Hired Truck Probe Reaches Chicago City Clerk James Laski; “Go Cubs” Code for "Lie to the Grand Jury;" “Inner Circle” Next?

“If you’re wired or not wired, that’s your business,” Sam (Salvatore) Gammicchia told Cooperating Witness 1 (CW-1). “If you want to put me in the trick bag being wired, that’s fine. The only thing, if I go to jail, you’d have to go under the witness protection and that would be the thing.”

That recording, among many others, were put on the public record by FBI Agent John Hauser in his attempt to get Gammicchia charged with obstruction of justice.

Gammicchia is a Cook County government ironworker paid $12,000 a year by City Clerk James Laski’s political organization. Gammicchia was the man Laski turned to when federal agents started sniffing at his involvement in the Hired Truck Scandal.

The two cooperating witnesses are closely associated, maybe relatives. Each seek leniency for the other. The two witnesses apparently have admitted paying Laski up to $1,000 a month in cash for his help in getting trucks into Chicago’s Hired Truck Program.

Federal agents guided both cooperating witnesses through a series of meetings and phone calls with Laski and Gammicchia. They sought evidence that Laski approved of Cooperating Witness 2’s lying to a grand jury. To express his agreement to the scheme, Laski was supposed to call CW-1 and say, ”Go Cubs.”

And that’s what Laski did. Twice.

The investigation also turned up what Laski called, “The Inner Circle.”

“Everybody in the inner circle is committed to helping everybody,” he said.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is climbing higher in the Chicago corruption jungle.

Most of the extensive contents of the recordings, are on McHenry County Blog.