WASHINGTON — Conrad Black is back in Canada. He controlled the
third-largest string of English-language newspapers in the world
before he became entoiled with the United States Department of
Justice. For his friends it was a terrible loss. We missed him and
we have missed his newspapers. He made the Telegraph
papers in London a beacon of civilized discourse and a sound source
of news. They provided better information on the high-jinks of Bill
Clinton than any news source here, save the Wall Street
Journal, the Washington Times, and, ahem, The
American Spectator. The Telegraph papers were great
newspapers and his other publications, for instance,
Spectator of London, were eminently civilized too. They
still are, though they miss Conrad’s journalistic touch.
He got in a corporate imbroglio that became a nightmare for him.
My comrade in arms Seth Lipsky of the New York Sun
understands the ins and outs of it far better than I and claims
Conrad was innocent. Who am I to doubt Lipsky? He knows the law. He
studied the charges against Conrad, and has pronounced him
blameless. Everything Lipsky says has the ring of truth to it.
Conrad’s problems began with minority shareholders in his
company, Hollinger International, complaining about his expenses.
Rather imprudently Conrad submitted himself to their
investigations. They invited one Richard Breeden in as special
investigator eight years ago. Breeden proved to be a man with an ax
to grind. The product of his ax work was to charge Conrad with
stealing more than $400 million from the corporation. By the time
federal prosecutors took over the case that number was down to $80
million in charges. In court the figure was whittled down to $60
million. Finally, after years of dickering, Conrad at great expense
to the government, to Hollinger, and to himself stood guilty of a
fraud charge of but $285,000.
Through it all Conrad went to trial on 13 counts of which the
jury acquitted him of nine counts. The most serious of those 13
counts were charges of racketeering and tax evasion. Conrad beat
them all. The jury convicted Conrad on obstruction for obeying an
eviction order from Hollinger and taking his property from his
erstwhile office. Tom Wolfe summed up the jury’s behavior: “They
had to get him for something.” It is a long way from $400 million
to $285,000.
The other three charges on which he was found guilty
involved “honest services fraud.” He went to prison on this charge
and on the obstruction charge, but he hired a gifted lawyer, Miguel
Estrada, who took the charges to the Supreme Court and got the
honest services law overturned. That is about the only thing I can
say that was good about the federal government’s proceedings
against Conrad. We can thank him for eliminating the misuse of “the
honest services” clause, but boy did it cost him. He spent a
fortune on lawyers, lost his liberty, and his papers are all
gone.
Last Friday, Conrad left his Florida prison and flew back to
Canada. He will not be allowed back in the United States due to his
conviction. He has been one of America’s most ardent defenders, but
his days here are no more. He is up in Toronto sipping white wine,
living in his handsome mansion surrounded by his family, and
enjoying his freedom. How will he spend his time?
My guess is that, with a few comforts added in, he will spend it
much as he spent his time in prison. He will write. While in prison
he finished two major books and wrote innumerable book reviews and
columns for the general press. He will lecture and travel. He will
speak out on prison reform, most notably the reform of the
draconian system that nailed him. Once the federal system focuses
its attention on a private citizen, he is almost helpless to thwart
it. Conrad came close but he missed and spent almost 42 months in
the clink.
During his incarceration I kept in contact with him as did
others. He maintained a vast correspondence. His spirit was
amazing. He never complained. He was not spiteful. He was always
upbeat, indeed jaunty. He was astoundingly resourceful both in his
defense, which he took a hand in, and in his wide-ranging
journalism. Bill Clinton envisaged a fate for me not unlike Conrad
Black’s, for my pursuit of Bill in the 1990s. I am not sure I would
have measured up.
