It is a 40-second phone call whose contents could answer the biggest question of the crack cocaine video scandal: did Mayor Rob Ford ask friend Alexander (Sandro) Lisi to retrieve the cellphone containing the embarassing video?

The call was made at 8:18 p.m. on Thursday, May 16, last year, just as news of the video’s existence was breaking, according to police documents filed in court.

What was said on that call is a mystery, as neither Ford nor Lisi’s phone was subject to a wiretap, and neither man will talk to police.

What immediately followed that call, according to a series of wiretaps released by a judge Thursday, were serious threats by Lisi to people whose phones were tapped, and discussions among several people of threats allegedly made by Lisi.

According to calls police did intercept, the hours that followed that Ford-Lisi call were filled with threats by Lisi that unless the crack video was turned over, “you’re f---ing dead and everyone on your block is dead,” according to one man’s account of Lisi’s threat. At no time in the wiretaps does Lisi say anybody told him to retrieve the video.

Over the next two days, Lisi spoke to several people connected to the crack video. To one, Lisi said: “Tell all his boys that it’s going to get worse and worse, all summer, until that phone gets back and that the whole place is going to get lit up,” according to the documents released by the judge.

Toronto police have charged Lisi with extortion over alleged attempts to retrieve the video. Detectives are continuing to investigate to learn whether others were involved.

The Ontario Provincial Police, which were tasked with overseeing the Toronto detectives, have taken a back seat on the probe and will only assist if new information is provided to them by the Toronto police.

Thursday, while Ford was giving an impromptu press conference celebrating that he had been “cleared” in the Project Brazen 2 probe into alleged wrongdoing on his behalf, a Toronto judge ordered the release of wiretap information related to the case.

Selected wiretaps form part of police documents filed in January and March seeking to obtain warrants in the ongoing investigation, and the Star successfully challenged a ban on their publication.

Justice Ian Nordheimer heard arguments last week from Lisi’s lawyer that releasing the actual wiretaps would hurt Lisi’s chance of a fair trial in front of a jury. Nordheimer ruled that releasing them would not, saying that if the wiretaps are ruled admissable in Lisi’s trial, then he trusts jurors to focus on the actual conversations played in court. He noted that any past media reports of those conversations would be “quickly forgotten.” Should the wiretaps be ruled inadmissable, Nordheimer said, there would not be much left of the case.

Nordheimer said it is of vital importance that information surrounding the investigation be subjected to “public scrutiny,” and that scrutiny is an “indispensible tool in guaranteeing the integrity of the court process and the public confidence in it.”

The newly released wiretaps are part of a growing document (now 504 pages) that police have used to seek multiple search warrants to gain access to homes and telephone records — records of who is calling whom and at what time.

The Star has not been given access to any judicial authorizations for wiretaps related to Project Brazen 2. The wiretap information released Thursday come from the Project Traveller guns and gangs investigation, in which detectives inadvertently picked up Ford-related chatter.

Not yet made public is the contents of audio and video recordings made on Lisi’s phone in the period in question and uploaded to iCloud, recently obtained under warrant from Apple headquarters in California — as well as dialled-number records of calls made by Ford, his logistics director David Price, and others.

The search warrant documents make it clear that times are very important in the police investigation; detectives have meticulously noted when events took place.

On Feb. 17, 2013, just after the supper hour, the crack video was filmed at the Etobicoke home of Ford friends Elena Johnson and her brother Fabio Basso, at 15 Windsor Rd.

The wiretap records describe alleged gang members discussing how Ford wanted to retrieve the video and had allegedly offered $5,000 and a car for it, but was rebuffed. Mohamed Siad, who made the video, muses about going back to Ford and asking for $150,000. It is not known if he did that.

On April 1, the Toronto Star was contacted by Mohamed “Big Dog” Farah, launching what would ultimately be an unsuccessful bid to sell the video for upwards of $200,000.

Siad, who made the video, showed it to the Star late in the evening on May 3, a stone’s throw from the Johnson-Basso home. The Star did not buy the video and reporters set about probing the case.

On Thursday, May 16, in late afternoon, the mayor’s office received calls from the Gawker website (which had also been offered the video for sale) and others asking about the video. According to the police document, Ford told chief of staff Mark Towhey: “Don’t worry about it, there is no tape.”

Ford called Lisi that May 16 afternoon, but the call was just two seconds long. Police have a “dialled number record” warrant that shows them when calls were made and how long they lasted.

Then, at 8:18 p.m., Ford called Lisi. The call lasted 40 seconds. Ten minutes later, Gawker broke the news of the crack video online. The Star published its story just after 11 p.m.

Soon after Ford’s mystery call to Lisi, telephone lines belonging to people connected to the crack video lit up.

According to the wiretaps, Lisi first made inquiring calls, asking shortly after 9 p.m. if certain people knew where the video could be found. He reminded one man, Liban Siyad, that he, Lisi, was the fellow who retrieved Ford’s lost cellphone on April 20 after a drug party at 15 Windsor Rd., the same place the crack video was filmed.

Lisi is heard reminding Siyad that he remembers him showing the photo of Ford with alleged gang members in front of the Windsor Rd. bungalow.

Lisi then asked Siyad to help get the video, offering a “reward,” which police say is a reference to the marijuana Lisi gave Siyad when the lost phone was retrieved the previous month.

According to the wiretaps, it was not long before Lisi’s calls turned threatening.

Lisi was captured in a call to Siyad warning that “heat” would be brought on the community until the phone containing the crack video was returned.

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In some of the calls, Siyad and others are speaking about Lisi’s calls that night and the next day.

Lisi allegedly said: “If that video gets released I’m gonna, I’m gonna run through all your houses, me and all the, all the Toronto police,” according to a conversation on an intercepted call.

There is a great deal of discussion of increased police presence and a fear that police are about to raid the community due to the crack video story, because “Rob Ford is going mad,” according to one of the calls.

The next morning, May 17, Lisi was outside Ford’s house running interference when reporters showed up to interview the mayor about what were then stunning allegations. Lisi and Price, Ford’s logistics director, were both at the home. The Star has previously reported that after Ford headed to City Hall, Lisi and Price headed towards the Dixon Rd. community that was at the heart of the Project Traveller raids the following month.

As the morning progressed, numerous people in the Dixon Rd. community made calls to discuss what they believed to be a desperate situation. One man issued a warning to Mohamed Siad, the man who made the video and was trying to sell it to the Star and Gawker.

“Be careful of (Mayor Rob Ford) because he knows a few dirty cops and other people,” he said in an intercepted call.

Over at 15 Windsor Rd., calls to Ford friend Elena Johnson were also intercepted. Johnson has publicly been a staunch ally of Ford and told the Star he is “the best mayor Toronto has ever had.”

Overheard on calls to Johnson from a person whose phone was tapped was the following:

“He’s the f---ing mayor of Toronto,” Johnson says in one wiretapped call in which she discusses what she calls the stupidity of Mohamed Siad to make the video at her home. Johnson is the person who, off-camera, goads Ford into making untoward comments about minorities and gays.

“We’re going to feel the heat everywhere ... not just in f---ing Dixon Park, we’re going to feel it, people at Weston Road’s going to feel it, people on Jane Street gonna feel it, everywhere,” Johnson, 51, says in a conversation recorded three days after the Star and Gawker broke news of the video’s existence.

The whole place is going to be “lit up,” another person, a man, says in one wiretapped conversation.

While Johnson, whose house has been referred to as the neighbourhood “crack house,” and gang members were bracing themselves for what might come, much of their ire was directed toward Siad, the self-styled videographer who decided on Feb. 17, 2013, to capture Ford’s impaired rant on his iPhone 4s.

Siad, Johnson told an associate, was an idiot for deciding to capture Ford on film while they were at her home.

“The f---ing goof did it at my house,” says Johnson, then telling Liban Siyad she now has “Rob’s people and cops coming every day.”

Siad, who showed the video to the Star and tried to sell it for $200,000, has effectively ruined the neighbourhood drug business, Johnson says.

“He only f---ed your business up, he f---ed my business up, he f---ed everybody; the whole area is going down” because of Siad, she says.

As for her younger brother Fabio’s high school chum, Johnson says she had warned the group of Dixon drug dealers about Ford.

“I told you guys from the beginning, he’s a big f---ing idiot,” Johnson says in the wiretapped conversation.

As to whether Siyad has the video, he says he doesn’t (other wiretaps reveal Mohamed Siad still had it at the time), but if he did, he says, he would bring it directly to Elena’s house “and give it directly to Rob.”