 On behalf of the Mead Public Library, it is my pleasure today to introduce our speaker. Mr. Frost was a photographer for the Chicago Sun Times, who was part of a very influential undercover operation that the newspaper conducted to expose corruption in the city of Chicago. This is his story, and so without further ado, photographer Jim Frost. Thank you. Thank you. It's been quite an experience for me that as you find out, this story actually is 40 years old. You'll see a picture of me 40 years ago, and you'll have to point out which one is me. Anyway, I'm going to work from notes because as I was explaining to Carol, there is so much to this story. There's a book this thick that was written after it had been published. There is so much to this story that if I don't follow the notes, we'll be here through the cocktail hour tonight. This will keep me in line and make sure that I don't get things mixed up. Before we really get to the meat of this project, I'm going to try to give you an overview of the whole situation, the scenes, so that when we get into it, you'll have some perspective of where things are taking place and what is taking place. So it is June 1977. I was just a rookie at the Sun Times. This was my third newspaper I had worked for. I started at the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, and we had an editorial staff of about 12 people. It was a great paper, or still is, and a great place for me to cut my teeth as a photojournalist. From the Wisconsin Rapids, I went to Arlington Heights, Illinois, a chain of suburban dailies of Arlington Heights, and I was with them for seven years fine-tuning my portfolio. My goal was to get on the staff of a metropolitan newspaper, and I was then hired to put on the staff at the Sun Times. So I had only been there two months. When I was still learning my co-workers' names, I was still trying to get a handle on how a big city newsroom functions. As I said, the Daily Tribune in Rapids was a staff of about 12, the editorial staff. And in Arlington Heights, I'm guessing about 60 probably. At the Sun Times, it was over 300. And we were staffing almost 24 hours a day. Well, for some 24 hours a day. So I was still trying to figure out how a big city newsroom operates, and still hoping I could make the grade, actually. I was, well, a little more than a kid, but I was in my 30s. So I was back in the ready room. The ready room is a place where the photographers had, we wrote our captions back there. The dark rooms were there. We processed our film. We're still back in the day of film. We had dark rooms where we'd process our film and all. So I'm back in the ready room where you're kind of waiting while you're doing all of that for that phone on the wall to ring and you get sent out on your next assignment. So the phone rings and Bob Katalic, he's the chief photographer, he says, Jimmy, Jimmy, get out here in the newsroom. He says, I got somebody wants to talk to you out here. So I walk in and he says, Stu, Stu wants to see you in his office. Well, Stu is the managing editor of the paper. And I'm like, oh boy, principal's office time. So he motions over to Stu's office. I walk in that direction and there was Stu standing at the door waiting for me. He motions to a chair in front of his desk and I go sit on the chair. He comes in, he closes the door behind us, sits at his desk. He makes a little bit of small talk and then he gets down to the nitty gritty. I had been chosen for a high level, I'm being told this now by Stu. I'm finding out I'm not sitting in the principal's office now. I had been chosen for a high level undercover investigation project. I'm a new kid in town. The secrecy is of high level on this project. No one, not even my boss, not my family. No one is to know what's going to take place over the next few months. It would only be referred to as the special. So day or night, whenever I got a call, I would just go to the special. You don't ask any questions, you just go. The main qualification for me getting this assignment was I was a new kid in town. We were going up against City Hall on this investigation. I didn't know all of this yet, but we were going up against City Hall in Chicago. Mayor Daley is in charge. Being the new kid, if any photographer on that staff would be recognized immediately, the City Hall people, they're just very visible, especially in politics in that town. So let's go on to what the special turned out to be. The Sun-Times had bought a rundown beat up old bar, old tavern, near the loop. My main qualification was I was a new kid on the block. The main qualification of this bar was that it was full of violations. Everywhere you looked, there was leaking pipes, there was exposed wires. In Chicago, it's a big deal that all electrical has to go through conduit. It doesn't even have insulation on it, but that's what PAM was looking for. PAM was leading up the investigation on this. It was a place that when inspectors would come in, they, anybody, you didn't have to be an expert to be able to spot the violations. The objective of this project was simple. Rumors were rampant of corrupt city officials that were extracting bribes from small businesses, particularly taverns. But no one would go on record with their story. None of the bar owners, they would complain that we're getting hit all the time. You've got to pay this, you've got to pay that to get a pass, to pay this to get a pass. But nobody would go on record with the story or be interviewed about it. It would have been business suicide for them in Chicago at that time especially. The objective was simple. When the bar was ready to just open the doors, we had to be very careful about entrapment. We did not try to push them toward a bribe. We did not offer a bribe. We just opened the doors, let, come in, what will come in. And they'll get around to the subject of, well, maybe you got so much going on here, maybe I can give you a break is what it would come down to to get a pass. So to get a little bit of an idea of what our bar looked like, it was basically your neighborhood bar, pretty typical except for the two characters up in the loft above the ladder there where there was a little peephole through the wall that we shot through. And from that vantage we could see pretty much the whole bar down there. When people came in that we're going to try and shake us down, but we didn't know. At that point we were just assuming. So up in the loft is myself there. And the other photographer, my co-photographer was Gene Pesic. There would have never been the both of us there at the same time. The idea was that somebody had to be available at all times, and that's why there were two of us. So the cover for Gene and I, for the photographers, because the bartenders were a reporter, everybody in there had a role that they were playing that were on the staff. And we actually did hire some people that were not on the staff of the paper, but they had no idea, they thought they were just working in a bar and they didn't know really what was going on. So Gene and I, we had to have a cover. So our cover was that we would be repairmen coming into the bar to fix something. And obviously you looked around, there was plenty that needed fixing. So we would be repairmen coming in. We would walk into the bar if we got a call. Sometimes we just waited there. But if we got a call from the assignment desk that said, go to your special, we had in the trunks of our car at all times, we had workmen's clothes and we had workmen's clothes and we had a large toolbox. And the assignment desk was instructed that during, especially Monday through Friday during business hours, that one of us, either Gene or myself, would be in the downtown area. So if they got a call from the bar that said, send, we need a photographer at the special, that's all they would be told. And they would have one of us available and send us. And the purpose of that toolbox, incidentally, was to get our cameras in and out of the bar when we were coming and going. But secrecy was absolutely of the highest priority on this project. Chicago is extremely competitive news town. And every paper is, we all got along pretty well with each other, the other papers, but still when it came down to the nitty gritty, it was each man for himself. And in the year objective was to get the better picture or the better story or whatever. And this project was going to go on for several months. So to keep this whole concept under wraps for four months, five months, it was almost an impossible assignment what we were going for. The Chicago SunTimes was a morning paper. The Chicago Daily News was an evening paper. Both the SunTimes and the Daily News were owned by Marshall Field. They were both in the same building, actually the city rooms for the SunTimes and the Daily News were on the same floor. There was a divider between them with big glass windows in it. You could look over there and see who was coming and going. And the photographers shared dark rooms. And that ready room I described earlier, the photographers from both the Daily News and the SunTimes were in there. But the deadlines were extremely very different. For the SunTimes, our deadlines, we were a morning paper. Our first deadline would be 10 o'clock at night. That was for, we called the Bulldog Edition. And that was for the papers that would go out to the train stations at the end of the line for the commuter trains. And then the later deadlines would be for the ones that would be on the newsstands in the morning. And they would have the final sports, especially when the Bulls were on the heyday, they would have, the sports could have the final scores in that edition and all. So the thing about the secrecy thing and the thing about sharing the dark rooms with other photographers and then we're going to get on to more interesting stuff. But in the film days, if you went into the dark room, an experienced photographer would pick up a negative, hold it up to the light and make a judgment how overexposed or underexposed or whatever it was and then slide it into the enlarger. And it would be a wild guess as to what that exposure should be, how long the enlarger, you just set the timer on the enlarger. And so what I'm getting at is you would end up making two, three, four prints before you got one just the way you wanted it. Well, those first prints until you got the one you wanted would go wet, come out of the fixative and wouldn't be totally fixed yet but they would go wet into the trash can. Okay, well, there's going to be somebody following us into that dark room, another photographer either with our own paper who had no, they knew we were up to something but didn't know what or a daily news photographer came in. The first thing we would do, I mean we all did it, you come into the dark room, you'd rifle through the basket and see what the other guy's up to. And so when we went into the dark room, in our pocket we had a garbage bag wadded up and every print that, every reject went into that bag wet. When we got down to the print we wanted, that one was put back in the chemicals until they were stabilized. They would be rinsed and dried. The dried prints would go into Stuart Leary's office locked into a cabinet, the negatives and the prints. So anyhow, so when we actually started on the project the city inspectors don't necessarily make appointments on when they're going to show up. So a lot of the time what I'm getting at is it's not always doing this clandestine work, this undercover work is not always as exciting as it may, you may think it is because there's a lot of time of just sitting, hanging out in the bar, waiting for this guy to show up. There's a limit to how much Coca-Cola you can drink in a day and you wait. And then when they do show up it's usually a very short visit but 10 or 15 minutes of tension. It's very intense while he's there. You have to be quiet, if you are visible in the bar there has to be a reason you're there. And on and on. Before we really start to go into the pictures I want one more thing which will involve some pictures. But this last January was the 40th anniversary of the publication when that first hit the streets. It actually the publication ran for 25 consecutive days a different story every day, a different investigator, a different surprise that we didn't expect. A lot of stuff we had no idea was going to happen was the best, the best stuff. But anyhow last January was the anniversary 40th and we had a party at the bar which now if you want to go visit it when we sold it after two months of open for business it was bought by people that called it the Brejon pub and it still is the Brejon pub. Much nicer place than the Mirage was. Actually quite a neat place. But anyhow we meet the team here the way we looked 40 years ago. So there's Bill Rectonwald on the far end, Pam Zeckman. Pam Zeckman spearheaded the project. She had tried to sell her idea of buying a bar and doing this to the Tribune. She was working with the Tribune. She was on the staff at the Tribune. They would have no part of it. It was too risky. The lawsuits, their lawyers nixed it right away. So she crossed over the street, came over to the Sun Times and actually the editors and the lawyers at the Sun Times said hey this sounds great and they went for it. So the Sun Times, the Tribune has always been a little stuffy and the Sun Times has always been a little more feisty and this story really proved it. So there we have Pam and Ze Smith, the middle guy. He's about my age. He was a reporter and he also was new on the staff. Pam had been around the city quite a bit and when she was in the bar, because she's a redhead, her hair was all under a bandana and she camouflaged herself as well as she did. A few people through the course did recognize her. And then the fellow on the plaid shirt, we had to have a person, no one on the staff at the Sun Times could be the owner of the bar because it would be traced back to the Sun Times. To get a liquor license is harder than getting on an airplane these days. I mean, your fingerprint, your background checks, if you have any criminal history, you're not going to get a liquor license. Anyway, Jeff was hired in any post. I think he was a grandson actually of one of the editors. And then you have yours truly. Actually, with the bushy mustache. Now remember, this is the 1970s. And Gene Piesic, my partner in crime here. Oops, wrong button. So actually, this is last January. Same players here. Zaya's in the wheelchair there. Pam Zekman, how she does it. Well, she didn't change a bit. And Rectonwald, myself and the fellow over there, he's currently the editor of the Sun Times. And as fellow down here is Gene. Gene's 91 years old now, but he made it to this party. And it was a great time. Just to give you a little locator, you recognize the Sears Tower there. Now, if you're younger than 30 years old, you would recognize it as Willis Tower. But for the next couple generations, at least to Chicagoans, it's the Sears Tower. And the Mirage is about 17 blocks north of the Sears Tower with a river in between them. So what I'm going to do now, and it might take me a while to get this started, but I've got a little video here I want to show you, which kind of really puts this whole thing into perspective. It looked like any neighborhood tavern in Chicago. The beer was cold and the bratwurst hot. The Sun Times scouted dozens of locations for this tavern, and they found one that was just kind of outside the rustry corridor in River North. The Sun Times now owned a tavern at 731 North Wells. It owned, in the language of the Bill of Sale, exactly this. One five-ton air conditioner, bar, 22 stools and back bar. Two cash registers, two upright coolers, one under-bar type cooler, one color TV with outside antenna, one three-barrow draft beer box, assorted glasses, books, refrigerators, home size in the kitchen, one ice cube maker inoperable, light fixtures. The tavern would have to be kept secret from the Sun Times' own city room. It was like keeping a salt lake from a community of deer. Even in an era where newspapers did a lot of undercover journalism, heavy lifting, reporters being able to take months to do work on one story, this one stood out because of its creativity and the overall characters that the story brought out. This story exposed things in ways that Chicagoans, as they were actually reading the story in the Sun Times, were chuckling at the schemes uncovered. Shakedowns, bribery, tax jips from the lawyer that worked with them to set up the bar, to the building inspectors coming in, to the fire inspector with the cigarette dangling out of his mouth as he's talking to them about their fire inspection. This was just a cast of Chicagoans. I think the reason we want to revisit the mirage is really he came during an era where there was a lot more undercover journalism going on and the enormous success of this series sparked a real debate within journalism about his undercover reporting ethical. There were pollicers awarded for undercover reporting. This one didn't get one and that's one of the issues I hope our three subjects will fill us in. So here we are. It is now Sunday, January 8th, 1978. This was the first day that this series was going to run. It would run 25 days and then actually it ended up running months beyond that because now everybody was willing to talk. It was out there and everybody that was afraid to talk before, it was all unwrapped and we had to set up a bank of phones just to deal with the calls coming in of people wanting to tell their story. So the story that saw a print that day was literally seen around the world in the next 24 hours. AP picked it up and put it on the wires everywhere. London, they just love this kind of story of the government getting caught cheating. We were all, as Ben said before, we all had our 15 minutes of fame when this story broke. But the payoffs, the thing that was just so unbelievable is how small the payoffs were. The fire inspector, I mean that place could have gone up and smoked at any time and $10. $10 and he saw nothing. He gave us a clean slate and walked out the door for $10. Some went higher than that. Some as much as $100. The liquor inspectors, they had a little bigger lever. If you're going to sell liquor by the glass over the bar, there's an extra tax that goes on it. When I walk into a liquor store and buy a bottle of something that, say, I pay $20, a bar would probably pay $30 or $40 for that same bottle. And theirs will have a sticker on it that says the tax has been paid. However, we had planted several bottles on our back bar that didn't have stickers on them to see what the liquor inspector would say. Basically what it came down to is what his take would be. He says, whatever's in your cash register, just give it to me and I'm out of here. That's just the way it went on. Day after day, this vending machine companies were, before we opened, they were lined up outside the door trying to get in. They wanted their machines in our bar. It's a new bar they wanted their machines in and they were all bargaining as how much they would skim off the top of one, went into that machine and they would split it with us, whatever they skimmed off. It just went on and on. We'll be talking about the vending guys in a couple of minutes a little more. But then, the one thing that we just never anticipated is that our teacher was going to be the accountant that we hired. And this fellow right here, Philip Barash, he told us, he said, I know all the angles. Stick with me, I save you lots of money. And he had angles. It began with Philip. He promised that he was going to teach us how to make more profit Chicago style. And it began with slicing 40% off the top of all that came into the bar, 40%. And then he taught us how to make sure that 40% slice off the top is not noticed. Now, if you only sold 2,000 drinks last month, don't turn in a bill for 8,000 bar napkins. They're going to figure that out. But anyhow, it was estimated, I'm getting ahead of myself here, but it was a nice reduction in our tax bill. Mr. Barash is giving us our lessons right now. And he is telling us, he says, listen carefully, listen carefully to me now. He says, I want you to take two plain envelopes, nothing written on them, just two plain envelopes. I want you in those envelopes to put a $10 bill in each one. I want you to put one of my cards, one of my cards in each one, so they know that I'm helping you. And I want you, when the fire inspector comes in, I want him to get one envelope. And when the building inspector comes in, I want him to get the other envelope. And he said, and actually, you don't give it to him. He says, there's nothing on that envelope. It's a white envelope. He says, you lay it on the bar there. He's going to have his papers there that have to be signed and everything. You just leave it, lay it on the bar there. He'll know what it is. He'll know what it is. He won't say anything. When he's going to leave, he just will shuffle it in with his papers and walk out. Yes. Did he know you guys were reporters? Oh, no. Oh, no. No, no one did. There were precious few people that knew that we were, I mean, that was the whole, because this was going to go on for months before it is printed. And in fact, Mr. Barash was so thorough with us that they, I say we, Pam and her people, hired five more accountants and kept separate books on all six of the accountants just to see how much they, how they would instruct us and how much it would vary. Actually, all six of them had a plan. Pretty similar to Mr. Barash. And some of them were trimming as much as 70% off. Some of them were trimming what it came down to, and I'm really getting ahead of myself now, but that's okay. What it really came down to is it was estimated that the state of Illinois was losing $16 million a year just on all of the buyers and other businesses, I'm sure, that were skimming their profits. $16 million a year was the closest estimate that they came up with. Statewide or just from Chicago? I'm sure that was statewide, but I don't know the answer to that question, actually. I have to call Pam. But, so, then the payoff trade begins. Next in was the fire inspector or the first in, I should say, is the fire inspector. And there he is looking under the cooler, under the bar, the cooler, by the way, which didn't work. It actually was a good place to grow mold down there. And Pam is now down in the basement right under the bar where all of the plumbing and pipes were leaking. And it's amazing that the whole floor didn't come crashing in when we, the place was jammed at night and people jumping around and dancing and sometimes fighting. It wasn't the finest neighborhood in town. So, the payoff trade goes on and on. The next guy that we're going to meet here, actually, he was not doing anything wrong. This fellow is Francis Murphy. He's the chief of the city's fire prevention bureau. And this is after the fire inspector had left. Pam went and paid a call on Mr. Murphy and actually didn't mention anything at all about the mirage and she identified herself as a reporter. And she said, Mr. Murphy, what would you do? If I told you that one of your inspectors would just pick up a white envelope with $10 and give a pass on an entire bridge, what would you do, Mr. Murphy? I'd crucify him was the answer. I'd say it again. I'd crucify him. Well, he probably would have. You see in this picture, the steps, he says one of the worst things you can do is nothing is allowed on the stairs because it's the best way to kill somebody, he says, and the bear wires. And up on the wall, that's the gas meter and there's chemicals stacked all around it. Unbelievable. But it went on and on, just day after day after day. It was like another day, another payoff. This is a building inspector and actually he has the envelope in his hand right now and he is just putting it in, not saying anything about it, just casually picks it up, puts it in with his papers and leaves. And actually he came a little more expensive. He required $15. But he didn't see the rotting floors, he didn't see the back wall, the wall that was actually, that we were shooting through, that back wall, the 2x4s were going the wrong way in it. I didn't understand that completely, but it's against code anyhow. But in addition to the 2x4s going the wrong way in that back wall, there was no drywall on it. There was just a sheet of paneling and there's supposed to be drywall behind that paneling, otherwise that's a pretty flammable material there. So he noticed that, he mentioned it as a matter of fact, but then it didn't show up in his report. So, then comes a big surprise. We got an honest cop. Now I'm not going to imply that all crops in Chicago are crooked. I mean I'm sure there are plenty of honest cops in Chicago, but there are plenty that are not. But meet Mr. Lou Cuddy. He was actually, I'm going to have to read this because it's so complex. I'll get it messed up if I don't. But what it's going to come down to is that he played it by the law, by the rule. Every T was crossed, every I was dotted, but he didn't have enough clout to hold back. He didn't have enough clout in his own department to hold it back. We'll get to that in a minute. So anyhow, Lou Cuddy was a police investigator who checks applications for liquor licenses. So we were applying for our liquor license. The bar still was not opened at that point. Lou informed us that he is going to need fingerprints. He's going to need ID papers. He's going to need affidavits. And on and on he's going to need this. The point he was making is that this process is going to take some time. A week, maybe two weeks to get all of this done. So don't plan on opening your doors, you know, Monday. Now, this is the place when the inspectors might add their, they might drop a line right now. Yeah, it's going to take time. It's going to take time. But don't worry about it. We can work something out. That was usually what it came to leading up to. They were ripe for a payoff. But Mr. Cuddy had a little different approach on that. Mr. Cuddy, when they sat down and Pam was there and there would have been Jeff, because everything was in his name. When they sat down at Mr. Cuddy's desk, he put a piece of paper, a card on the table in front of them. And that card, it was written on the card, any effort to influence me with a gratuity will be considered a bride and will be prosecuted as a felony. That was, and he was consistent with that. They came back at a later date asking, they were going to test him again to see if he would still play it straight. And the second time they came in, we wanted to go from a two o'clock opening. They needed a special closing. I mean, instead of a 2 a.m. closing, they wanted a special permit, which were available for more money, to get a 4 a.m. closing. But he played the game exactly straight at that time. But meanwhile, while this is going on, the delays waiting for this print is driving the vending company operators crazy, because they want to be first in line to get their machines in our bar, because you can't have two companies when vending machines, they'll shoot each other in the same bar. They were courting the mirage for a contract, and unbeknownst to the mirage, they were calling Lou Cuddy trying to prod him along. And Cuddy calls the bar and he says, what the hell is going on here? What is going on? These companies are calling me. I've got work to do. And, you know, it's just not going to, it's going to take what I said it's going to take. And then he got suspicious of Pam. He was thinking that maybe she was a madam, and we were planning on opening a girly joint there. Well, come on, we already had two girly joints within a block. But back to Mr. Brash, one tip that he had given us is if you're having problems, if you're having problems with anybody at the city hall, if you're having problems, what you do is you call your precinct captain. Now, every precinct has an alderman, but every alderman has a precinct captain. And the precinct captain, his job is to keep the residents in that precinct happy so that they'll vote for that alderman again. So they get things done. And so the precinct captains usually have a fair amount of clout. Actually, our precinct captain was Frank Bruno. Now, Frank Bruno had clout. As a matter of fact, Frank Bruno, and his regular job, he was in the administrative staff of George Dunn, who happened to be the cook county board, the president of the cook county board. So using a tip from Mr. Brash, Pam calls Frank Bruno and explains, well, you know, we're trying to get this pushed through. We're trying to get it through because we got to open up. We got to open our cavern. We can't afford to be closed another two weeks. And so Bruno says, well, you'll see if you can move things along a little faster. Well, Frank Bruno, not being somebody to mess around, they hang up the phone. And five minutes later, Pam's phone rings. And it's Frank. He says, this afternoon, later this afternoon, he says, go over to the license bureau and pick up your license. It's waiting for you. Five minutes. So anyhow, the point of that is that Mr. Bruno was able to go over Lou Cuddy's head. He went to supervisors in the licensing bureau, went over his head, and they pushed the license through and Cuddy's sitting there. Help us. Although he was doing everything right. You got to love the guy. So we move along. We got time yet. We move along and the mission is accomplished. The bar had been opened for two months. There was about a month getting it ready to be opened. Then it was open for about a month. Had a party at the last night. It was going to be closed the next day. Actually the people in the neighborhood did not know that. But there was a big party. The bar would be closed. It had only been open for two months and it would be closed. But the investigation was definitely not finished. There would be another at least two months of just fact checking, chasing down every lead that we had ever been given and confirming it so that we're not setting ourselves up for that lawsuit. However, that had some effect on us as Gene and I as photographers. It's a whole different ball game for us. Our method of operation is now drastically changing. When we were in the bar, they were coming to us. We had our cozy little place up there. We were hiding and we'd take the pictures. Now we're going to have to go out to find the people. There were many people in this scheme that never had a reason to come to the bar. Like Luke Cuddy was one, but there were other people that were involved in the schemes but they had never actually physically been in the bar. So when the stories ran, we needed to have pictures of everybody. So that was our job. So Gene and I no longer had control of the environment. Now we are learning how to be a paparazzo. That involves long stakeouts and vans with darkened out windows, with black curtains on the windows behind you and shooting through darkened windows, telephoto lenses, and thermos as a coffee. That was the way our life was going to be for the next couple of months. But it worked out. Actually Officer Cuddy was a good example of this. His case was a little more difficult because his office is in a police station. So I'm going to go in and pop a picture of Mr. Cuddy and I don't think so. Even though he was honest, he's not going to want his picture taken in connection with anything. So fortunately his desk could be seen through a window on the hallway. I took a BGA person with me. The reason I had a BGA person, the Better Government Association, they were working with us on this project. And the reason, because I wouldn't know, Lou Cuddy was an office full of plain clothes cops I'm not going to know who's Cuddy. So he came along so he could point out which one I needed to photograph. So there we are standing out in the hallway. There's this window and there's Mr. Cuddy in the background. But I'm not going to walk up to the window and start taking pictures. I'm going to wake up in jail tomorrow morning. So anyhow I had the BGA guy stand in front of me. He's right out in the middle of the hall. He says, stand in front of me. So I stand back. Now instead of having a lens on where I would be shooting somebody three feet in front of me I have a longer lens on so I'm shooting over his shoulder and taking a picture of Officer Cuddy. It worked. And we got through it. But that was just an example of just an example of being in a different, not having control of the environment. So we had other visitors. 60 minutes got involved with this. Mike Wallace and crew actually spent, actually visited four times while the bar was open for business. Had visited four times. So how are you going to sneak Mike Wallace, his director, his camera crew. How are you going to sneak them in and out of a bar? You're not. Well the way it happened, well first of all their equipment is not going to fit in a workman's toolbox. And especially in those days. But there was a door. He never actually did any filming in the bar itself. But there was a door in the back that came into that back room where we worked from Gene and I. And the stairs down into the basement were there. So they were down in the basement. Actually where a lot of the violations were very obvious. Down there the dripping pipes and the bar of wires and everything. And they did filming down there and they interviewed people down there. And they got in and out. And of course under the understanding they were not going to air anything until it was published in the paper. There was one little close call on that. One of the part-time bartenders came, they were set up filming down in the basement. One of the part-time bartenders who has no idea what's going on comes strolling down the steps. And Bill Rectonwald, is the BGA guy and Pam there. Bill runs over to the bottom of the steps and tells him, you can't be down here now. You can't be down here. The architect is, they're going to do major remodeling and they're filming all of this and to figure out how they're going to remodel it, whatever, but go back upstairs. And he did. That was possibly one close call. Another close call was, years truly, was in the bar working, actually waiting I should say for an inspector to show up. It had been there for some time, but I was told that there would be, for this inspector, there would be absolutely no reason for him to go up on the loft. That loft was above the toilets. And the bar had like a 16-foot ceiling. But I was told there would be no reason for this inspector to go up there. So don't worry about it, because I had a camera sitting on a tripod right at the little opening we were shooting through. So I was hanging out in the bar when the inspector arrived. So where does this guy go? He goes right to the back room immediately and Jeff is curst-tailing along with him. And he says, well, I want to go up there. And he's reaching for the light switch and Jeff screams at her. He says, no, don't turn on that. It blows fuses every time you turn it on. And I'm standing right behind, I'm standing right at the door at that point. And I say, okay, I tell you what, I got a flashlight up there. I'm working up there. I got a flashlight up there. Just hold on, I'll go get the flashlight. So I go up. It's dark up there. I'm fumbling around trying to get the camera off at a tripod. It's stuck. It doesn't want to come off. I'm cursing and I'm making noise. And I say, where is it? I know I left it up here. Where did I put it, you know, and anyhow. Finally, I get the camera off, stuff it back in the toolbox, take the flashlight, go down, hand it to the inspector. He goes up. Two seconds he comes back down. That was the closest call I ever had to because he walked up and saw that camera in front of that, on the tripod in front of that hole. He would put two and two together very quickly, I think. I did a little thing on my own. I decided I was going to give out some awards. And I was going to give out award for the honesty and for corruption in morality. And so winner for the drum roll here, winner for the honesty, obviously goes to Officer Cutty. Winner for corruption in immorality definitely goes to Mr. Barash, who gave us good lessons and opened up many interesting stories for us, but Guy was kind of a little sleazy. Cutty tried so hard to play by the rules. Which we found out very rare for investigators. But when his own supervisors went over his head and pulled that liquor license through, you would have thought would have crushed him. Pam called him after the story had run and all. She called him and he says, well, what is your reaction? What is your reaction when your own people jerk that out of your hand and passed it through? And Lou, being a pretty cool guy, kind of takes everything in stride. He gets a little philosophical here. And he says, well, you know, the law is the law. But Chicago is Chicago. So that was all Lou had to say on the issue. So anyhow, just to kind of wrap this up, hey, we're doing pretty good on time. I'm right on time actually. So the Merage assignment was really the very beginning of my Sun-Times career. And I retired from the Sun-Times about 30 years later in 06 actually. I didn't retire from photography, but I did retire from the Sun-Times. I'm still exercising in that camera a little bit. And the assignment was absolutely a windfall for me. It opened many doors for me down the road. Being able, because of the amount of publicity it received. But I really did not want to spend the rest of my life, the rest of my career, photographing people through a people. It just wasn't my idea what I got into this business for. And however, I did do a couple more undercover projects with Pam following that. The most probably as shaking as the Merage story was there was a doctor in Chicago that was operating in Borschen Clinic, and a large of Borschen Clinic. And it became evident some women were complaining that, you know, everybody that goes to see a doctor can't even remember his name. Everybody that goes to this clinic, they're pregnant. Never when they get the test back. And it's a urine test, always. So Pam, being rather clever, figured the way to tackle this problem was, she found four female reporters at the paper. And of course, the test is a urine test that's going to determine if you're pregnant or not. And so she found four reporters that agreed that they would go over and want to be tested. And so then she went and found four guys, four male reporters, and gave them each a bottle. And said, yeah, give us a little sample. And so they did. And then so each of the women were given a bottle and went over and said they wanted to be tested. And, you know, every one of them came back positive. They were pregnant. And they had gone into the room, of course, and poured a little of from the bottle they had been given. So anyhow, having said that, I did a couple more projects. But then I really, my love for photography involved more documentary and working with people face to face. They can see me. I can see them. But also I kind of am a control freak. And I like to have control of situations, a little more control of photography, lighting and whatever. And a position opened up at the Sun Times for the studio photographer. They had one studio photographer. And so I asked for it. They were a little reluctant at first, but they gave it to me. So I spent the rest of my career shooting fashion, shooting food, architecture, portraits of whoever was in the news, whatever. As a studio photographer, my responsibilities, as well as I said, were food fashion portraits. Actually, I worked with Roger Ebert a lot. He would, if a movie was about to be released, a new movie, of course, they want to get as much press on it as they can. And of course, Roger was about as high as you could get as far as getting press. So the leading actors, actresses, or the directors or the writers would come in and interview with Roger. And quite often, because I was living downtown at that time, quite often I would get sent with a great guy to work with, by the way. One of these people that Roger, of course, has gone now, but he treated everybody the same. I could be in the room with Roger, and he would treat me the same as he would treat Michael Douglas or Kirk the father, or whoever it was in the room. That's just the way he was. Great guy. That's it. I'm done. Yes. The story broke. How was your reception in bars and taverns? People recognize you? Well, not me, no, or Jean. I mean, we never got that much visibility. It wasn't until the story was running that once in a while a picture of us would be, when they were explaining how things were done further into the story. But no, I didn't. I was a little cautious at times because the Mafia was involved with the vending machine companies and whatnot. I've watched my rear view mirror some, but it never was a problem. Yes, a lady back here was... What happened to all the people with these choral practices that you had brought and they were assigned to such a jail? They were, as far as I know, I don't think anyone to jail, but most of them were nearing retirement. They get those kind of jobs and they were suspended. I mean, here's a guy, 60 years old, a fire inspector. This guy, he's like a year or so away from retirement. It's gone. There will be none. So, I mean, that was the function, I guess. I'm not aware of any of that actually had been charged with them. Yes? I'm from Chicago and I remember this so clearly. But I was wondering what the, you know, what other reforms, if any, were enacted after this. And I came out with that, the Shackman decree that I think was supposed to kind of do away with patronage, which doesn't relate exactly to this, but sort of because that's how you get those jobs. And I think that was some time after this. And then, but daily was not mayor at the time. Daily, I think, died in December of 76. And that was before Richie. Yeah, this was the first, but Richard J. The first, daily the first, yeah. He died just like six months before he started that. He said in early, no, June 77. So that was like seven months after, or six months, six months after daily died, I think. Right, the system was still operating. But you're right, the daily himself. There was a quick succession of mayors and interim mayor and that got, was tied up in court. And then Eugene Sawyer was mayor. And then, and then the Landic was mayor and then the Snow's got him down. Yeah, the Landic actually was involved in a lot of this. He was trying to protect some of the, some of the people for a time. I mean, that's really out of my area of knowledge. But there was, there's so much more that I just, I had to trim up so much. I mean, I could have gone on for hours. So the other question I had was, I know the Mafia control, I know all the vending machines and the jukeboxes, pinball, everything like that. But I was wondering if, you know, during the time that the Mirage was set up, if they ever came and shook the bar down for protection money or something like that. Not, no, that, no, that never happened. Actually, as far as, there was one company called CENA, a vending company, that was pretty general knowledge that they had mock connections. And I don't know how many others did. Possibly, they were the only one because I can't imagine them not having two fighting against each other. But anyway, the Zenith was one of the better strength to get into the Mirage. And I don't know who actually had it. Yes. How can an honest tavern keeper keep a business called his craft toy, not his slot machines or not slot machines, but his jukebox and all that was a payoff, and he's had a payoff to a filling inspector. He's got to pay off all his people. How can an honest guy keep a tavern open? Yeah, well, actually, like with vending companies, they were actually giving us money. They were skimming off the top, but they were trying to get the contract. And that's what they would promise, is that when they empty out the machines and this many quarters came out, they would skim off a percentage of it and they would keep some and they would give the bar some. And that, of course, wouldn't be reported as income. And the amounts would have been much less, right, compared with skimming, 70% of the total take. Yes, sir. I take it that you didn't have any quality work. Yeah, quality work. You didn't have any selling work. Oh, we didn't, no. And in fact, in Illinois, it was not legal at that time. I'm not sure if it is now, but it was not legal to record any interviews and use it as evidence. No, it would have been a lot more... I wasn't aware of it either. I read it in the book. Not the mirage. If there had been some audio, they actually get an idea of what these corrupt people were thinking of seeing. It was recorded, I mean, kind of on paper, but not audio. We recently mentioned one name of a reform act I believe, but do you know if they were going to draw changes in practice or did things kind of continue the same as they have before? You know, for a short time at least, there were huge changes. And I'm sure it has lifted back some wearing a different hat probably. But I'm not aware. I mean, they... If you get a copy of the book, The Mirage by random house, say, in Pamelaud, there are chapters involved of what the results of what this investigation brought down, and there were several. Yes, I think this gentleman is next. 160 minutes treated out of the broadcast. What did 60 minutes mean in the story? You know, I could look back. It ran after it had been running for a while, again, sometimes, and it was on a Sunday night that it ran. And I actually have the date of it. What you're looking at is the cover of a special section after it was all over. The sometimes printed a special section of all of the stories that resulted from it. And all of the slides that I showed you, actually mysteriously, the negative disappeared. We, the sometimes, you know, used to be what is now Trump Tower. I mean, that is the footprint of that building. It was our building. And so, we... I was still at the paper then, and we had to move. And I had the box of negatives locked in a cage back in the photo department. And then it got transferred up into an equipment room up on the roof of the building. And I wasn't even aware of that. I was looking for that. I couldn't find him. I went to the picture editor. And he said, oh, I know where they are. They're up in the midst. So he went up with me. He spent a couple of days searching for them. I mean, there were just boxes for stuff up there. And we were about to be moving out of that building. And I just don't know. Now, somebody has them, because pictures were showing up. For example, in that video, I had saved a few of myself, but not to the extent. There was a lot of fresh pictures in that hiking mask. I don't know. But it had... I could not find the box that I had been hiding for a long time. The whole neighborhood is a lot different now. Yes. It's all very trendy galleries. Yeah, very trendy. It was very seedy at that time. It was. Yes. I was just curious. So the photographers, you would all develop your own film? There were lab people that would... We were kind of picky about our pictures. And if we were on deadline, for example, a lot of times, especially on night game sports, we hired motorcycle guys to run the film back into the thumb of the paper. So you'd still be shooting. And that's when the lab guys would process the film, make the prints and all. And it was never good enough for us. We wanted to do it ourselves. We all had our little formulas for different developers, give it different instructions, whatever. And we were young men. We were fierce. And it was the 70s. Listen to another question. When you left in 2006, what size was the editorial staff then? Because when you said you started, it was quite huge. And I just was curious. It had diminished considerably. When I went to the Sun Times, there were 23 photographers on the staff. And it wasn't too long later. Well, Marshall Hill was forced to sell the paper. He had a brother that turned 21 who was entitled a half of everything that Marshall had abandoned only. And the younger brother wanted his attention. He wanted it now. And Marshall had no... He had to sell it. That was the only way he could give his brother the half. So, anyway, after Marshall Hill was out of the paper, it started to diminish because investment companies were buying the paper. And it changed hands about the end of the game. And it was... The staff had diminished to 11, I think, photographers. And in spite of that, even a little lower than that, by the time I left. Actually, I wasn't gone more than a few years. And they eliminated the 4%. Eliminated it. I went down and picketed with them. And then they hired back a few on a contract basis. And actually, to have a staff of that size of 23 photographers, that was a luxury at that time. Marshall Hill just loved the newspaper business. He just loved it. And he had very deep pockets. But the New York Times... I spent a lot of time in New York when I left the studio assignment. And I spent a lot of time in New York. And the New York Times, they only had a few photographers, but they had tons of stringers that would... And those people were hungry. And they would go out and shoot a lot of paparazzi types. But there were also good journalists that supplying them photos. And actually, a paper like New York Times didn't want paparazzi. They would be altering, interfering, not claimed by the rules of journalists. Listen, this was fun for me. Thank you all for coming.