Remember the agent that was not allowed to retire, (even though he had reached retirement age) may have triggered bringing this case to trial early.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/blagojevich/2467698,CST-NWS-fbiagent06.article
The FBI agent who ran wiretaps on Blagojevich
(Pete) Cullen retired last week as most senior agent in U.S.
EXCERPT
For more than two months preceding the arrest, Cullen spent every night coordinating more than 100 agents who, in shifts, monitored at least nine different phone lines belonging to Blagojevich and those in his inner circle.
By FBI rules, Cullen shouldn’t have even been there. He reached the FBI’s mandatory retirement age of 57 in 2006.
But again and again, Chicago’s FBI chief Robert Grant had something else in mind for the longtime agent and supervisor.
In the spring of 2008, Grant got special permission to extend Cullen’s tenure and appointed him acting assistant special agent in charge of public corruption.