LIBEL, PAN-AMERICAN STYLE

How Did Al Giordano Land In The Middle Of The Hottest First Amendment Case
In Years.

After spending years underground, Al Giordano has virtually surfaced.
Giordano, you may remember, spent his salad days in Western Massachusetts,
sniffing out Springfield Mafiosi as a reporter for the Valley Advocate and
turning over rocks throughout the Valley in search of dangerous political
parasites and garden variety public corruption. After four years at the
Advocate, Giordano moved on to the Boston Phoenix to report on politics
from the statehouse, where he covered what he calls the "legal bribery"
that passes for lobbying on Beacon Hill.

By 1996, Giordano was fed up with business as usual in politics, in the
press and in the U.S. So he followed the trail of so many disaffected
American writers before him and landed in Latin America. There he began
reporting on the so-called "drug war." Last year Giordano turned his
passion into a cottage industry. He created a website called Narco News
(www.narconews.com), whose self-proclaimed purpose is to challenge, through
front-line reporting, "the illusion that the drug war is about combating
drugs."

Undercover in Latin America, Giordano was in his glory. (Like Narco News,
Giordano also lives in cyberspace. His address and phone number are secret,
although plenty of people close to him know where he is, Giordano says.)
His site, by his own account, was generating 20,000 to 25,000 hits a day in
its first year.

Now one of those hits has landed Giordano and Narco News in the middle of
the most-watched libel case in recent history. The case raises fundamental
questions about free speech in the hyperlinked world of cyberspace, where
stories that originate near the equator can be read from the North Pole to
the South Pole and anywhere in between.

Lawyers for Banco Nacional de Mexico, or Banamex for short, are charging
Giordano and his colleague, Mario Renato Menendez Rodriguez, a reporter for
the Mexican paper Por Esto, with "defamation and interference with
prospective economic advantage." The charges stem from Menendez's reports
that Banamex's chairman and owner, Roberto Hernandez Ramirez -- reportedly
one of the richest men in the world -- is a drug smuggler. Mexican courts
twice threw out the case against Menendez and Por Esto, but Banamex's
lawyers, Akin, Gump, an international law and lobbying firm, found a new
venue: the New York State Supreme Court.

Giordano had translated and reprinted Menendez's series on the Narco News
website, and independently researched and reported on Hernandez's alleged
drug connections as well. Banamex's lawyers claim the multi-national
company (it merged recently with the financial firm Citigroup) could bring
the suit in New York because it was defamed on the Narco News website and
in New York last year, when Menendez did interviews about Hernandez and
Banamex with The Village Voice and WBAI Radio and led a panel at the
Columbia University School of Law. Statements made in New York are well
within the court's purview, but Banamex's libel action also cites a number
of articles Giordano published on his website, which is produced and
maintained in Mexico. Akin, Gump did not return Advocate phone calls in
time for publication.

On Friday, July 20 Giordano responded formally to what legal experts and
media watchers expect to be one of the most fascinating libel cases in
recent history. The New York Supreme Court is expected to rule sometime in
the next three to six months, according to Giordano.

While Giordano awaits Narco News's fate, he gleefully continues his
crusading dispatches from the sunny frontlines somewhere in Latin America.
Giordano and his volunteer staff are hard at work on the Narco News
Bulletin's first ever "Back to School Issue." The special issue "will
include analysis of university endowments that are invested in drug war
corruption, money-laundering, and, with a focus on Latin America, where
those investments harm democracy, peace with justice and human rights,"
according to a missive on the Narco News website.

The Advocate caught up with Giordano in his cyberspace hideout. Here's what
he had to say about his most recent adventure:

Advocate: As I understand it, all your Narco News reporting centered on
Hernandez himself, not Banamex, right? So, basically, this multi-billion-
dollar conglomerate is saying you defamed the whole company by making
allegations against its chair. Is that right?

Giordano: That's exactly what the Mexican courts found. Banamex had no
standing. It wasn't about their corporate activities. That Hernandez didn't
sue us himself leads to all kinds of speculation: What's he got to hide
from a U.S.? style lawsuit discovery process? ... What if you said that
Donald Trump was an asshole, could [his company] Trump Towers sue you? Or
if you noted that Bill Gates had a bad hair day, could Microsoft sue you?
This is one of the matters that makes the lawsuit so totally frivolous and
abusive of the court system. And one of the reasons why it will not
possibly succeed.

Advocate: Why, for god's sake, do these guys want to go through discovery
with you and Menendez? Are they simply banking on the fact that you're a
shoestring operation and can't afford to do real damage?

Giordano: Yes, they have severely miscalculated both our own fighting
spirit and that of civil society that has supported us in this fight.
However, it's not all roses. I'm already $170,000 in debt and our Drug War
on Trial Defense Fund is depleted. Which was, in my opinion, part of the
purpose of the lawsuit.

Advocate: What do you think they want or expect to get out of the New York
suit? Are they trying to sink Narco News?

Giordano: Yes. But they have failed.

Advocate: Now, I think I read in one report that you'd agreed not to post
anything new about Hernandez until the trial is over. Did I misread or is
this true?

Giordano: Where did you read that? It's completely untrue! And bizarre. I
don't make agreements with people like Hernandez. I have my credibility to
protect. ...

If you look at Narco News for the past six months since we learned we were
being sued, you will find scores of articles about Hernandez, Banamex,
Citigroup and all of them. The exact opposite has happened. Whereas I
hadn't been writing about Banamex as an institution before, or about
Citigroup's long history in drug money laundering, now they've made those
important public policy issues even more interesting to the public by
filing this SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) suit.

Advocate: Is there more to report here?

Giordano: Yes. For example, in 1998, then-treasury secretary Robert Rubin
prosecuted Banamex in the Operation Casablanca money-laundering sting
operation, in which two Banamex executives were charged with money
laundering by the U.S. Attorney General's Office. The Federal Reserve Board
slapped a cease-and-desist order on Banamex, and Rubin's behavior was so
aggressive that Madeleine Albright wrote him a letter of protest for not
having alerted Mexican officials. Flash forward to the present: Citigroup
executive and board member Robert Rubin, ex-Treasury secretary, personally
engineers the deal to buy Banamex for $12.5 billion dollars. That speaks
volumes of his ethics, of his sincerity when he was a U.S. official, and
raises obvious questions about whether his official actions brought him
certain benefits when he went into the private sector.

Advocate: Has your reporting changed Hernandez's behavior?

Giordano: Por Esto's reporting did have a major impact on cocaine
trafficking routes in recent years, many of which switched from the
Caribbean to the Pacific side, in terms of boat shipments. This has been
confirmed by the Mexican drug war officials.

Advocate: Now, if this guy is a drug king-pin, his assets in the U.S. could
be seized, as his own attorneys said in court. Do you know the extent of
Hernandez's U.S. assets?

Giordano: I thought that was pretty funny, that Akin Gump [Banamex's law
firm], the third largest lobbying firm on Capitol Hill, was accusing me on
behalf of Banamex of being able to give orders to U.S. officials. What
wonderful news! I thought I was more like Marshall Mathers, "just a regular
guy," but they say I'm "Slim Shady." Hernandez should be very happy about
it, this Akin Gumpster announcement of my super-powers to influence U.S.
policy, because my first order would be to legalize drugs! Then none of
these pesky reports and photos would pose any more problems for Hernandez.