Smile! You're on Blago Camera

With a hocus pocus — you’re in focus, it’s your lucky day …

Or perhaps not so lucky.  Federal investigators used more surveillance equipment and in more places than first thought in their investigation of Rod Blagojevich, including a video camera installation at the Friends of Blagojevich offices.  They used the equipment to ensure that everyone who conversed with Blagojevich and his staff could be identified on the bugs and to have a record of their visits.  It’s a lesson they learned from similar investigations into the Mob:

Joseph Ways, former No. 2 at the Chicago FBI office who now works for Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, said it’s typical that when bugs are planted a camera is installed on an outdoor pole.

“It can be maneuverable so you can sit with a control and move it around,” Ways said. “It’s a logical addition to a planted microphone.”

If agents don’t recognize the person or can’t make out his or her face, a remote control allows them to visually follow an individual to his or her car and get the plate number. The FBI has used such cameras in the past, including in the visitors’ area at a prison during the Family Secrets mob investigation. The camera helped identify various individuals caught on recordings.

The FBI doesn’t need a judge’s approval to install an outdoor camera because it’s taping a public area, Ways said.

Ways has even more good news for Blagojevich’s associates.  The cameras and bugs may still be in operation, even after all of the publicity.  Normally, one would think that the arrest and the media reports on the wiretaps might make that less than effective, but then again, normally one would have thought that the Blagojevich gang would have known better than to have the conversations they did on the phone.  After all, Blagojevich knew he was being investigated, and still tried to sell the Senate seat.  We’re not exactly dealing with the Lake Michigan Mensa Society here.

This revelation indicates that the feds threw a wider net than first thought.  Patrick Fitzgerald has probed Illinois politics for years to root out the corruption endemic to the state, especially in Chicago.  He may have found his path to victory through Blagojevich and his carelessness, and at some point, we may get a complete multimedia record of Who’s Who in Crooked Land of Lincoln Government.