Why would a U.S. Senator check into the hospital using an alias? [View all]

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/lawmaker-news/236733-mark-kirks-use-of-an-assumed-name-last-january-was-not-the-first-time

Mark Kirk’s use of an assumed name — last January was not the first time

By Carol Felsenthal - 07/09/12 01:41 PM ET

Yesterday’s Chicago Tribune story about the queasiness of public officials revealing hospitalizations sent an alarm off in my head. Katherine Skiba and Todd Lighty, in a story prompted by Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s (D-Ill.) weird disappearance and the silence in its aftermath, focused also on Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who, they write, experiencing dizziness and numbness, checked himself into Lake Forest Hospital last Jan. 21 under the assumed name Hillel Underwood.

Skiba and Lighty quote doctors and others saying that using a fake name is done, although not often.

The reporters note that Kirk, 52, refused a request for an interview on the subject and that Eric Elk, Kirk’s Chicago chief of staff, “turned aside the question of whether Kirk had ever used {the alias Hillel Underwood} before."

He has, according to my notes of interviews with Kirk’s ex-wife Kimberly Vertolli. That alias sounded familiar to me because it came up in long conversations with Vertolli that started with my interviews with her in August 2010, during the nasty campaign against Alexi Giannoulias. Vertolli was then supporting Kirk’s election, although given also to harsh criticism of his personal life. (See my two-part Q-and-A with her) The two have since, Vertolli has told me, stopped speaking, and Vertolli filed an FEC complaint against him late last year, alleging, according to Skiba and Lighty, who broke that story in late May, "that the Kirk campaign may have improperly hidden money to {Dodie} McCracken {a former Kirk staffer and romantic interest} by paying her through another company working for the campaign. Because the money was not paid directly to McCracken, her name does not appear in Kirk's federal disclosures.”