INTERNET ON TRIAL

The War On Drugs, A Powerful Mexican Banker, And A Libel Suit Add Up To A
Big Threat To Independent Online Journalism

Ask Al Giordano about the theatrical possibilities of a high-profile libel
suit that's been filed against him and his Web site, the Narco News
Bulletin (www.narconews.com), and he responds that he's not going to talk
about it.

But Giordano was, after all, a friend and acolyte of the late Abbie Hoffman
- -- not to mention an anti-nuclear activist and a Boston Phoenix political
reporter in the mid 1990s. And he is being sued in New York City, the media
capital of the world, for accusing a powerful Mexican banker of being a
drug trafficker. Then there's the matter of his legal representation.
Though Narco News is being defended by veteran progressive lawyer Tom
Lesser, Giordano will represent himself.

In other words, look out. In a telephone interview from an undisclosed
location in Latin America, Giordano makes it clear that he'd like nothing
better than to confront his nemesis, Roberto Hernandez Ramirez, not only
about the issues at hand, but also about the entire misbegotten war on drugs.

"What I would prefer is that this be settled in the way we settle disputes
over words in a democracy," says Giordano, who believes the only solution
to the drug problem -- both at home and in the supplier nations of Latin
America -- is to end prohibition. "We could grab a couple of soap boxes,
head up to Union Park, and debate all the issues." As for the trial itself
- -- assuming one ever takes place -- Giordano says, "I take the law very
seriously, and am studying the court rules and will mount a very serious
defense." But you can assume that he and Lesser plan to depose Hernandez
and a whole host of Mexican and US officials. At some point Hernandez may
find himself wondering what he ever got himself into.

Sometime on or before next Thursday, April 19, Lesser will file a motion
with the New York state court system seeking to dismiss Hernandez's libel
suit against Narco News, a Web site Giordano launched a year ago to cover
the war on drugs in Latin America. For the past year, Giordano's been
producing Narco News from "somewhere in a country called America," as he
signs his dispatches, taking on powerful icons ranging from the New York
Times and the Associated Press to the governments of the United States and
Mexico.

Among the icons with whom Giordano has tangled is Hernandez, the principal
owner of Banco Nacional de Mexico, more commonly known as Banamex, which
Hernandez bought from the Mexican government in 1991. Last August,
Hernandez and Banamex sued Giordano, the Narco News Bulletin, and Mexican
journalist Mario Menendez Rodriguez, accusing them of libel, slander, and
"interference with prospective economic advantage."

The reason: Giordano and Menendez, both in interviews last year with the
Village Voice and WBAI Radio and in a public appearance at Columbia
University, charged that Hernandez is a drug trafficker whose profits
helped to finance the purchase of Banamex. Giordano also published those
charges in Narco News.

Giordano and Lesser say their defense is based on the simple fact that the
charges are true, and that they were found to be true in the Mexican
courts. They say that Menendez and the newspaper he publishes, Por Esto!
("That's Why!"), which has reported extensively on Hernandez's alleged
drug-trafficking ties, were sued by Hernandez and Banamex in Mexico, and
that Menendez prevailed on two occasions, with a judge ruling that Por
Esto!'s reporting was grounded in fact.

But Hernandez's US lawyer, Thomas McLish, of the Washington, DC--based firm
of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, counters that the charges against his
client are false and have never been adjudicated in the Mexican courts.

"Their claims are not only untrue, but absurd, and they know it," McLish
says in a written statement provided to the Phoenix. "The assertion that a
Mexican court has already found the statements to be true is simply wrong.
The Mexican courts have never ruled that these accusations are true or are
supported by facts." The Mexican case, McLish adds, was "eventually
dismissed ... on technical points of Mexican law, without ever addressing
truth or falsity."

This case is an important one, involving as it does questions of free
speech in the Internet age, the consequences of the war on drugs, and the
role of high-profile, well-connected lawyers.

First, though, a few notes of disclosure. This story involves enough
entangling media alliances that it could be accompanied by footnotes. To wit:

I worked with Giordano during his stint at the Phoenix, and was his
immediate editor during his first year as the paper's political reporter.

Giordano continues to write occasionally for the Phoenix -- including, most
recently, a dispatch from Mexico on the motorcade by the Zapatista rebels
led by the mysterious Subcomandante Marcos (see "Rebel Rainmakers," News
and Features, March 9), an event he covered for the Nation as well.

A year before he started Narco News, Giordano wrote about the
drug-trafficking accusations involving Hernandez and Banamex for the
Phoenix, carefully -- and accurately -- attributing those accusations to
the reporting of Por Esto! (see "Clinton's Mexican Narco-Pals," News, May
14, 1999).

The case against the Narco News Bulletin was first reported last December
by the Village Voice, and has since attracted the attention of the Boston
Globe as well. Giordano was also interviewed last week on The David Brudnoy
Show, on WBZ Radio (AM 1030).

No doubt Giordano's status as a well-known activist has something to do
with the attention he's getting, but there also are some fascinating subplots.

The first is the battle of the lawyers. Northampton-based Tom Lesser, of
Lesser, Newman, Souweine & Nasser, is highly regarded in leftist circles,
having represented war-tax resisters and anti-nuclear protesters, including
Giordano. Lesser recalls meeting Giordano for the first time about 20 years
ago, after Giordano and other protesters had been arrested outside the
Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire -- for a legal defense that
included a Sunday-morning conference with future Supreme Court justice
David Souter. Lesser also represented Abbie Hoffman and Amy Carter in 1987,
after they were arrested for protesting CIA recruitment at UMass Amherst.

McLish, Hernandez's lawyer, is part of a firm whose partners include
Democratic grandees Vernon Jordan and Robert Strauss. And for good measure,
Menendez is being defended by First Amendment lawyer Martin Grabus, whose
client list includes Lenny Bruce and Timothy Leary.

The case also involves some vital free-speech issues. With the mainstream
media increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer corporate
owners, the Internet is a crucial outlet for independent media projects
such as Narco News. But Giordano's very independence makes him vulnerable
to the wealth of a banker such as Hernandez and a law firm such as Akin, Gump.

"Even if the charges are preposterous, the fact that he has to divert
resources, time, and energy -- it deflects you from your work, and it
displaces you from your energy, time, and effort," says Danny Schechter, an
old friend of Giordano's who is executive editor of the Media Channel, a
progressive nonprofit watchdog site (www.mediachannel.org). "It becomes a
noose around your neck. It makes it harder to do your work, and it makes it
harder to find allies."

Adds Schechter, best known in Boston for his years as the "News Dissector"
on the old WBCN Radio in the 1970s: "I admire Al. He's one guy taking on
the whole drug war."

Trouble is, it's a lot easier for the likes of Roberto Hernandez to crush
one guy than it would be to take on a major media organization. Just ask
Matt Drudge, whose online Drudge Report (www.drudgereport.com) several
years ago slimed then--White House aide Sidney Blumenthal with a false
story that Blumenthal had physically abused his wife. Drudge pulled the
story and apologized almost immediately, but Blumenthal has continued to
push a $30 million libel suit against Drudge, which critics charge is
motivated more by his desire to harass a persistent Clinton enemy than to
clear his name. (Yet another disclosure: the Washington Post reported last
November that my name was on a list of witnesses whom Blumenthal intended
to depose in an effort to track down Drudge's sources. To date I have not
been contacted by any of the parties in the suit.)

Another relevant example is that of Brock Meeks, whose pioneering CyberWire
Dispatch (www.cyberwerks.com/cyberwire) was sued by a telemarketing firm in
1994 after Meeks claimed the firm was engaged in a "scam." Meeks ended up
settling without admitting any liability or falsehoods, and paid for his
legal representation through an on online defense fund that raised some
$10,000 to $15,000.

"The thing that I learned is that if you're going to be a cowboy, you have
to be really prepared to endure all that comes with that," says Meeks, now
the chief Washington correspondent for MSNBC.com. "The frightening thing is
when you learn just how alone you are. It's very tough unless you've got a
deep-pockets publisher behind you."

The issues in Hernandez's suit against Al Giordano, Mario Menendez, and
Narco News are complicated, and involve Menendez and his newspaper, Por
Esto!, more directly than they do Giordano. In a series of articles, Por
Esto! reported that coastal properties purchased by Hernandez in the late
'80s and early '90s were used to deliver large volumes of Colombian
cocaine; from there, the drugs were allegedly flown into the United States
from Hernandez's private airfield. Por Esto! also reported that Hernandez
used resorts he owned to launder drug money. Although Giordano reports that
he's done some checking of his own, his involvement was largely limited to
repeating Por Esto!'s charges in interviews, at the Columbia University
appearance, and in the Narco News Bulletin.

The truth of Por Esto!'s reporting will be determined in court -- assuming
the case ever gets far enough to go to trial, a process that Tom Lesser
estimates could take several years.

But to the extent that Giordano's own reputation is at issue, one
indication of his reliability may be gleaned from a piece Narco News
published last October. According to Narco News, Associated Press reporter
Peter McFarren had lobbied the Bolivian Senate on behalf of a $78 million
water project from which he would have indirectly benefited. Not long after
Giordano's story was published, McFarren resigned.

Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz, who reported on McFarren and
on Giordano's role, told me, "Giordano's reporting on the serious conflicts
of an AP reporter in Bolivia was right on the mark and well documented in
my view. The AP was slow to acknowledge Giordano's basic point -- that its
reporter could not lobby the Bolivian legislature and continue to function
as a journalist -- but the wire service ultimately distanced itself from
its former correspondent, thus underscoring that Giordano hit the bull's-eye."

Among Giordano's supporters is Gary Webb, whose "Dark Alliance" series for
the San Jose Mercury News several years ago -- reporting that the CIA
looked the other way while its right-wing clients in Nicaragua raised money
by selling cocaine that helped touch off the US crack epidemic -- created a
national sensation.

Webb's experience shows what Giordano may be up against. After the New York
Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times all published long
series suggesting that Webb may have overreached, the Mercury apologized,
leading to Webb's departure from the paper. He later expanded on his story
and wrote about his own experience in Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras,
and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (Seven Stories, 1998).

In a letter posted on Narco News, Webb compares his situation to
Giordano's, saying, "Make no mistake. This court fight isn't about any
particular story Narco News has done. It's about ALL of them, and all of
the ones yet to come. And it's a battle over the continued independence of
Internet journalism as well."

There's going to be a celebration next Wednesday, April 18. It's the first
anniversary of the Narco News Bulletin, and Giordano has scheduled an event
that will take place in New York City at 8:30 p.m., at 538 West 40th
Street. The MC will be humorist and social activist Barry Crimmins, whose
Web site ( http://www.barrycrimmins.com ) runs an amusing parody called "Where's
Al?", about Giordano's efforts to avoid having papers served on him in the
Hernandez lawsuit.

"The thing that I think Al and I really have in common, and what I think
his friend Abbie Hoffman probably spotted as well, is that Al has always
understood that you have to have fun," Crimmins says. Not that Crimmins
doesn't see the seriousness in Giordano's situation. "If they can get Al,
they can get the rest of us," he says. "I'm proud to be part of this one.
This is a great one."

Giordano says it's not quite accurate for Crimmins to suggest that he tried
to prevent Hernandez's lawyers from serving papers on him. "I never
intended to evade service. I've never run from a fight in my life," he
says, offering as proof the fact that he did, after several months, step
forward and accept his role as a party to the suit. But, he adds, "The law
doesn't require me to stop what I'm doing to facilitate anyone serving me
papers. I'm not going to march to their rhythm, their drums, and their case."

Giordano is trying to move forward. These days he's focusing considerable
attention on the Peruvian election. Narco News has reported that the United
States withdrew its support for the previous dictatorial president, Alberto
Fujimori, because Fujimori opposed US intervention in Colombia. Now it
appears that Alan Garcia, a progressive who also opposes Plan Colombia, may
win back the presidency he once held. On Tuesday of this week, the Bulletin
published photos purporting to show US Marines in Peru above the headline
will Washington accept democracy in Peru?

At the same time, however, Giordano acknowledges that the lawsuit could
wear him down and interfere seriously with his mission.

"It is possible that Narco News ceases publication of new stories because I
am converted into a full-time pro se defendant," he told me in an email
exchange. "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."

You don't have to form an opinion about the Banamex lawsuit to see the
Narco News Bulletin for what it is: a passionate, occasionally funny, and
important extension of Al Giordano himself, a passionate, occasionally
funny activist who has important things to say.

It would be a damn shame if legal woes end up silencing Narco News. But I
suspect that silencing Giordano himself would be an utter impossibility.