Democrat Rod Blagojevich tells voters that Republican Jim Ryan was either incompetent or in political cahoots when he failed to investigate a scandal that eventually ended a governor’s political career and continues to cast a giant shadow over the battle to replace him.
More Top Picks Canopies
But interviews and records offer a more complicated version of events.
Jim Ryan, Illinois’ attorney general who is now running for governor, has said his office knew nothing about commercial trucking licenses being exchanged for political contributions until the scandal became public in 1998.
That hasn’t stopped Blagojevich from trying to tie Jim Ryan to the corruption that spread through the secretary of state’s office when it was headed by now-Gov. George Ryan. That effort includes a television ad that has run on recent days in media markets outside Chicago.
“Any way they can attach Jim Ryan to George Ryan is to their political benefit,” said Jim Ryan spokesman Dan Curry.
The scandal is among the biggest in Illinois political history. Federal prosecutors have convicted 44 people as part of the ongoing Operation Safe Road probe, which has laid bare widespread corruption in the secretary of state’s office and George Ryan’s political campaigns.
Blagojevich’s campaign for governor has not presented any evidence that Jim Ryan, as attorney general, or anyone in his office, took any affirmative steps to cover up corruption flourishing in George Ryan’s secretary of state’s office during the 1990s.
What it does allege is that documents sent to Jim Ryan’s office in 1997 provided information that should have prompted the attorney general to launch an investigation.
The basis of the charge: In June 1997, a civil lawyer in the attorney general’s office who handles state employment issues received the personnel file of Marion Seibel, records show. The file was forwarded because George Ryan’s secretary of state’s office was attempting to fire Seibel, manager of the McCook licensing facility, for making herself a fake driver’s license. The attorney general represents other state agencies in such personnel cases.
Seibel’s file contained copies of reports on investigations conducted jointly by the secretary of state’s inspector general’s office and the FBI into allegations that she was improperly assisting immigrants on their truck-licensing tests.
The file contains allegations that bribes were being paid to grease the way, though it’s not clear who was allegedly receiving them, the records show. And an undercover operation at McCook that was attempting to document the bribery had failed because the agent believed her cover was blown, according to records in the file.
Because the then-unproven allegations about bribery weren’t a factor in Seibel’s firing, the civil employment attorney in Jim Ryan’s office didn’t consider them, according to Jim Ryan’s staff.
In addition, the file shows that federal investigators had already examined the bribery questions. Jim Ryan’s campaign has said it would have been inappropriate to launch an attorney general’s investigation because the FBI was already involved.
“When the federal government is investigating, you don’t just start investigating the same set of facts,” Curry said.
That’s a suggestion backed up by two former Illinois attorneys general, one a Democrat and one a Republican.
Tyrone Fahner, a Chicago lawyer who left the attorney general’s office in 1983, said the attorney general has the authority to investigate almost anything in the state. But, Fahner said, the officeholder almost always defers to federal authorities if an investigation is already under way.
“In reality and practicality, when the feds are investigating something, you never, never, never get involved unless you are looking for some trouble yourself,” said Fahner, a Republican. “You don’t have all the tools the feds have and you could screw up an investigation.”
Roland Burris, a Democrat who supports Blagojevich, agreed that it’s generally not a good idea for state officials to jump into an active federal investigation. “If there is an ongoing investigation, unless the other party is invited, generally it would be difficult to commence or initiate an investigation,” he said. “It could cause something to prevent the case from going to trial.”
In addition, Burris, an attorney general for four years in the early 1990s, said there are often conflict-of-interest questions when the attorney general’s office investigates another wing of state government. He said the attorney general can appoint a special prosecutor, but it’s often more practical to ask federal authorities to look into the matter.
“I don’t know if Jim Ryan made any contacts with the U.S. attorney,” he said. “If he just let it slide, then Rod’s charges have merit.”
Jim Ryan’s staff acknowledged last week that its civil division did not contact federal investigators, a point hammered by Blagojevich’s campaign.
Blagojevich’s campaign also argues that there was a brief lapse in the federal investigation in 1997 when Jim Ryan’s office had the Seibel file–and an opportunity to take action.
“There certainly was a period of time when there was no ongoing federal investigation,” said David Wilhelm, a Blagojevich campaign adviser.
Federal investigators were engaged with George Ryan’s own internal investigators in the case in 1996 and early 1997. But the larger probe by federal prosecutors and the FBI didn’t take off until mid-1998, according to federal court records.
The key factor in reinvigorating the probe: The FBI and other federal agencies stopped trusting George Ryan’s inspector general–a supposedly independent watchdog–to conduct investigations of corruption in the secretary of state’s office, records show.
After the FBI stopped cooperating with Inspector General Dean Bauer, federal prosecutors indicted Seibel in April 1999 for allegedly fixing scores of truck licenses at McCook in exchange for bribes. Seibel admitted churning those bribes into at least $80,000 in campaign cash for George Ryan’s political fund.
More Top Picks Best Neck And Shoulder Massagers For Pain
Almost a year later, in February 2000, Bauer was himself indicted for allegedly covering up the very corruption he was supposed to be uprooting. He pleaded guilty to obstructing justice and is now in a federal prison.
The question that voters will have to decide: Should Jim Ryan’s civil employment attorney, or anyone else in his office, have been able to pierce a cover-up in George Ryan’s administration that seemed to fool even the FBI until 1998?
To marshal its case that more should have been done, Blagojevich’s campaign also alleges that a whistleblower alerted Jim Ryan’s office to the corruption in 1996.
An FBI report shows Tony Berlin, a worker at the McCook facility, told federal authorities in April 1996 that he had sent an anonymous letter to the attorney general’s office “a few months” earlier. Berlin said he wrote to tell the attorney general’s office that state trucks were being used by non-state employees at a driver’s license facility.
“That would have been an excellent starting point for what was a tremendous scandal,” said Blagojevich spokesman Doug Scofield.
What his campaign doesn’t say, however, is that the FBI itself took a pass on Berlin’s 1996 allegations until the case was re-examined in 1998.
Stephen Culliton, Jim Ryan’s current campaign director and former chief of staff, says the attorney general’s office never had the opportunity to weigh those allegations.
“We don’t believe he ever sent that letter,” Culliton said.