That episode helped start United States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s Operation Board Games. For the next seven months, Pamela Davis, hospital administrator, became Pamela Davis, secret agent, helping to expose a multimillion-dollar scam that at times resembled a spinoff of “The Sopranos,” guest-starring the back office from “Grey’s Anatomy.” Davis attended long lunches and boozy dinners with crooked businessmen, listening (and taping) as they talked of grafting off the hospital industry. She would slip the tapes to her F.B.I. handlers at Marshall Field’s makeup counters in malls around suburban Chicago.
Davis taped all sorts of incriminating conversations, but she never quite got used to spycraft. “The wire is a little tiny square thing I put inside my bra. I thought it would fall out all the time,” she said. “Oh, the logistics of getting this stuff done! One morning, I had to meet one of the F.B.I. guys in my office at 6 A.M. so he could hook up a wire to tap my phone. He was under my desk, on the floor. It looks kinky! My administrative assistant pops her head in, and there’s this man under my desk, and she says, ‘Oh, my goodness,’ and leaves. And I go, ‘What am I supposed to tell her?’ He says, ‘I don’t know. That never happened to me before.’ ” Read the whole thing.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Pamela Davis Kickstarted the Blago Investigation
Pamela Davis, mother of three and CEO of Edward Hospital, just wanted state approval to expand her Illinois hospital. But some business men tried to extort her -- If you don't use this contractor then you can't expand, they told her. Her call to the FBI (they laughed at her) eventually led to the wiretapping of Blago. This is a really interesting (and short and sweet) story because the New Yorker writer tells the story from the perspective of a working mom learning spy craft. She'll have a book coming out.
