Ex-mayor's busy personal sleuth

By Trevor Jensen | Chicago Tribune reporter
October 9, 2008
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-hed-jack-clarke-09-oct09,0,601...

Jack Clarke was Mayor Richard J. Daley's personal gumshoe.

For more than a decade, he conducted clandestine investigations for the
mayor, in part to make sure Daley found out about city corruption before
federal investigators.

An expert on organized crime and a busy private investigator until about
a week ago, Mr. Clarke, 79, died Saturday, Oct. 4, of complications from
lung cancer at his longtime home in Chicago's Wrightwood neighborhood on
the Southwest Side, his son Kevin said.

Described in news accounts of the day as a shadowy "super-sleuth," Mr.
Clarke was a Cook County probation officer in the late 1950s when Daley
enlisted him. In the mid-1960s, he became an investigator with the
city's Department of Investigations, a small unit set up so Daley could
keep tabs on city employees.

"He was a very interesting man," said Bob Wiedrich, a former Tribune
reporter and columnist who knew Mr. Clarke both as a source and a
subject of articles. "He did a lot of work for the mayor off the books
and out of sight."

In 1966, Mr. Clarke led an investigation at the Port of Chicago, where
millions of dollars a year were allegedly being lost to theft. Among his
methods was to have federal customs agents open the trunks of their cars
as they left the port.

He oversaw an undercover operation in Cook County Jail that found the
inmates were virtually in charge, with drugs widely available and
brutality among inmates unchecked. He organized efforts to keep
demonstrators from coming to Chicago for the 1968 Democratic Convention.

In 1972, Mr. Clarke helped form the so-called C-5 unit to investigate
links between cops and the mob. Police officers were called in and Mr.
Clarke demanded to know who their district commander's bagman was,
according to "Legend: The Only Inside Story about Richard J. Daley" by
former Daley press secretary Frank Sullivan.

Most told.

Mr. Clarke maintained a network of paid informants, using money provided
by the city. A federal investigation accused him of not reporting on his
tax returns money given to him for such investigative work and
obstructing a grand jury investigation into theft at the Port of Chicago.

During this case, James Thompson, then U.S. attorney, backed news
reports that Mr. Clarke had ordered police to dig up dirt on him and his
staff, ostensibly for blackmail purposes. Daley issued a denial,
accusing the future governor of political grandstanding.

Mr. Clarke pleaded guilty to the charges against him and spent 11 months
in federal prison.

"I think he was a political intelligence operative, and he had a very
broad portfolio," Thompson said Wednesday.

The son of a firefighter, Mr. Clarke grew up in St. Sabina's Parish on
the South Side and graduated from Leo High School. In the Army, he was
trained in undercover surveillance, his son said.

The full scope of Mr. Clarke's activities may never be known. After his
release from prison, he repeatedly invoked the 5th Amendment in a civil
hearing when asked whether he had bugged activities of the Black
Panthers or searched the room of a grand jury looking into the 1969
police raid that resulted in two Panthers being shot to death.

His government career was over, but Mr. Clarke continued to do
investigative work, mostly for lawyers. Rick Daniels of Daniels Long &
Pinsel in Waukegan said Mr. Clarke had an uncanny understanding of how
things worked.

"When you had Jack on your tail, look out," Daniels said. "He was very
forthright. He didn't have any tolerance for fools."

Wiedrich said that despite all the controversy, he always found Mr.
Clarke to be a straight shooter.

"There was nothing kinky about him, but he delved into the subterranean
world of the city," he said.

Mr. Clarke's wife, Eileen, died about seven years ago. He is also
survived by another son, John; two daughters, Colleen Cleary and Maureen
Dignan; a brother, James; and seven grandchildren.

Visitation is set for 2 to 9 p.m. Thursday at the Brady-Gill Funeral
Home, 2929 W. 87th St., Evergreen Park. Mass will be said at 10 a.m.
Friday at St. Thomas More Church, 2825 W. 81st St., Chicago.

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