An Investigation by Any Other Name . . .

Creating code names for undercover operations provides an additional layer of secrecy for the government--and sometimes an element of fun.

When an FBI supervisor in Chicago asked agents for names for the investigation into the court system, one of them was reading a racing form. “Greylord” was the name of a horse running that day and is now the name of one of the most successful government stings.

Other names are more obvious. “Abscam” was a combination of Arab and scam just as “Brilab” was a combination of bribery and labor. In California, the investigation of bribery and special interests in Sacramento was code named “Brispec.”

Imagination and even a little levity apparently came into play when the FBI named its twin investigations of the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

At the Board of Trade, where grain futures are traded, the probe was code named “Sour Mash” after the distilled grains used in some whiskeys. It also was an investigation that turned lucrative trading practices in grain futures sour for some traders and brokers.

At the Mercantile Exchange, financial institutions, insurance companies and multinational companies protect their exposure to sudden economic changes by hedging with futures contracts in currencies, stock indexes and precious metals. The government believed there was fraud in some of that activity, so they named that investigation “Hedgeclipper.”