Golden
Authors: Jeff Coen
© 2012 by Jeff Coen and John Chase
All rights reserved
Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
814 North Franklin Street
Chicago, Illinois 60610
ISBN 978-1-56976-339-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Coen, Jeff.
  Golden : how Rod Blagojevich talked himself out of the governor's office and into prison / Jeff Coen and John Chase.
       p. cm.
  Includes index.
  ISBN 978-1-56976-339-1 (hardback)
 1. Blagojevich, Rod R., 1956-2. Blagojevich, Rod R., 1956âTrials, litigation, etc.
3. IllinoisâPolitics and governmentâ1951-4. Political corruptionâIllinois.
5. GovernorsâIllinoisâBiography. I. Chase, John. II. Title.
  F546.4.B55C64 2012
  977.3'044092âdc23
  [B]
2012017760
Interior design: Sarah Olson
Printed in the United States of America
5 4 3 2 1
For Meredith and Liam and for Josephine
“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
âPreamble of the U.S. Constitution
“Always remember the rule of law is sacrosanct, nay it is moreâit is F'n golden.”
âInscription Rod Blagojevich wrote on a
copy of the document at a book signing
Prologue: A Legacy of Corruption
Part I: The Young Rod Blagojevich
Sourcing for this project starts with the authors' almost total immersion in the Blagojevich story for much of the decade after 2001.
John was part of the
Chicago Tribune's
team that began covering Blagojevich the candidate and then governor early in the decade, while Jeff was working the halls of Chicago's criminal courthouse covering the aftermath of the city's street crime. Their careers merged as John began covering the ongoing shenanigans in the Blagojevich administration and Jeff was sent to the Dirksen US Courthouse to monitor the swirling federal investigation.
In the days after December 9, 2008, the eyes of the nation and the world turned to the arrested Illinois governor. But what followed nationally was a mostly oversimplified version of the bizarre, Shakespearean downfall of Rod Blagojevich. Frustratingly, much of the telling was being done by writers outside Chicago or by Blagojevich himself. This project is our attempt to preserve a piece of city historyâtold by two Chicago journalists who were well positioned to do so. It's a great American political story detailing the rapid rise and meteoric fall of a man who touched the lives of millions, and one that carried lessons for future generations to heed.
The material in these pages came from a variety of sources. Many scenes that are replayed here we personally witnessed. Those we didn't observe came from scouring thousands of pages of court documents or from interviews with the players themselves. Not including the hundreds of notebooks we filled between 2002 and 2008, we conducted more than one
hundred interviews specifically for this project with those who were part of the Blagojevich story from the political and the investigative sides. The interviews often took hours and sometimes were done with the promise that what would appear in this book wouldn't be directly attributable to those we spoke to.
The goal was to talk to sources on the record. And in the instances where the parties we interviewed agreed to be quoted by name, it is noted in the pages that follow. But where a quote appears without direct attribution, there was an agreement not to name a source. There were times when agreeing not to name someone freed them to speak and allowed that person to be forthcoming and provide even greater context for the story we wanted to tell. To verify information we were told in such instances, we checked court documents from Blagojevich's criminal trials, public documents, e-mails, and other correspondence, or interviewed others who were involved in particular scenes or who might have had direct knowledge about what was being said. If there was a disagreement over a set of facts provided by a person who wished to remain anonymous, we either made that disagreement clear in the pages or left the scene out.
In instances where dialogue is quoted, we took extreme care to ensure its accuracy by confirming it with either the speakers themselves or others who personally witnessed what was said. If we paraphrased a remark, it was because we felt we could not know with absolute certainty what was uttered, even if several people we interviewed confirmed a general idea or concept.
We quote heavily from the recordings that federal agents made on phones used by the governor and others. All of those quotes come from transcripts of those phone conversations or the recordings themselves. We are grateful to those who provided case material that was outside of the public record.
The authors also used information gathered from numerous interviews with Blagojevich himself over the years, including one in his home in the days before the start of his second trial. We also had access to transcripts of two extensive interviews with reporters from the
Chicago Tribune
in 1996 when he was first running for Congress. Those interviews proved extremely valuable, and we are grateful to those reporters and the newspaper for allowing us to use them.
We reviewed hundreds of stories about Blagojevich over the years, in particular from the
Chicago Tribune,
the
Chicago Sun-Times,
the Associated Press, the
Daily Herald,
and
Chicago
magazine.
A Legacy of Corruption
Rod Blagojevich belongs to Chicago.
Journalists, analysts, pundits, and comedians made him a national character, mocking his cartoonish hair and laughing at his reality-TV misadventures. They found his obsession with historical icons from Theodore Roosevelt to Elvis Presley somewhat endearing. And some fancied him a political Lazarus, dead but seemingly destined to rise again and keep the fifty states amused along the way. Maybe the impeached fortieth governor of Illinois says something about modern America.
But he belongs to Chicago. A back-alley jokester, yes, but one whose over-the-top persona always hid the kind of insatiable ambition that has made men of stronger character into great leaders. Like his city, he was tenacious and bold. He was steadfast and of good humor in the face of long odds. And it can be argued that nothing motivated him more than having someone tell him he couldn't do something. He was the young boxer who thinks he's twice as tough as he really is but when knocked down rises from the mat convinced he'll hit his opponent doubly hard in return. He was the city kid cliché; the charming son of immigrants who fought his way from tough beginnings on the Northwest Side to success and fame. Some days he shuffled through the slush of winter like anyone else, dreaming of being someone.
But there were other qualities, too, the ones from the shadowy places in Chicago's history: avarice, jealousy, vengefulness, and skill at manipulation.
The proverbial stacking of the deck and a very easy slide into moral ambiguity when it means dollar bills flowing from you to me. Blagojevich, like many before him, flew after power and after money, even when all wisdom should have told him not to. As a chief executive, he allowed influence to outweigh merit. And as a politician, he reveled in a world where backroom dealing almost always took precedent over front-room negotiation. If you can wink it, don't say it, and if you can nod it, don't wink it.
He came from a town whose city fathers pushed the Potawatomi out of the way to take the prairie and whose business leaders put labor rebels to death. It's a town built and sustained by power and run by those who have it. Even the do-goodersâthe “goo-goos”âneeded power to make things happen. Blagojevich knew that history better than most, though with outsiders he would discuss Alexander Hamilton more than Big Bill Thompson.