Golden (41 page)

Underrated on the long list of shady political characters in Chicago history, Stuart Levine was still largely an enigma when he took the stand at Rezko's trial. He stood stiffly to be sworn in at the front of the courtroom and sat
down in the witness chair with a somewhat smug look on his face. Even with everything that was known about him, Levine still carried himself with a slight aloofness and not a hint of shame or introspection.

He told Assistant US Attorney Niewoehner that he was sixty-two, living in Highland Park to the north of Chicago, and that he graduated from the University of Illinois in 1968. After law school at IIT Chicago-Kent, he worked as a lawyer and then as an administrative assistant for Tannenbaum. He said he handled some of Tannenbaum's business interests and banking. And after that, Levine said, he was a consultant and an investor.

Between 2000 and 2004, Niewoehner asked, how much money was he making?

“I would estimate between $9 and $10 million,” Levine answered, still without much emotion.

But since he had been charged in Operation Board Games and some of his schemes had been exposed, things hadn't been going as well. He had gotten a job, any job, to say he had one while he was on bond in the case. The former high roller was working for the Chicago Messenger Service, he said.

“I deliver packages,” Levine said, telling Niewoehner he was now making only about $800 a week. “Minus expenses.”

Levine told the jury he had first been indicted in May 2005 for the attempted extortion of Edward Hospital, the Rosalind Franklin University scams, and siphoning money away from a student charity. Then he was charged several months later and accused of scheming to defraud the Teachers' Retirement System. Levine was doing his best to maintain a dignified air, answering questions on the stand as one would expect a lawyer would, seemingly with a lot of respect for the process and what was unfolding in front of him. Every yes or no response he gave Niewoehner had a “sir” at the end of it, and Levine occasionally gave a slight head bob as he replied.

Niewoehner went over Levine's plea agreement with him, the one that would see him spared from a long prison term, and then immediately moved to get ahead of some of the damaging material that Rezko's defense had promised to attack him with and tell the jury about it first. Levine acknowledged he had committed crimes he had never been charged with and said he had used drugs from 1972 to 2004.

“I experimented with LSD, marijuana, cocaine, Quaaludes, Ecstasy, crystal methamphetamine, ketamine,” Levine said flatly. It was definitely like it was no big deal—and to him it probably wasn't. He could have been a doctor or a treatment expert reading the names of the substances off a clipboard.

Between 2000 and 2004, Levine said his drugs of choice were crystal meth and ketamine, known on the street as the designer drug Special K and used commercially as a horse tranquilizer. He said he used them once or twice a month.

Levine had decided to cooperate in January 2006, he told the jury, and had been interviewed by the government “certainly more than one hundred times.” He had tried to be truthful, except in one instance regarding Vrdolyak, Levine said, and he often had to go back and listen to recordings or review documents to get his memory straight. Niewoehner had Levine again track through the early stages of his legal career, stopping in 1976 when Levine began sharing office space with Tannenbaum, who had been a founding shareholder of McDonald's of Canada. It was while doing work for Tannenbaum and some of his businesses that Levine had begun bribing public officials.

One of the companies was the Consumer Tire Company, Levine remembered.

“It wanted contracts from the city of Chicago—certain departments, Streets and Sanitation—to supply tires,” Levine testified. Another company, called Willett, wanted contracts with the Chicago Board of Education to supply school buses. And then there was Chicago HMO, an insurer that had Dr. Robert Weinstein as its president and COO. That company wanted members of the postal union to sign on as subscribers to its insurance plan, so Levine said he passed a bribe to Vrdolyak to make that happen.

“Was it your understanding Mr. Vrdolyak was going to give that bribe payment to someone else?” Niewoehner said.

“Yes, sir,” Levine answered matter-of-factly. And Chicago HMO also paid three lobbyists to try to influence lawmakers on its behalf, he said— Cellini, Kjellander, and Vrdolyak.

Levine had also worked for a dental insurance company owned by Tannenbaum, Dental Care Plus, that Tannenbaum eventually sold. The company became known as CompDent in about 1996, and Levine said he stayed on to maintain its government accounts. The state of Illinois and the Chicago Board of Education both were clients, and Cellini and Kjellander were lobbyists. And on the city side, Levine said he again passed a bribe to Vrdolyak for him to take elsewhere and help secure the contract with the city schools.

The testimony was coming off fine, with a fairly polished and seemingly well-rehearsed Levine rattling off facts for Niewoehner without a problem. But then, just a few minutes into his questioning, came the first hiccup. In
normal circumstances it would barely have been noticed. But in Levine's case, his drug-addled memory was going to be an issue. Levine said he stopped working for CompDent several months after he was first indicted— in 2004.

“I think you earlier said you were indicted in 2005. Is that right?” Niewoehner said, keeping Levine on track.

“I'm sorry. Yes, sir,” Levine replied, the expression on his face not changing much.

Levine said there had been a number of times when he had violated laws on campaign financing, by contributing money through straw donors.

“It was simply easier for me to give the money myself, through others, than to go out and raise it,” Levine said. Other times, Levine said, he would give money through others that would wind up in the coffers of Democrats. Levine, a Republican for the sake of appearances, didn't want his name attached to the funds.

“Did you expect to get anything when you made significant contributions to candidates?” Niewoehner asked in a tone that made it very clear that he and everyone else in the courtroom knew the answer already.

“Yes, sir,” Levine said, stopping.

“What did you expect to get?” Niewoehner continued.

“Access,” answered Levine, uttering the word that probably singularly embodied what he was really about when it came to the world of Chicago and Illinois government. He believed he was buying the opportunity to worm his way into the political world and get in a position to make even more money for himself.

He had been named to the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, the state Gaming Board, and the board of the Teachers' Retirement System. And yes, Levine said, he did know Tony Rezko. The men had met at a dinner party in November 2003, Levine said confidently. And here it went again, as Niewoehner stopped to ask the judge if he could show Levine his own office calendar to refresh his memory about the date.

“I'm very sorry, sir,” Levine said. “That was 2002.”

Levine told jurors how during the dinner conversation, Massuda had interjected that she had a clinic in the Scholl building and was interested in buying the property herself. Levine recalled that he asked whether she had something to do with holding up the arrangement he was behind.

“Simultaneously, Dr. Massuda said, ‘No,' and Mr. Rezko said, ‘Yes,'” Levine told the prosecutor. The two then had a short discussion, Levine
said, and Rezko turned to tell Levine that if the building had been promised to someone else, Rezko could make the snag go away. Rezko controlled the Scholl board, Levine said he was told, so he asked his dinner companion when he could expect the problem to evaporate.

“Mr. Rezko told me by the following Tuesday morning,” Levine recalled, and said that in fact the issue was solved the next week and the deal closed shortly thereafter.

The power play apparently impressed Levine, and he said he sought out Cellini to ask if he knew Rezko. Cellini said he did, “very well,” and Levine went on to describe the meeting with Rezko and how Rezko had promised to take the brick off the property sale to the medical school. Levine said he had wanted to know whether Rezko was trustworthy and could be believed when he made a promise.

“Mr. Cellini's response was that he found—had always found—Mr. Rezko to be reliable, a man of his word,” Levine said.

Levine had arranged to meet with Rezko again after the Massuda dinner. On his mind was an attempt to get another county contract for CompDent. Kjellander had told Levine again about Rezko's influence, he said, telling him to go to Rezko to get things done in Cook County. So Levine imagined a two-for-one, where he could go to Rezko for help either with county issues or to get a contract with the state under Blagojevich, who had won the election by the time Levine had Kjellander set up another meeting with Rezko for him. Levine said the next sitdown was in Rezko's conference room at Rezko's offices at Elston and Milwaukee on the North Side. Cook County was about to bid out for dental insurance, Levine testified.

“I indicated to Mr. Rezko that any fees that I would make in the event of a successful contract with the county of Cook, that I would share with Mr. Rezko,” Levine said. Rezko said he was willing to go forward with the plan, according to Levine, and that he would put Orlando Jones in charge of it. Levine had met Jones at the same dinner party at Dr. Massuda's home, he told the jury, but it didn't matter anyway. CompDent withdrew its contract application after Levine was approached by the FBI.

But in the wake of their Cook County conversation, Levine said he began to try to bring more opportunities for inside dealing to Rezko's attention. One key meeting was the following summer, he said, when he was in Rezko's Chicago office explaining what they could do together at TRS, at least in theory. He said he brought lawyer Steve Loren with him, TRS's outside counsel, to detail how TRS went about choosing investment firms to give
funding allocations to. Rezko had an associate named Mike Winter take in what Loren was explaining, Levine recalled, and then walked out of the meeting room they were using and into his own office. Levine said he followed and immediately began to tell Rezko that up until that point, he had not personally made any money off TRS dealings.

Rezko quickly gathered what he was getting at, Levine recalled.

“Mr. Rezko said to me, ‘Stuart, anything that I decide to do at TRS, you will be a partner in,'” Levine said, adding that he saw it as a green light from Rezko that they could cooperate on schemes at TRS and elsewhere, such as the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, where Levine still was a member.

“I told Mr. Rezko that I was extraordinarily pleased to know him and to have gotten to know him better and that I thought we could do a lot of business together.”

And with their relationship having progressed, Levine said he began spending much more time at Rezko's office, talking about ways to make money at TRS and about state politics. Rezko explained how he had been given the power to make key recommendations to have people appointed to state boards and to have others hired to jobs in state agencies. He went over his picks directly with Lon Monk. In fact, Levine said, Rezko told him that “all major decisions that were made in the governor's office” were cleared by him. There were more conversations than he could specifically remember about such things, Levine said, though he did recall Chris Kelly was there for some of them. Rezko told Levine not to worry about Kelly's presence, Levine remembered, saying he was told there were no secrets between Rezko and Kelly. Money that they made was shared, and Levine should know he could speak freely. Both men were a part of Blagojevich's “kitchen cabinet” of advisers and were obviously its most influential members.

Levine said he had been reappointed by Blagojevich to the health facilities planning board in August 2003, after a phone call he had with Cellini. He remembered telling Cellini he had decided he wanted to be reappointed and that he had gotten a response that Levine thought was unusual.

“He said that he would call Mr. Rezko and see if that were possible,” Levine said, remembering telling Cellini to pass the message to Rezko that he would cooperate with anything the Blagojevich administration wanted to do on the planning board.

“That meant that if there was an application pending before the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board that the governor's office wanted to either
have approved or not approved, that regardless of the merits, I would do as the governor's office asked,” Levine said, remembering that Cellini called him back within days and told him Rezko had said he would see to it that Levine stayed on the board.

The appointment came through as promised, and two months later, Levine said he chartered a flight for himself, Blagojevich, and others to take to New York to attend a fundraiser there. This was the flight Cari had described for prosecutors, the one that helped send the Blagojevich probe into overdrive and that the media later dubbed the “shakedown shuttle.”

The trip had been an in-and-out affair, Levine remembered, and on the flight back with him were just Blagojevich and Kelly. It was then, Levine said, that he took the chance to thank the governor for reappointing him to the hospital planning board.

“The governor said, in response, ‘Never discuss any state board with me,'” Levine recalled. “‘You discuss them with either Tony Rezko or Chris Kelly. But, you stick with us, and you'll do very well for yourself.'”