Mob wouldn't boch summer corporate crises

Mob wouldn't botch summer's corporate crises

September 8, 2000, Friday, Cook/DuPage/Fox Valley/Lake/McHenry

BY Chuck Goudie

The summer of shame for Nicor and Firestone has actually resulted in a valuable public service.

Experts should now be confidant that both firms are run by civilians and that neither company has been infiltrated by the Mob.

The reasoning is simple. The Outfit would never have allowed corporate scandals such as faulty tires or bad gas meters to be traced to them.

In the case of Nicor, Illinois Attorney General James Ryan has filed a civil lawsuit against the gas utility after mercury contamination was detected in homes, corporate sites and junkyards. Ryan is considering criminal charges in connection with the disposal of mercury regulators.

Mobologists know that if wise guys had been in charge of natural gas service, those rusty old regulators filled with dangerous mercury would never even have been found.

Instead of being discovered last week by a TV investigative crew piled at a South suburban scrap yard, the Outfit would have chopped up the defunct regulators and deposited the remains on the bottom of Lake Michigan.

Or the regulators would have been melted into that fancy wrought-iron fencing that will soon surround Chicago.

Had the Mob been in charge, the devices certainly wouldn't have been left for dead in a junkyard in Chicago Heights of all places.

The equipment would never have been dumped in the Heights because that has been sacred mob turf since the time Albert Caesar Tocco was playing with toy guns.

If hoodlums were running the utility some leaky mercury regulators would probably have been buried in an Indiana cornfield, a la the late Spilotro brothers.

Furthermore, the Mob would never have sanctioned apologies for mercury misconduct, as we have heard on a regular basis from Nicor executives.

After all, there were no apologies to Catholics after mobsters soiled the good name of St. Valentine.

There were no apologies to Nevada taxpayers when gangsters skimmed millions from casino profits.

There were no apologies to hard working Teamsters and Laborer's Union members when Outfit stooges looted their pensions.

You've never heard an Outfit leader say "I'm sorry" for corrupting judges, aldermen, congressmen or police.

But no one has ever expected such an apology by a crime boss, nor would we believe it if it came. There is no expectation of Mob truth or honesty.

Public utilities are another matter. For decades conservative investors have trusted gas and electric utilities enough to safely sock away their small fortunes.

People could see their trust at dinnertime when they turned on the burners; in wintertime when they turned on the furnace and at dividend time when they opened the check.

But this summer all people saw was Nicor stumbling through the crisis, changing its story day by day.

It's been the same for Bridgestone/Firestone Tire Co.

Consumers have learned to trust the tires that separate them from potholes, highway debris and pavement whizzing underneath at 65 miles per hour.

When motorists' tires start to pop, the public trust deflates and corporate excuses can't patch the hole.

"I come before you to apologize to you, the American people," said Masatoshi Ono, chief executive of Bridgestone/Firestone this week at a Senate hearing.

"We feel a heavy responsibility to make certain that we are worthy still of your continued trust and confidence," said Ono.

Mobwatchers offer that as proof that the Japanese tire maker is not connected to Yakuza, Japan's well-disciplined Mob.

The protocol for an executive in the grasp of Yakuza would have been to "amputate a finger from his own hand, then present it to the offending party as a gesture of sincerity," according to congressional investigators.

Mr. Ono offered an apology for the 88 deaths, but neither pinkie.

A mea culpa such as Ono's to Congress could only come from a CEO in the year 2000. It would never come from a mob leader.

Once, when crusty Chicago Outfit boss Anthony "Joe Batters" Accardo was called to Capitol Hill to testify at a crime hearing, he didn't apologize for the lives lost under his reign nor the rackets he ran.

Accardo stymied the committee chairman by claiming merely to be a career beer salesman. He took the Fifth to any serious questions.

Of course so far there are no criminal charges against anybody involved in the tire tread problem or the mercury contamination. And nobody has suggested mobsters are involved in any of this summer's mayhem.

But the executives now looking for atonement in both fiascoes might consider adopting Tony Accardo's explanation years ago when congressmen asked him about his role as leader of the Chicago organization.

In sworn testimony, Accardo said, "I've never been a boss, sir ... I've never been a boss."

Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Friday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC/7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by e- mail at goudie@mediaone.net.