Trial resumes with Field Museum testimony

A longtime Field Museum government affairs director was calling powerful Chicago Ald. Edward Burke to ask for his support for the museum’s fee-increase proposal in September 2017 when he caught her off guard with an immediately chilly demeanor.

“Well, uh, I was surprised to hear from you as a matter of — to be very frank,” a gruff-sounding Burke said to Deborah Bekken on the Sept. 8, 2017, call, which was played for the jury at his corruption trial Monday. Burke grew more icy as he explained that he’d recommended a good friend’s daughter for an internship at the Field Museum but never heard back.

“I was quite disappointed and surprised that I never heard another word after my initial request,” the alderman said on the call, which was secretly being recorded by the FBI. “So now, you’re going to make a request of me?”

Bekken had no idea at the time what internship Burke was talking about. She stammered in reply: “Well, uh, what I wanted to do was to ― ” before Burke cut her off again.

“I’m sure I know what you want to do, because if the chairman of the Committee on Finance calls the president of the Park Board, your proposal is going to go nowhere,” Burke snapped.

That tense exchange formed the backbone of allegations in the Burke indictment that the then-powerful alderman threatened to block the Field Museum’s $2-per-person admission fee increase because it had dropped the ball on the internship recommendation, which was for the daughter of Burke’s longtime friend, former Ald. Terry Gabinski, 32nd.

Bekken testified Monday she was “very surprised” by Burke’s demeanor on the phone. “I perceived him to be very upset,” she said. “I perceived it as a threat.”

On cross-examination by Burke attorney Joseph Duffy, however, Bekken said that when she and other top museum officials met with Burke a little more than week after the phone call, he couldn’t have been more cordial and spent most of the time regaling them with stories of Chicago history.

In fact, she said the issue of the internship application never even arose.

In later testimony, Bekken’s former boss, retired Field Museum President Richard Lariviere, told the jury that despite some harsh language, Burke never threatened him when he called later that same day to smooth things over.

While it was clear Burke had been embarrassed and angered by the episode, Lariviere, who had become good friends with the alderman, said he never felt that the fee increase was in any jeopardy because of it.

[ Corruption trial of ex-Ald. Edward Burke: What you need to know ]

Burke, 79, who left the City Council in May, is charged with 14 counts including racketeering, federal program bribery, attempted extortion, conspiracy to commit extortion and using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity.

The Field Museum issue is one of four main episodes charged in the indictment, and the only one that does not center on Burke trying to get business for his property tax appeal law firm, Klafter & Burke. It also does not involve Burke’s two co-defendants, former 14th Ward aide Peter Andrews Jr. and real estate developer Charles Cui.

Burke’s attorneys stressed to the jury in opening statements that being angry isn’t against the law. Prosecutors, however, alleged said Burke had made a “clear threat” to kill the Field Museum’s proposed fee increase.

Before getting into the recordings, prosecutors on Friday called FBI Special Agent Jennifer Avila to establish how far back Burke and Gabinski’s friendship goes. The jury was shown city records showing both men were sworn in as aldermen on the same day: March 11, 1969.

The call with Bekken ended with her saying she would look into what went wrong with the application. Burke quickly said, “Well, somebody better.”

“We are working on fixing it. We will definitely fix it,” Bekken said, before Burke replied curtly, “Thank you,” and hung up.

Half an hour after the call, Bekken emailed her boss with the subject line, “We have a problem,” explaining that Burke was irate over the internship breakdown. Though Burke had no direct jurisdiction over the Field Museum’s pricing, everyone at the museum knew he took a keen interest in fees and could make an increase difficult to pass, Bekken testified.

“The whole effort of trying to schedule a meeting with Alderman Burke was to try to make sure we didn’t have an upset public official,” Bekken told the jury. “It was obvious I already had an upset public official and I had no idea why.”

The issue touched off a scramble inside the Field Museum to figure out what had happened to the daughter’s application and how to placate Burke.

Bekken wrote in a subsequent email that maybe they could offer Burke a “mea culpa prize,” like “an internship that he can award as a scholarship to an intern of his choosing?”

Her boss, then-Vice President Charles Katzenmeyer, replied, “Good thinking, let’s bring a few of these ideas to him when we visit the Great Man in his history shrine.”

Bekken testified that her other idea was to offer a “special discount day to seniors” in Chicago “and start with Ald. Burke’s ward.” But ultimately that idea wasn’t workable, she said. “We couldn’t offer something to Ald. Burke and his ward without doing things for all the other wards,” she testified.

The museum instead offered Gabinski’s daughter, Molly, the chance to apply for a full-time paid position as a museum coordinator. In a recorded call from Sept. 12, 2017, five days after Burke’s dressing down of Bekken, the alderman told Molly’s mother that he had “read them the riot act because of the way they treated (the) application.”

Her mother, Celeste Gabinski, said they were appreciative of the effort, but that Molly had by then “moved on” to another job and was doing very well. “She’s happy. … I don’t know if we should even pose this to her?” the mother said.

In the end, Molly Gabinksi never applied for the job, and the Field Museum’s fee increase was passed by the Park District board later that month, according to records and testimony Monday.

Lariviere, meanwhile, testified that when he took over as head of the museum in 2012, he was “advised to stay on Alderman Burke’s good side” because of the alderman’s history of objecting loudly and publicly to fee increases at Chicago’s museums.

So, within minutes of Burke’s scolding of Bekken, Lariviere called the alderman with hat in hand.

“I’m calling, first of all to apologize, because I understand that we dropped the ball on a request from you,” Lariviere said on the recording, which was played in court Monday afternoon.

[ Ex-Ald. Edward Burke corruption trial: Evidence seen and heard by the jury ]

“Uh, you sure did,” Burke shot back. “And I’m sure it’s not you, but, uh, I consider you a personal friend and I was very disappointed and uh, embarrassed that I would never get a call back.”

When Lariviere asked whether it was an internship Molly Gabinksi was after, Burke replied, “That’s what she applied for. Uh, but not anymore.”

“I’m really feeling s—– about this,” Lariviere says. “Can I get in touch with her and see what we can do?” Burke replied, “That ship has already left the dock.”

Lariviere told Burke he would get to the bottom of it. “You’re perfectly justified,” Lariviere said. “And now that I have her name, maybe we can find, in emails or something, what the hell happened here, because when you call Ed, everybody knows, we jump.”

[ Timeline: Edward Burke, once Chicago’s longest-serving alderman, faces a federal trial ]

But in cross examination by Burke attorney Chris Gair, Lariviere confirmed he believed his conversation with Burke to be not as confrontational as it may have sounded. Lariviere also said he was laying it on a bit thick in an attempt to smooth things over.

“Well, Mr. Burke was clearly upset, embarrassed and angry, but it was still a call between friends,” Lariviere said.

Lariviere also confirmed that he had received commemorative Chicago Fire Department medals as presents from Burke because he’d had relatives serve in the department. Burke also was known to give him neckties as Christmas presents, he said.

“I was hoping you were going to wear one of them today so I could ask you about it,” Gair said.

[ From Chicago machine maestro to indicted alderman, Ed Burke’s corruption trial follows half-century of clout ]

Burke smiled repeatedly during Gair’s testimony, including when Lariviere spoke about the neckties and his desire to have Burke sign copies of his books about Chicago history.

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The trial got an unexpected — and unusual — afternoon break when, in the middle of Lariviere’s testimony, one of U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall’s two well-behaved therapy dogs, Birdie, jumped down from behind the judge’s bench and ambled over near where Andrews, Burke’s co-defendant, was sitting, and made it clear she had urgent business of her own.

“Uh, your honor?” Andrews said, as the judge saw what was happening and quickly recessed the proceedings. After her law clerks helped clean up the mess, Kendall said one of the jurors apparently had given Birdie a whole package of treats, albeit “with no bad intentions.”

After Gair said Birdie would probably be in the newspapers, Kendall said it was too bad.

“It’s such a shame, because she’s such a good girl,” the judge said.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com

rlong@chicagotribune.com

mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com

Originally Published: Nov 20, 2023 at 8:16 am