Defining "The Chicago Way"

The Chicago Way.

What is it? Is it easily abused? Is it dangerous in the wrong hands?

This is critical, as the nation's eyes turn toward Chicago's federal building, where Barack Obama's personal real estate fairy, Tony Rezko, stands trial on federal corruption charges.

The phrase must be put in context, something the national media fails to do when they portray Obama as the boy king drawing the sword from the stone, ready to change America's politics of influence and lobbyists, ignoring the fact that Chicago ain't Camelot.

With opening statements expected Thursday, the court will be packed with journalists foreign to our idiom. In the past, a few reporters have applied "The Chicago Way" to our pizza, theater and opera, thereby embarrassing themselves beyond redemption.

To prevent such outrage, I've enlisted the help of George Washington, father of our country, crooner Dean Martin and aged action star Sean Connery in a cutting-edge video premiering now at chicagotribune.com/kass.

You know the movie "The Untouchables" in which Connery played the only Chicago cop in city history with a Scottish accent? "He [ Al Capone] puts one of yours in the hospital, you put one of his in the morgue..." says Connery's cop. "That's the Chicago Way."

Perhaps.

Chicago's mob -- we call it the Outfit -- was slapped last summer by federal prosecutors in the Operation Family Secrets trial that convicted Outfit bosses, and cops and put political figures in with them. We've had our chief of detectives (William Hanhardt) sent to prison for running the Outfit's jewelry-heist ring. And we've had white guys with Outfit connections get $100 million in affirmative action contracts from their drinking buddy, Mayor Richard Daley, who must have seen them pink and white and male at some point.

That's the Chicago Way.

"This country was built on taxes," said a Democratic machine hack, Cook County Commissioner Deborah Sims, as she and other Democrats prepared to slap Chicago with the highest sales tax of any major city in the country.

Her belief, that America was built on taxes, is one of the unique features of our own city's history, which reportedly began in 1776, when the Daleys boldly declared our independence from the English king.

"There's not that many political hacks in Cook County," Sims insisted after the tax hike.

Not that many hacks? The only one reporters need to bother about is also involved at the same federal building: the mayor's own Duke of Patronage, Robert Sorich.

Sorich has been found guilty by a jury, but the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals above the Rezko courtroom is still deciding whether to redeem the jury or redeem the mayor, who'd much rather have Sorich happy than Obama in the White House.

Sorich was convicted two years ago of running the mayor's massive and illegal patronage operation, and he's still not in prison. Thugs, morons, idiots, and convicts were put on the city payroll to work the precincts so that Daley could keep getting elected. Obama's spokesman, David Axelrod, defended Daley patronage in a Tribune op-ed piece.

The Daley family's parish priest in Bridgeport, Rev. Dan Brandt, lovingly compared Sorich to Jesus Christ as both had troubles with the law.

"People often say, what would Jesus do?" he said, loyal not only to his faith but to the 11th Ward's place at the head of Chicago Way. "I put a twist on it and say, 'What would I do for Jesus?' With whom Robert has a lot in common as far as legal problems ... [The Lord] was a convicted felon. And Robert was convicted, and so he may have a lot in common with Jesus."

When the parish priest does right by the patronage boss to protect the mayor who gets endorsed by that great reformer Sir Barack of O'bama, that's the Chicago Way.

Naturally, there are some squares who don't think taxpayers should pave the Chicago Way to make it easy for Rezko to help purchase the senator's dream house in a kinky deal exposed by the Tribune and still not fully explained.

"It's really the Old Chicago Way," said Jay Stewart, executive director of the Better Government Association. "In the old days they would pretty much admit it up front, and now they deny it. It's essentially about power, access to government jobs, government contracts and taking care of your own."

One secret DaVinci Code-type sign for the Chicago Way is in the back room of the Chicago City Council chambers at City Hall, where a portrait of George Washington looks down at the crookedness below, and extends his own hand, palm up, itchy, needing that special grease. But some strangers to our lands have used the Chicago Way with perfect pitch. Rezko's buddy, former Iraqi electricity minister, Aiham Alsammarae, escaped an Iraqi prison where he was being investigated for corruption.

A reporter asked -- How did you escape?

"The Chicago Way," he said.

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US Marshall Wore Wire to Investigate Mob Witness Leak

A deputy U.S. marshal secretly wore a wire against a man who was like a father to him as part of the investigation into the leak of confidential witness information to the Chicago Outfit.

The details were revealed Tuesday in federal court as the deputy marshal, John Ambrose, battled prosecutors to get certain statements he allegedly made to investigators thrown out of his upcoming trial. Ambrose is charged with leaking information on a star witness, hitman Nick Calabrese -- information that made its way to mob boss James Marcello.

Federal agents focused on Ambrose as the source of the leak after listening to secret prison tape recordings of Marcello.

Ambrose was lured to FBI offices on a pretense in September 2006, then the feds revealed their evidence against him. The feds needed Ambrose to detail how the information got from him to Marcello. Ambrose answered the feds' questions but initially balked at wearing a wire, worrying he would be viewed as "a snitch," FBI Special Agent Ted McNamara testified.

Ambrose eventually recorded William Guide, a former Chicago Police officer who was convicted with Ambrose's cop father in the Marquette 10 scandal. Ambrose's father died in prison, and Guide became a second father to Ambrose.

The feds haven't charged Guide but claim in court filings Ambrose passed witness information to Guide, who allegedly has mob ties.

Thanks to Steve Warmbir

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Did US Marshall Put Flipped Mobster at Risk?

In a brief but loud confrontation, the top FBI agent in Chicago, Robert Grant, underscored the deadly potential of a deputy U.S. marshal leaking information to the Chicago mob about a star government witness, as Grant verbally battled with the deputy marshal's attorney during a court hearing on Monday.

"This leak put at risk the most important witness in the Family Secrets case. It put at risk the agents guarding him. It put at risk his wife," Grant said, during questioning by Francis C. Lipuma, the lawyer for U.S. Deputy Marshal John Ambrose. "This leak was no small leak."

Ambrose is accused of leaking information about mob hit man Nicholas Calabrese, the star witness in the Family Secrets trial, which ended in September with the convictions of five defendants, including Calabrese's brother, mob killer Frank Calabrese Sr.

Chicago mobsters "protect their own because it's assumed they won't cooperate. Once that cooperation becomes known, it's fair game," Grant said.

A federal judge is holding a hearing to determine what statements by Ambrose, if any, should be allowed at his trial.

Ambrose contends when he was lured to FBI offices in September 2006 on a ruse, he was in custody but not initially read his Miranda rights.

Both Grant and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who paired up to talk with Ambrose initially, testified at the hearing that they told Ambrose he wasn't under arrest.

Ambrose's name came to light during secret FBI recordings of Chicago mob boss James Marcello while in prison.

Grant said that Ambrose admitted he knew two of his friends had connections to mob bosses Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo and John "No Nose" DiFronzo.

Thanks to Steve Warmbir

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Will Artifacts Confirm Discovery of Secret Capone Hideout?

Jean Garland had always admired the stately home where she and her family now live. But she never knew that secrets dating back more than a half century could have been buried beneath it.

In May 2000, the Garlands bought the home, which sits on a bluff overlooking Three Mile Lake in Paw Paw. And in the years since, neighbors started telling them stories about how the house was a getaway and hideout for notorious Chicago mob boss Al Capone. Capone died in 1947.

Eventually, their curiosity got the best of them. Last spring, they began digging for answers.

They found a hole in a wall in the basement, and upon looking down inside it, saw a shaft reinforced with steel and wood ran from the bottom of the hole further back into the basement.

They started clearing an area around a place they thought the shaft -- which might have provided a stream of fresh air -- could have ended. What they found surprised them.

A circular outline in the concrete about four feet in diameter emerged, and they went to work smashing through the concrete to see what was below.

All of a sudden, the concrete gave-way, revealing a hole with brick walls and a heavy iron fixture at its top.

"That's when our hearts started beating," Jean said.

Jean's husband, Jim, grabbed a hand-held ice auger and began slicing through the dirt. When he got down nearly six feet, he stopped.

They found Chicago Daily Tribune newspaper clippings from the 1930s and 1940s, along with assorted empty bottles and other items.

Could this have been a secret area for Capone or one of his associates to hide if law enforcement came knocking? Or is it an old well? Jean said it's not likely to be a well because there is no solid bottom to it.

"If it is a real hideout, then it's really interesting what we've found," Jim said.
In all, the Garlands have collected about 100 artifacts, he said. None of the items bears Capone's name, however.

Behind the main house, a yellow carriage house sits close to the Garlands' garage. Jim and Jean's daughter, Cara, currently lives there, but neighbors told the family that employees of Capone stayed there when he was staying at the main house.

Further back, encased in a heavily wooded area, is a five-sided, three-story silo, with windows on each side.

Neighbors said it served as a look-out tower for Capone's security detail, who would position themselves on the top floor, where a pool table currently sits, Jim said. On the bottom floor, Capone would host cock fighting contests, Jean said neighbors told her.

Tom Dietz, curator of research at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum, said he has heard stories over the years about the possibility of a Capone home in the area, but he remains skeptical.

"There certainly have been legends and folklore that Capone did have such a home," he said. "But so far, I have not been persuaded."

It's not inconceivable that the gangster -- who was known to have spent time in Michigan -- could have had a house in the area, Dietz said, given the Kalamazoo area's equidistance from Chicago and Detroit. The proximity would have been a boon to his alleged bootlegging operations.

Dietz has investigated several claims from area homeowners who insisted their homes were used by Capone, but all were unsubstantiated, he said.

Still, he's curious about the Garland home.

"I'd be happy to take a look out there," he said. "Who knows what we'll find."

For their part, the Garlands are cautiously optimistic that their home is the real deal, saying they believe they have encountered paranormal activity.

Routinely, a television in their main living room turns on suddenly. A rocking chair in the carriage house rocked even when no one was in it. Disturbed, Cara got rid of the rocking chair.

"If this was an Al Capone house, then it's almost like he's still here," Jean said.

Thanks to Chris Killian

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Mob Mentality at the Movies

The nearly concurrent DVD releases of Alberto Lattuada's "Mafioso - Criterion Collection, and Marco Turco's "Excellent Cadavers," from First Run, make for a discerningly complementary treatment of the Sicilian Mafia as an indestructible force of evil. Americans have adopted mobsters as cultural house pets — as urban outlaws, dapper rogues, or House of Atreus incendiaries, depending on one's metaphorical preference. These two films — a dark comedy from 1962 featuring a perfectly judged performance by Alberto Sordi and a documentary from 2005 — go beyond catchphrases and soap opera to capture the chilling reality of an institution that appears to be as secure as the church, even though for a long time it was hardly acknowledged at all.

Mafia movies, like mafia prosecutions, were redefined in the 1950s by two commissions. First, the 1951 televised Kefauver Committee hearings concluded that organized crime existed, despite suspiciously stubborn denials by the FBI. The stars of the proceedings were Frank Costello's hands. The mob boss had somehow convinced the committee and the broadcaster not to show his face. A better symbol for the manipulations of an invisible puppeteer could not have been invented.

The cinematic response was instantaneous, as a slew of films appeared about the secret empire. Unlike the crime films of the 1930s, which focused on individuals, these films looked at a larger enterprise: "The Enforcer," "The Big Heat," "On the Waterfront (Special Edition)," "The Big Combo," "The Miami Story," "The Phenix City Story," "The Brothers Rico," "Chicago Confidential," "New York Confidential," "The Garment Center," and dozens more. They often avoided ethnicity, steered clear of the word "mafia," and usually ended with Mr. Big taking a fall. "I'm glad what I done to you," Terry Malloy chided Johnny Friendly in "On the Waterfront" — all it took was a stand-up guy. Even so, J. Edgar Hoover persisted in characterizing the mob as a chimera, unlike the bank robbers he had dispatched in the happier days of the Depression. Even Hoover had to moonwalk, however, after the mob bosses convened their own 1957 commission in Apalachin. Local police intruded, sending made men scurrying into the nearby woods. Denial was no longer an option, though it was the Treasury Department's Bureau of Narcotics, not the FBI, which soon compiled the first bestiary of connected men, published only last year as "Mafia."

This time the cinematic response was more violent and morally baroque, animated by realism that the Production Code could not entirely repeal. Richard Widmark (in 1947's "Kiss of Death") and Eli Wallach (in 1958's "The Lineup") played psychopaths who push wheelchair-bound seniors to their deaths. In the first film, the victim is a harmless woman, and the death of the predator restores social order; in the second, the victim is a kingpin, and the death of the hit man who pushes him over the railing of a skating rink resolves nothing. Richard Wilson's "Pay or Die" (1960) tells the true story of the fearless Italian-American cop who visited Sicily in 1909 seeking information to expose the secret society. He was promptly assassinated: end of story.

The Italian film industry, which had ignored the Mafia to this point, now began to acknowledge its barbarity, if somewhat obliquely. In the late 1950s, Francesco Rosi began his career by exploring the rituals of organized crime in "La Sfida" (shot in Naples for fear of offending Sicilians) and the bumbling "I Magliari" (starring Sordi). He found a voice of his own in "Salvatore Giuliano" (1962), using documentary meticulousness to trace the rise of a mob chieftain in the postwar years as the Allies cemented a Mafia-government coalition — a theme briefly explored in "Excellent Cadavers."

That same year, Sicily's underground was further breached in two comedies set in the present: Pietro Germi's flat-out hilarious "Divorce Italian Style," in which the rule of the dons is a given and pandemic bloodlust is played out in a burlesque of marital honor; and Lattuada's "Mafioso," in which the comic elements are, at first, disarmingly unclear. If "The Godfather" is a bloody epic that leaves residual recollections of star-powered romance, nostalgia, and wit, "Mafioso" is a comedy of manners that leaves the chill of unappeased horror. It drolly meanders for half its running time, a beautifully played character study without urgent direction. The viewer is encouraged to feel superior to the naïve Nino, until Nino and viewer alike are placed in the dark — a plane's cargo hold, en route to New York to commit a crime for which neither he nor we are quite prepared.

Lattuada makes clear from the beginning that Mafia tentacles reach well into the north. Nino has lived in Milan for eight years as an efficiency expert in a factory. He now chooses to take a long-delayed vacation, bringing his wife and children to meet his family in his native Sicily. His boss gives him a package to be hand-delivered to Don Vincenzo (Ugo Attanasio), which turns out to be an American-made golden heart that will adorn the church's Madonna and also contains coded instructions for a death warrant.

Nino is a fish out of water (except in the zone afforded by his family and by vanity), never more so than when shipped to New York, oily and overdressed — though he briefly feels at home as he looks up at the astonishing skyscrapers and sees a poster for a Sophia Loren film. The favor Don Vincenzo demands of him is filmed as a dream, a few hours on the other side of the looking glass. Nino and we know virtually nothing of his target, but the deed is compromising all around. "Mafioso" is built like a snare, supported by the sumptuous photography of Armando Nannuzzi and a wonderfully mottled score by Piero Piccioni, who mixes idioms and underscores ill omens with electrical rumbling.

"Excellent Cadavers" is not for the faint of heart or the cheery of disposition. It argues that the Mafia, which, during a two-year period in the early 1980s, left 300 slaughtered bodies on the streets of Palermo, could be eradicated. It almost was, according to Mr. Turco, when two magistrates, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, combined to launch the maxi-trial that placed more than 400 Mafia suspects before a judge and, despite interference by the Italian government, ultimately won convictions. The reprisals were swift. In 1992, Falcone and Borsellino were murdered, months apart, in explosions that observers likened to nuclear blasts. Silvio Berlusconi's government then undid much of what had been accomplished, even dismantling the witness protection program. Today the mafia is said to extort tributes from 80% of Sicilian businesses, to say nothing of its role in the international heroin trade.

Much of the archival footage in "Excellent Cadavers" is astonishing, including dozens of photographs by Letizia Battaglia, who appears on camera at 70 and recalls the almost daily calls to various murder sites. Her pictures of bodies surrounded by grieving widows and curious onlookers are horrific; in one, a severed head is set upon a car seat. So much of the film is admirable that its missteps are especially regrettable. Mr. Turco's film is based on a book by Alexander Stille, who is inexplicably on camera throughout, lugging a shoulder bag, occasionally pretending to read or write. He also serves as narrator and lacks authority in the role. He doesn't even explain the title, which is mob slang for the bodies of political officials.

Yet the film tells a complicated story, involving a great many names (First Run ought to have provided a dramatis personae); it is coherent and dramatically sound. Falcone and Borsellino emerge as genuine heroes. Asked if he is afraid, Falcone, who looks disconcertingly like Alberto Sordi, says, "Living with one's fear, without being conditioned by it, that's courage. Otherwise, it's not courage but recklessness." "Excellent Cadavers" is one of the saddest films I've ever seen.

Thanks to Gary Giddins. Mr. Giddins is the author of "Natural Selection: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music, and Books."

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