Mayor livid over 'ridiculous' headline
A furious Mayor Daley on Wednesday denounced as guilt by association attempts to link him to a Bridgeport trucker implicated in the bombing of a suburban restaurant.
Outfit hit man Nicholas Calabrese fingered Fred Barbara in the 1980s bombing of Horwath's Restaurant in Elmwood Park, a reputed mob hang-out, while testifying as the government's star witness in the Family Secrets mob case.
What enraged Daley was a front-page headline in the Sun-Times that read, "Hit man: Daley pal in on mob bombing."
"It's ridiculous. Just another headline you provide. . . . It's ridiculous to basically place me in that position. That's how you do it," the mayor told reporters.
Pressed on whether he considers Barbara a friend, Daley said, "Any other questions?"
Mayoral press secretary Jacquelyn Heard explained Daley's outrage: "Just that you were able to put 'Daley' and 'mob' in a headline on the front page simply because he knows the guy? . . . Would you like to see your name just placed in the front-page headline which millions of people read so somehow, by association, it looks like he has involvement?"
Daley has long contended he has precious few friends and that the terms "mayoral pal" and "mayoral crony" are loosely and unfairly used to smear him.
He's making the same claim about Barbara, who told Chicago Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin last year that he is "definitely a friend" of Daley.
City Hall sources confirmed that view Wednesday. They describe Daley and Barbara as longtime friends who have golfed together.
Barbara's wife, father and daughter's mother-in-law all cashed in on the city's scandal-plagued Hired Truck program. Barbara made a fortune hauling garbage to landfills until 1996, when blue-bag recycling was launched, then sold his companies in a deal potentially worth $100 million.
Barbara still works as a consultant for the company that operates Chicago's waste transfer stations and hauls garbage to landfills and gets monthly payments based on the amount of trash city garbage trucks dump at Barbara's former transfer station.
County Commissioner John Daley, the mayor's brother, sold insurance to Barbara's companies.
Recently, Barbara contributed $27,500 to a political fund created to elect Daley's City Council allies.
"They're childhood friends, but he's not one of the regulars or one of those people in the [inner] circle," said a Daley confidante.
Barbara is a grandson of Bruno Roti Sr., who was one of Chicago's earliest organized crime bosses, according to FBI files.
In 2004, shortly after the Sun-Times broke the Hired Truck scandal, Daley told reporters, "Sure I know Fred Barbara." The mayor said their families don't vacation together, but he acknowledged he had seen them at a few "banquets."
Contributing: Scott Fornek