Bugging Blagojevich

Note that I just love the Capitalism cover. It doesn't really have anything to do with the FBI bugging Blago. -- Jeanie

WIRETAPS

Feds leave no trace behind when they sneak in

December 11, 2008

NATASHA KORECKI
Federal Courts Reporter

Casing a building. Picking locks in the dark. Planting bugs and listening in on conversations, often for just 30 seconds at a time.

It sounds like the stuff of a mob investigation.

But this was the likely mode of operation for federal investigators as they incredibly, surreptitiously recorded a sitting governor.

Winning a court order to bug Gov. Blagojevich's campaign office and home was no easy feat and came only after a series of rigorous legal thresholds were met by authorities, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said.

The break for the feds came with information provided by Blagojevich fund-raiser John Wyma. In October, Wyma told officials the governor was in a race to collect more than $2 million in cash from state donors before a new ethics law went into effect Jan. 1, according to charges.

The feds say they met the threshold to record Blagojevich because Wyma was witness to current alleged illegal conduct and they showed there was no other way to get the evidence (Wyma refused to wear a wire).

Then came the execution.

"They're very discreet in the way they go about doing it," said Joseph C. Ways, former No. 2 in the Chicago FBI office who now handles internal affairs for Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart. "You have people able to pick locks. They won't break a window or anything, nothing that leaves any signs of forced entry."

After the devices were set, the FBI couldn't listen in on any conversations they chose. Rather, agents wearing headphones broke in to conversations for about 30 seconds. If it didn't sound like criminal talk, they had to shut off the recording switch and wait two to three minutes before cutting in again to see if it changed direction.

Before agents are even allowed to listen in, they have to attend a special meeting explaining the rules and sign papers saying they'll abide by them, Ways said.

"The courts look at these as the severest invasion of privacy that an investigative agency can be asked to do," said Ways.

Blagojevich was charged Tuesday with shaking down campaign donors as well as candidates for an open U.S. Senate seat.

Former prosecutor Patrick Collins said the government did not meet the bar to record former Gov. George Ryan. But such evidence is invaluable in court, he said.

"The prosecution probably got more evidence in the last six weeks than they did in the preceding [five] years," Collins said.