Blagojevich name game keeps Washington guessing

When details of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s (D) Senate
scam went public, some jumped past his f-bombs to decode the alphabet soup of
aliases that investigators assigned to the scandal’s vast cast of characters.

But what’s even trickier than ferreting out the identity of
“Senate Candidate 5” is determining what the feds are hinting at when they parcel
out a few telltale details amid the cryptic nomenclature.

{mosads}Some former federal prosecutors say the coded references can
be a way to press the nearly-named to cooperate with the investigation.

“There is an informal code. It’s very carefully tailored,” said
Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), a former federal prosecutor. “Sometimes there are
little subtle hints to be sent.

“You’re trying to quietly reach out to lawyers for potential
cooperating witnesses, who read these things very carefully,” Davis explained.

Letting the public in on the investigation can also pry
loose information that investigators have not found, said Roscoe Howard, a
former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

“It’s kind of like a wildfire. It can chase people out of
the woods,” Howard said. “People come dropping on your doorstep saying, ‘I know
something about this.’ That’s why you have press conferences.”

It also alerts people that investigators know something, but
leave them guessing about how much.

“It’s not whether I’m candidate five or six,” said
Washington lawyer Stan Brand. “It’s that I’m mentioned. Then I have to wonder,
‘Am I on tape?’ You’d better start searching your memory and get yourself a
good lawyer.”

For the public and press, it’s a “do-you-know” game that
plays out with each high-profile indictment. In the Jack Abramoff lobbying
investigation, “Representative 1” became Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), who became
prisoner No. 28882-016.

The trial of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) had “Juror 4,” who
lied about a death in the family to get to a horse race. Eliot Spitzer was
Client 9, and the petite brunette he hired for the night was known only to us
as “Kristen” until the tabloids outed her as Ashley Dupre. But in Rep. Randy
“Duke” Cunningham’s (R-Calif.) bribe-to-play case, we found out Brent Wilkes
was “Co-conspirator 1,” but we never found out the name of “Prostitute A.”

“That’s the game,” said Brand, a former federal prosecutor
who’s now one of the best-known white-collar defense attorneys in Washington.
“It’s like ‘Who’s on the D.C. Madam’s list?’ It’ll come out. It always does. Everybody
likes to play the game.”

Brand, however, downplays the idea that U.S. Attorney
Patrick Fitzgerald and the FBI are dropping hints. They’re just including
enough facts to make their case.         

“The prosecutor is not driven by hints,” Brand said. “He’s
putting enough facts in evidence to make his case.”

Still, there is big variation in the level of detail
attached to the players. It’s not clear why the feds made some people
identifiable, while thoroughly cloaking others. And at least for now, they’re
not explaining.

Barack Obama, for example, is cited simply as “the
President-elect,” though that can describe only one person; same with “Tribune
Owner” Sam Zell. Meanwhile famous rich guy Warren Buffett is named outright,
albeit in a quote.

Descriptions of “Senate Candidate One” had just about every
detail except Valerie Jarrett’s Social Security number. “Senate Candidate 3”
comes up only in a brief quote from Blagojevich with no details, and is not
named. “Senate Candidate 4” is a deputy governor of Illinois, which narrows it
down to three people: Dean Martinez, Bob Greenlee and Louanner Peters.

And the description of “Senate Candidate 5” listed just
enough facts to potentially end a political career, or at least Rep. Jesse
Jackson Jr.’s (D-Ill.) bid for Obama’s Senate seat.

But it is the players whose descriptions hint at
negotiations with the Obama transition that are drawing the most attention in
the wake of Jackson’s outing on Thursday. In addition to figuring out who they
are, observers are seeking to figure out how big a part they played in
Blagojevich’s Senate seat scam.

Incoming Obama chief of staff and outgoing congressman Rahm
Emanuel (D-Ill.) is being pressed hard on whether he’s “President-elect Advisor,”
though that person is not alleged to have done anything wrong. But Blagojevich
clearly indicates he expects to be negotiating with him or her.

And the desires of one “Advisor B” for a “three-way deal”
that would leave out Obama’s “fingerprints” has hinted to some that “the
President-elect” might not have been so removed from the negotiations.

“Anyone who wants to understand the Blagojevich scandal will
have to learn more about Advisor B,” wrote conservative commentator Byron York
of the National Review.

There’s also an unnamed “SEIU [Service Employees
International Union] Official” even more bluntly portrayed as an intermediary
between Blagojevich and the Obama camp.

Spokesmen for Fitzgerald and the FBI in Chicago made it
clear last week in interviews that they were not interested in explaining why
some people were more identifiable than others.

Officially, the cryptic aliases in the 76-page affidavit by
Special Agent Daniel Cain are meant to distinguish between the players in the
narrative while protecting the reputation of those not charged, whether or not
they’re completely innocent.

As the U.S. Attorneys’ Manual states , “In the absence of some significant justification, it
is not appropriate to identify (either by name or unnecessarily-specific
description) a third-party wrongdoer unless that party has been officially
charged with the misconduct at issue.”

Chicago FBI spokesman Ross Rice said the Bureau is careful
not to explicitly identify people who are not being charged, but some
information has to be laid out.

“We have to present that complaint to a judge,” Rice said. “You
can’t water it down to the point where he can’t make a decision.”