yes. they have another department that is the literacy program for adults, but these are people who go there just to read and write. so that is also the problem. .. >> examines the effect the war of 1812 had on american politics and patriotism. visit booktv.org for a complete schedule of this weekend's programming, and watch

booktv all weekend long here on c-span2 and at booktv.org. >> up next on booktv, jeff coen and john chase report on the political ascendancy and demise of rod blagojevich, former governor of illinois. the authors utilize 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. that's actually joke. [laughter] but 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, sarah -- >> she's left. >> in the back. 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 kind of a crime beat at first and then i moved to 26th street which is the criminal courthouse in chicago and 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, '06. so the project was just sort of our attempt to preserve this story and kind of tell a piece of city history 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 wipe the slate clean and tell the blagojevich story from the ground up, just restart it and eliminate a lot of the things that were making headlines at the time. so that involved 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 off and 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, 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. as well as people who are just interested in the topic. so, yeah, as sarah mentioned in

our introductions, i was working for the chicago tribune, i started more on 1998, covered 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 or, were showing. and so after that, after he got elected they moved me, the tribune moved me to the thompson center, and as everyone down state illinois knows, rod blagojevich didn't, didn't work -- was not golf from spring -- was got governor from springfield, he governed from chicago and, more specifically, his house. 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. 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. 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. i remember there was actually a few people saying we 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 off the shelves or buy a book at the book stall and, you know, learn about it from start to finish. so we really did decide to set, you know, hit the reset button on that and start from the beginning. so rod blah i do slip's career -- blagojevich's career as a 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 edward oliack who was one of his first guys he was trying to come up through

politics with. okay, thanks. that was, you know, that was important, 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 -- we still work ae chicago tribune" and still wanted to -- well, still doing that work, sort of did it at nights and weekends and stuff like that and put it together. >> so really nobody has worse blagojevich fatigue than we do. [laughter] so really, so it's sort of a promise to people who might 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, we try to decide, you know, how to open and where to start, and we really just decided 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 in later years make more sense when you understand that he was 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 mel's organization. and when you understand that those are his roots, you 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 sort of an understanding what his chicago dna is. >> right. >> so part of the story was really more of the kind of thing john handled having covered the politics, and i hooked in later. >> yeah. there was a lot. in covering him the six years before the trouble happened, there was a lot. sort of had my notebooks, you

know, it never found it 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 in the came out in the trial. the guy spent, you know, tens and twenties of thousands of dollars a year on suits, more than he spent collectively than, on their nanny, patty and rod. that on clothing that they spent. and, you know, there's interesting stories of his, you know, his hair. [laughter] and his obsession with his hair, like, you know, and everyone talks about, you know, is it fake, is it gray or whatever. and, like, one of the stories we have in the book is this story of a guy who is a big fundraiser for rod, and he was taking him

up to farther northern than here for a fund raising event, and then, you know, rod left his hair brush up there. and this guy lived in indiana. [laughter] and at, like, 5:00 at night -- this is hours after the event was over -- rod made the guy go all the way back up there when he was practically in indiana just to pick up the hair brush and deliver it to his doorstep, you know? things which don't find their way into a newspaper story but are interesting, they do show the kind of person rod blagojevich was or is. and so i felt like it was important to, you know, maybe that's not an important, super important story, but it is 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 just in 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 a, you know, working class neighborhood. and he made himself governor. but he did it on the backs of, you know, he married patty mel who was dick mel's daughter, and he -- and dick mel was the one who made him a political person, who helped him with his success. and dick mel 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, and this constant prodding from dick mel about you're nobody without me really just sort of built that chip. and because of that rod blah i do slip -- blagojevich sought out chris kelly and others who were beholden just to him, and these were fundraisers for 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 blaming tony rezko and chris kelly. he created this world where he wanted only people who were beholden to him and loyal to imfor this fundraising machine. anyway, those are some of the stories we felt were important

to tell in "golden" just sort of to lay out the whole personality as well as the investigative side of things and then, of course, the courtroom drama that we observed and jeff especially observed on daily basis. >> yeah. i think that the -- 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 mel 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 to the next level, but he's angry about people having to help him get there. so even for me at a late stage it really helps me to see the guy who develops when i pick up the story in '05-'06.

so i was at 26th street and was having some success there in doing things that reporters do and building sources and, you know, talking to investigators and understanding criminal enterprises and how these kinds of things come together. and so the paper said why don't you go to dirksen because we've go 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, you know, finally come to a conclusion. so was there anything just in the early years that -- do you want to begin by just -- >> well, yeah, the book sort of starts off with this guy who is alderman, ed yard vrdolyak, and

when rod blagojevich was between first and second third year of law school -- no, second and third year of law school, b those two nations and cultures don't get along, but in america they got along, especially in chicago, rod's dad knew somebody who knew vrdolyak, so he decided i'm going to try and get a job with the city law department. and, um, rod what guy slip told -- blah i do slip told these stories from time to time. at that time this is the late '70s, early '80s. he's becoming this monster of a politician, the most powerful man, alderman in chicago, and

vrdolyak sees him and gives him a job, and then blagojevich comes back to him and says well, hey, i know this is crazy, but if there's anything i can do for you, just let me know which is like some 24-year-old kid saying, hey, if i can help you out. so vrdolyak sort of likes this can 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 a good, i felt, introduction because, you know, people knew vrdolyak was, was up to whatever he was up to and was doing whatever he could to remain many power. remain in power. so it was an interesting way to sort of, we felt like, start the story. and it does get this whole idea of rod blagojevich is a chicago story. so for us that's always, that's a theme that sort of we try to keep throughout the whole book

is, you know, this guy became a national laughing stock because he's on, you know, the is the celebrity apprentice, and patty blagojevich is on i'm a celebrity, get me out of here, and hanging out with john salley in the jungle. while that's funny and amusing in the book, it's also a chicago story for us and an important one to tell. so anyhow, the vrdolyak doesn't end up being successful, and rod is, of course, immensely bitter about it. and he eventually becomes a prosecutor in the cook county state's attorney's office and is invited to a fundraiser for alderman dick mel. and so he meets patty blagojevich at this fundraiser at a north side german restaurant, and they hit it off. you know, a lot of people have asked me questions, well, is it

a real marriage, do they really love each other? you know, i'm about as, i don't want to say cynical as i can get -- >> go ahead. >> but sure. when it comes to rod, rod blagojevich being governor, but i, you know, i do believe they were in love and are in love, i mean, you know, sticking through everything that they've been through, i can't imagine that would be a total sham. but he, you know, they met, and they fell in love, and, you know, before rod knew it, you know, dick mel was offering him, you know, positions to move up with his ward office and then eventually a state rep seat opened up, and he got him elected. there's no denying that dick mel made rod blagojevich which, again, is sort of a pure chicago story. >> yeah. john did a good job just stitching autocampaigns together, and you -- all the campaigns together, and you get to see how rod kind of rises up

the food chain. all the while, again, just really interesting no matter where he is, he's always looking to take that next step, and he just gets fixated on where he can get, who can get him there and how he can, you know, make that kind of a play instead of paying attention to the thing he's just been elected to. >> yeah. that was something i'd heard often from former staffers was, you know, he really only saw his job as a guy who -- 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 good campaigner. i think if rod blagojevich walked in right now, he'd be immensely personable, and half of you would be saying he's not such a bad guy. got a self-depracating humor --

>> even jurors were like -- >> yeah. and that was his skill was being a great personality. something really wrong with my mic. that good now? i won't touch it. so i guess where things start to come apart for him from an investigative standpoint is around '04, 'o 5 when the feds get interested in tony rezko who rod's established for his gubernatorial races. there he is right there. >> there he is right there. >> so there's an investigation that actually begins with a tip from the co of edward hospital. she's dealing with the i'll health facilities planning board because edward hospital wants to open a new facility in the western suburbs. and she very quickly starts to feel the squeeze from some of the guys who are a part of the scheme because they want --

>> including this guy. >> yes. stuart levine is on this board, and so people in the his circle want the ceo, pam davis out at edward, to hire a certain contractor to build the facility. so they're sort of backing into this. and the hitch, of course, is that the contractor has agreed to pay a dickback if he get -- kickback if he gets this deal. so stu levine comes up with this plan where the guys trying to get pam davis to hire the contractor are going to meet at a restaurant, and he's just going to happen to be there, and on the way out he's going to elbow the contractor and say he does a good job, he's worked for us before, and she'll get the message. she had already been communicating with the fbi and letting them know that sort of the fix was in on this thing, and so she was wearing a wire in her bra at the time, and she catches this. so at that point agents are

already up on stu levine's phones. so we left a lot of that in there, sort of the back and forth. you kind of, you get to hear stu levine talk about these schemes in realtime, and it really 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 this case. well, you know, they corrupted two or three state boards. well, what does that mean? how do you corrupt a state board? so we left a lot of the back and forth and how they talk about people that they've put on the boards, how they motto deal with companies that are plot to deal with companies that are trying to do business with the boards. one of these is the teachers' retirement system here in illinois which handles all the retirement money for all teachers in illinois that aren't cps, so no chicago but everybody else. finish and you say you have a lot of large investment firms that want to handle that money,

and you're talking about allocations by trs of 10, 20, 50, $200 million at a time. so it's really great for rezko and company if they can have those boards prewired, somebody can come in wanting to take that retirement money. if they can tell the investment firm that they can get the approval if the investment firm agrees to pay a finder's fee to the person that they name -- and often those finder's fees are bogus -- that really gets a go. so we left that all in here, and we used recordings from the rezko case including levine, and you see how that builds toward some of the later stuff with blagojevich. >> yeah. so, obviously, there's a lot to talk about with rod and his personality and also the corruption. i mean, he got to the stage where he's listening to the likes of tony rezko and chris kelly who's, you know, pictured

here who ended up committing suicide a couple years ago amid all the pressure and the mounting investigation. and, um, you know, he got to the stage again i think a lot because of this chip on his shoulder and this obsession with fundraising where that was really the only job he felt he needed to do. and so, and these were guys who were willing to help him in that regard. they were willing to pressure, you know, state contractors and people looking for state contracts and others, um, to give money to friends of blagojevich, to his campaign fund. that's what rod cared about. he wasn't 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 by these guys to then to fundraise. and then in return they get the state contracts, or they get the trs benefits or the investment, i should say, where then they are able to make money. so it's all sort of a political and a business give and take. i did an interview years before tony rezko was indicted -- oh, going the wrong way -- with him, you know, and he said, you know, what's wrong -- like i was asking him questions, he had friends who had business at -- [inaudible] and i'm like how, you know, is there a coincidence that the good friend of rod blagojevich b his good friends are in these franchises? and he's like, well, that's business. that's what you do.

like, these are my friends, these are people i trust. and, like, he didn't get -- and i think business people a lot of times don't get the difference between business and politics and government. with government, you know, it's supposed to be above board. not that giving friends is -- that's business, though, and if it's personal business, that's fine to. there's no problem with it. but when you get the government involved, it gets messy, and it's supposed to be fair and above board, and i don't think business people, guys like tony rezko, got that. >> yeah. and it really becomes rod's undoing because once rezko's convicted and realizes that, you know, the show's sort of over to him, to try to avoid a longer prison sentence be, he starts cooperating. and one of the things he does is telling one of rod's good friends who's a lobbyist, he -- rezko tells the feds that he was involved in one of these deals

at the illinois health facilities planning board. and, basically, says that wyma helped communicate what the going rate was to get something through this board. and so the feds finally subpoena wyma for information that he has related to this deal with the board, and wyma kind of realizes that he's in trouble, so he starts to think about cooperating. and just as he's doing that, um, he's in a fundraising meeting with rod where rod kind of goes off the rails and is talking about doing things for children's memorial hospital, but in exchange 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 on and on it goes. and wyma realizes that he's basically screwed.

he's about to talk to the feds about his own problems, and here he is listening to rod -- >> and now he's witnessing this which is, clearly, going over the line. >> with right. so he goes in and explains this, and they want him toll wear a wire to another fund have been raising meeting. he refuses, but he allows investigators to listen to his voicemails, and they take this information that wyma's given them which is that rod is trying to make as much money as he can before the end of 2008 when some new ethics legislation was coming down. they were handgun -- they were willing to let him plant bugs in his office, and they catch enough from that to turn around a few days later to get a judge to permit them to wiretap rod's phones. that's the beginning and the end. basically, we were able to get any recording of blagojevich including a lot of stuff that wasn't played at trial. >> yeah. two things. first is, actually, this picture of john wyma in the background

you might see a taller building. that's actually the friends of blagojevich headquarters, the campaign headquarters, and this is john wyma walking out of the that meeting where the bugs were -- had been planted. >> be first day the bugs were up. >> might be why he's a little pale there. i think he was going through a lot. and the second thing was, um, the tapes. rod blagojevich, as i'm sure everyone in this room heard about 500 times, you know, said play all the tapes, and i'll be upon be rated. so that really was a major goal of ours was to get all the tapes, or at least all the tapes of rod blagojevich talking and to put them in context. would that -- you know, we weren't looking to exonerate or find him guilty again, but we were looking to put the whole thing out there. so we felt like that was really important to actually even though i guess we're not playing

all the tapes, but they're all there in their full and proper context. >> and it does -- new things do pop out of you when you put them in order. >> uh-huh. >> even ones that we'd heard before. >> right. when we went through it again, there were drafts. oh, wow. because in court they mix 'em all up because they're focusing on one topic, so they'll jump from a conversation in october to a conversation in december. >> we also overlaid it to where we knew he was and other things we knew he was doing. and so when you put it in that chronological order, layered the right way you really see what he was thinking and how he makes each move and, you know, he thinks he's playing chess and everybody else is playing checkers, but he's -- >> marbles? >> he may be playing basketball, i have no idea. [laughter] so it was really interesting to put all that together and hopefully reveal some things. as john said, a lot of attention was given to this project, i

think a month or so ago because there's one tape where he actually relates a story where he thinks that rezko was involved in giving obama some illegal walking around cash. you know, some of that stuff was unsubstantiated and some of the more, some of the crazier things rod says. we just left that stuff in order, basically, as rod says it. you know, we're trying to provide some context but really, you know, just let you see what his brain is or isn't doing at any particular moment. but i know we do want to get to some questions. >> i know we probably talked too long, but happy to open it up to questions. i see one in back -- don't all go at once. yeah. there's a boom mic over will so people can hear -- >> and i apologize for being late. what is this being taped for? >> c-span, booktv. [laughter] >> then i won't ask that question.

>> oh, that's okay. [laughter] >> no,. [inaudible] i was going to say thank you to coming to the book stall, it's a pleasure to have you. and in the interest of full disclosure, i used to work for george ryan back in the day. i got out. in any event, i wanted to ask a question related to, obviously, the culture of politics in illinois which is, to your point about rezko saying, what's the big deal? this is how it's dope. and kind -- this is how it's done. and kind of the culture of just how it's done. but i wanted to get your comment on something andy shaw said about a year ago when he was being interpseudoon wbez. this was right after chris kelly had committed suicide. 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, resonated, and i'm wondering if you saw this as well. he said the difference as i see it is chris kelly, michael scott all had consciences, albeit a little late, and they, like, oh, you got me. i just, i cannot take the guilt. i cannot face the dirksen federal building for three months in a row, i won't put my family through it. unlike rod and george who don't really think they did anything wrong. so why take your life if you didn't do anything wrong? i'm wondering if you could speak to how both the culture of illinois politics merges with the personality of, you know, if i've done these good things, can you just, please, forgive this bad stuff. and, you know, we all saw him at the terminal at o'hare still saying, oh, free rights for seniors, i'm a good guy, and you

thought, wow, what a far narcissist. and i'm wondering if you could comment on that. >> sure. >> seven-part question, so i'll take it. [laughter] >> one through three, i'll take four through seven. >> i think as far as the culture, i actually get asked quite a bit especially what is going on in chicago and illinois, how do you guys keep voting for -- over and over again seemingly. and my answer is that i think maybe this project helps reveal some of this, um, people don't realize, i think, a lot of times we're really given a choice between two relatively bad outcomes. [laughter] 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. >> right. >> rod blagojevich, you know, wasn't, you know, born in an easter basket and suddenly just arrived on the scene. [laughter] he came up through chicago, and we got to vote for him because

he came up in the mel organization, and because he was the best at this kind of thing. right? and so once you produce, and we're not saying that every candidate out there, you know -- >> right. >> -- your favorite candidate, i'm sure, is fine. [laughter] but a lot of times that sort of system can produce a lot of different personalities is, i guess, what i'm trying to say. and so i think people react to pressure in all different ways. certainly in this case they did. i think chris kelly and john can probably speak to this, but chris kelly had a lot going on in the his life aside from this case, and i think some of those issues related to, you know, gambling and whatever else he was into. i think it was sort of the last straw for him. he had family problems also. his family had completely disenintegrated. this is in a group of bad things that are happening to him. as far as rod, we didn't get to the end of this project and

decide what personality disorder he might have, you know, whether he's sociopathic or whatever it is, 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're speaking that what they're saying is true, and he totally has that gift. i think when he says he's innocent, he's coming from a place that he literally thinks he didn't can do anything wrong, and that's why he's so good at getting people the believe him. >> i think, honestly, that's a skill a lot of politicians have and why maybe -- the people that he mentioned who, you know, committed suicide or whatever, and i, you know, i don't know whether they developed a conscience at the end of their life, i don't think that was the case with chris kelly. i think what jeff said was more accurate. he created a world that just crumbled on top of him, and that's why he, you know, it was, it was too painful for him to go

on apparently. but i think most politicians have a, have that ability. and not that they're all liars, but they do have an ability to compartmentalize things. i mean, that's a skill. that's a political skill, too, um, being able to say, okay, there's this one bad thing going on, but i can do, you know, i can't do a, b and c, but i can do x, y and z. so i think that's definitely one of the things that why maybe a politician would be able to jutte sort of pursue forward -- just sort of pursue forward. he or she is thinking of the four talking points that's going to get them through, and now for rod blagojevich i'm going to guess it's my appeal and these issues related to the appeal and then my next day in prison, and i'm not going to be washing pans in prison anymore, i'm going to be teaching kids about shakespeare because that's the last thing we've heard from him. so i think, you know, that's

just how they're built. and, you know, people who are attracted to politics and being political figures, i think, are built that way. so, you know, that's as much as i can get inside rod blagojevich's head without going crazy. yeah. >> 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 fairly full notebook with a lot of these things in it, and there were republican operatives that had full files, too, but a lot of that did not come out. and i'm wondering why you either chose to sit on it or you did sit on it. because the feds were following him around even then, and i'm just wondering why that fraud was perpetuated on the illinois citizens at the time that it was? >> i would say, actually, i would say a lot of it did come out. and i certainly budget sitting on anything -- wasn't sitting on anything. i mean, there's a -- it's tough

to get stories in the newspaper, especially when you're writing about a governor. you better be 100% sure of what you're writing about, that it's accurate. but there was a story, there were numerous stories. we wrote stories about -- and it wasn't just the tribune, it was sun times and newspapers, tv stations, you know, across the state. there's an ongoing hiring investigation in 2005, we wrote about that for one of my former colleagues ray gibson's here, he helped work on those stories for a year. where there were massive questions about them circumventing hiring laws, state hiring laws where they're giving, giving jobs to people who didn't deserve them, sort of quote-unquote civil service. that's more of a federal thing. but basically civil service jobs. you know, the most qualified people, not the people with political connections. we wrote about that for a year before the 2006 election.

as part of that, we actually wrote a story about the fbi investigation of a $1500 check which some of you may remember the story where, and this was money literally in rod blagojevich's bank account where a friend -- and this is in the book -- a friend, um, long friend from his time growing up, his name was mike, everyone called him lou nova because he was a good boxer, and lou nova was a famous boxer back in the day. and his wife got a state job. and right after she got this state job, mike writes amy blah blah -- blagojevich, then a 7-year-old daughter of rod and patty's, a $1500 check for her birthday. and the fbi investigated that. they questioned mike's wife, they questioned mike, they were, you know, pulling paper 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 -- [inaudible] he was under assault. i actually had a -- >> rezko was actually indicted too. >> and rezko was indicted -- >> which i think they made a point to -- >> -- for months before -- right -- before the election. so there was no secret that there were about 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. >> with well, yeah, and they were puzzled, too, at the federal courthouse. sources i had at the time right after he was reelected kind of went, well, i guess he'll be a sitting governor -- [laughter] >> yeah. >> you mentioned your competition, the sun times. a couple weeks ago a reporter, i think natasha corecki, you were

maybe scooped, she came out with a book about blagojevich. does it cover the same territory? does it have the same tone? have you read it? >> i haven't read it, but i've been busy. my understanding is it's a little more -- what she said is it's more putting together her blog postings together, it's more based on the trial. that was one of the things we really tried to do with this was go beyond just the trial. a lot of people have read the trial, stuff about the trial. so that was one of the things we were really trying to do with "golden" was to show the full arc of this guy's life as opposed to just the trial. >> sir, in the back, i think. >> yeah. >> is so my understanding is blagojevich for some reason didn't fund all the time the teacher retirement system fund, you guys know about that.

and you guys also know what's going on with the teacher retirement system since blagojevich is no longer around, and you guys are continuing to follow up with the corruption that existed, and you've discovered with stuart levine and kelly, have you guys followed up to see if that still continued, or did you stop after their deaths? >> we did follow those sort of tentacles that were revealed when blagojevich went down finally, and there was pretty much a statewide revamp of a lot of these boards, a lot of the blagojevich appointees were either asked to leave or quite a few of them resigned. in terms of what trs does now, i haven't really followed them that closely real recently. i'm sure that they've got -- >> [inaudible] a continuing source of

frustration, especially with what's happened -- >> well, i'm not sure, i mean, i haven't done a full top-of to-bottom search recently of trs' leadership. i do know we are constantly looking at them, and to your point, to your first point which is trs is massively underfunded, it's part of a massive problem in state government of underfunded pensions, they're a big one, but they're not the only one. that is the problem, the state of illinois government is facing right now is underfunded pensions. it's just, it's -- and it's because of blagojevich, it's because, i mean, right now quinn is still trying to deal with it. it's because before quinn governor ryan, everyone just has been kicking the can down the road on this issue. and so, and the tribune and other papers have, i mean, and the legislature's 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're going to address it after the election. so we'll see. or they say they're going to address it after the election. it's an important, it's a majorly important issue. trs isn't the only one. it's every, it's every pension that the state controls because they don't, they don't -- they haven't been funding it. they've been borrowing from it. they haven't been paying, and when they borrow from out, they don't pay back n simplest terms, they don't pay it back. and the way the system is set up right now, there's no way to catch up unless you do a total revamp of the legislative -- of how, of how it's funded. yeah. >> after you listened to all the tapes in order and put that in context with everything else that was going on, what was 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 sol qume thing -- volume thing and the

fact that he literally had no off switch 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 -- >> right. >> but 100 miles an hour. >> i sort of thought, well, we're going the get, we're going to get all the tapes now, and they, obviously, they minimize the recordings when it's, when rod's literally ordering a pizza or whatever it is. but just in the things that they captured, on and on it goes. and just some of the more off the wall things we gathered, you know, at one point he's joking about can he name halle berry the senator so he can have a chance to have sex with her. [laughter] stuff like that where you kind of hit the pause and say what did he just say? at one point he reveals that people remember the rezko/obama house deal which was so controversial for obama, and mr. gibson helped break that story. he, he's on the phone with an

adviser and says, well, you know, patty was almost the agent on that deal. what do you think of that? and the person he's talking to actually says, what did you just say? [laughter] you know, things like he voted, he talks about his voting record, there's a lot of republican votes in there. he says he voteed for george h.w. bush, and he thinks reagan is his model, and at one point he's talking to this aide and says, you know, if you would tell anybody that, i'll wait a little bit, and then i'll find a way to fire you. you can totally hear his personality. >> what jeff said about the volume is right. it's more rod blagojevich talking crazy talk. but or for these people it was, that he talked to four, five, six, seven b times a day for periods anywhere from a couple minutes to an hour, this was their daily lives. like, this was their existence working for rod blagojevich.

for me i came away going, you know, none of this is criminal. he'd be one of the worst bosses in the world to work for. >> seven in the morning he'll call somebody, are you busy? and the guy will say, well, i was just about to work out. and then the guy launches into a 45 minute diatribe. >> he's very much a very needy guy, and he at this point in his career especially, he was never going in to 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 maybe go out and lift weights or -- while lifting weights make phone calls, actually, the halle berry --? >> he was pumping iron during that. so you can hear the clanking in the background. [laughter] it's quite -- you know, on that one, i mean, to me, it was amusing and all that, but it

also is really telling of what's going on in his head. he really did think he had something to give it away, and he could literally trade it -- not that he was ever serious about the halle berry thing, but he thought of this as something that was his not as the public's. that was what really got to me, sort of fended me a little bit. >> people asked did you hear anything that was good for him, and not really. it was more -- you hear him creating kind of parallel arrangements, but it really feels like he's just trying to set up a whole bunch of options so that at the end he can pick one. and he really does get in trouble because he winds up sending his brother to the guy who he believed was the person who was going to pass this jesse jackson jr. money to him for an appointment, so he takes that step to carry one out. sir. >> so at the end of the day what was his relationship like between dick mel and blagojevich, since mel made

blagojevich and he was married to his daughter, wasn't there any way that mel could prevent the garbage from self-destructing? >> that mel could have prevented blagojevich? blagojevich wouldn't listen to him anymore. and that's one of the things we do try to get in the book. a lot of people night remember there was a big blow-up -- might remember there was a big blow-up between blagojevich and mel when blagojevich was governor, and specifically it was over a landfill deal that involved dick mel's cousin or a relative, and rod blagojevich was saying, you know, i'm standing up to this, i'm not going to -- even my father-in-law, i'm not going to let that deal. they had a bad relationship going back ten years earlier than that. maybe not ten but eight, six to eight years earlier. there was this constant tension between the two of them since the time rod blagojevich became congressman. and it goes back to that point i tried to make earlier which is

that he had this chip on his shoulder. everybody called him representative son-in-law, you know, because it's -- and then when he was in congress people called him congressman son-in-law. and things like that just irked, just drove rod blagojevich absolutely crazy. so -- and that was what steered him toward the chris kelly and tony rezkos of the world, to create his independence from him. so when there was a big blow-up at the end there, that was a big blow-up, there's no dow about it, but it wasn't -- no doubt about it, but it wasn't the first time, and rod 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 budget listening to dick -- he wasn't listening to dick mel, taking his advice, taking his counsel on anything at that point. if he was, would dick mel have given him the right advice? that's a question too, you know? the. [laughter]

dick mel is, has been making a career as a chicago alderman, and he's been, you know, he's done well for himself. but, you know, he's a chicago alderman, so he's had a few, you know, questions raised about him too. but, um, i -- you know, who knows what dick mel was trying to tell him. yeah, there was extreme bad blood there at that point. >> can you talk a little bit about his uncanny memory? >> yeah, sure. yeah. he developed a really -- and this was a great political skill -- he developed this real ability to remember things. he as a kid would study, um, and i talked to him about this one time on the presidential -- on the campaign trail in 2006 when he would associate -- he didn't have a great memorization, but he had a process where he would associate somebody he met with, say, a president.

so -- and then he would associate that president with something related to something weird. it was this mind trick he had. and so he -- and he was able to do that all the way through school and in college, and so it sort of -- he was not a good student. he was a b and c and d student. he almost got kicked out of law school twice. but on the stump, on the campaign trail he would remember people. he would go, jeff coen, i remember you live in oak park. so there's one editor or one reporter, bob sector, who is an editor of ours at the paper, and every time he said, hey, bob sector, how's oak park? somehow he associated bob sector with oak park. bob sector doesn't live in oak park. if he got it wrong, it was like he had this computer thing, you know, where it's like literally just push a button, and it was like, bing, and then he'll say

that. so that was -- it was a way he really got through life. but when he got it right, people were like, wow, the governor remembers me, remembers where we first met, remembers all this stuff. and it's, you know, it's a really -- bill clinton has a very similar skill to that from what i understand, and it is a good, it's a great political skill. >> and it was funny, too, because he even tried it in the second trial with the jury. >> yeah, right. >> where he listened very closely during voir dire as they talked about their professional lives, and then when he spent a week or whatever it was on the stand, he kind of went through and tapped one thing for every juror, you know, one guy had 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 was a church choir director on the jury, so they were showing a photo of his library, and this is where i keep all my bibles right there. [laughter] and the jury really caught that.

and afterward, you know, a lot of reporters from the paper -- including st. claire who's also here -- worked to interview jurors who had made the decision. they said that they caught on to that, and it kind of backfired on him. it made them feel like he was being manipulative. but, you know, on the trail it actually works really well. >> yeah. on the trail it works really great but, yeah, in the courtroom, it's a difference t dynamic. >> -- different dynamic. >> people caught on. >> patty blagojevich, do you feel she broke any federal laws, and if so, why didn't the government go of after her? [laughter] >> that's a good one. >> well, um, it's, 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 could probably come up with -- just taking with what the government presented at trial, you could come up with charges for her if she knowingly, um, was in on or, you

know, allowed herself to be placed on real estate deals that she wasn't a part of so that rezko could get the family money. she's also on tape yelling, you know, stop that f-ing cubs ass at one point when rod is talking about getting people from the tribune fired. and you really do hear her helping rod come up with some of these plans and decide which ambassadorship would be best for him. could you come up with some kind of conspiracy charge for her? you probably could. i think, um, part of the reason that they didn't charge her was he was their main target, he was the elected officer, she budget. she budget. she wasn't. in and -- and they did not wanto create a situation for the jury where they 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 that she had done to

make the case against rod, and mostly that meant with money moving to the family. so i think they got their pound of flesh, and the person they were really after was him. >> yeah. and that was the important thing, he was the elected official, he was the guy we all voted for or had the opportunity to vote for. so, yeah, i think that that's -- generally, that's how the fbi works on those sorts of things in the u.s. attorney's office. they're not, you know, they're looking -- again, this sort of investigation they're looking to go after elected officials if they're up to no good. >> yes. >> kind of along the same line, i was just wondering the dynamic between the two. she's grown up with a very powerful father and kind of knows the ins and outs and almost, you know, is a great training guide for him, um, their kind of kindred spirits and desire maybe to both be narcissistic as well as driven. do you think she was much more of a mastermind on some of the

ways and maybe the ways to hide money or, you know, through either her businesses, um, the way that it's all kind of gone out? because if he's not really the mental giant of the group, she might have been the mastermind, i mean, what are your thoughts on that? >> yeah. i don't think if she was the mastermind. she was, she's on, i mean, you know, when you read the book, you see her on these tapes a lot. i mean, she was the person he probably talked to more than anybody, um, about all the 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 who got involved in politics and was interested in it. you don't really ever hear her, you know, saying, well, here's what we need to do. she's generally, you know, listening to him and, um, and

then reacting and offering advice. i can't say i ever, you know, see her as being the, the person, you know? but there's also, you know, there is a definite -- jeff's got a story, lady mcbeth element. >> well, she was definitely a sounding board for him at the very least. >> yeah. >> and a lot of that kind of resolved around -- revolved around plans if for their family. when he was talking about taking an ambassadorship and going to india, she was in on that discussion. >> right. >> there's one funny discussion where they're talking about the state they're at in their lives and he didn't get to run for president, and he says i feel like i let you do, did i let you do? she's like, what? shut up and get back to work. [laughter] quite a few recordings where