Conrad Black

by A Matter of Principle

  The usual plea bargain requirement that the dominoes fall upward, from the middle management to the top, was not met, but with two thin lines of saliva curving downward from the corners of their mouths, the rabid prosecutors panted forward, fuelled by the inflammatory vapour of Breeden’s lies and what would soon be revealed as Radler’s fatuous conjurations of the “silent” scheme.

  The prosecutors were noisily thrashing about in all directions, including trying to imply that I had had an extra-marital relationship with Barbara’s and my friend, radio and television news and talk-show personality Laura Ingraham. They pursued this even though it was clear from our many emails that that was not the nature of our relationship. They only desisted when she made it clear that she would not cease to object, to her seven million radio listeners, that the pursuit of me was unjust, and would respond vituperatively, as I would, to any effort to propagate this falsehood. That fact that the whole subject was irrelevant to the legal issues was, of course, irrelevant itself; the prosecutors I encountered were perversely, even dementedly nasty. They had dirty, as well as low, minds.

  Ravelston was included in the indictment thus paralyzing the controlling shareholder of Hollinger Inc., and Breeden continued to use Hollinger International in what he represented to be the public service of pursuing me. It also assured the prosecutors’ complete domination of the receiver.

  The game was already clear from their treatment of Walker at Hollinger Inc.: where there was a management, no matter how implausible and self-serving, they traded non-prosecution of the corporation – and the protection of the U.S. government for the ransacking of the company by those who were supposedly managing it – for the complete and servile cooperation of that management with the government’s assault on me. Where the management was a receiver or other official, the bargain was similar. The receiver, Richter, could remain in place and rifle Ravelston for whatever it could find, as long as it knuckled under to the U.S. prosecutor and co-operated in any way possible with prosecution battle plans.

  Eddie Greenspan would indirectly completely fluster and distract the Chicago prosecutors by giving a tutorial to the Ravelston receiver’s counsel on how to avoid the service of the action on Ravelston. As that company had no presence or assets in the United States, it could only be served in that country if it chose to facilitate the prosecution. The American officials were reduced to huffing and puffing and threatening to treat Ravelston like a fugitive from justice. Since Farley, Toronto’s chief commercial judge, who had granted the receivership application, had stayed all proceedings against Ravelston, he now had his chance to bat down the Chicago bully boys.

  I assumed he would roll over for the American prosecutors, though my absence from a direct involvement made this a more suspenseful issue than it would otherwise have been. One of the Canadian counsel asked the Americans what they were going to do. “Send up the Marines and put Ravelston’s corporate seal in prison?”

  Predictably, the receiver and its counsel waffled and announced Ravelston would enter a plea of not guilty – a totally unnecessary thing to do – with Farley’s permission. They could simply have ignored the whole thing. Ravelston was my private company, holding shares and real estate in Canada. We all assumed (correctly, it turned out) that Richter would change the plea to guilty after the proverbial decent interval as long as they could take everything moveable out of Ravelston for themselves. Ravelston’s receiver was supported by Hollinger Inc. and Hollinger International, who presented themselves as stakeholders. However, the only involvement they could claim were spurious lawsuits.

  Eddie Greenspan rose splendidly to the occasion in Farley’s court on October 3, 2005. He pointed out that Ravelston’s receiver’s counsel had no capacity to enter a plea and that the U.S. government had no standing to charge Ravelston. It was all very galling. The receiver was pledged to uphold the interest of the Ravelston stakeholders, of which I was the major one, but was appeasing the enemies of the stakeholders and was intimidated by the U.S. prosecutors. The receiver, the controllers of the Hollinger companies, Justices Farley and Campbell, and the Chicago prosecutors were all ostentatious partisans on the same side of this issue.

  As I had assumed, Farley threw out Greenspan’s motion. He treated Greenspan respectfully, but took his usual free shots at me, referring sarcastically again to the “old guard.” He warned that I must not be seen to be dominating the receiver and associated me as closely as possible with Radler by alleging that “Black and Radler had been running Ravelston.”

  Radler had nothing to do with running Ravelston; he had one-fifth of the shareholding in it that I had. Greenspan went at once to the Court of Appeal with an excellent motion pointing out the many legal errors in Farley’s finding. I had seen enough of Toronto’s courts to have a strong premonition of the result, and was not surprised when Farley’s misjudgment was upheld. The judicial deference system in and around Osgoode Hall seemed to immunize the lower court judges from having most findings of fact overturned. They visited a formidable variety of such unjust judicial divinations upon me, until, difficult years later, the fashion changed and piling on to me was less popular and less fun. It was never after this far from my thoughts that Ravelston need never have reported to the jurisdiction. I assumed that Farley, in his perverse judgment, understood it would penalize us financially, while Richter went happily along to receive their blank cheque from the prosecutors to transfer the whole value of the asset to themselves, from the stakeholders whose interests they were so richly rewarded for protecting.

  SO MY BUSINESS PARTNER OF thirty-six years was a crook and a liar after all. From the start of this horror show, he told me that he would never have dreamt of doing anything illegal and that there had been errors of execution by Boultbee, Kipnis, and Atkinson. Early on, he had claimed to Peter White that after he had completed the negotiations with the buyers of our community newspapers, the financial instructions had come from Jack Boultbee and me. As has been recorded in his lawyer’s letter to Paris and Thompson of November 2003, he had claimed that I had “initiated” the payments in respect of the U.S. community newspaper transactions. He had acknowledged to me that what he meant was that I had said that he should be rewarded for such a brilliant disposition of assets. I did say that, and he should have been.

  I had in mind, as he knew, a payment from Ravelston, not a non-compete payment, but when he told me non-compete payments had been approved by the Audit Committee for all of us and that nothing from Ravelston was necessary, and when Atkinson assured me that all was in good legal order, I did not intervene from London to have my Toronto office send back the non-compete cheque when it came in. For years afterward, the auditors and Audit Committee confirmed that everything had been done properly. Thus advised by an associate of more than thirty-five years, personal counsel of more than fifteen years, and the company’s overpaid accounting watchdogs, I can’t imagine anyone acting differently.

  If we were successful in a criminal trial, the entire assault on me would collapse. The civil cases would be fallen soufflés and the public and press bias would shift. Nothing could restore the life Barbara and I had lost, nor take back the years Barbara and I, who were no longer young, would have squandered in this desperate defence against American persecution and its Canadian excrescences. But here, at last, was a possible victorious end to the nightmare.

  In order to lay in a cash reserve sufficient to deal with the upcoming legal fees, I sold our New York cooperative apartment for a generous capital gain and gross consideration of more than $10 million. The closing kept being rolled back in a manner that made me uneasy. The buyer’s lawyer, the ubiquitous Skadden Arps (whose chairman, Ken Bialkin, was and remains a friend and supporter), had written up a title search that presented me as a virtual Al Capone figure and had presumed to contact the ineffable Sussman directly to ensure there was no problem with their clients’ acquisition of our unit at 635 Park Avenue.

  Once again, and for the second time in four months,
the gallant Barbara cleaned out a residence of ours and all the contents were moved to, and generally accommodated in, our Toronto home. The influx of paintings vastly lifted the quality of what was on our walls. She “hated giving up this apartment,” which was not large but was comfortable for our purposes, but she did it with pluck and thoroughness. I was still retreating to a defensible perimeter, as the most ominous storm signals yet were being hoisted daily.

  The U.S. government was going to indict. My business associate of thirty-six years was not going to snitch and blow his whistle – that would not be possible, since I had not done anything illegal. What he was to swear to, however, was designed to bury me and release him. His lawyer, Valukas, was now seen and reported in ardent whispered debate, rising occasionally into button-holing and shouting, in the corridors of the courthouse, with the prosecutors. And Williams & Connolly, without actually having done anything useful or difficult, or even given correct advice, were still vibrating in public about whether they would really act for me. The legal front was wobbling before a shot of live ammunition had been fired. I was counting on the receding closing in the Park Avenue apartment to keep Brendan Sullivan in the firing line.

  Radler finally made and announced his plea bargain in late September, reading his confession to the grand jury, of whose existence Williams & Connolly had been confidently unaware for many months. Radler’s statement was as preposterous as could be imagined, even from him. He told the performing bonzes on the grand jury, which the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution assures us is a solid defence against capricious prosecution, that there had been a “silent” scheme. The scheme had never been discussed, much less written about, as we simply did not tell the Audit Committee about these non-compete agreements I had supposedly told Radler to issue. This monstrous assertion, presented by such an ill-favoured witness, was not going to do it for The People, despite all the prosecution’s advantages, when they faced a serious defence, provided I could field competent lawyers.

  Radler made his wretched court appearance in Chicago on September 20. He produced nothing useful for his new masters. He had been “tasked” by “Toronto” to get the non-compete payments for Hollinger Inc. and “surmised” that “the chairman” knew about it because only I had the authority to order such a step. In other words, he acknowledged I wasn’t on the call, if it occurred at all. This was the best Valukas could do. But so full of blood lust for me were the prosecutors, brainwashed by Breeden (a minimal laundering challenge, as I soon discovered), that they leaked Radler’s allegations endlessly to the press, who were at the edges of their chairs after a two-year tease before my indictment.

  Hollinger International’s lawyer sat at the prosecutors’ table in the court. There was no longer even a pretense that it was not a common front against me. My former associate would receive a six-month sentence (twenty-nine months but with a transfer to Canada that would reduce it to six months). But I felt that no jury in the world could convict me on the basis of Radler’s evidence.

  In the American manner, which bears a startling resemblance to the Stalinist formula of prisoners coming meekly into court and condemning themselves, Radler gave his “allocution,” confessing criminality, lies, and cowardice, and apologizing for his contemptible behaviour. This last part was the only accurate part of his presentation, though it is extremely unlikely that he was sincere in stating it.

  He was, in fact, pleased that he had escaped the maelstrom, secure, he thought, in his shady swindling of me in the private newspaper company he had siphoned out of Hollinger International (where, again, although he had said we would be equal partners, he had twice as many shares as I did). He was assured of a sentence of six months, in a penal horse farm near Vancouver offering golf therapy, creative theatre arts, and equestrian diversions.

  Obviously, the accused in this case was, in fact, a criminal, and he had not been tortured physically, as Stalin’s victims were. But the U.S. prosecution system does seize and immobilize assets, often on the basis of false affidavits and by exploiting laws of questionable constitutionality, designed to combat terrorists or organized crime; deluges a suspect with subpoenas, civil charges from regulators and ambulance-chasers, and relentless harassment from the IRS and SEC; and assures massive defamation. It is a form of mental torture.

  Radler, unlike Stalin’s targets, did not demand to be executed as soon as possible for his crimes (as an opponent of capital punishment, I would object to such a fate for anyone, but such a demand from him would have been euphonious). The spectacle of this man, who in the thirty-six years of our acquaintance never admitted a mistake other than his harmless clumsiness with gadgets, confessing to criminal dishonesty and cowardice was almost refreshing.

  Yet it was also repulsive, not only because it was untrue, like the absurd statement that followed it, but because it demonstrated the dishonesty of a man I had been closely commercially associated with for decades and the power of intimidation of the U.S. prosecutors.

  The nature of the U.S. plea bargain system had been repellant to me for many years, and I was, as in so many other related matters, about to receive a bruising practical education in it. It is the exchange of testimony for varied sentences. It generally starts well down in an organization and brings irresistible pressures to bear on people unable to sustain themselves psychologically or defend themselves financially against such an onslaught – until that person promises to inculpate a higher-up.

  The process goes through an organization until sometimes scores of intimidated or suborned people are accusing the chosen target. It is an evil and profoundly corrupt process. It is not reconcilable with traditional American notions of the rule of law. Every informed person in the country knows that the criminal justice system is based on officially sanctioned fraud and intimidation, that the courthouses are silent and the courts empty because almost no one can go the distance with the government, and that there are tens of thousands of innocent people in U.S. prisons because of the false confessions and accusations that are extorted. But almost no one says anything about it.

  Once Breeden scared off private equity investors, and especially after he crossed me on the November 15, 2003, agreement that unearthed the opinionated, self-gratified hip-shooter Leo Strine, I was in a power dive. I knew the Breeden report would be murderous, and he held up the dividend of any proceeds from the Hollinger International sale of the Telegraph (having promised to sell the whole company and failed to do so) until it was very late for me to do anything with Hollinger Inc. The U.S. prosecutors got to the compliant Harvey Strosberg, Gordon Walker, Tony Kelly, and Bobby Kofman very quickly.

  My sunset gun was the Hollinger Inc. privatization, but I hoped in vain that the OSC would not destroy the public shareholders and save Breeden’s fiefdom. As with the judges and tax collectors in Canada, who wrap themselves in the Maple Leaf at all other opportunities, the national parlour game to get me was too addictive. The proverbial widows and orphans who had invested in Hollinger Inc. could go to the wall.

  Radler, skilled at tough talk to defenceless people and at the firing of superfluous employees (a necessary task but one that can be accomplished more humanely and stylishly than was his custom), watched as Ravelston went into receivership and as I was evicted from my own building, and noted my complete humiliation in the videotape affair.

  I SUPPOSE IHAD SEEN FROM THE START that it could come to this, even without Radler’s defection. It was painfully ironic: I was a qualified U.S. historian; I had been denounced in the parliaments of Canada and the United Kingdom for my pro-U.S. sympathies – and now I was about to be assaulted by the U.S. government. This greatest of all countries was about to try to end the useful career and perhaps even the natural life of one of its most vociferous admirers, in the U.S. prison system, on the strength of baseless allegations.

  My former career as a perceived media mogul, a London Fleet Street baron in that formidable tradition, which had been thirty-five years in the making, had been extingu
ished in a few days. I was realistic about the scale and speed of my reversal. I made no compromise with the objective collapse of my status and the gratuitous cataract of misfortunes that followed. Never had I appreciated so much Napoleon’s most brilliant aphorism as he began the retreat from Moscow, that “from the sublime to the ridiculous is a single step.” My position had never been sublime, but it quickly became ridiculous.

  I was more afraid of the financial wars than of the legal ones. My financial condition was again becoming parlous. I was counting on the proceeds of our New York apartment sale to prevent Brendan Sullivan from deserting a ship from which he seemed to think all the valuable cargo had been removed.

  Apart from the legal and financial challenges, which were constant and treacherous, the challenge was now to maintain personal dignity without appearing to be residing in a fantasyland of denial. My new vocation by necessity would be to resist the Goliath of the abusive American prosecution system and accomplices in Canadian middle officialdom and to fight the tendency of the Western media to rush to judgment in a presumption of guilt.