Customer Reviews

When Corruption Was King: How I Helped the Mob Rule Chicago, Then Brought the Outfit Down

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Every Chicagoan knows they live in a cesspool of corruption. It's been that way for more than a century and will probably never change. Robert Cooley is obviously a brave man. He put his life at risk to expose corruption. Though he was once part of that corruption, he ultimately saw that the evil needed to be fought.

That said, the book is disappointing. The writing style is flat and there is far too much focus on Cooley's childhood and personal life. Opportunities are missed time and time again to bring the corrosive effects of political and judicial corruption into sharper relief. Excursions into the impact of mob murders, fixed court cases and the like would have been welcome. Particularly for people who don't live in Chicago, the impact of Cooley's bravery on the people of the city may be lost.

That said, Cooley's book is still worthwhile for demonstrating how a few dishonorable men can steal the life and wealth of a great city.

Jerry

I'm a mob afficiandado and live close to Chicago, so this book drew my attention the moment I found out about it. If you want to know the way Chicago works (still works, by the way) this book will tell you. Bob Cooley was a mob lawyer who got in over his head and saved himself by ratting on the Outfit. The evidence he gave the feds sent a lot of made men previously untouchable to prison. Frankly, I don't like Cooley at all. He rode the mob gravy train until it was about ready to run him over, then jumped off and let it wreck. I think most mob lawyers are worse than mobsters, because the lawyers dishonor their sworn oath to uphold the law by ignoring their clients' known crimes. But Cooley, slime though he may be, has fascinating information to give about the Outfit, and Hillel Levin does a terrific job of presenting it. The writing is dynamic and Levin puts his reader into every mob hotspot and Chicago wiseguy hangout in a way that makes that reader feel as if he's there, and brings along plenty of Windy City politicians and judges for the sleazy ride (many of whom are still lining their pockets with crminals' money). Spellbinding reading, with lots of great photographs. This is not just a Chicago mob book; it's a book for anybody who finds the underworld an interesting place.

This book brings you through the life of lawyor Bob Cooley and how he got involved in the Chicago 'Outfit'. Coming from Chicago myself I was engulfed in the stories he told of his childhood and even his adult life partying and living the dream life in downtown Chicago. Coming from a working class family Cooley still managed to attend Catholic high school and college. Working his way through law school as a cop he learned a lot of the ways the police worked. It was when he became a lawyor that he really got involved in fixing cases for the mob and gambling heavily. Soon enough he was in too deep to find any other way out but the feds. The stories Cooley experienced in his adult life were truly remarkable and definitely worth reading. From martial arts experts to hanging out with Sinatra at famous clubs, Cooley really lived an amazing life during most of his adulthood.

great book, fast read, incredible content, very well written. this mafia lawyer snitch turned corruption fighting superhero is a must read. he presents all his own crimes, scummy dealings and ripoffs with an air of nobility, so take it with a grain of salt. the lawyer can't admit when he's wrong. the good thing is he can admit when the mafia is wrong, and goes about setting them up and recording them in the most outrageous fashion, netting mass convictions and (hopefully) forever altering the political and legal landscape of chicago.

Robert Cooley was a former cop who studied law and became one of the top hustlers in the Criminal Courts Building. After years of fixing cases for the mob dominated First Ward Democratic Organization, Cooley turned informant and helped the United States Attorney for the Northeastern District of Illinois indict and convict a variety of political hoodlums.


The negative publicity from the resulting scandal was so great that when the City Council proposed a redistricting map the former First Ward was eliminated and renumbered out of existence. The newly drawn First Ward no longer includes the downtown business district.

Sadly, the book documents how the leading members of the city's legal profession and political establishment have tolerated widespread corruption and facilitated its longevity through bribing members of the local judiciary. Even murder cases could be fixed for a price.

Cooley is not a hero or a saint and at times his claimed contrition seems somewhat false and selfserving. It does seem that he discovered some dregs of conscience about the same time he was about to be dropped by the leaders of the Outfit. Whether or not he was to be frozen out of the action or found dead in the trunk of an abandoned car is for the reader to decide. Cooley is now in the Federal Witness Protection Program.

Local law enforcement and a series of elected Cook County State's Attorneys abandoned any pretense of prosecuting organized crime and political corruption decades ago. No meaningful prosecutions have occurred without the participation of the US Attorney. On many occasions, the power elite have succeeded in placing players in the Federal Prosecutor's office as well.

What is particularly disturbing to many Chicagoans, even after repeated Federal prosecutions over the past quarter of a century, is the knowledge that many crooked political officeholders and judges remain in office having escaped the net. Some of the former Federal prosecutors who worked on the Operation Gambat (short for "gambling attorney" a code name that recognized Cooley's habitual gambling) cases are now in private practice defending the criminal suspects who are the successors to those that they formerly indicted and convicted.

Found Bob's story was told from a self serving perspective. Kind of had a ring of untruth or exaggeration that made me lose interest.

When people talk about organized crime in Chicago, they usually mean Al Capone and the gangs that operated during Prohibition. But in When Corruption Was King, I learned that the Chicago mob really reached its height during the seventies and eighties, when they controlled the city's police, judges and politicians. This book is about Bob Cooley, the mob lawyer who ended all of that when he decided to wear a wire for three years in the late eighties. His tapes help the Feds bring down both the Mafia bosses and their associates in the courts and government during several landmark trials during the nineties. The writer, Hillel Levin, tells the story in Cooley's own voice. He's a loud mouth and a braggart, but always interesting with some amazing stories--not just about mobsters, but a crazed Karate master, a cop who runs the traffic court and even a member of the DuPont family who makes the mistake of tangling with a mob boss. Eventually, you realize that Cooley is a hero because he didn't have to do what he did. Instead, he had a guilty conscience thanks to his devout Catholic upbringing and especially his father, a Chicago detective who was actually honest. When Cooley does do the right thing, literally putting his life on the line, he is humiliated and made to suffer. His only reward is to watch the bad guys get convicted thanks to his tapes and testimony. It's as satisfying to watch as anything you'll read in a revenge novel.

Having lived in Chicago for years I relished this book. Reading it was like sitting in a dive bar and listening to the outrageous, hilarious, and probably sociopathic Sout' Side guy next to you tell tales of Windy City corruption so depraved you know they've got to be true.

as a native of chicago, this book was truly enlightening. you hear about corruption and scandal all the time on the news and basically pass it off and forget about it.

well this book was written by an insider who started off as a corrupt police officer, then an even worse lawyer. it tells how anyone can be bought, how the mob ran chicago and how one man brought the mob to their knees.

any chicagoan definitely should read it. anyone who believes that the system is corrupt should run and read it.

Well, what with all the current hullaballoo in City Hall, I thought I'd check to see how many people had rated this book-

Not enough, they should be covering this in the public schools so that kids will grow up in Chicago not thinking our corrupt system is "normal".

This book is crazy, if I didn't know several people who have independently verified tales in it, I'd think it must be fiction, but it isn't.

What really kills you is not simply how many people sell out, but how cheaply they do so.

buy this book.