FBI informant: Blago was a bookmaker

As the connected fellas in Chicago say, "Lemme tell you sometin'. I heard dis story before..."

And this is what I heard a few years ago... and it is exactly how ABC 7 Chicago is reporting this today.

All attornys specialize. Some work on tax issues, others personal injury cases, some lawyers prefer wills and probate.

Robert Cooley had a specialty too. Criminal defense work, with a sideline in fixing cases.

Cooley was a criminal defense lawyer in Chicago in the late 1980's who became one of the most potent witnesses against Chicago corruption, testifying for federal prosecutors in cases that resulted in dozens of convictions.

Cooley says that before Rod Blagojevich got into politics he was a bookmaker on the North Side who regularly paid the Chicago mob to operate.

"When I was working with government wearing wire, I reported, I observed Rod, the present governor, who was running a gambling operation out in the western suburbs. He was paying street tax to the mob out there," said Robert Cooley, federal informant.

On a web-based interview show last week, Cooley said he reported to federal authorities nearly two decades ago that Rod Blagojevich had been operating an illegal sports gambling business.

Cooley's most infamous fix was the murder trial of mob-hitman Harry Aleman. Cooley bribed the judge, Frank Wilson, who presided over the bench trial of Aleman. Despite two eyewitnesses to the crime, the Wilson found Aleman innocent. The day after federal authorities confronted Wilson about the Aleman fix, Wilson committed suicide.

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