Zaken's book of revelations

Testifying before the Jerusalem District Court on Monday, Shula Zaken leveled harsh criticism at her former boss, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, saying he was angry with her for keeping records of illicit contributions made to him over the years in a little notebook, which has now come to be known as "Shula's dairies."

But the fact of the matter, she told the court, is that Olmert did not refute even one detail of the transactions detailed in her notes. The notebook contains copious details on the steady flow of dirty money, but all Olmert ever did was sit there, with an artificial smile on his face.

Other, private conversations were documented in the notebook: Olmert dared tell her he never received any money from attorney Uri Messer, nor did he ever give him any money, and she was flabbergasted. How could he say that to her? To her -- the person who would go back and forth between them, delivering the money-

Prosecutor Uri Korev also introduced 11 segments from tapes Zaken had made of her conversations with Olmert. In one of the segments, Olmert is heard implicating himself in the case, telling Zaken that if she ever disclosed that he gave her money, it was "game over," as he put it, and he would surely be embroiled in a bribery scandal.

If Olmert still, somehow, manages to avoid conviction in this case, than he is indeed a magician.

As one tape followed another, defense attorney Eyal Rozovsky interrupted Zaken's testimony again and again, to the point where Korv had to ask the court to call Rozovsky to order. But Rozovsky, who is just one members of Olmert's substantial defense team, knew exactly what he was doing. After all, the tapes heard by the three judges presiding over the hearing were chilling.

It is up to judges Moshe Sobel, Jacob Zaban, and Rivka Friedman-Feldman to decide whether they believe Zaken, and whether her testimony would be enough to relieve Zaban and Sobel of the peculiar doubts that affected their ruling in the case to begin with.

As far as I am concerned, however, the criminal aspect of Monday's hearing was not as important as the actual nature of the things heard on the tapes.

The court, which is usually privy only to the final result of a criminal act, was afforded an unusual glimpse into the prelude of the main event, going behind-the-scenes of the alleged criminal enterprise.

This was more than an account of an alleged crime, but one detailing how it came to be; and it was more than a mere conversation between felons, but one that afforded us a unique look into the inner workings of white-collar crime.

Olmert has been involved in grave scandals, which were exposes by lucky happenstance. The public is in debt to a long line of public servants, who discovered "Shula's diaries" and the safe hidden in Messer's office, and to Eliad Shraga, head of the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, for petitioned the High Court of Justice, asking it to order the State Attorney's Office to pursue a plea bargain with Zaken.

The information revealed on Monday, and the information that will surely be exposed in hearings to come, is just as important as the future ruling in Olmert's case.

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