* After an October 6 meeting with Harris and Individuals A and B, during which Individual B sought state help with a business venture, Blagojevich told Individual A to approach Individual B about raising $100,000 for Friends of Blagojevich this year. Individual A said he later learned that Blagojevich reached out directly to Individual B to ask about holding a fund-raiser;

• Also on October 6, Blagojevich told Individual A that he expected Highway Contractor 1 to raise $500,000 in contributions and that he was willing to commit additional state money to a Tollway project - beyond $1.8 billion that Blagojevich announced on October15 - but was waiting to see how much money the contractor raised for Friends of Blagojevich; and

• On October 8, Blagojevich told Individual A that he wanted to obtain a $50,000 contribution from Hospital Executive 1, the chief executive officer of Childrens Memorial Hospital in Chicago, which had recently received a commitment of $8 million in state funds. When the contribution was not forthcoming, Blagojevich discussed with Deputy Governor A the feasibility of rescinding the funding.

On October 21, the Government obtained a court order authorizing the interception of conversations in both a personal office and a conference room used by Blagojevich at the offices of Friends of Blagojevich. The FBI began intercepting conversations in those rooms on the morning of October 22. A second court order was obtained last month allowing those interceptions to continue. On October 29, a court order was signed authorizing the interception of conversations on a hardline telephone used by Blagojevich at his home. That wiretap was extended for 30 days on November 26, according to the affidavit.

Without going through it word by word, it's important to notice than everything resembling a cash bribe precedes the wiretap and bug. Cash was allegedly discussed October 6 and October 8; the bug and wiretap went up two weeks later.

Cash payments don't figure in material arising from the bug and wiretap, and the basic flavor of what they have recorded is captured in this segment:

Also on November 12, in a conversation with Harris, the complaint affidavit states that Blagojevich said his decision about the open Senate seat will be based on three criteria in the following order of importance: our legal situation, our personal situation, my political situation. This decision, like every other one, needs to be based upon that. Legal. Personal. Political. Harris said: legal is the hardest one to satisfy. Blagojevich said that his legal problems could be solved by naming himself to the Senate seat.

There's not much question that Blago was trying to squeeze some advantage for himself out of the Senate appointment. But the wiretap doesn't seem to support previous allegations about bribery, and the material presented by the US Attorney doesn't offer any additional support for those allegations.

This comment is getting outrageously long, but there's one more fairly significant aspect of the authorization for the bug and wiretap that any decent courthouse reporter would cover: