Blagojevich behind bars
Five years ago, former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich reported to a federal prison in Colorado to start a 14-year sentence for corruption, said journalist David Bernstein. In his first prison interview, he details life on the inside.
R OD BLAGOJEVICH’S FIRST summer in prison was, he recalls, “quite an awakening.” He had arrived at the low-security prison in Jefferson County, Colo., 15 miles southwest of Denver, in the spring, when there was still a mountain chill in the air. But that year, 2012, Denver experienced its hottest summer on record. At the time, the former Illinois governor was housed in a dorm room with nearly 100 other inmates. The room was essentially a long, narrow hallway, partitioned into 10-man cubicles. Metal bunks lined the walls, jammed in tight. Blagojevich slept on a top bunk. “It was extremely close quarters,” he notes. “Just a lot of men with a lot of noise—bad sounds and bad smells.” Blagojevich is telling me this story in an email. It is the first time since being incarcerated more than five and a half years ago that he has been interviewed. The facility didn’t have air-conditioning, either, he continues. “The heat was oppressive. Sleeping in that heat was almost impossible.” To cool down, he employed a prison trick. He emptied out the contents from the plastic bag of cereal he purchased from the commissary and filled it with ice right before evening lockdown. Prison officials brought in several large fans and placed them around the room, but there weren’t enough to make much difference. The biggest and toughest inmates, he remembers, would turn the fans to blow toward themselves. Blagojevich sums up the experience this way: “Extreme heat, drenched in sweat, with no air movement, scores of angry men, snoring and other bad, unpleasant sounds— I remember moaning to myself, ‘How the f did I end up here?’” F OR MANY OF us, the last images we carry of Rod Blagojevich are from March 15, 2012. The sun had yet to rise when the former governor opened the door of his house in Chicago’s Ravenswood Manor neighborhood and bounded down the front steps toward a waiting car. He was leaving to catch a flight to Denver to start serving his 14-year prison sentence for corruption. The most sensational of the 18 federal counts had him trying to hawk Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat for campaign contributions or political favors. (Five of those counts were tossed on appeal in 2015, though his sentence was not reduced.) Five years, two months, and eight days later, on a May afternoon, a call with a 303 area code pops up on my cellphone. My phone interview with Rod Blagojevich, Inmate 40892-424, was scheduled for 2 p.m. But it’s only 1:51. Rod Blagojevich, early? While governor, he was chronically and unapologetically late for events, if he showed up at all. But here he was—early— on the other end of the line.
Weeks before, Blagojevich had agreed to an in-person visit, but officials at FCI Englewood denied the request. They allowed instead two telephone interviews: a 30-minute call in May and an hour-long one in July.
Those conversations—as well as six lengthy emails Blagojevich sent me via his lawyer and several interviews with his wife, Patti— offer detailed glimpses into his life behind bars, his relationship with his wife and two daughters, and his thoughts on his future.
I begin our May call by noting that many people presume he’s at a “Club Fed.” Blagojevich responds that it feels nothing like a vacation: “It’s really a prison.”
Opened in 1940, FCI Englewood sits on 320 acres in the foothills of the snowcapped Rocky Mountains next to Littleton, Colo. The low-security facility, where Blagojevich began his sentence, houses some 920 prisoners. If it weren’t for the guards armed with assault rifles and the razor wire encircling it, one might mistake FCI Englewood for a suburban high school. On the same campus is the less restrictive minimumsecurity prison camp where Blagojevich was transferred in November 2014 and now resides, along with 170-plus other inmates.
Blagojevich asked to serve his time at FCI Englewood for several reasons. For starters, it’s one of the few federal prisons to house both low-security and minimum-security facilities. This is important because it makes it quicker and easier for inmates to transfer from one to the other. Second, while there are several low-security prisons much closer to Chicago, FCI Englewood’s proximity to Denver’s airport actually makes it easier for Blagojevich’s family to visit. Third, as Patti Blagojevich points out, Forbes once ranked FCI Englewood among the “12 Best Places to Go to Prison”; it is one of the least violent and least crowded federal sites. Last, but not least important for the inmate, is the inordinate number of days the sun peeks out in Colorado, which Blagojevich thought would help him stay upbeat.
Still, the long sentence has weighed heavily on him. “It’s a terrifying prospect,” he says. “I can’t lie.” He won’t be eligible for early release until he serves a little more than 12 years. He will be 68 then.