Once they all gathered in the glass conference room, a meeting ensued that by Whelan's account was brief and unsatisfying, almost farcical.
The phone company executive carried with him a key document given him by Wojdak. It listed Fumo's requirements, the most drastic of which were handwritten by the lobbyist after conferring with the senator.
Whelan testified that he told Cohen and Makadon "that the document that I had with me had a number of demands from Sen. Fumo, and we were concerned about the propriety of agreeing to those demands.
"I took it out of the folder that I had and pushed it on the table, and it was pushed back to me. They specifically didn't want to see the document.
"After several minutes of discussion, Mr. Cohen said, 'Dan, find a way of working it out. That's our advice to you. Find a way of working it out.' "
Whelan added: "They said find a way to work it out with the senator. That was the sole and repeated language they used."
Conover, who was also at the meeting, declined a request for an interview.
According to a source, she corroborated to the FBI Whelan's failed attempt to show the lawyers the document.
Whelan also testified that he and Conover asked Cohen and Makadon whether they should report Fumo's demands to federal prosecutors, but never got an answer. Conover also corroborated this.
Cohen is now a top Comcast executive, chairman of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, and the incoming head of the board of trustees of the University of Pennsylvania.
He has declined to discuss the meeting.
"I'm not interested in talking about this," Cohen said recently.
Makadon spoke briefly with The Inquirer during the trial. Asked for a follow-up interview, he said, "I have nothing more to say."
In the paper's one interview, on Jan. 5, Makadon said he did not remember telling Whelan to "work it out" with Fumo.
"I don't recall that phrase," Makadon said.
Of the demand list, he said, "I never saw it. He didn't try to hand me a document."
Makadon also said that it was "unlike me to tell somebody I wouldn't read a document."
In general, Makadon said, "the only thing I remember from the meeting was there was a [Verizon] case up on appeal. I don't remember anything about demands, or anything like that. I told him he should try to win that appeal . . . get the best offer possible. That's all that I remember."
Makadon's private view reportedly was that Fumo's tactics were nasty, hard-edged bargaining, but not obviously criminal. He also thought that Verizon was in a tough spot, given Fumo's clout in Harrisburg, with judges and state regulators.
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