years later that he'd been told that a RICO indictment would destroy Drexel within a month, if not sooner. As it turned out, even though Milken and Drexel signed a co-counsel agreement, Milken's legal team warned him that Drexel would almost certainly be forced to cooperate rather than risk being driven out of business by the pressures of the investigation. Nonetheless, negotiations for a possible plea agreement collapsed on December 19 when Giuliani made several demands that were far too draconian even for those who advocated a settlement. Giuliani demanded that Drexel waive its attorney–client privilege, and also wanted the right to arbitrarily decide that the firm had violated the terms of any plea agreement. He also demanded that Milken leave the firm if the government ever indicted him. Drexel's board unanimously rejected the terms. For a time, it looked like Drexel was going to fight. Only two days later, however, Drexel lawyers found out about a limited partnership set up by Milken's department, MacPherson Partners, they previously hadn't known about. This partnership had been involved in the issuing of bonds for Storer Broadcasting. Several equity warrants were sold to one client who sold them back to Milken's department. Milken then sold the warrants to MacPherson Partners. The limited partners included several of Milken's children, and more ominously, managers of money funds. This partnership raised the specter of self-dealing, and at worst, bribes to the money managers. At the very least, this was a serious breach of Drexel's internal regulations. Drexel immediately reported this partnership to Giuliani, and its revelation seriously hurt Milken's credibility with many at Drexel who believed in Milken's innocence—including Joseph and most of the board. With literally minutes to go before being indicted (according to at least one source, the grand jury was actually in the process of voting on the indictment), Drexel reached an agreement with the government in which it entered an Alford plea to six felonies—three counts of stock parking and three counts of stock manipulation. It also agreed to pay a fine of $650 million—at the time, the largest fine ever levied under the Great Depression-era securities laws. The government had dropped several of the demands that had initially angered Drexel, but continued to insist that Milken leave the firm if indicted—which he did shortly after his own indictment in March 1989. Drexel's Alford plea allowed the firm to maintain its innocence