Operation Greylord (26 page)

As he had me describe summer working conditions at Devine's stuffy Auto Theft Court, I admitted telling a lawyer that the judge was “scum.”

“So we didn't have the most impartial of FBI agents going in on July 6, 1981, to Traffic Court with Mr. Benson [the name used by an undercover agent], did we?”

Having made his point, Genson said to an objection from Sklarsky, “I'll withdraw the question. It's easier than arguing.”

Instead he went into my friendship with Mark. As he spoke, I separated a little from myself and could almost see how Genson wanted to portray me. This helped me couch my answers, but I could feel the energy I needed flow out of me.

“He confided in you?” Genson asked.

“Yes, he did.”

“Even though you had the FBI money when you went into practice, you took some of his office furnishings?” Genson's eyes twinkled with mischief.

“He lent me two chairs.”

“Did you ever give them back?”

“No, I haven't given them back yet.”

Taking another tack, he asked, “Didn't you encourage him to go bribe Judge Olson?”

“I don't think [I did] outright, but I suggested it, yes.” Since I could reply only to what had been asked, I could not explain that it was Mark who said I should introduce him to Judge Olson so they could work out an arrangement on a PCP case.

“Basically what you did say to him was … that he should bribe Judge Olson, didn't you, sir? … Didn't you say, ‘What are you going to do if his eyes are going to bulge?'”

“Yes.”

“Then you suggested that maybe you shouldn't introduce him, he should go through Costello.”

“Yes.”

“But he says he doesn't want to do that, and you said, ‘Well, he's back there now, do you want me to introduce you to him' or anything like that? Do you remember that?”

“Yes.”

“In your conversation, you make no attempt to discourage your good friend, the one who talks to you about his wedding and baby, from bribing or attempting to bribe the judge, did you, sir?”

“No, I did not.”

“And would that have influenced or hurt your role as a law enforcement officer of the FBI if you had told your friend, ‘Look, just stop all this and start practicing law the right way'? You wouldn't have had to uncover your identity by doing that, would you, sir?”

“No. But it would have been wrong for me to let it go by my eyes, too, Mr. Genson, as a law enforcement officer.”

Judge Getzendanner apparently noticed from my slowing responses that I was wearing down and called for a fifteen-minute recess. We all could have used some water and a chance to walk around. When we returned to our places, Genson picked up a new thread by portraying Judge Devine as an innocent man in a corrupt world.

Referring to the “catch phrases” that fixers used, such as “see you later” as meaning I'll pay you a bribe, he asked, “Doesn't that assume that the person you're talking to knows the code?”

“Yes.”

“Did you end a conversation with Ciavelli saying, ‘Talk to you later'; Hake saying, ‘See you later'?”

“Yes.”

“Did you mean you were going to pay him any money?”

“No, I don't think so.”

Genson apparently was disappointed that I wasn't unnerved when he had practically accused me of stabbing Mark in the back. He kept asking rambling questions as if trying to find a foothold until Judge Getzendanner recessed the trial for the day.

I felt as little relieved as a boxer sitting on his stool between rounds, knowing that he has to go back and get slugged some more. I couldn't
enjoy looking at the changing fall colors as I drove home or even spending the evening with my family.

When I took the stand the next morning, I was fresher but so was Genson. He played tapes of conversations over again and hammered away at minor points until all of us were uneasy.

Admonished for his hostile tone, Genson promised the judge that henceforth he would “unantagonize” his voice. But he became abruptly accusatory when it came to the second time I tried to bribe Devine. “The fact of the matter is, at that time you were an agent trying to make a case, is that right?” he asked.

“That's correct.”

“You were trying to inculpate Judge Devine in a crime, is that right?”

“That's correct.”

“Did Judge Devine say, ‘Go give Harold [Conn] some money?'”

“No, he did not.”

“
You
brought up Harold, is that right?”

“That's correct.”

“In that two years” when I was a project development specialist rather than an FBI agent “you had not put any money into any judge's hand. Is that correct?”

“No, I did not.”

He tried to imply that I was setting the judge up to justify all the work we had been doing. But the questioning was punctuated by Sklarsky's repeated objections over Genson's repetitive and argumentative approach. The badgering returned so often that the judge sometimes acted as a referee between Genson and Sklarsky that day and the next.

Toward the end of my third day of grilling, Genson made an unusual request, that I stand before the jury as another of our tapes was played. He asked me to recreate how I had handed Devine the one hundred dollars.

“He kind of held his hand out,” I said. “I went like this”—showing him the fixer's way of passing money from palm to palm so that anyone walking by would think nothing of it.

“You didn't offer it to him?” Genson asked with feigned surprise. I felt like saying, Well, I didn't exactly force the money into Devine's fist.

Imitating my motions, Genson asked, “So you held it up like this?”

“No, I didn't. I said, ‘Is one enough?' or ‘Is one okay?'”

“Sir, sir,” the attorney said with practiced irritation, “I'm asking you a question. Was the person able to see the money in your hand the way you held it?”

“I don't know if he could or not.”

“Devine didn't reach out with his right hand, did he?”

“No, he didn't.”

“You can sit down,” Genson said sharply.

“No,” I said to complete my sentence, “he used his left hand.”

With threadbare patience, Judge Getzendanner told Genson that she would like him to conclude the cross-examination soon. She must have known that the questioning had been protracted to wear me down.

“Well, I'll conclude it,” he said curtly and spun around to me as I returned to the witness chair. “Now, sir, if you didn't know whether a man was guilty or innocent, you wouldn't lie or finagle or conjure up evidence to get that man convicted, would you?”

“No, I wouldn't do that.”

“But if you did believe, based on your views about a man, that someone was illegal or immoral—corrupt, whatever you would call it—would you get up in a court and conjure up evidence or get up in a court and lie?”

“No, I would not.”

That should have been the end of it, but Genson wanted to finish with a flourish. “Sir,” he said, “you lied here today about having given Judge Devine a hundred dollars.”

“No.”

“Well, sir, I submit that you did.” He turned away and added, “I have no further questions.”

I assumed the worst was over and eased up when Chuck Sklarsky started his re-direct questioning. He had me clarify that all my actions were being supervised, and had me relate how I knew that my friend Mark had become corrupt. And so I told the jurors something he had said to me, that “in order to be successful in the court system, you have to pay the judges to get what you want. To protect your client's interest, you have to pay the judges.”

Part of me was back in that painful time when I tried to warn Mark. I had told him it would be better not to buy the judges, no matter what they did. But he said to me, “It doesn't work that way.” As I had learned,
there would be more honest attorneys in this world if there were more honest judges.

Sklarsky continued asking about my personal reactions, trying to show the jurors the human cost of my work. I admitted that after the conversation with Mark “I went home and cried to my mother.” Not only had I discovered that I had lost my closest friend at the State's Attorney's Office to corruption, I had been forced out of the illusion of basic human goodness that had sheltered me all my life.

“Do you want a recess?” the judge asked. I was unable to answer her, for I found myself crying and couldn't believe I was behaving this way in front of everyone. I just couldn't collect my feelings once the first few words tumbled out. I held up my hands in a time-out signal. “Let's take five minutes,” Getzendanner said.

I had steeled myself for the cross-examination but let myself be open during the re-direct. That was when the deepness of my emotions caught me by surprise, and I headed for the witness room. Sklarsky was waiting for me. He gave me a manly hug and started crying, too. “I'm sorry I got you involved in all this,” he said. “We asked too much.”

“It's all right, Chuck.” I was already feeling better. “I don't regret it.” Any of it.

An assistant prosecutor resting up in the room said that there should be a special place in hell for lawyers who defend evil judges. Just that little joke lifted my spirits. A law school professor friend of mine, Randy Barnett, came in wanting to know what had happened to me on the stand. Barnett was attending the trial as a spectator but had gone to the washroom while I was still testifying, and when he returned the trial was in recess and a former public defender was complimenting Genson for his attack on me.

I couldn't explain without crying again, not with someone else near us, so I took Barnett to the empty hallway and told him what I could. But some things you can't explain. All the education you go through from kindergarten through law school doesn't prepare you for the human heart. There aren't any white knights. Just ordinary people. They get beaten, then they have to pick themselves up and go through it all over again.

When the trial resumed Genson seemed pleased with himself and was ready to attack me again. During re-cross examination, he tried to
suggest that the jury had seen a staged performance. “
I
asked you many questions about him,” he said about Mark, “and you didn't cry then, did you, sir?”

“No.”

He asked whether, apart from the conversation that Sklarsky had me describe, I ever said anything to Mark about handling cases on their merits alone.

“No, I didn't.”

“And this was your good friend, isn't that right, sir?”

“Yes.”

“And you continued to use him as a source of introductions to other people who you thought might help you in your investigation … and continued to be involved with him and talk to him about the fixing of judges, isn't that right, sir?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And this was the same good friend you cried about just a few minutes ago, wasn't it, sir?”

“Yes, it is.”

Having milked the situation as much as he dared without turning jurors against him, Genson tried to minimize everything I did by saying my appearances before Devine were for just two drunken driving cases, and judges might be expected to temper justice with mercy.

“Mr. Genson, you were talking about judges' findings in general, which could have been a rape or a murder,” I replied. “The judge has a sworn obligation to find that person guilty.”

“And because you had a sworn obligation as an FBI agent-to-be, project development specialist, you felt it was more important to use Mark Ciavelli as a source than to treat him as a friend and dissuade him from what he was doing, is that right?” Genson was staying away from the fact that it was Mark who had initiated nearly all our conversations about bribes. In fact, I had never wanted to see him again after he let me know he was corrupt.

“Objection,” said Sklarsky.

“You may answer,” the judge ruled.

“Is that right?” Genson badgered. “Yes or no,
if you can
answer.”

“That's not right, no,” I said. By now I was too used up to give the question an answer it deserved.

“I have no further questions,” Genson told the judge.

I stepped down from the witness chair and left through a side door feeling as if I had just survived a hurricane. I was not so much glad it was over as I was sad and tired, and wondering how to get on with my life.

Getzendanner recessed the trial for the day. When reporters later asked her about my breakdown on the stand, she replied that any man would cry after so many hours of harassment in which he was presented as “a completely insensitive person.”

While she spoke, I went to the FBI offices downstairs. Everyone was nice to me but I felt stupid for losing control. I can see better now why it happened. The stress of undercover work builds up in the fissures of your personality, and you never know when the pressure will erupt. Genson's questions were not devastating—after all, I was not hiding anything and I was not ashamed of what I had done—but they had dragged to the surface all the things I had been trying to keep myself from thinking over. Now that my emotions had been released I couldn't hide them any longer.

The “closings” were divided into three parts, with the prosecution and the defense alternating. Assistant prosecutor Sheldon Zenner began by telling the jurors that “you have heard about corruption of such magnitude that it has never been seen before in a courtroom.”

Getzendanner sustained a defense objection.

“The clerks were taking money, the sheriff's deputies were taking money, lawyers were paying money to the judge,” Zenner continued. “You heard testimony from Mark Ciavelli about police officers taking money. You heard testimony from so many different people about the pockets of corruption, enormous corruption. And if you ever saw a need for an undercover project, you saw it here.”