Operation Greylord: Chicago’s Corrupt Courts

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In May 1977, A young man named Bobby Lowe took took the witness stand in a packed Chicago courtroom.

Lowe swallowed the lump in his throat and tried to focus on the prosecutor.

The man he was here to testify against sat at the defendant's table, staring at him.

He was one of Chicago's most feared mobsters, Harry the Hook, Alaman.

Lowe took a deep breath to steady his nerves.

Then he told the court what he'd seen one night five years ago.

Lowe was out walking his German shepherd and spotted his neighbor heading to his car.

The neighbor was a Teamster's Union steward.

Out of nowhere, a vehicle pulled up and gunshots poured out of its open window.

The union man was hit repeatedly and knocked into some nearby bushes.

Before Lowe could process what he'd seen, he heard a car door open.

Someone got out and headed straight toward him while pointing a gun.

Lowe's dog lunged forward to attack.

As Lowe tried to hold her back, he locked eyes with the gunman.

He was frozen for a second and then ran to escape.

The murderer's face was instantly seared into his memory.

As Lowe recounted his experience, he thought about everything he'd been through over the last few months.

He'd been forced to quit his job.

He'd been put in witness protection along with his wife and their four children and moved between safe houses under a 24-hour guard.

It was pure hell, but everything was building to this moment.

The chance to put a murderer behind bars.

The prosecutor asked Lowe if the man he'd seen that night was in the courtroom today.

Lowe nodded and pointed at the man who'd haunted his nightmares for so long, Harry Alaman.

The mobster sat coolly in his flashy suit and silk tie, his eyes hidden under tinted glasses.

The smirk never left his face.

Lowe finished his testimony and was escorted out of the courthouse flanked by police.

Now, all he could do was wait.

Lowe wasn't the only eyewitness to the murder.

Another neighbor had identified the gunman too, and the man who drove the car had also turned state's witness.

He gave a detailed account of the mobster's role in the murder.

A few days after testifying, Lowe and his wife were in a car with federal agents.

They were listening to the news on the radio, and the judge was about to read the final verdict.

Lowe asked the agents to turn up the volume.

When the announcement was read, Lowe was shocked.

Not guilty.

The judge said the state had not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt, and not only did he acquit the mobster, the judge accused Lowe of lying on the stand.

Lowe punched the seat in front of him, stinging his knuckles.

He put his life on the line to testify against a violent mobster, and in the end, It had all been for nothing.

To the mobster, the verdict was no surprise.

He knew the judge had been bought off.

It had taken just $10,000 to throw a murder case.

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From Balin Studios and Wondery, I'm Luke Lamana, and this is Redacted, Declassified Mysteries, where each week we shine a light on the shadowy corners of espionage, covert operations, and misinformation to reveal the dark secrets our governments try to hide.

This week's episode is called Operation Greylord, Chicago's Corrupt Courts.

If you spend enough time in the military, you'll realize that just because someone has been in for a long time, or even if he has a lot of rank, that doesn't mean he's a good person.

One of the most frustrating aspects of military service is when you find out you have a corrupt or otherwise incompetent leader, and yet you still have to call him sir.

I'm not going to name any names, but one of the ships I was deployed on had several high-ranking Navy personnel, such as the ship's commander, that were caught taking bribes from sleazy foreign contractors.

They scammed the U.S.

Navy out of millions.

All of them were arrested.

But even all of that doesn't hold a candle to how bad the Chicago judicial system was in the 1970s and 80s.

During that time, Chicago's courts were a breeding ground for corruption.

The system was rife with mob ties and bribery that let killers like Harry the Hook Alaman walk free.

Brave witnesses like Bobby Lowe spoke out in cases with predetermined outcomes.

Victims of horrific crimes, including rape, murder, and child molestation, were routinely denied justice.

Chicago's courts preferred to keep their dirty secrets hidden, but federal authorities had a plan to blow the lid off the whole corrupt system.

They launched Operation Greylord, a covert investigation to expose and dismantle crooked local institutions.

It would ultimately lead to the biggest corruption bust in U.S.

history.

At its center was Terry Haik, a young idealistic attorney.

Without him, Operation Greylord would never have been possible.

In the fall of 1979, Terry Hake sat at the prosecutor's table in a downtown Chicago courtroom.

He was an assistant prosecutor just three years out of law school, and he was about to question the victim and key witness in a rape trial.

Hake watched as the teenage girl took the stand.

Her voice was shaky as she began to recount her horrific ordeal.

The teenager had been raped by her boss at the grocery store where they both worked.

Her boss had chased her around the store, bitten her neck, brandished a gun, and threatened to kill her if she went to the police.

The courtroom fell silent, absorbing the weight and horror of her testimony.

Hake sat down and waited for the defense attorney to rise for his cross-examination.

But the attorney chose not to question the victim at all.

That was highly unusual.

But a little while later, it all made sense to Haik.

The judge dismissed the charges without any hesitation, letting the alleged rapist go free.

After the trial, Haik pulled the girl's parents aside to talk.

They were devastated, and he felt awful for making their daughter publicly relive her experience for nothing.

He did his best to console the girl's parents.

He told the couple that the judge must have killed the case because there were no witnesses.

He didn't have the nerve to tell the girl's family what he strongly suspected.

He believed the defense lawyer had paid off the judge.

As the girl's parents turned to leave, Haik heard footsteps approaching him.

He turned to see the courtroom sheriff's deputy walking toward him, her face contorted with anger.

She demanded to know how he could have lost the case.

She told him to think about what his failure did to that poor girl and her family.

Her words rang in Haik's ears as he drove home to his parents' house, where he still lived.

Hake had become a lawyer because he wanted to put bad guys behind bars.

Now he felt disgusted with the profession and utterly helpless.

He was starting to reach his breaking point.

It had been two years since a judge found Harry the Hook Alaman not guilty of murder.

At the time, Hake was shocked, but he didn't immediately conclude the system was corrupt.

He later noticed it was part of an alarming pattern.

Some judges seemed to be playing by an entirely different rulebook when it came to the law.

The latest rape case proved it once again, and for Hake, it was the last straw.

Many judges were just as bad as the criminals in their courtrooms.

Some were even worse.

Someone had to do something about this rampant corruption.

Hake decided it might as well be him.

Shortly following the court system's most recent failure in the rape case, Haik filed a complaint about the judge with the state's attorney and the special prosecution's unit.

But his fight for justice would have some unexpected turns.

A few months later, Terry Haik walked into a Chicago FBI office.

He'd gotten a call to go there in the middle of the workday.

Hake wasn't sure what to expect, but he figured it had to be connected to his complaint.

He made his way past the entrance where photographs of former special agents hung on the wall.

A receptionist ushered him into a room with a long oval table where three Justice Department officials were waiting.

The man in charge was an assistant U.S.

attorney with dark brown hair and a reddish mustache.

His name was Dan Reedy.

Reedy asked Hake point-blank if he'd ever taken a bribe.

Hake shook his head and said no.

Reedy leaned over and pressed Hake.

He demanded to know what Hake would do if he was offered money to throw a case.

Hake said he would report it to his division.

Reedy kept pushing.

He asked if Hake knew anyone who took bribes.

Hake said no, but he didn't need a personal connection to know what was going on.

He said it was no secret that people were taking bribes, but he didn't know who exactly.

He and other attorneys often speculated.

After a long pause, Reedy stared straight at Hake and finally told him why the FBI had called him in.

They wanted him to pose as a corrupt prosecutor and take bribes to drop cases, and they wanted him to wear a wire so that they could listen in.

Hake's heart was racing.

He'd never expected a request like this.

Reedy told him the government had long suspected something was rotten in the Cook County courts.

He said he had an entire folder filled with the names of judges, lawyers, and police officers who may be linked to corruption at the highest levels of the system.

But to root out the bad actors, they needed someone honest on the inside.

Hake had been the only lawyer to make an official complaint about the corruption.

Haik shifted nervously in his chair.

He worried about what would happen to him if he took the job.

He remembered the advice he had gotten one day outside the special prosecution's office.

Don't ever rat on your colleagues.

Besides, any corrupt lawyers surely had mob ties.

What if the mafia found out and showed up at his house?

Hake also knew he wouldn't be the only one in danger.

He still lived with his parents, and he had recently started dating someone that he was getting serious about.

They could be in danger too.

Reedy promised Hake that the FBI would protect him and they would keep the investigation tightly under wraps until it was time for him to testify.

They were calling it Operation Greylord after a racehorse one of the FBI agents had gambled on and won.

But Reedy did have a warning.

If Haik agreed to go undercover, it would probably be the end of his career as a lawyer in Cook County.

The corruption went so deep that no matter who they put away, there would still be people who would see him as a rat.

Hake understood the risks of taking on this assignment, but at the same time, a jolt of adrenaline ran through him.

He'd always dreamed of working for the FBI.

He'd even applied for a position there while he was in law school.

His mind was made up.

He wanted to make a difference.

But there was one person he needed to talk to first.

That night, after work, Haik drove back to his parents' house in the suburbs.

Reedy had agreed that since Haik was still living there, he could tell them about going undercover.

Haik didn't want to reveal anything to his father since he could never keep a secret, but he knew his mother could, so he told her what he was going to do.

Her face fell.

She was scared.

Haik tried to reassure her.

He'd said he had dreamed of this moment ever since he was a kid, watching shows about the FBI on TV.

Haik could see his mother understood, and reluctantly, she gave him her blessing.

At his next meeting with the FBI, Hake gave Reedy his answer.

He was in.

Just a few weeks later, Haik was seated in a booth at a restaurant near the courthouse frequented by lawyers.

He was having lunch with a man he'd never thought he'd be sitting in front of, Jim Costello.

Costello had a reputation as a crooked defense lawyer.

He'd earned the nickname Big Bird due to his height and unruly hair.

Hake thought of him as a hallway hustler, always ready to prey on defendants from low-income backgrounds.

Costello would promise he could make their cases go away and told them he had the judge's ear.

The judge was Wayne Olson, who was rumored to be the most corrupt man in all of Cook County and maybe even the whole country.

Hake really wanted to bring Olson down, but to get to him, he needed to go through Costello.

The two lawyers had gone to the same university, but they made an odd pair.

Costello was from the south side, a rough part of town, and he'd worked as a cop for years before becoming an attorney.

That's where he'd learned how the justice system really worked.

Haik was soft-spoken and had grown up comfortably middle-class.

Many of his colleagues joked that he looked like a choirboy with his rosy cheeks.

The FBI had even suggested he grow a beard to look older and tougher.

Haik had taken their advice and sprouted a scraggly mustache, but he had just shaved it off.

He figured he'd be a more confident mole if he felt comfortable in his own skin.

As they waited for their food to arrive, Costello nodded toward some of the other prosecutors sitting in the restaurant.

He called them dorks and said, they're making, what, 25, 30,000 a year and they think they're tough shit.

Costello took a swig of beer and told Haik he knew how to get things done, and it wasn't by following the rules.

He said there were certain ways to make things easier for everybody.

Haik was surprised at how openly Costello was talking about corruption.

Even without Haik admitting to any illegal activity of his own, Costello had alluded to his connections with fixers who collected bribes.

He seemed to be inviting Haik into his shady world.

It worked.

Later that summer, Costello stopped by Hake's office and handed him two $50 bills.

He said it was for all the favors Hake had done for him.

Hake hadn't done him any favors, so it was clear Costello was trying to buy his help in the future.

Hake reminded himself this was the whole point of the operation.

He put the bills in his pocket.

He was officially a crooked prosecutor for Chicago.

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A few days later, Hake used surgical tape to strap a recording device underneath his left arm.

He wore a t-shirt under his dress shirt, hoping it would hide the awkward bulge.

By the time he got to the courthouse, he was sweating and hoped it wouldn't drench the recorder.

Hake tried to act casual as he approached Costello in the hall.

He asked him to have lunch again, this time in the courthouse cafeteria.

They loaded their trays with cheeseburgers and fries.

After they sat down, Hake thanked Costello for the $100 he had given him.

He said he had used it to take his girlfriend Kathy out over the weekend.

Then he fished for information.

He was shocked to hear Costello admit he paid off Judge Olson nearly every day.

Hake prayed his tape recorder was working.

He tried to memorize everything Costello was saying in case it wasn't.

The next day, Hake handed the tape over to his FBI contact, who told him he'd threaded the tape incorrectly in the recorder.

But somehow, Costello's incriminating words had come through, loud and clear.

In another conversation, Costello gave Hake a full rundown of how the system of fixers and payoffs worked.

It was as if he were training a new employee.

Costello explained he had a deal with Judge Olson.

The judge would send him defendants and Costello would give him 50% of his legal fees in return.

Every Friday, he dropped $500 or $1,000 into Olson's drawer.

This was crucial information Hake could use to bring down the corrupt system.

But, he also wondered what some of his honest lawyer friends might think, watching him sit with Costello at lunch day after day.

While the system was full of corruption, there were still upstanding attorneys committed to doing their jobs.

His girlfriend Kathy was on her way to becoming one of them.

She was in law school and her father had been a judge with an honorable record.

And though Hake had been sworn to secrecy, he told her about his undercover work.

Luckily, Kathy was proud of what he was doing and promised not to tell anyone.

All the other lawyers were left to guess what was going on.

By hanging out with Jim Costello, Hake was making it known that he was open to taking bribes.

As dirty as it felt, he knew this relationship would open up doors, even if he lost friends in the process.

In October 1980, about five months after starting his undercover assignment, Hake walked up to a swanky apartment building on Chicago's near North Side.

He was there to meet an old friend named Mark Chiavelli, who'd once worked alongside him as a prosecutor.

That night, boxer Sugar Ray Leonard was facing off against Roberto Duran.

Hake wasn't much of a boxing fan, but this was a big fight, so when Chiavelli suggested that they watch the broadcast in a local movie theater, Hake had agreed to go, and Chiavelli picked him up in his BMW.

Chiavelli had left the state's attorney's office to become a defense lawyer, and it was clear from his luxury car, fancy apartment, and tailored suits that business was booming.

The month before, he'd approached Haik, suggesting he also ditch his career as a prosecutor and join his private practice.

Chiavelli even admitted to bribing judges, telling him that was just how things worked.

Haik had been shocked to learn that even his old friend was corrupt.

It seemed like it was just a matter of time before he found out everyone he knew was taking bribes.

But that evening, Haik figured he and Chiavelli weren't going to talk business, just unwind.

He could use a night off.

The stress of working undercover was getting to him.

He'd spent the last few months enduring boozy lunches and late-night binges with Big Bird Costello and Judge Olson himself, pumping them for information.

Haik leaned back into the BMW's smooth leather seat.

But as soon as they got on the road, Chiavelli dropped some disturbing news.

He and a guy named Bob Silverman, another one of the most corrupt attorneys in Cook County, had fixed a narcotics case in a suburban courthouse.

Hake tried to hide his disappointment.

He forced a smile as Chiavelli described the way he and Silverman had just bribed several judges.

Silverman had deep ties with the mob and was so confident about his fixes that he'd stroll into court for trial without carrying a single file or briefcase.

He was known as Silvery Bob.

He was a big fish, and Hake wanted to reel him in.

Chiavelli then described another business opportunity.

There was a case coming to Hake's narcotics courtroom, which Judge Olson would hear.

Chiavelli asked him to drop the charges in exchange for a bribe.

Hake played along, knowing he could use the offer to his advantage.

He nodded and told Ciavelli he'd dropped the charges, but it wouldn't be necessary to pay.

He'd do it as a favor.

Now he could go after not just the judge, but Silvery Bob too.

The day before Thanksgiving, 1980, Hake was lurking anxiously in the hallway of the Cook County Courthouse.

Most of the courts had closed early and everyone was trying to wrap up their work before the holiday.

But that afternoon, Hake wasn't thinking about turkey and stuffing just yet.

He was trying to look inconspicuous as he kept his eyes glued on the door of Judge Olson's chambers.

Two FBI agents, disguised as repairmen, were waiting nearby to bug the office.

They had walked confidently into the building and unlocked the door to the switchboard room where operators managed the court's phone calls.

Once Haik confirmed the chambers were empty, they would head in, pretending they were there for a repair.

Olson was on vacation, but he had a fill-in judge that must have been taking his job seriously.

It felt like he would never leave.

Finally, Hake heard the door open and then footsteps striking the marble floor.

He walked quickly to a phone nearby and confirmed the office was empty.

A few weeks earlier, Haik had flown to Washington, D.C.

to meet the director of the FBI and lay out all the evidence he'd gathered.

By that point, Olson had admitted to Hake that he had accepted thousands of dollars in bribes and with that admission, the FBI had given him the green light to install the bug.

It was the first time an American judge's chambers would ever be put under this kind of surveillance.

The timing was perfect.

When Olson came back to the office on Monday, lawyers would be clamoring to fix cases that they hadn't been able to under the fill-in judges.

And now they'd be caught doing it on tape.

While the FBI agents went into Olson's office to install the bug, Hake left and drove to a nearby supermarket.

He met a female agent who accompanied him back to the courthouse in an unmarked car, ready to pose as his girlfriend.

If the two FBI agents inside Olson's office ran into trouble, Hake and his fake girlfriend would run back into the building, claiming he'd forgotten his briefcase.

The ruse would hopefully cause enough of a distraction so the agents could slip away.

As they waited for updates on a walkie-talkie, Hake's mind raced through the worst-case scenario.

What if someone came back unexpectedly?

A janitor, or worse, one of Olson's fixers.

If anyone showed up in the chambers, it could blow the entire operation.

But as luck would have it, the agents placed the bug without a hitch.

By early December in 1980, the FBI had been listening in on Judge Olson's chambers for more than a week.

So far, the bug had recorded enough evidence to prosecute Jim Costello, the Fixer attorney.

But they still hadn't gotten Judge Olson clearly admitting he was in on the scam.

The judge had told Hake about plenty of his illegal dealings over drinks at their usual bar, but it had always been too noisy to bug.

The FBI needed Olson to confirm on tape that he took bribes.

That would be enough to charge him with federal crimes under the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, otherwise known as RICO.

Eventually, they got him, when the agents in the FBI listening room picked up a heated argument between Judge Olson and Costello.

Olson wanted to know why there wasn't more cash in his drawer.

He'd written down he should have $2,300,

but when Costello counted, he told the judge that there was only 800.

The two men went back and forth about the number, and then, loud and clear, Olson told Costello that yesterday they'd fixed eight or nine cases, so where was the rest of the money?

The bug caught every moment of the fight.

Haik was out in the hallway while it was happening, unaware of what was going on inside.

He saw Costello storm out, looking like he was ready to punch someone.

This disagreement over a few hundred dollars would not only reveal their level of greed, it would cement the federal conspiracy case against Olson.

Just a few days later, Haik got another big breakthrough.

Bob Silverman, the mob-connected fixer his friend had been working with, passed him a bribe.

Haik had been wearing a wire and caught Silverman discussing the payoff on tape.

But Haik's elation was short-lived.

He soon got some troubling news from his FBI contact.

The bug in Olson's office had picked up someone telling the judge that Haik had once applied for a job at the FBI.

Hake felt his stomach drop.

He understood immediately what it meant.

Maybe his cover had finally been blown.

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Two weeks later, in the middle of January 1981, an assistant prosecutor pulled Hake aside in the back of the narcotics court.

He spoke quietly, telling Hake there was something he needed to know.

Hake braced himself for the bad news that Olson had figured out his connection to the FBI.

But instead, the prosecutor had a very different kind of warning.

He told Hake that court insiders were calling him Terry Take behind his back.

He told Hake to watch out the next time he takes a bribe.

Haik cursed the prosecutor out and denied that he was doing anything illegal.

But on the inside, he was actually pleased.

His cover as a corrupt fixer seemed to be safe.

It also reminded him that there were still some honest lawyers in the Chicago courts.

Shortly after that, on January 20th, 1981, the FBI removed the bug from Judge Olson's chambers.

By that point, they had captured more than 2,000 conversations between the judge and his many crooked partners.

And if Judge Olson was onto Hake's FBI aspirations, he never let on.

For Hake, the mission was a massive success.

That night, he went out for a celebratory meal.

He stopped at a busy restaurant in Little Italy, asked for a table for one, and ordered an Italian beef sandwich.

But as he took the first bite, he looked across the room at couples, families, and friends eating together and realized just how isolated he had become.

Working undercover meant living a double life.

He felt lucky he didn't have to lie to his girlfriend Kathy, but instead of spending time with her, he was knocking back beers with lowlifes like Jim Costello.

And he didn't even like beer because he was allergic to it.

But Hake knew the work wasn't over.

The worst was yet to come.

Even with all the bribes and taped conversations, the FBI and Operation Greylord still needed more evidence to stop the corruption.

They would start staging cases themselves, and they would need Haik to go undercover in a new role, this time as a crooked defense lawyer.

A few weeks after the bug in Judge Olson's office was removed, Hake was sitting at a restaurant near the courthouse, surrounded by Jim Costello and a few other corrupt fixers.

Costello ordered another round of beers, and the waitress arrived with plates of fried food to soak up the booze.

As usual, Costello's drunken voice seemed to fill up the whole dining room.

He told Hake they would miss him and raised his glass for a toast.

Hake had told everyone at the courthouse he was leaving the prosecutor's office and going into private practice as a defense lawyer.

So Costello had surprised him with this going-away party.

For Haik, it was another reminder of how successfully he'd played the part of a corrupt prosecutor.

These guys actually liked him and trusted him.

At the end of the night, Costello pressed a wad of cash into Hake's hand as a going-away present.

He told him to buy himself a new car.

Up until now, Hake had been accepting bribes.

Now in his new role, he would be handing them out.

It would be the next phase of Operation Greylord.

While the FBI had been gathering evidence of bribes, Their investigation was also allowing criminals to walk free in cases that they knew were fixed.

but they couldn't do anything to stop them.

The FBI now wanted to create their own crimes.

They would manufacture cases from scratch and control every aspect from the criminal activity to the courtroom bribes.

Agents flew into Chicago from around the country to pose as perpetrators and victims.

It was awkward at first.

The agents had been hired due to their respect for the law.

and their unwillingness to break it.

And here they were being asked to steal cars and guns and carry drugs.

But Hake embraced the assignment.

After months of anxiety, he found himself re-energized by his high-stakes role.

In one made-up case, an undercover FBI agent was supposed to get arrested for drunk driving.

As he careened through downtown Chicago, an FBI colleague called the cops to report him, but no squad car showed up.

So the agent went so far as to drive the wrong way down one-way streets until the police finally pulled him over.

In another staged incident, Haik played the role of a defense lawyer for a shoplifting suspect.

He approached the judge, telling him the evidence against his client was weak.

The judge nodded in agreement, suggesting that Hake's client might have simply forgotten to pay for the items he had purchased.

The judge later dismissed the case, but he didn't mention any kind of bribe payment from Haik.

So Hake followed the judge to his chambers and asked if there was anything he could do to show his appreciation.

The judge's response was cryptic.

Take $100, buy stamps and postcards, and write to all your friends supporting my re-election campaign.

Hake was baffled, but then his fixer friend Costello decoded the message for him.

He's telling you the first one's free, but the next one will cost you $100.

A few years later, on August 5th, 1983, Haik got a call from one of his handlers at the FBI.

The voice on the other end of the line was low and urgent.

He asked Hake if he'd seen the 5 o'clock news.

Haik had not.

An investigative reporter had just gone on TV to break the story of a massive undercover operation aimed at rooting out corruption in the Chicago courts.

Hake cursed under his breath.

Who could have leaked the details of Operation Greylord to the press?

And what the hell was this reporter doing?

Now that the investigation was public, anyone who was dirty would immediately clean up their act.

In the days and weeks that followed, Hake was proven correct.

One older judge, accused of accepting bribes, abruptly announced his retirement.

Hake worried about what this meant for his personal life, too.

He and Kathy had recently gotten married and bought a house in the suburbs.

Now he wondered if they would have to move to an entirely new state for protection.

But while the existence of Operation Greylord was no longer a secret, the reporter had no idea that Haik was the mole.

As a result, Haik's own cover still hadn't been blown.

So he told his handler that he wasn't ready to quit, and the FBI agreed to let him keep wearing a wire to record every dirty deal he could.

His status as a mole wouldn't last much longer, though.

Four months later, Haik was waiting for a flight to Washington, D.C.

at O'Hare International Airport.

He was carrying a briefcase full of incriminating tapes.

And as he passed a newsstand, he spotted a headline about a former assistant state's attorney who had been working as a government mole.

He grabbed the paper and read the article.

Hake's name wasn't in the story, but he knew it was all about him.

And he knew Costello and all the other fixers would recognize it was him, too.

Then, within days, someone did leak his name to the press.

When Haik got back to Chicago, the FBI brought him and Kathy to a hotel to hide out.

After three and a half long years, his time as an undercover agent had finally come to an end.

In March 1984, Haik took the stand to testify in a federal corruption case for the first time.

He looked out at the courtroom from behind the witness stand, trying to spot Kathy's face in the massive massive crowd.

He felt sweat seeping under his armpits.

He wasn't used to being on this side of the courtroom.

The trial was for a traffic court bagman named Harold Kahn.

It seemed like a minor case, but it was pivotal for Operation Greylord.

It would serve as a test of the approach the FBI used to gather evidence and whether they had followed proper legal procedures.

An acquittal could potentially unravel all the FBI's cases against corrupt judges and fixers and other bagmen.

Hake had spent the last several weeks reviewing tapes of Khan and going over the case with prosecutors, but he still didn't feel ready.

The cross-examination from Khan's defense attorney was tough.

He accused Haik of violating the lawyer's code of ethics by lying, creating phony cases, and allowing his undercover FBI colleagues to testify falsely in court.

Haik replied that he didn't think he was lying.

He argued that a lie was something you said for personal benefit.

Hake was acting on behalf of the people of Cook County, not himself.

After the barrage of questions, Haik was finally able to step down from the stand, exhausted.

All he could do now was pray the jury would agree with him.

A few days later, the jury found Khan guilty of racketeering and extortion.

He was sentenced to six years in prison.

Hake breathed a sigh of relief.

It seemed his more than three years of undercover work with Operation Greylord was actually paying paying off.

Over the next decade, Haik testified 22 times as a witness, but no matter how often he appeared, he never shook off his courtroom nerves.

The defense attorneys called Hake a rat for stabbing his friends in the back.

Friends like his old buddy Mark Chiavelli, the corrupt prosecutor turned defense lawyer.

It also included the so-called friends he'd made undercover, like Jim Costello, the lawyer who taught him how to be a fixer.

Chiavelli would ultimately ultimately strike a deal with the FBI.

He would testify in exchange for avoiding criminal prosecution.

One thing Chiavelli admitted eased any pangs of guilt Hake might have felt about betraying his friend.

According to Chiavelli, Bob Silverman, the corrupt attorney with mob ties, had threatened to kill Hake because he thought he worked for the FBI.

Ciavelli hadn't even bothered to warn him.

Not wanting to deal with the shame of standing trial, Silvery Bob would plead guilty for bribery, mail fraud, and racketeering.

He was sentenced to seven and a half years in federal prison.

Jim Costello was sentenced to six years.

In all, more than 100 people were charged as a result of Operation Greylord, including 20 judges, 57 lawyers, nine police officers, and 17 court staff.

These defendants are charged with a variety of federal crimes, including racketeering, extortion, mail fraud, and conspiracy, all of them in connection with the alleged corrupt disposition of cases pending in the Circuit Court of Cook County.

Three judges died before they were ever indicted, including two by suicide.

Judge Olson received 12 years in prison.

He died at the age of 63 while still behind bars.

In 1986, Operation Greylord ended.

A corrupt attorney named Robert Cooley came forward to the FBI about his involvement in fixing cases and agreed to wear a wire.

One of the first things he admitted was that he had paid a judge $10,000 to find Harry the Hook Aloman not guilty of murder back in the late 1970s.

In 1997, Bobby Lowe, the eyewitness who had seen the murder while walking his dog, returned to the stand to testify along with Cooley.

That year, Aloman was finally convicted.

Terry Hake's undercover work paved the way for a distinguished career with the FBI.

He became a full agent within the Department of Justice.

Despite the FBI's warning that he would never work as a lawyer in Cook County again, he eventually did make it back to the Chicago courts.

After retiring from the FBI, he went to work for the Cook County Sheriff's Office and eventually the state's attorney's office, the same place he had started his legal career.

Operation Greylord exposed how corrupt Chicago's judicial system had become, where justice was offered to the highest bidder.

Terry Hake was a young lawyer thrust into this murky underworld.

He discovered that sometimes the most dangerous conspiracies unfold not in far-off lands, but in local courtrooms and city halls, in the very institutions meant to serve and protect us.

Follow Redacted Declassified Mysteries, hosted by me, Luke Lamana, on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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From Balin Studios and Wondery, this is Redacted: Declassified Mysteries, hosted by me, Luke Lamana.

A quick note about our stories.

We do a lot of research, but some details and scenes are dramatized.

We use many different sources for our show, but we especially recommend the book Operation Greylord: The True Story of an Untrained Undercover Agent and America's Biggest Corruption Bust by Terrence Haik, and news articles on Operation Greylord from the Chicago Tribune.

This episode was written by Susie Armitage, sound design by Andre Plus.

Our producers are Christopher B.

Dunn and John Reed.

Our associate producer is Ines Renike.

Fact-checking by Sheila Patterson.

For Balin Studios, our head of production is Zach Levitt.

Script editing by Scott Allen.

Our coordinating producer is Samantha Collins.

Production support by Avery Siegel.

Produced by me, Luke Lamana.

Executive producers are Mr.

Bollin and Nick Witters.

For Wondery, our senior producers are Laura Donna Palavota, Dave Schilling, and Rachel Engelman.

Senior managing producer is Nick Ryan.

Managing producer is Olivia Fonte.

Executive producers are Aaron O'Flaherty and Marshall Louie.

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