* I was surprised that nobody followed up on my subscriber-only story this week, so I decided to use it in my Sun-Times column. Let’s all try to be very, very careful in comments, please. I don’t want to see any rumors posted and he’s innocent until proven guilty. With that in mind, read on…

The biggest story under the Illinois Statehouse dome this week wasn’t the landmark change to public employee pension plans.

It wasn’t the Senate’s passage of a school voucher measure.

It wasn’t that state Sen. Susan Garrett might very well be Gov. Quinn’s choice as a running mate.

The story that had everybody talking was something I wrote for my newsletter subscribers about how a well-known Statehouse lobbyist admitted he had been cooperating with a federal corruption investigation for the past two years.

Bob Swaim has been around forever. He lobbies for the gaming industry and several other clients. Last week, a very brief story appeared in the Springfield newspaper that Swaim had been indicted by the Central Illinois U.S. Attorney’s office on tax charges. He allegedly owes the IRS almost $400,000 going all the way back to 1990.

On Monday, Swaim sent an e-mail to a group of friends that shocked them to no end.

“More than two years ago,” Swaim wrote, “I was pressured into cooperating with the Federal Government regarding their investigations of public corruption in Springfield and Illinois.”

Swaim claimed he did “everything” the feds asked him to do during those two years. But last December, the government allegedly revealed to him that some of his friends were “the targets of their investigation.” He stopped cooperating, he said, and the feds played “hardball” with him, leading to the indictment.

Everybody on that e-mail list probably choked on their coffee when they read those lines. If the feds really are playing hardball with him, they could grab that e-mail and see who belongs to his inner circle of friends. Not a smart move.

The first thing I did when I obtained the e-mail was call the U.S. Attorney’s office in Springfield. I wanted to get the standard “We can’t comment on an ongoing investigation” response and to make sure I wasn’t going to blow a case or something. I don’t need any trouble with the federales. No way.

After a very pleasant U.S. Attorney representative thanked me for the heads up, I called Swaim, but he understandably refused to talk.

I wanted to know how far he went. For instance, did he wear a wire? Was the probe related to Rod Blagojevich or were they looking at something completely different? I didn’t get a chance to ask much else.

Those same questions, and more, were asked by many folks under the dome this week.

Some tried to replay in their heads any conversations they had with Swaim during the past two years that could be taken out of context (or worse).

Others pondered whether there were any warning signs. Just about everybody debated who those allegedly targeted “friends” were and what the feds were up to.

The vast majority of people in politics are honest, even scrupulous. But it’s not hard to see how much pressure the feds can use to make their cases.

Heck, even I’m scared of them, and I have no reason to be. There’s no telling what somebody might say under those circumstances.

Also, the stain on state politics that the Blagojevich indictment has wrought is making this business intolerable for some.

Another investigation will just make matters worse for the honest ones, at least in the short term.

“Just what we need,” one guy said with a sigh this week as he tried to pass a bill. “More heat.”

“Now I find myself in a strange and unfair place,” Swaim wrote to his friends.

Yeah, so does everybody else while we all wait around to find out what’s really going on.

Again, make sure to keep the comments free of rumors and other over the top stuff. You don’t want to be banned for life, do you? Thanks.