Chicago City Hall Corruption Defendants: Feds, 'Trib' Ganging Up

By: Mark Fitzgerald The lawyer for one of four former Chicago city officials opened the defense in their federal corruption trial by accusing the government and the Chicago Tribune of conspiring to unseat Mayor Richard M. Daley, who is not charged in the case.

In his opening statement, attorney Thomas Anthony Durkin pointed at Tribune columnist John Kass, who was in the courtroom, as he made his accusation, according to accounts Tuesday in the Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times.

"I think (the case) is about the betrayal of normal prosecutive procedures to embarrass if not perhaps unseat, with the help of the Chicago Tribune, a very popular sitting mayor," Durkin said, according to Kass' page-two column Tuesday. "Notwithstanding my friend, Mr. Kass, for the Chicago Tribune and all his colleagues -- it's a little easier to spin this case in the newspapers," he added.

Durkin said his client, the former head of the mayor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, "is very happy to be here so finally we don't have to keep taking a bath in the newspapers."

Sorich, his former aide and two former high officials of the city's Streets and Sanitation Department are charged with scheming to hire politically connected employees in violation of a long-standing judicial order against patronage hiring for the great majority of city jobs.

In his column, Kass said the accusation that he was working with the feds to bring down Daley was "a whopper of gigantic proportions."

Outside the presence of the jury, Assistant U.S. Atty. Patrick Collins said Durkin's allegations were "patently absurd."

In the rival Sun-Times, columnist Mark Brown -- who like Kass writes in a space once occupied by Mike Royko -- wrote: "If there were such a conspiracy, we at the Sun-Times, birthplace of the Hired Truck Scandal, should probably share in the blame -- or credit, as the case may be. But that may sound like sour grapes, and anyway, there's no conspiracy."

In 2004, the Sun-Times revealed that millions had been squandered to hire trucks that did not work at construction companies, and were often contracted from politically connected people who paid bribes to get into the program. Federal prosecutors have charged 39 people, including the city clerk, James Laski, in the scandal. Of those 25, including Laski, have pleaded guilty.