Lessons in Investigative Journalism | Carol Marin | TEDxMidwest

Carol Marin, a Veteran Investigative Journalist, taps into her audience's deeply rooted interest in bad guys and catastrophic events. She is completely captivating as she recounts thrilling tales of organized crime and political corruption in Chicago as well as the fear and chaos of the day she spent rushing toward the falling Twin Towers in New York City.

Thank you very much!

So, I've learned a lot of lessons
as an investigative reporter,

and I thought
we'd just get right into it.

Lesson number one:
you could get somebody killed.

(Laughter)

I've reported on organized crime
for a long time over the years

and in 1980 in particular,
I covered organized crime in Chicago,

and a multi-millionaire mob bookmaker
by the name of William "B .J." Jahoda.

He worked for the Cicero crew.

We in Chicago know that back in the day,
that means it was Al Capone's territory.

He worked for a mob.

What do we say about Rocky Infelice?

A really bad guy.

It was one of the cruelest,
toughest, meanest crews

and Rocky Infelice was someone
to be reckoned with.

"B" is what we called Jahoda,
what everybody called Jahoda.

He was a formal newspaper guy,
he was a brilliant word-smith.

He was an operator,
he could do the numbers in his head.

And he could keep books, and count odds
and could figure it out.

But it was also, at the heart of it,
a decent man.

Over many profitable years,
Rocky get very testy,

because they were
renegade bookmakers in Chicago.

They were independent guys,
they weren't kicking over to the Outfit,

and that was a bad thing.

Rocky ordered Jahoda to go pick
some of those guys up

on some ruse or another
and then, drop them off.

"Drop them off" said Rocky,
"and don't look back!"

Well, one of those bookmakers
was slaughtered in B.J.'s own kitchen.

It was a bloody mess.

He couldn't take it anymore and in 1989,
he agreed to be wired up by the feds

to take down Rocky and his crew,
and believe me, this was a first,

this never happened in Chicago.

Nobody penetrated the Chicago Outfit
and the whole street crew,

but Bill Jahoda did, and at great peril.

The first time he put on
a wireless microphone,

he thought it would be
some little tiny transistor radio.

It was the size of a pack of cigarettes
and they put it in the small of his back.

He said it was like a brick.

He said when he went
into his first undercover meeting,

he felt like a San Diego chicken
in a funeral parlor,

he thought everybody knew.

After six weeks of unbelievable testimony
in Federal Court,

including that most memorable
moment I sat through,

when even the judge laughed,

because B was describing Rose Laws,
a famous Chicago madam,

and how she would provide "her girls"
to the boys in Rocky's crew.

Jahoda called it
"horizontal refreshment."

(Laughter)

B.J. Jahoda took down
the whole street crew.

Rocky went to prison, B went into hiding,
into witness protection.

And he decided to give me
his first TV interview.

We were terrified.

The Mob wanted to kill him.

We had to be careful
about the meeting place.

We decided on a hotel in Wisconsin,
outside the northern district of Illinois.

But you know, we don't travel light.

So we had 2 camera crews,
3 producers, me,

and if somebody watched
the Channel 5 news, they could spot me.

We were terrified that we were going
to get him killed,

and I think B was pretty worried
about it too.

We didn't get him killed, thank God!

And in the interview,
I've got to tell you,

it was just something!

Because people called him a rat,
we called the story "Diary of a Rat."

B. J. Jahoda did his civic duty,

and stopped helping people get killed,

but it was pretty tough.

And when the interview
was almost over, I said:

"Do you still everyday fear
for your life?"

And he said:
"Let me just put it to you this way."

"They'd start the party by scooping out
my eyeballs with a teaspoon."

Lesson two:
somebody may want to kill you.

My next door neighbour called
one morning frantically and said:

"Who are the guys in your backyard
with the weapons under their arms?"

(Laughter)

It was a long story, but it begins with
a guy named Jeff Fort.

Fort is in federal prison now,

he's been in and out for
these many years.

But even to this day, he remains

one of Chicago's most feared
and most notorious gang leaders.

He was a child of the Great Migration.

He came up from Aberdeen, Mississippi,

in the 50s, to Woodlawn
on the South Side of Chicago.

And it was odd, because he was skinny,

semi-literate at best,

but he was magical.

He was a leader.

He led thousands of followers
in the 60s and 70s,

and they called him "Angel."

And in the Lyndon Johnson
War on Poverty's years,

Jeff Fort got some of that federal money,
about a million dollars,

that went to community organizations
and people with natural leadership.

And he scammed the government,
stole the money, went to federal prison.

But smart enough to realize
in federal prison

that religious organizations experience
a level of constitutional protection.

So he went: "Aha! I will form
a religion, not a gang!"

It came to be known as the El Rukns,
a Muslim religious organization.

And out of prison Jeff came back
to the streets of Chicago

with his El Rukns.

The Rukns were not just deadly,
they were small, they were secretive.

And the government had a hell of time
penetrating them and tried for many years.

Jeff quickly went back to prison
on a different charge,

it was was a drug charge.

And besides being a religious leader,
he was very good on a pay phone.

And so, from the pay phone
in another joint,

for 3500 hours of wire taps,
the feds were listening in,

as he instructed his followers
to make a deal with Muammar Gaddafi.

And they go to Libya.

Because they are Muslims
and will get to know Gaddafi.

And for 2.5 million dollars,
Jeff's group promises

promises that they will commit
acts of domestic terrorism

and shoot airliners out of the sky.

And the feds got him.

And he was in terrible trouble
in that trial.

In the meantime,
I'm doing a documentary on him,

it's called "Angel of Fear."

And the phone rings at home,

and it's an El Rukn hitman
named Billy Doyle

and El Rukn hitmen
don't call reporters at home,

so I knew I was in trouble.

I called NBC, I called the feds
and I called the police.

I didn't want to call anybody,
because as a reporter,

you belong to nobody's club.

NBC sent in security,

the feds and police
were watching the house.

The security system that was installed
came with a panic button

that looks like a garage door opener,

and if you punch it with your finger,

it creates a class-one emergency
and cops come to your house.

One morning, I am in the tub,
with my six month old son,

and my two-year-old comes
into the bathroom and goes: "Look, mom!"

(Laughter)

I knew I had 30 seconds

to either take my mascara out
from under my eyes or put on a robe,

because in 30 seconds the cops were
at the door, the doorbell was ringing.

When I opened the door, there were
two men in firing position,

they had run through the wet
cement next door,

where they were relaying sidewalks,
cement was on their shoes...

And I said: "I'm so sorry!
I'm so sorry! I really am sorry!"

Next day, I called Jeff's lawyer,
and I said:

"Tell him he made
a really bad mistake in doing this."

The lawyer said: "Jeff says he's sorry."

But I knew I had
to say sorry to somebody else.

Early the next morning,

I packed up the kids, baby on my back,
Josh next to me.

We get a cab, we go to Dunkin' Donuts,
get 12 dozen donuts,

put them in the cab,
drive to the 18th district.

A hooker and a drunk hold open the door
as they've been let out of the tank.

We go into the 18th district
I put Josh up on the desk,

and I said: "Josh, tell the sergeant
that we are sorry."

(Laughter)

And the cop, who had
an Irish brogue, of course,

goes "Oh ma'am, don't be
so hard on the boy!"

(Laughter)

Lesson number three:
prepare to be unpopular.

Over the years, we've done stories
on the most popular people in our midst.

That would include Michael Jordan
at the pinnacle of his career,

Barrack Obama at the beginning of his
historic ascendancy to the presidency.

And we are currently at The Sun-Times
engaged in yet another story

about the nephew of the Daley clan

and whether he got special consideration

in an altercation resulting in the death
of a young man in 2004

for which he had not been charged.

All three of those stories have generated
great controversy for us.

Jordan's charity was designed really
as a public relations thing for him;

giving money to the needy
was only a tiny percentage of it.

Obama had a well-connected fundraiser
named Tony Rezko

whom he didn't want talk about
during that first campaign,

and we did.

It took 18 months to persuade him to come
to our editorial board and explain it.

There's been a special prosecutor
appointed in the case of the Daley nephew

and the young man who died,
David Koschman.

There has been push-back
on all of these stories,

from all kinds of people,
but we did the stories anyway,

because it is a privilege
to be a reporter.

In exchange for that privilege,
I always tell journalism students,

that you give up some
of your normal rights as a citizen.

Which means you don't belong
to a political party,

you don't belong
to a special interest group,

and sometimes, you don't get invited
very many places to dinner,

because people don't want talk to you.

And you know what?

That's OK.

Lesson number [four]:

prepare to get more credit
than you deserve.

In 1997, I quit my job at NBC

and so did my co-anchor, Ron Magers.

At that time, NBC was under quite
a different management, they're gone now.

But they had decided
to jazz up our newscast,

and they believed that doing that
would be best accomplished

by hiring Jerry Springer as a commentator

whom we would introduce
on the 10 o'clock news.

Ron and I felt it would forever wreck
the integrity and credibility we'd built.

We protested that it would be a mistake.

We lost, they won.

We quit.

Our audience went on revolt,

called in so many calls,
they melted down the switchboard.

ten thousand calls came in, and voom.

Ron and I got a lot of attention.

National new stories were done about us,

we're given credit, praise and all that.

The fact of the matter

is that people quit their jobs
every day on principle.

I got 2000 letters, easily,

one of them from the wife of a DCFS,

Department of Children
and Family Services worker,

a guy who refused to relocate
battered children in a shelter in Chicago

because he believed
they would be sexually prayed upon there.

He was fired.

I went to the grocery store one day,
and the butcher there, his name was Bruno,

told me how he, the sole support
of a wife and kids,

refused, at another store he worked at,
to short-weigh meat,

put his thumb on the scale.

And he was fired.

The social worker and the butcher
didn't got all that press that we got,

didn't get the attention,
nobody wrote a story about them.

And they took risks
that were far greater than we did,

for rewards that were far less
than Ron and I experienced.

The day after I quit NBC,
there was a letter left for me at home.

No post mark, no real return address.

It was from B.J. Jahoda,
who picked it up on the news.

He was somewhere in witness protection,
and the letter read:

"Dear Doll, sometimes, we just have
to walk away. Love, B."

Lesson five...

be prepared for what
you cannot prepare for.

There's a sense of mission for most of us
in my business, a sense or purpose.

Like an emergency room nurse
that runs in when something happens,

or a firefighter who hears
the fire call and goes.

It's not just because
you're supposed to do it,

because you trained to do it.

It's because you want to do it,
because you believe in doing it.

On 9/11, I was in New York,

working for "60 Minutes,"
and "60 Minutes II."

Like a classic Midwesterner,
I'm in there way early,

because New Yorkers come in later.

And there are monitors, of course,
everywhere in those places.

And there are only of couple of us there,

and someone screamed out "Oh my God!"

as they saw on TV
the first plane hit the first tower.

I'd been a reporter long enough
to know when something big happens,

you get there, you get there
as fast as you can,

because police lines will close around it

and you won't get close enough
to see as much as you need to see.

I headed down to the WTC
armed with my trusty phone.

By that time,
the second tower had been hit.

And I'm on the West Side highway,
as thousands are streaming this way,

I remember one of them said:
"Stop, turn around!"

In this crazy sense of invincibility
you have when you do the work you do,

I said: "CBS news, don't worry!"

(Laughter)

And I kept going.

I assumed my cell phone would work,

but thousands of cell phones
frantically calling jammed every system.

I was on the West Side highway
when I saw the first tower

fall to the ground.

And I kept going.

I got around by West street
and there is ash on the ground

and there are firefighters,
and I showed them my ID,

and one of the firefighters said:

"Just walk down the middle of the road,
because there is falling stuff."

And there were stretchers,
but nobody was on them

and paramedics were waiting.

And that's when, as I'm walking down,
I feel the ground rumble.

And the firefighter ahead of me
turns around, screams "Run!"

I could see a fireball come out
of the base of the building,

probably the ignition of jet fuel,

as the building began to collapse.

But you don't have time to look
at those things.

I turned, I fell,

he grabbed me by my waist,
threw me on my feet.

And we ran, and he had the foresight

to spot another building
that had a marble overhang,

and he slammed me against it,
and he covered my body with his.

I could feel his heart banging
against my backbone,

because it was pounding so hard.

The morning light had turned
completely black in a second.

There were particles everywhere.

You know, there were particles of people,

and desks, and buildings,

and pens and things, and we couldn't see.

Couldn't see your hand in front
of your face, because it was so black.

I thought to myself,
this is really how firefighters die.

It isn't the flames, it is the smoke,
because you can't breathe.

The firefighter, once we felt
that the building was down,

handed me off
to a New York City police officer,

who literally, held my hand,
as we put our hands over our faces

to try to keep going, try to find
more and more light, to find our way out.

I didn't think to ask
the firefighter's name.

I did not ask the firefighter
to tell me who he was.

And that haunts me to this day.

What kind of reporter was I, you know,
that I didn't think to get his name!

I got everybody else's after that.

I got the police officer's,

I got the people
who put the oxygen on me.

I got some paramedics who got me
half way down the street.

I got the name of the bus driver

who let me hijack his bus
to take me to the CBS broadcast center.

Just not the firefighter's name, not his.

I don't know if he survived.

He turned back, and went back
to the site of the second fall.

I've looked for him,
I've written letters to authorities,

I've told this story like this often
in hopes that someday, somewhere,

someone will know who he is.

I got on the set, at CBS,
sat down next to Dan Rather,

covered in dust,
and I reported what I'd seen.

The biggest lesson I have learned of all,

every story, every day,
every year that I do this...

Is that it is a privilege
to be a reporter.

To do this work.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)