Pubdate: Thu, 09 Aug 2001
Source: Valley Advocate (MA)
Copyright: 2001 Valley Advocate
Contact:  http://www.mapinc.org/media/1520
Website: http://www.valleyadvocate.com/
Author: JoAnn DiLorenzo

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. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake