Governor lays bare pay-for-play culture

Washington: Federal prosecutors charged Illinois Gov Rod Blagojevich on Tuesday with engaging in a series of illegal schemes intended to enrich himself, including an attempt to sell the Senate seat recently vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

In conversations riddled with coarse language and blunt threats that the FBI recorded with telephone wiretaps and listening devices planted in his campaign office, the Democratic governor laid bare a "pay-for-play" culture that, according to prosecutors, began shortly after he took office in 2002 and continued until before sunrise on Tuesday, when FBI agents arrested him and John Harris, his chief of staff.

Beyond deliberations about filling the Senate seat, Blagojevich and Harris discussed withholding funding for a children's hospital project until its chief executive made campaign donations, investigators said. They allegedly pressured the owner of the Chicago Tribune to fire a critical editorial writer if the newspaper expected substantial state assistance for Wrigley Field, which is owned by the Tribune Co.

"Governor Blagojevich has been arrested in the middle of what we can only describe as a public corruption crime spree," US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said in announcing the charges. "The conduct would make Lincoln roll over in his grave," he added, referring to the former president and Illinois politician.

In a state with a notable history of influence peddling, the allegations against the two-term governor and his chief of staff resounded across Chicago's insular political circles and among Washington's newly energised Democratic elites, who are busy planning the Obama inauguration. Obama, who once supported Blagojevich but had distanced himself from the governor in recent years, said he was "saddened" by the arrests. Fitzgerald emphasised that the case "makes no allegations about the president-elect whatsoever".

Bug

FBI agents targeted Blagojevich and Harris after secretly enlisting close associates, placing a bug in the governor's campaign office and wiretapping his home telephone, all with approval from Justice Department officials and a federal judge in the northern district of Illinois.

Blagojevich, who turned 52 yesterday, a former congressman, and Harris, 46, appeared in a Chicago federal courthouse on Tuesday afternoon to answer charges of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and solicitation of bribery. The charges carry maximum combined penalties of 30 years in prison.

Blagojevich was released after paying a $4,500 bond and agreeing to turn over his passport and a card entitling him to own a firearm.

Fitzgerald said he had "laid awake at night worrying" that some of the governor's alleged plans would come to life, including the firing of John McCormick, a deputy editor of the Chicago Tribune's editorial page, who had angered state officials by advocating the governor's ouster.