he reported to no one, but he had hands on the purse pursestrings, and this led to the 2010 legislative lexeses. they raised a toe call of $-- a total of $300 million, and they swept congress taking 63 seats in the house, and suddenly obama's big advantage was gone. he had no real authority. this money -- so the question is what did he do with the money?

it's not what is he going to do with the money, but it's going into the battleground states. i started to look at what he's going to do now, and i decided to look what he had done in the past, and i found again and again that a lot of it really had not been reported in-depth. we -- for one thing i found that he had was a huge technology apparatus, and i went to chat chatanooga, tennessee, and there i found a company called smart tech. i saw rove a year ago in ohio, and i asked him about the company. he told me he never heard of it. well, i find that hard to believe. this is a company that has a corporate history, but if you go through the fronts within fronts and corporate changes and find out who put up the original money, the original money came from two very wealthy republican

donors named reynolds and bill dewitt. i researched them. in the 80s, they bailed out george w. bush several times. he had three oil companies in the 80s that went belly up. each time, they came to his rescue. they were also baseball loyalty. dewitt owned the st. louis cardinals, and his father owned the old st. louis browns. they gave bush entray into the ownership of the texas rangers, which was one -- the only investment he ever made putting in $600,000 and came away with $15 million. this company, smart tech, which started out as a legitimate technology company, soon became a republican operation, and it's all good and well that republicans or conservative groups should have their

websites and so forth, but this was up usual, and i saw george bush 43 was there. later, the veterans for truth. hundreds of conservative troops there. again, all fine and well, but this company, which is highly, highly partisan, also over time acquired contracts that i think probably should to the have gone to such a partisan company. let me say two of them. one was if you're in the white house, your e-mails are public documents, and they are supposed to be hosted on whitehouse.gov, but rove made sure his e-mails were hosted been smart tech and

that 80 of his staffers who -- other people who worked with him in the white house, also had their e-mails there. when rove was investigated for the claim affair and, again, in the u.s. attorney scandal, suddenly, 22 million e-mails were deleted, and these are all government documents, and they have never been found. that was one thing he seems to have gotten away with. another thing was in 2004, smart tech played a central role in the presidential election, and the secretary of state, of each state, part of their job is to oversee affair and impartial election, and you may recall in the 2000 election, kathleen harris in florida was sex -- secretary of state in florida,

played a role in the bush election, and there was considerable controversy over that. well, very similar thing happened in ohio in 2004 when kim blackwell was secretary of state, and, again, was supposedded to oversee a fair and impartial election, but he happened to be co-chair of the bush-cheney reelection committee, and he decided that to tab by late the returns for the election, the secretary of state's computers were not enough. they needed to get another set of computers serviced. who did he go to but smart tech, and smart tech's role in this is -- raises a lot of -- an enormous amount of very, very interesting questions, and i went through the returns with people who studied this. there were civil lawsuits. you could see when the returns came in that night. what happened as that night wore on on i believe november 2,

2004, it was a very, very close election, and it was clear the election would come down to who won florida and ohio, the last two key battleground states. at two o'clock, they called it for florida. there was one state outstanding, ohio. whoever won ohio would win the electoral college. the exit polls were in, and they showed kerry winning ohio by 4.2%. suddenly millions of people started logging on to the secretary of state's computer in ohio. traffic through the roof up 700%. meaning the computers in tennessee kicked in at 11:14 p.m.. suddenly, in county after county that reported, there were just striking anomalies.

the next ten counties in a row, and this raises a lot of serious questions about who actually won the election. i went about as far as i could in tracing this down, and in terms of pinning it down conclusively, unfortunately, there were still unanswered questions, and the reason for that is that again and again all of the evidence vanished mysteriously, and there was a court order as a result of one of the lawsuits to impound all of the ballots, but sunday lily over -- suddenly over a million ballots were damaged or disappeared. in 2006, a new secretary of state, a democratic secretary of state was elected in ohio, and she was about to take office, and went by the -- her new offices just before he formally took office, and when she went in, she saw everyone there under the direction of the old secretary of state,