"From the St. Louis Post Dispatch"

Court papers portray Ryan as endorsing, hiding wrongdoing
By Nicole Ziegler Dizon and Christopher Wills Associated Press
12/22/2002 10:45 PM

CHICAGO - The timing could not have been worse for Secretary of State George Ryan. Federal agents were hauling box after box of documents out of a drivers license facility in suburban Melrose Park.

Two office supervisors had been arrested for trading truck drivers licenses for cash, and agents were questioning other Ryan employees about fund raising for their boss.

Locked in a tight race for governor that day in 1998, Ryan tried to put a positive spin on the investigation.

"This is really a good day for honest government," he said. "A message has been sent to public employees who may be tempted to betray the public trust."

But as Ryan faced reporters, top campaign aides began the first of what would be many frantic days of tossing and shredding campaign documents that could point to the illegal use of state resources for political purposes, prosecutors allege.

And, they claim, Ryan knew about it.

In an extraordinary court document filed last week in the "Operation Safe Road" corruption investigation, the secretary of state's office under Ryan was portrayed as an arm of his campaign organization. Employees were pressured to make campaign donations and ordered to do political work on state time, the document said. Political pals got contracts aimed at disguising the misuse of state resources, it said.

Ryan has not been charged with a crime, but the 76-page court document draws a portrait of a man who endorsed the misuse of his employees, knew evidence was being destroyed and participated in a charade to conceal freebies he accepted from a state contractor.

Prosecutors made it clear that they were not talking about overly enthusiastic Ryan supporters accidentally crossing the fuzzy line between government and politics.

In lavish detail, they set forth what they claim to be example after example of Ryan aides collecting state paychecks while doing political work. Those who complained were ignored, prosecutors said.

What follows is a synopsis of the document prosecutors compiled to describe the scope of their evidence against Scott Fawell, Ryan's former chief of staff, and Citizens for Ryan, his campaign committee. Their trial is scheduled for Jan. 8.

Shredding allegations

Five days after the Melrose Park raid, Fawell and Ryan huddled in a private office of the secretary of state in the James R. Thompson Center in downtown Chicago.

When aide William Mack entered, Fawell told him to spread the word around the fifth-floor offices to destroy campaign-related documents, prosecutors said.

Then, Fawell turned to Ryan and said something like: "Hey, George, I told Bill to go around and tell people to get stuff out of their offices," according to the document. Ryan abruptly left, it says.

Mack oversaw a nighttime shredding mission that produced eight to 12 bags of litter. He later told Ryan the offices had been cleaned out, and Ryan gave no response, the document says.

Mack did not return a telephone message from The Associated Press for comment.

It wasn't the first time that Ryan was present when his aides discussed using state employees for campaign purposes, according to prosecutors.

Two months before the November 1992 election, Ryan held a meeting in his Chicago office to find out about the help a secretary of state worker had been giving to the legislative campaign of his niece's husband, the document says.

Someone at the meeting suggested it would be smart to take the employee off the state payroll and have the campaign pay him, prosecutors said. Fawell said no, and the worker remained on the state payroll through the election, they said.

In the spring of 1994, Ryan got involved when internal investigators began asking questions about fund-raising quotas for secretary of state workers, the document says.

Russell Sonneveld and another agent for the inspector general's office suspected that the manager of a Naperville drivers license facility had stolen $2,600 to help reach a $5,000 quota for sales of campaign fund-raising tickets.

Sonneveld was directed to call Ryan at a private phone number and tell him about the investigation. Two days later, the agents were taken off the case, the prosecutors said.

Campaign charges

In the spring of 1995, Ryan decided to endorse Phil Gramm's candidacy for U.S. president and coordinate his campaign in Illinois. Ryan suggested charging Gramm's campaign a consulting fee "so that some people can make some money," prosecutors said.

Ryan's aides drafted a Republican businessman for the plan, the document says. His company was hired, on paper, as the consultant and would collect money from Gramm's campaign but then pass it along to Fawell, deputy campaign manager Rich Juliano and certain members of Ryan's family, the prosecutors said.

Gramm's campaign did not know about the arrangement, the document says.

The next year, Ryan agreed with then-House Speaker Lee Daniels to put the Ryan campaign's might behind some House Republican races, prosecutors allege.

Again, a private firm was drafted to pay campaign workers - avoiding questions about why full-time government employees were also getting paid by a campaign, the document says.

The following year, Ryan aides were preparing for his run for governor.

Fawell contacted Juliano late in the summer of 1997 to join the campaign, arranging for him to get a government contract worth $22,500, prosecutors said. One of Juliano's duties was to make a list of secretary of state employees who eventually would leave the state payroll and be paid by the campaign, the document claims.

Although most did eventually work almost full-time on the campaign, they never stopped collecting their paychecks from the state, prosecutors said.

Many employees got hefty government raises as reward for their campaign work over the years, prosecutors said.

"What do I care, it's not my checkbook," Fawell reportedly told a subordinate who objected to a particularly high pay raise for a loyal campaigner.

Fawell directed employees to hide their campaign roles by falsifying timesheets or getting someone to log into their government computers, and he sent a memo to Assistant Secretary of State Glen Bower telling him the workers had been instructed to make their state offices look "lived in," prosecutors said.

Fawell brushed off growing complaints about the arrangement, saying the campaign had to save money for advertising near the election, they said.

Bower, who is currently head of the state Revenue Department, repeatedly questioned the campaign work being done by state employees, prosecutors said. Campaign aide Nat Shapo, now the Insurance Department director, worked on the campaign while being paid by the state but ultimately insisted on being paid by Citizens for Ryan, the document says.

Robert Newtson, then head of Ryan's Securities Department and now the governor's chief of staff, questioned the diversion of employees at one point, the document says. But a few months later, he ordered his secretary to get rid of campaign documents his staff had created on state time and stored in their offices, prosecutors alleged.

Newtson, Shapo and Bower declined to comment.

Claims of theft

At the same time, Ryan's campaign was raising millions of dollars, it was stealing typewriters and cartons of copy paper from the secretary of state's office, prosecutors claimed. Parking spaces rented with government money were given to campaign workers, they said.

In 1998, when Fawell left the secretary of state's office and officially joined the Ryan campaign, he used a screwdriver to pry the state identification tags off his office television and refrigerator and had them sent to the campaign headquarters, prosecutors alleged.

"One way or another, I'm not coming back to the office," he told a co-worker, according to the document.

Contract for friend

The secretary of state's office also used government programs as campaign tools, prosecutors alleged.

In 1994, after the Legislature approved spending millions of dollars to promote organ donation, Fawell arranged for his friend and former lawmaker, Roger Stanley, to get a $229,000 contract for mailing out brochures. In return, Stanley, who is cooperating with investigators, agreed to come up with $25,000 for the Ryan campaign, prosecutors said.

The mailings were sent shortly before Ryan's 1994 re-election campaign to voters who could swing the election.

Stanley, who is accused of giving Fawell free vacations and arranging prostitutes for him, did mailings for the organ-donor program through 1997. He also was given a job with the secretary of state's office, staying just long enough to boost his pension benefits.

Ryan's job of issuing license plates also was turned to political purposes - bringing in campaign donations, prosecutors alleged. For $1,000 donations to Ryan's campaign, supporters could obtain specially numbered plates, the document says.

State leases also went to political allies, including a man who supported a third party that might drain votes away from Democrats.

"My conscience is clear"

Fawell has pleaded not guilty and his attorney did not return telephone calls for comment.

Ryan has refused to comment on the specifics of the allegations, releasing a statement Wednesday that said in part: "As everyone knows, there are two sides to every story, two sides to allegations leveled by individuals claiming to recollect conversations and actions from several years ago.

"I will only repeat what I have said many times before: My conscience is clear and, in every public office I have held, I have respected the public trust," he concluded.