When Stern called John J. Kenny to the stand, Richard B. McGlynn, chief of the trial section of the state attorney general's office, interrupted the proceeding to announce that the state intended to proceed with its prosecution of the witness.

"If it can legally do so," Judge Shaw snapped.

His anger barely concealed, the judge told McGlynn, "I don't recognize that the state attorney general has any standing to challenge the action which I am taking . . . to immunize a witness who will testify in behalf of the government."

He warned McGlynn, "I will not permit any state official to interfere with the trial of this case in any manner whatsoever, and anyone who thinks he can do it will be before me for appropriate proceedings. I can't make myself more clear, I don't think."

Kenny was given immunity. He was 51, a handsome man with a ruddy Irish face and dark hair tinged with gray at the temples. He spoke with the classic New Jersey accent "I coit-nly did" - and his knowledge of Hudson County politics was encyclopedic. But he was not a good witness: His manner was feisty, his memory for detail was hazy, and he was not especially articulate - or politic. At one point he likened himself to John F. Kennedy.

"I find the comparison odious," said defense lawyer Raymond Brown-and no doubt many on the jury did, too.

Kenny told how he'd met John V. Kenny at his father's wake in 1944, allied himself with the Little Guy and rose through the patronage ranks until he became a freeholder in 1961 and county chairman in 1964. But they were figurehead posts. As he put it on cross-examination, "I was not able to do anything unless I had the approval of John V. Kenny."

He described how "the system" operated. He would hold checks due contractors on county projects until they kicked back; then he'd pass the payoffs to Stapleton. There were so many such payoffs that he could not remember all of them.

But he gave a few specifics. He told how Mayor Whelan had approached him at a political rally in 1964 and asked him to shake down a gambler named Lefty Marchittowho had enjoyed Jack Kenny's "protection"-for a quartermillion dollars. Kenny went to the shoeshine parlor where Marchitto held court and relayed the mayor's message. "There was no reply but a laugh." But, after some harassment by the authorities, Marchitto coughed up $15,000, which Kenny passed to Whelan.

Kenny went on to tell of shaking down the builder of a firehouse for $5000 and a sewerage construction firm for $50,000.

In 1965, he continued, Whelan thanked him for the money. "He said, `We should get together and we'd do well, and we ought to get John V. Kenny out of the picture.' "I told him to go to hell."

Kenny continued his account, telling how he'd run into Dominick Galano of J. Rich Steers Construction at Pollak Hospital, which he described as "a sort of political headquarters." Galano, the son of a Hudson County freeholder, was interested in getting work on the New Jersey Turnpike.

"I asked Mr. Galano how large that contract would be," he said. "He told me in the neighborhood of ten million.... I asked Mr. Galano for a hundred thousand. He said, `There is not a chance.' "

Kenny met later with Steers's president, Gene Rau. "I asked him for seventy-five thousand, and he said twenty-five thousand. . . . We agreed on fifty thousand." He said he passed half the money to Turnpike commissioner Sternkopf, half to Stapleton.

Soon afterward, Sternkopf went from the Turnpike Authority to the Port Authority. Steers had a four-milliondollar claim against the Port Authority for cost overruns on runway construction at LaGuardia Airport. With Kenny acting as middleman, Sternkopf agreed to expedite settlement in return for a $30,000 kickback. The payoff was divided among Kenny, Sternkopf and Kenny's brother-in-law, Edward Dooley, the Freeholders' clerk, who cashed Steers's check and paid the taxes on it.

Steers, Kenny said, also agreed to kick back $150,000 to get a contract for repair work on a Jersey City bridge, but by the time the payments came due, Kenny was out of politics and never collected.

He also told of receiving $225,000 in kickbacks from Sarubbi Construction, headed by Angelo Sarubbi, the mayor of nearby North Bergen, for work on Pollak and Mental Health hospitals. By the time the last installment of $35,000 was paid, Kenny had broken with the organization, and he simply pocketed the money.

Kenny said he sought Sternkopf's advice on investing his ill-gotten gains. The commissioner suggested south Jersey real estate. The C.E.W. Corporation was set up, with brother-in-law Dooley serving as Kenny's "dummy," while Sternkopf handled Kenny's $81,000 investment.

Finally, Jack Kenny told of getting the $50,000 from John V. Kenny at Newark Airport. Stern opened a brown briefcase and spread the bills on the rail in front of the witness stand for Kenny to identify. Kenny did so, and the prosecutor scooped up the cash in his arms, walked across the well of the court and dumped it on the defense table.

"Get that stuff away from me, whatever it is!" Van Riper shouted, while his colleagues jumped up screaming, "Objection!" and moving for a mistrial.

The defense attacked Jack Kenny with vigor, but he generally gave as good as he got. Stern's fear that he couldn't limit cross-examination proved justified. Van Riper's first question concerned the subject of the state indictment:

"Didn't you shake down the Reinauer Land Company for fifty thousand dollars?"

"I didn't - but Angelo Sarubbi did, and he brought me the money in a brown paper bag."

While Kenny was undergoing cross-examination, Stern received the first word of IRS's discovery of the Florida bank accounts. As the trial ground rules provided, Stern passed out copies of the bank records to opposing counsel. One could sense the complete collapse of Whelan's and Flaherty's defense.

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