A CONVERSATION WITH AL GIORDANO

On the eve of his return to New York City to answer a libel suit brought by
Banamex executive Roberto Hernandez, Narco News Bulletin
publisher/editor/correspondent Al Giordano took part in an e-mail exchange
with the Phoenix's Dan Kennedy. An edited transcript of their conversation
follows.

DAN KENNEDY: Why the Narco News Bulletin? You've done good work writing for
the Phoenix and the Valley Advocate, and hosting a talk-radio show in
Western Mass. Why did you want to go off completely on your own, and why did
you want a cover a topic - the war on drugs in Latin America - that everyone
knows is important but that few people really care about?

AL GIORDANO: Dan, first let me say that it is a pleasure to be interviewed
by you again. The last time you interviewed me, in 1993, you were the news
editor at the Phoenix, looking to hire a new political reporter. I hope this
interview goes at least as well.

I'll answer your lead question with what the lawyers call a leading
question: if "few people really care about" how the US government is waging
the war on drugs in Latin America, then why is Narco News getting an average
of 20,000 to 25,000 hits per day after just one year of publication?

When Narco News began publishing on April 18, 2000, we began with an opening
statement (http://www.narconews.com/opstate1.html). We posited that if the
American public was "poorly informed" about the drug war in the larger
America (we are speaking of the America with an accent), it was because we
the public are burdened with a "poorly informing" US media.

I had spent three years - 1996 to 1999 - pretty much away from the
journalism business, except for three freelanced stories in the Boston
Phoenix, written from Latin America. During that time I learned Spanish,
stayed in various indigenous communities, and walked with social movements.

We said in that opening statement that many Latin American journalists were
doing a better job than their US colleagues in covering the drug war, and
vowed to translate their work, which we did and continue to do. We said
there was an unreported drug-legalization movement in Latin America that
would soon shake the foundations of US drug policy. Many folks didn't take
us seriously, but I'll return to that point momentarily because they sure
take us seriously today. We said that Mexico was particularly key to this
movement-in-formation because it has a unique power to stand up to the
impositions of Washington. And we said that a "war on drugs" implies that
things eventually go "boom," and that the military war was coming to Latin
America because of the wrongheaded US-imposed prohibition on drugs.

Since then, immediate history has unfolded and found Narco News was correct
on each of these points. Let's take a quick tour through a few parts of our
America, one year into Narco News:

- Colombia: Washington has now revealed its bellicose agenda with the Plan
Colombia $1.3 billion military intervention in the Andes. And a real antiwar
movement is building in North America, not to mention throughout Latin
America. You'll see manifestations of that later this month, when 20 heads
of state hold their "Summit of the Americas" event in Quebec City from April
20 to 22. The action will be in the streets - a la Seattle, Prague, Davos -
and it will fall heavily upon the US-picked chairman of the Organization of
American States, former Colombian president Cesar Gaviria, who has betrayed
his own people by backing Plan Colombia. Put on your seat belts.

When Plan Colombia was first ratcheted up by the Clinton administration, it
might well have become the "wag the dog" scenario: war as re-election
strategy. We actively set about to close the spaces that Washington had to
manipulate this scenario, with no weapons in our hands other than words and
facts to break the information blockade. In August and September of last
year, Narco News conducted daily online press briefings on Plan Colombia -
shadowing and exposing the lies coming out of the State Department,
diffusing various "Tonkin Gulf"-type provocations based on official
disinformation. And we went right after the linchpin of the plan: Colombian
paramilitary leader Carlos Castano, documenting how US officials tolerate
his drug-trafficking activities and calling to task the US reporters who
wrote about him while withholding the basic fact on this war criminal: he's
a narco-kingpin (http://www.narconews.com/nmonth0900.html). Now, the US
correspondents have to mention his drug-trafficking history. They didn't
always do that beforehand.

Bush, like Clinton, keeps looking for an opening to escalate the shooting
war in Colombia. They're very persistent, but so are we, and so is the
antiwar movement at home and abroad. They may yet escalate it, but it will
not happen in silence. Nor is the European Union going to support a military
solution: we've been translating the news from overseas as well. Thus, the
resistance in Latin America and in Europe to this bloody drug-war plot now
has voice inside the US. And it will continue to be seen and heard for as
long as Narco News is around.

- Bolivia: The country was paralyzed by two months of social unrest last
autumn by coca growers and indigenous, labor, and water-rights groups. The
nation was literally shut down by road blockades between its farming regions
and its cities. La Paz, the capital, ran out of food. It should be no
surprise that the "reporter" who controlled all the English-language news
coverage in the US from that country - AP Bolivia correspondent Peter
McFarren - resigned in disgrace after we exposed last October that he was
part of the problem: a lobbyist, powerbroker, and socialite in La Paz who
had a secret, undisclosed financial link with an $80 million water-export
project, that is to say, with the narco-regime of President Hugo Banzer. And
for 18 years McFarren had posed as a "journalist" - US newspapers called him
"Mr. Bolivia," the go-to guy for coverage of that country. The Washington
Post credited me with the story of his downfall. It wasn't me! I credit my
sources: members of the social movements in Bolivia who responded to my
questions about McFarren, whose coverage of events in Bolivia was pure
fiction. Bolivian Civil Society came forward with the information that led
to this shocking story. My only real role was having gained the trust of
those movements by the work that I do; they took care of the rest.

And now, thankfully, there is a kind of "McFarren syndrome" among US
correspondents down here, and that's a good thing. The days are gone when
they could operate without scrutiny. Their coverage is still dreadful, but
now they are at least forced to write about stories they could have ignored
previously. Narco News is a real pain in the ass to the impunity that US
correspondents used to have here. And we've only just begun to fight.

- Uruguay: The president of Uruguay, Jorge Batlle, became the first American
head of state to call for legalizing drugs. He did it in front of a slew of
US correspondents last autumn at a Latin American presidents' summit in
Panama. Nobody in the US press corps reported this major story. So Batlle,
nobody's fool, did it again, in Mexico City, in front of US correspondents,
at the December 1 inauguration of Mexican president Vicente Fox. The US
correspondents all withheld the story from their readers! The only foreign
agency to touch it was EFE, a wire service from Spain. Narco News wasn't
there at either of those events, but we saw it one day while doing a routine
monitoring of Uruguay press reports, and voila!, on December 22 we ran with
the story (http://www.narconews.com/heroyear2000.html). Clifford Krauss of
the corrupted New York Times, caught with his pants down in Buenos Aires,
had to file a quick news brief the very next day to cover his bruised rump.
Ha! I just have to laugh. The drip, drip, drip of the facts is coming out,
and these phony "journalists" act like it's Chinese water torture. It's not
torture: it's authentic journalism!

By the way, Dan, you'll note that I prefer the term "authentic journalism"
to "alternative journalism." I refuse to be a mere "alternative" to
something that is corrupted, tired, and worn out. Those guys in the big
national dailies, the wire services, and the TV networks are imitating an
authentic journalism that once existed. We who are the real thing should not
relegate ourselves to being just an alternative. We are the real thing! When
a fedora hat comes back into style, as my granddad, who wore one, said, it's
not an alternative hat. It's the original!

- Peru: Another surprise, to some, from the past year: the fall of President
Alberto Fujimori and his enforcer, Vladimiro Montesinos. Both of them were
set up, supported, and covered in their atrocities by US policy - including
CIA involvement in protecting their role as major narco-traffickers. On
January 1 of this year, Narco News published a story by Peter Gorman - a
High Times editor who has spent many of the past 18 years in Peru -
explaining why Washington had turned against the regime it once had
controlled. Gorman wrote that the US government turned against Fujimori and
Montesinos not because of their cocaine trafficking, but because Fujimori
had spoken against Plan Colombia (http://www.narconews.com/gorman1.html).
After that story, Gorman received a visit from US Embassy representatives at
the riverside bar he owns on the Peru-Colombia border. They admitted that
his Narco News report was accurate but told him that they were not happy
with what he wrote, and demanded to know his sources. Gorman declined to
reveal his sources, but he wisely got out of Peru. And he published another
story on Narco News, based on sources he interviewed: that the US has
contracted mercenaries on a pay-per-kill basis to assassinate rebels and
farmers who flee from Colombia and Peru once the shooting starts with Plan
Colombia (http://www.narconews.com/gorman2.html). Gorman is a very brave
journalist who has done his homework in the field, and I'm proud to publish
him on Narco News.

- Mexico: Okay, my answer is getting long, but we've only been through four
countries! Next stop on this tour: Mexico. Here we are reaching the crux of
the matter. "The speed bump on the road to the New World Order," as the late
philosopher Terence McKenna defined Mexico in a Phoenix interview I did so
many years ago. You might even have edited that interview, Dan! Mexico has a
grand power before the United States, based on its border proximity.
Washington can, when all is said and done, invade almost any country
militarily or destroy a nation's economy with an economic blockade. The
history of more than a century in this entire hemisphere is a history of
this domination, of Mexico included. Thus, it has been a history of fear, of
disregard for human rights, and a history of imposed policies, among them
the prohibition on drugs.

The first thing I concluded after walking thousands of miles with the
indigenous movement and other social movements in Mexico, after becoming
fluent in Spanish and talking to thousands of Mexicans from all walks of
life, is that there is no ideological support for drug prohibition here.
There is opposition to the violence, the corruption, and those who engage in
it. And there is, of course, the desire to protect children from drug abuse.
But nobody is under the illusion that the drug laws accomplish that. It's
commonly accepted that the drug war is a war to be waged to please the
gringos, to stave off the punishments of Washington. The second thing I
concluded is that democracy in Mexico is very dangerous to the US-imposed
policy, including that of drug prohibition - no wonder Washington propped up
single-party rule in Mexico for 71 years! So what has happened over the past
year in Mexico?

The end of one-party rule with the election of Vicente Fox.

The imminent victory of an armed indigenous movement out of Chiapas and the
passage of constitutional reforms to recognize indigenous rights in the San
Andres Accords. Did you ever read the San Andres Accords in English? No? No
newspaper has published them? I'm shocked and stunned! Narco News published
them last December, as Fox was inaugurated
(http://www.narconews.com/mextransition2.html). Did you know that the San
Andres Accords, when made law, will restore the rights of all Mexico's 56
indigenous ethnic groups, 10 million people, to the ritual use of
sacramental plants that are currently illegal under the drug war? Did you
know that the accords will restore local indigenous systems of justice that
do not imprison drug offenders, and yet have had more success stemming drug
abuse and narco-trafficking than any other society in the Americas? Narco
News readers do know that.

The Mexico City police commissioner, Alejandro Gertz Manero, called last May
for a "Holland-style drug policy" in Mexico
(http://www.narconews.com/hollandmexico.html). It was Narco News that
translated his words to English and sent them worldwide over the Internet.
Oh, and what's Mr. Gertz doing today? He's now the public-safety czar for
the Mexican federal government
(http://www.narconews.com/mextransition3.html).

Mexico's secretary of state, Jorge Castaneda, Colin Powell's counterpart, is
a long-time backer of drug legalization
(http://www.narconews.com/mextransition1.html).

The chief of the federal police, Miguel Angel de la Torre, is now a
legalization backer (http://www.narconews.com/pfp1.html).

So are Mexico's leading human-rights leaders and journalists
(http://www.narconews.com/concha.html).

And just recently, as the Zapatista Army for National Liberation made its
final gambit to force the federal congress to listen, at long last, to the
indigenous movement - on the same day, Mexican president Vicente Fox said
that he, too, favors drug legalization
(http://www.narconews.com/splinters.html).

So, Dan, that's the quick tour. We could also go to Venezuela, Brazil,
Chile, Argentina, the Caribbean, and Oh Canada and see that US-imposed drug
policy is becoming increasingly isolated. Narco News doesn't take credit for
any of this: these are the democratic impulses of all America. But if you
speak English, you wouldn't know these facts if not for Narco News. A year
ago we said, Hey, check it out, something is happening here, something
historic, that will turn the tables on the failed policy of drug
prohibition, and very few journalists or officials took us seriously.
They're taking us seriously now! Enough so that the narco-system - the real
powers that benefit from the drug war, from money launderers to
narco-lobbyists in Washington - are trying to silence Narco News. We take
that as a sign that we are on to something.

KENNEDY: What are the logistics involved in producing Narco News? I'm not
looking for your actual physical address, but how do you live? Do you have
any income - grant money, donations, and the like? What kind of traffic do
you get?

GIORDANO: I speak in the first-person plural about Narco News because it is
participatory journalism. It seeks to involve Civil Society - the citizenry
- of all countries in seeking the truth. As we said on our first day of
publication - it's posted on our front page (http://www.narconews.com) -
we're conscious that our truth is not the only truth. It is our truth, but
it needs your truth, and everyone's truth, in movement, "to make a bigger
truth."

So Narco News is a "we," but it's also a "me." Narco News is my work of
authentic journalism, and it's still a work in progress. You'll note that we
haven't written our closing statement yet. Narco News is to me like a
painting is to a painter, and you're all here in the studio. Sometimes I
even add you, the reader, to the painting. It's really a kind of book that I
invite the public to read over my shoulder as I type. I want the reader to
comment, to help me improve upon it. The public has responded very well to
this concept. There is a bond between my readers and me that I did not have
when writing for newspapers. It's direct and immediate. An e-mail from an
anonymous person can change the course of a story. And I get a lot of
e-mail. Sometimes I get hundreds of e-mails in one day.

You're not looking for my address? Dan, you could auction it off! It was
funny to see the overpaid lawyers of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld in
Washington trying to serve me with the legal papers for the lawsuit they've
filed on behalf of the Banamex bank against Narco News, Mario Menendez, and
me. A reporter called them one day last December. The lawyer - a humorless
slash-and-burn artist named Tom McLish of Akin, Gump - begged the reporter,
"Do you have Al's phone number? Do you have his address?" And for weeks on
end, despite all the hundreds of people who know my physical location,
nobody ever turned me in.

There's a very funny attempt to help poor McLish on Barry Crimmins's Web
site ( http://www.barrycrimmins.com ). It's titled: "Where's Al?" Of course,
there is no law that required that I stop what I'm doing to answer to them.
I made my point about that, and I didn't want to leave my Mexican colleague,
authentic journalist Mario Menendez, alone to face these good-for-nothing
Keystone Lawyers and their frivolous lawsuit. So in February I finally
waived service and entered the case voluntarily. That was my plan from the
start, but one has to walk to his own rhythm in this world, not the pace
imposed by the greedy grabbers. My friend Bruce Berman, now of Save the
Harbor in Boston, used to tell me that I should have business cards that say
nothing more than "Ask Around" as my address. I think he was making fun of
me. But it's still funny. Jesus, if we can't laugh, we're already dead.
Officially, my address is "from somewhere in a country called America." I
wasn't thinking about sleazy lawyer-lobbyists when I began signing all my
Narco News writings with that address. I was more concerned about corrupt
governments and white-collar narcos coming after me. Besides, it's not as if
the whole world can't find me by e-mail - narconews@hotmail.com.

Part of it is also a tip of the Mao cap to Subcomandante Marcos, who has
signed many communiques "from somewhere in the Lacandon jungle." My work is
derivative as can be of his work. I admit that. Why? Because his work works!
Winning is a priority for me. And it's also a tribute to Simon Bolivar, who
said, "the name of our country is America," which is the motto of Narco
News.

So the proverbial Narco Newsroom is wherever I travel, my laptop and me.
It's all done off a laptop. I got a grant from the Angelica Foundation to
buy the first laptop, and ran it into the ground in one year. They gave me a
second grant last fall, and that's the laptop that produces Narco News
today. I'm taking better care of this one, I hope. Narco News has virtually
no financial overhead. The annual rent is $270 per year, and that's for a
super-fast and very reliable server at Voxel.net (http://www.voxel.net).
Those are really good and ethical people at Voxel.net, too - I really
recommend them. Poor McLish sent them a letter, but they wouldn't censor
Narco News. So not only are they technical wizards, but also moral ones.
That was a very key moment. That's when the tables turned on the lawsuit
against us, and the defense became the accuser, and the accuser began to
hide. Poor McLish won't even give a direct interview to the press anymore;
the best you'll get out of him is a faxed statement - and now the Drug War
itself is going on trial. I'm sure you'll ask me about that shortly.

Narco News accepts no advertising. We've had offers of up to $2000 a month
to put a single ad banner up on our site. I refuse. Why? What's the point? I
can support Narco News with my other work as a journalist, a translator, and
a researcher. The real point of Narco News is that any citizen can do better
journalism than many journalists, that free speech means you don't pay. The
idea is not to make money! It's to make an argument, and to defeat a bad
policy.

So I sell occasional stories - in the past month, to the Phoenix, to the
Nation, to the Evergreen Review literary magazine - and I do translation and
analysis work on drug policy. But there is a separation between church and
state. None of my newspapers or clients has any say over Narco News, nor are
they responsible for its content. It's my child. The words are my children.
Would you share custody of your children even with people of the best
intentions? To a point, I suppose, but in the end, it's your kid, and you'll
keep custody. More writers should think of their words as their children.
They wouldn't be nearly as careless about their work.

KENNEDY: A few years ago, when you were still at the Phoenix, we had several
discussions about your philosophy about editing. As I recall, you had
reached the point where you actually opposed editing as a matter of
principle. Could you expand on that? Also, if there is something inherently
wrong about an editor shaping the words and thoughts of a writer, why isn't
it wrong (or is it) for a writer to shape the words and thoughts of the
people he writes about? What is the journalist's obligation?

GIORDANO: Ha! An editor's view of Al's policy on editing! Dan, you've been
on the writer's side of the barricades for a number of years now, and
welcome home! Let me recruit you here. (But be careful! You may end up
agreeing with me, leave your career, end up homeless and broke, wander in
the jungle for four years, and then resurface again writing freelance
articles for the paper you left!) But it is a war, the relation between
editor and writer, and it has to do with power. What I have proposed is more
balance in that power relationship.

In my 1997 work, "The Medium Is the Middleman: For a Revolution Against
Media," I devoted an entire chapter to the written word and the editing
process. I quoted Paul Goodman on this question of editing. "Format," he
said, "is a style imposed on the literary process that is extrinsic to it."
I guess I'm really talking about format - and too much of editing today is a
matter of imposing format upon the writer and the reader.

I suggested, in that work, that there may even be a role for editors, and
suggested a new title for that craft: the "immediator." That is to say,
someone whose role is not to mediate the relation between writer and reader,
but to "immediate." Someone not to impose format upon the writer, but,
rather, to work for the writer to help him and her say what we want to say.
I do think it would be an interesting newspaper that let the writers hire
the editors. You used to edit me, Dan. I would hire you. You have these
qualities. So does Clif Garboden, who has edited my freelance pieces for the
Phoenix. But then dammit, Dan, you went and rejoined the ranks of the
writers, and, now let's play nice, I just didn't have that chemistry with
your successors. Or they didn't have it with me. Honestly, I don't even
remember the last kid's name, but he lasted about three stories with me. And
here I am, still kicking, albeit from the outside kicking in. (If those last
sentences get through whoever edits this interview, well, okay, the
revolution is winning, and not just in Mexico!)

But let me talk about "The Medium Is the Middleman," and make up for my bad
manners by giving the Phoenix a scoop that will interest the readers of your
excellent music critics. That pamphlet was the worst career move I ever
made. And it was the best human-being move I ever made. I just let it all
spill out there: years of working for the media, in print, on the radio, on
TV, on the Internet. Five thousand copies were circulated in English, and
then it was translated into Spanish - "Los Medios Son el Intermediario" -
and it was better received south of the border.

There is a story about "The Medium Is the Middleman" that I have never told
publicly before. It has to do with the singer Jeff Buckley (1967-1997). Jeff
was my friend. And after he died so tragically (Buckley drowned in the
Mississippi River in Memphis), I didn't want to join the long line of
opportunists trying make a career move out having been associated with him.
Jeff's death was, for me, the last straw. Want to know why I went to Chiapas
"to die or to be reborn," as I later wrote in the Phoenix? It was Jeff's
death. There are people who knew this then. I was really crushed. On his
last night in New York, before heading to Memphis, we were together until
dawn, when he left for the airport. That was the last time that I or anyone
saw him in New York. Penny Arcade, his good friend, and John Wilson were
there, too, bidding him goodbye as he left at 7 a.m.

Now it can be told, because somebody wrote a kind of dual biography of Jeff
and of his father, Tim Buckley, and part of this untold story appears there.
Also I think the Phoenix, so important to the Grand Pooh-bahs of the music
industry because it has more college music consumers as readers than any
other paper in the nation, is the right place to tell this story. And Sony
can go fuck themselves, let the chips fall where they may. I don't know who
told the biographer this story, but it can only be one of two or three
people, because it wasn't me, and few knew. I was in Mexico by the time the
biographers descended upon Jeff's thousand new "best friends," and I was
really sick over his death.

Anyway, here goes; the secret history of Jeff Buckley and the road to Narco
News:

Jeff had read "The Medium Is the Middleman," and we discussed it at length.
He applied my critique of the media industry to the music industry, and we
had the exact same conclusions. Sony, in the spring of 1997, was giving him
real problems over whether he could choose his own producer. He wanted Tom
Verlaine, the virtuoso guitarist, to produce his album, and Sony wanted to
impose another editor - um, I mean producer. So we had a common story. And
we also had big plans for how to explode this idea upon the public psyche.
Jeff had a lot of spectacular terrain and also a voice of five octaves - if
you know about music, you know how rare that is. And he had an intelligence
that not enough people saw because he was also physically very beautiful.
But his mind was razor sharp, electric. He had a mind, let's say, of six
octaves.

Jeff turned my book into a song, titled "The Sky Is a Landfill." The concept
of the song was that the media turned the airwaves into a garbage dump.
Arcade called it his "magnum opus." Let me find the passage from this
biography . . . okay, here it is:

"Nonetheless, Jeff, Verlaine, and the band managed to nail preliminary
versions of four songs. One of them, an anthemic wall-toppler called 'The
Sky Is a Landfill,' was inspired by 'The Medium Is the Middleman: For a
Revolution Against Media,' an anti-media tract by writer Al Giordano."

That's from the book Dream Brother: The Lives and Music of Jeff and Tim
Buckley, by David Browne (HarperEntertainment, 2001).

Jeff also said - and I don't know if this is in the biography, I haven't
found it yet in Latin America, but it is published on one of his fans' Web
sites:

"I don't write music for Sony. I write it for people who are screaming down
the road crying to a full blast stereo. There is also music I make that will
never ever be for sale. This is my music alone, this is my true home, from
which all things are born and from which all my life will spring untainted
and unworried, fully of my own body."

So you can see why we got along. This was the stuff that was churning in
Jeff when he went for his final swim. Whatever demands Sony was placing on
his album were eating him alive. And then he had an accidental death,
swimming with his boots on. He never came to shore. But I took my memory of
him to Mexico. And one night, weeks later, in the highlands of Chiapas, I
was alone in the dark, crying over his death, I mean, sobbing, and keeping
silent so no one would hear. And an old man named Don Andres found me there
in the dark and sat down next to me
(http://12.11.184.13/boston/news%5Ffeatures/top/documents/00669432.htm). I
was busted. And although he was three times Jeff's age, Don Andres somehow
filled part of that loss for me. And he took me on four years of study, a
learning that continues today, and that probably prevented me from going
swimming in the Usamacinta River with my boots on. And every time I see Don
Andres, which is often, I think of Jeff. I think Jeff would like that. Don
Andres has a life of five octaves of struggle.

And sometimes when this narco-lawsuit in New York becomes a drag, or
something else bugs me, I think, ah, if only Jeff were here. He'd be so
proud that these assholes were suing me. But that's a benefit concert for
the defense that can't happen. I'll bring his memory to court with me. You
can take that to the narco-bank.

KENNEDY: I read Michael Ruppert's "Courage" essay
(http://www.copvcia.com/courage.htm), which lists what he thinks are your
biggest triumphs with the Bulletin. But I'm curious to know what your own
take on that would be. What have been the high points of the Narco News
Bulletin?

GIORDANO: The highest point was the release of four indigenous prisoners
from the Cerro Hueco penitentiary last month in Chiapas: Norberto Lopez
Rincon, a great-grandfather framed on drug charges, and also David Hernandez
Hernandez, Mario Diaz Gomez, and Jose Hernandez Dias. It's these
lower-profile things that move me: concrete results, a difference made in
somebody's life. Four men, innocent, persecuted, framed, and tortured on
drug charges because they were indigenous in Chiapas. I interviewed them in
April 1998 at the prison. I think I'm the only journalist ever to have
interviewed these men during their four to six years behind bars.

I tried so hard to get a magazine to publish their stories. All the national
editors of New York told me the same thing: Chiapas is old news and nobody
cares. It was burning me up that I could not find a place in the national US
media to let these men tell their stories. Within two months of publishing
Narco News I wrote a nine-part series on the drug war in Chiapas
(http://www.narconews.com/chiapaspart1.html). The ninth part of the series
was the story of these men (http://www.narconews.com/chiapaspart9.html). I
repeated their stories last December, leaning heavily on the Fox
administration to release them (http://www.narconews.com/amnesty2000.html),
because drug crimes, in Mexico, are exclusively federal crimes. And although
the new governor of Chiapas, Pablo Salazar, did his part in releasing all
state political prisoners, these federal prisoners in Chiapas were
languishing in prison and nobody in the Mexican or international press was
doing anything. But the Fox people read Narco News too. And I put their
stories as a high priority throughout my coverage of the events in Mexico.
The Fox administration finally commuted their sentences.

Two more of these men - Rafael Lopez Santiz Conseta and Gustavo Estrada
Gomez - are still in prison as we conduct this interview. It's an outrage
that they are not out yet. These men are being played like peace-talk
trading cards by the government. I expect to see them out shortly. If they
are not out soon, I will provoke a greater scandal. I am capable of almost
anything to get these men out. They never belonged in jail. Rafael is
especially important: he's the most tireless social fighter of them all, a
schoolteacher and Tojolabal Indian who has devoted his life to struggle. And
he is dying of a skin disease without medical care in prison. They are
killing him. That's your US-imposed drug war in Mexico. It is the
murder-in-process of Rafael Lopez Santiz Conseta. And Fox can say whatever
he wants about drug legalization, but while he holds Rafael and Gustavo
hostage, I have a hard time believing his sincerity. But I swear upon my
dead: we will get them out.

KENNEDY: What is the most difficult aspect of producing the Bulletin?

GIORDANO: Having to represent myself in a frivolous narco-lawsuit because I
don't have the funds to hire lawyers to do it for me.

The lawsuit is already interfering with my First Amendment rights. It is
taking half my time away from the work I love, which is producing Narco
News.

The other difficult part is that there is a policy of drug prohibition.
Narco News was born to disappear. It will only disappear when the drug war
is repealed. If there are forces that want to silence me, I suggest that
their only way to do so is to end the policy of prohibition. They can't
expect to declare "war" and not generate soldiers against them.

KENNEDY: You covered the recent Zapatista motorcade for the Phoenix and for
the Nation. What do you think is next for the Zapatista movement? Do you
think the Fox government can accomplish what its predecessors could not? I
did notice that Fox is a personal friend of Banamex's Roberto Hernandez.

GIORDANO: First, it is Roberto Hernandez and ex-president Ernesto Zedillo
who created the impression that Fox and Hernandez are such good friends. I
am not yet convinced. I don't know that Hernandez has any friend that money
can't buy. And those kinds of friends are not friends. Time will tell
whether the fact that they attended prep school together means there is a
lasting friendship. A lot of that is just Hernandez promoting his own
celebrity and impunity.

As for the Zapatistas, I feel very confident. The key is the passage of the
San Andres Accords. If those peace agreements become law and indigenous
autonomy is recognized by the Mexican constitution - and I see that as
attainable right now in the Congress - the armed struggle will give way to
democratic struggle. And the Indigenous National Congress, and the
Zapatistas of Chiapas, and Subcomandante Marcos, will move on to a more
global stage. The Zapatistas have offered the world a new way to fight.
Narco News is just one small part of what happened to the Zapatistas.
Without having learned from them, Narco News wouldn't be possible. I
remember writing about the Zapatistas in the Phoenix the first week of the
rebellion. I am a Zapatista. And they don't mind at all my saying so.
Zapatismo, as a media virus, has now entered the journalistic profession.
It's unstoppable. It's my life. And I love it.

KENNEDY: What do you think the future of the war on drugs will be under the
Fox regime?

GIORDANO: I don't see much change in policy in the short term. The pressure
from Washington is so intense. There'll be more announcements of record
seizures, more corrupt officials caught in the act, but it won't make a
dime's difference in stemming the flow of drugs, or the destabilization of
the nations.

What can be hoped for is that the debate on drug prohibition will be opened
in Mexico. The US embassy has been trying to keep the lid on that for a long
time. It's illegal, but the intelligence apparatus (that is to say, the
CIA), with as many as 500 operatives on the ground in Mexico, is dedicated
to spying on and neutralizing the drug-legalization movement in this
sovereign country. So Fox's statement in favor of legalization was a warning
to Washington. This, while Bush hasn't even appointed a drug czar! And I
think that the Fox administration had to send a message to Washington
saying, hey, we're not going to fall into that same relationship you had
with the former ruling party, the PRI. The drug war is about control, not
about drugs.

So it was encouraging that Fox was smart enough to cut [CIA director George]
Tenet off at the pass and mention the L-word. The challenge now is to turn
it into a hemisphere-wide debate, out in the open. Washington knows that it
loses a fair and democratic debate over drug prohibition. From our end, at
Narco News, we see our job as translating and reporting the facts each time
this suppressed debate pops up out of the box. And that may be somewhat
helpful to the Latin American leaders, including Fox, since they know that
now, finally, their words will be heard inside the United States beyond
Langley and Foggy Bottom. Narco News is the lifeline between free speech in
Latin America and Civil Society in North America.

KENNEDY: How does the Internet make it possible to do independent journalism
in ways that would not have been possible pre-Net?

GIORDANO: That question kind of answers itself, no? It takes out the
middleman! The writer can now communicate directly with the reader.

Dan, you've written some of the best analysis of this question, regarding
the boom and bust of the dot-coms
(http://www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/features/00/12/28/AMAZON.html). I
share your conclusion: anyone hoping to make a fortune out of Internet news
is going to be disappointed. But for those who "live off the land," as you
say - who speak because they feel they have something to say - these are the
journalists who are kicking butt on the Internet.

The other part of this is how independent Internet journalism forces
traditional news agencies, newspapers, broadcasters, and even commercial
Internet news sites to adapt to not having a monopoly of control over the
news. This is a real challenge for us at Narco News. As we said on our first
day of publication, we are out to force stories onto their pages that
otherwise would be ignored. And we have done that. And we do that. And we
will keep it up.

KENNEDY: The flip side of the previous question: doesn't the very freedom to
do independent journalism make you (and others, from Brock Meeks to Matt
Drudge) incredibly vulnerable to people who are willing to abuse the legal
system in order to harass their enemies? In that sense, Roberto Hernandez
has every incentive to sue you regardless of whether there are any merits to
his charges or not, doesn't he?

GIORDANO: Press freedom and First Amendment protections are developed mainly
through litigation, through the interpretations by the courts of
constitutional protected liberties. There is very little case law on
Internet speech. Hernandez and his lawyers are taking advantage of that gap,
but I suspect they know full well that we will defeat them in the end. Right
now, it's a matter of applying case law on other media to the Internet
itself. And by that standard, we will emerge victorious. We plan to make
some good case law along the way - that is to say, to set precedents that
protect everyone's cyber-liberties in the future.

The courts have yet to address the phenomenon of the "cyber-SLAPP suit" -
Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation - like the Banamex/Akin,
Gump case against our First and 14th Amendment rights, as well as our right
to petition our government for a redress of grievances. I am going to push
the courts to do their job on this, to make good case law and settle this
problem once and for all.

This case does not deserve to go to trial. It should be dismissed. But if it
does go to trial, then the jury is going to have the final say. And it's
going to be very interesting to see the adversary's attempt to extract out
of me and the other defendants a "culpable mental state," which is an
element they have to prove to win a libel verdict. In the end, they want to
prove a "thought crime." Well, okay, let's open up Giordano's head, let's
open up Menendez's head, let's see what Narco News is really all about, and
let the jury hear it. Let's see what formed our states of mind in making and
writing these statements. Let's have a full airing of the facts of US
government complicity in cocaine trafficking in Mexico - the corrupt
officials, the laundered-money trail, the pristine Caribbean beaches
destroyed by this illicit business. Let's see how Mr. Hernandez and his
official protectors abused the courts in their country to persecute
journalists. Let's subpoena some white-collar narcos and corrupted officials
directly involved in this story, depose them under oath, and see how it
really operates. Let's look at Hernandez's participation in what I think is
the legalized bribery of campaign finance. Let's look at Operation
Casablanca and the two Banamex officials charged with money laundering in
the United States. Because before I even heard the words Hernandez or
Banamex, the Federal Reserve Board slapped them with a cease-and-desist
order to stop laundering dirty money. Let's open up all these vaults and see
what flies out.

If they want to put me on trial for my thoughts, my experiences, and my
beliefs, I am more than happy to have them heard in an open and public
forum. Let's look at the drug war and how it is waged in Mexico. The movie
Traffic only scratches the surface of the festering corrupt narco-system
that lies beneath and benefits from this policy. That's why our defense fund
is called "Drug War on Trial."

KENNEDY: How are you handling the legal aspects of this? How can you afford
to travel back and forth from Latin America to New York?

GIORDANO: I can't. This is the major headache. And what about where I stay
while I am in New York? I can't afford an apartment there, certainly not a
hotel room! And they are gambling that one day I will have to show up for a
hearing and won't be able to afford it. This is where Civil Society, if it
believes in our most basic freedom - the freedom to speak and write without
reprisal - is needed to help out.

Good people of conscience can help out by making a check to "Drug War on
Trial" and sending it to:

Drug War on Trial

c/o Attorney Thomas Lesser

Lesser, Newman, Souweine & Nasser

39 Main Street

Northampton, MA 01060

This is what bugs me most of all. I never wanted to ask anyone for a cent to
publish Narco News. I believe that free speech should be free. And as my
late pal Abbie Hoffman said, "Free means you don't pay."

There are people of conscience who have the means to solve this inequity
with a single check. Maybe one of them will come through. Or maybe there is
another Jeff Buckley or two out there who can help Barry Crimmins organize
the cultural defense and we can fill Madison Square Garden for a few nights
for a free-speech fund that will solve not only our defense, but defend
others similarly attacked in the days and years to come. Meanwhile, working
folks are kicking in 10 bucks, 20 bucks, sometimes a hundred bucks, and this
has kept us in the game so far, albeit precariously close to defaulting. But
Civil Society has responded and ordered Narco News not to give up the fight.
Obedience leads, as the indigenous of Chiapas taught us. And we will obey
this order from Civil Society with our every last ounce of strength.

As a writer, when so many people give me the gift of their eyes by reading
my work, I have a responsibility that comes with that privilege. I can't let
the readers down! Without them, I'm not a writer. I'm very lucky to have
readers. They give meaning to my life. And if it means enduring the hassles
of this lawsuit, well, let's go into the fight!

KENNEDY: Has Mario Menendez also been traveling back and forth? Are you
mounting a joint defense, or are your cases being handled separately?

GIORDANO: Mario is represented by the foremost First Amendment attorney in
the United States, probably the world: Marty Garbus of New York. There is a
spirit of full cooperation between the defendants and attorneys, but each
defendant has a slightly different set of facts to respond to, although it's
all essentially the same big set of facts and the same principles and
liberties at stake. I wish I could afford Marty Garbus. I wish I could
afford Tom Lesser - right now he's defending Narco News, my first priority
to defend because, as I said, it's my child! And unless and until enough
funds come in, I have to represent myself. You can't ask any talented
attorney to do a complex libel case against Akin, Gump for free, although
both are doing it at less than their usual fees because they believe in the
rightness of the cause and the defense of liberty. This isn't anywhere near
as simple as a criminal case. It's a civil litigation, against sleazy
attorneys from Akin, Gump whose only goal is to tie the case up in knots and
delay eventual judgment, because they have to know that Banamex going to
lose in the end, as long as we keep fighting. Maybe they haven't told
Banamex that fact, but they must know it themselves.

KENNEDY: Is it possible for Hernandez to grind away to the point where the
Bulletin ceases publication? Or is the operation small and mobile enough
that it can't be killed?

GIORDANO: Yes. It is possible that Narco News ceases publication of new
stories because I am converted into a full-time pro se defendant. But what
is already published on Narco News will remain on the Internet. That is my
vow. If it has to go to a thousand mirror sites, or reconstitute itself in
anothernews.com from an offshore server, well, the Internet also provides
those options. But I don't foresee any ruling from the court to shut down
Narco News. It would be illegal and unconstitutional, and overturned on
appeal. The law is very clear.

As for whether we can keep publishing new commentary, reports, news, and
information, that is up to Civil Society. So far, Civil Society has said
yes.

KENNEDY: What's next for you and the Bulletin?

GIORDANO: Waiting for orders from headquarters. That is to say, waiting for
Civil Society. Or, as Jeff said in the final words of his magnum opus: "I
have no fear of this machine!"