|
Al
Giordano |
Free Speech
Congratulations,
Al!
Huge Victory for Free
Speech and the right to fair comment!!
Dec. 7, 2001:
"This
court finds that Narco
News
is a media defendant and is entitled to heightened protection
under the First Amendment (Sullivan v. New York Times)...
"The Internet
is similar to a television and radio broadcast in the sense that
the electronic missive is able to reach a large and diverse audience
almost instananeously... However, the character of a particular
website depends on the format and program design... A careful
review of defendants' submission on Narco News's website indicates
that the Narco defendants' format is similar to a regularly published
public news magazine or newspaper except for the fact that the
periodical is published "on line" or electronically,
instead of being printed on paper. The fact that the Narco News
website can accept readers' comments, or letters to the editor,
via a seperate e-mail address only strengthens the need for First
Amendment protections for the medium.
"Since
principles of defamation law may be applied to the Internet...
this court determines that Narco News, its website, and the writers
who post information, are entitled to all the First Amendment
protections accorded a newspaper-magazine or journalist in defamation
suits... Furthermore, the nature of the articles printed on the
website and Mr. Giordano's statements at Columbia University
constitute matters of public concern because the information
disseminated relates to the drug trade and its affect on people
living in this hemisphere..."
-- New York
Supreme Court Justice Paula Omansky
Banamex
owner sues Narco News: An on-going story of authentic journalism,
free speech and the internet
Interview
with Al Giordano, defendant in Banamex lawsuit
The Banamex-Press Case: Narco-Politics
on Trial
Translated from El Boletín
Mexicano de La Crisis
By BEATRIZ FREGOSO, January
16, 2001
Roberto Hernández Ramírez,
president of Banamex, seeks to "bury" the accusations
that have been published in various media about him for drug
trafficking and money laundering in legal paperwork and "drown
them," through an expensive trial in New York, says Al Giordano,
editor of The Narco News Bulletin and one of the journalists
sued by the banker in the New York Supreme Court.
More than trying to "restore"
the deteriorated image of the bank, as he claims in his lawsuit,
what the Banamex owner wants "is to silence us and discredit
us in order to discredit the published accusations, since he
already doesn't have the elements to refute the facts upon which
the reports that accused him were based," said that journalist.
Tireless investigator, passionate
opponent of the war on drugs, enthusiastic promoter of social
causes, Giordano declined to speak of the strategies that he
will use in his defense, but he declares himself openly optimistic
of the results that this trial will bring.
He warns that the case is going
to be politicized, "because we have all the elements for
that: international narco-trafficking, money-laundering, government
persecution against journalists and photographs of cocaine containers
in the pristine coastal lands of Quintana Roo that belong to
the banker."
"The Banamex owner wanted
to silence us," he said, "and what he is going to succeed
at doing is to place the narco-system and its bastard child,
the war on drugs, in the seat of the accused."
"Roberto Hernández
has already lost in advance because he has failed to silence
us," he emphasized.
Soon, the parties will begin
shooting, and to start it all off, Giordano notified Banamex
defender Tom McLish by email of the adjournment of the pre-trial
conference, ordered by a judge, from January 25th to March 8th.
In a missive infused with irony,
in which he represented himself as his own attorney, the journalist
accepted service of the bank's lawsuit against him and asked
the accusing side for 90 days to respond.
"Roberto Hernández's
gamble was to sue us in order to cost us money that we clearly
don't have," said the former political reporter of the Boston
Phoenix newspaper, a media that he left to dedicate himself to
report on the absurdities and abuses of the war on drugs in Latin
America.
"If Roberto Hernández's
desire was to silence us he has failed because neither don Mario
nor I are the type of people to give up in the face of harassment.
To the contrary, here we go into the fight," he advised.
He stressed that the banker
knows that neither of the journalists has the money needed to
mount a defense to this lawsuit. "He knows it, because he
has used companies like DSFX, an espionage firm, to investigate
us."
And he added: "He knows
perfectly well that I don't earn enough money to live in New
York. He knows that Mario Renato Menéndez and Por Esto!
sell ads for pesos and he wants to obligate them to pay for a
legal defense in dollars."
"This lawsuit is about
harassment and intimidation. The fact that to defend oneself
from any lawsuit in New York costs hundreds of thousands of dollars,"
he said, adding that the cost of court documents alone is going
to cost him around $100,000.
To be able to mount an adequate
defense, he explained, "we need the transcripts of all the
depositions and they cost about $500 dollars apiece, and if they
have to be translated from Spanish, the price doubles. To this
must be added the legal fees, the trips to New York, etcetera."
And why hasn't Banamex sued
media like El Universal, AP, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston
Phoenix or the Village Voice that published the same facts? "Because
they know they have a weak case and anyone with a minimum capacity
to pay for a legal defense can prove it."
Also, he recalls a series of
facts that demonstrate the kind of web that the Banamex owner
is weaving to silence the two journalists: "The lawsuit
in New York was filed on August 9th and some days later, on August
24th, the Mexican Attorney General brought charges against Mario
Renato Menéndez. Their plan was to obtain a secret arrest
warrant, to arrest the Por Esto! editor in Cancún on September
8th and the next day announce the lawsuit in the Big Apple."
"I think it was a huge
surprise for Roberto Hernández's lawyers that an attorney
like Martin Garbus, who has defended Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel,
Henry Miller and many others, appeared in the defense of our
case."
He outlines that Garbus has
defended twenty cases before the US Supreme Court, "and
has not lost a single one."
Another attorney that may join
the defense is Tom Lesser, friend of Al Giordano, who has so
far given legal advice, and is known for his talent at politicizing
cases like this one.
But the most appetizing bite
in this entire buffet of expensive plates is the possibility
of putting the war on drugs in the seat of the accused.
Al Giordano explains: "In
the United States, to win a lawsuit for libel, they need to prove
malice on the part of the accused. As I see things going, I think
that don Mario and I might spend days and days in the witness
chair to explain all that we knew about this theme. In this sense,
a lot of information that is unknown or ignored about drug trafficking
and its complicities is going to come to light in New York."
Are you disposed to come to
a legal agreement with Banamex outside the court if Roberto Hernández
solicits that at some point?
"No deals: I don't make
deals with this kind of people. I have to preserve my integrity."
But not all is honey over pancakes.
Al Giordano recognizes that since this matter of the lawsuit
began he has spent hours and hours preparing his defense and
has been obligated to leave things that before seemed fundamental
on the side. But not even that seems to deter his steel will
to mount his defense with all the moral authority that he has
earned through an impeccable journalistic career.
Date: January
13, 2001
Please DON'T censor our
adversary's web site
Dear Jared,
As part of an effort of censorship
and harassment by the banker Roberto Hernández Ramírez,
his bank, Banamex, and the lawyer-lobbyist firm that he hired
to sue and harass online and newspaper journalists, you have
been contracted by Banamex and/or Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer
& Feld to publish a web site at this address:
NarcoNews has published the
lawsuit here.)
The web site, on your server,
contains this message:
"Banco Nacional de Mexico,
S.A. ('Banamex') has filed suit against 1) Mario Renato Mendendez
Rodriguez, 2) Al Giordano and 3) The Narco News Bulletin. That
case is currently pending in the United States District Court
for the Southern District of New York. Banamex has set up this
web page as a means to deliver important documents relating to
the the lawsuit to the defendants in the case. Clicking on the
links below will display the documents and permit the user to
save them, if desired."
I am writing to kindly ask
that you NOT censor this web site that has been placed by our
litigious adversaries.
At Narco News, we believe that
sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Since April 18, 2000, we have
published hundreds of news stories that reveal the facts about
the present-day atrocity that is the US-imposed War on Drugs
in Latin America. These journalistic reports can be found at
http://www.narconews.com
The web site that you have
been contracted to provide includes the text of a lawsuit filed
against Mexican and US journalists.
They are suing us because we
reported the facts and told the truth about government-protected
drug trafficking throughout América, including some stories
about those in government and media who protected that activity
on the coastal Caribbean properties of Mr. Hernández,
owner of Banamex.
Today, we have placed a link
from our web site to the site on your server so that all our
readers across the world may read the false and unsubstantiated
charges filed against us by Banamex through its lawyer-lobbyist
firm Akin Gump.
The lawsuit speaks for itself.
One need only read its hostile tone and its lack of facts to
back its most serious allegations to see, clearly, that they
have no real case. This lawsuit is a classic SLAPP suit (Strategic
Lawsuit Against Public Participation), and its perpetrators are
already beginning to feel the consequences of their own censorious
and immoral actions against us.
The lawsuit makes some allegations
that would be actionable as libel if the Plaintiffs or their
lawyers stated them anywhere outside of the protected realm of
a court proceeding (thus, they have not repeated these knowingly
false and malicious allegations in their statements to the press).
But we believe, as First Amendment advocates before us have said,
that THE
ONLY SOLUTION TO HARMFUL SPEECH IS MORE SPEECH.
Your new clients do not share
our commitment to free speech. Here is a case in point that,
as an Internet Service Provider, ought to concern you deeply:
Last month, Mr. Tom McLish
of Akin Gump sent a threatening letter to our Internet Service
Provider, Voxel.net in Troy, New York, seeking to intimidate
them into censoring our web publication. The good people at www.voxel.net
, instead of running scared and taking our site down, told the
Metroland newspaper of Albany that Narco News is providing "a
public service," and that Voxel.net will not censor us.
You may also read a Village
Voice story that reports on Akin Gump's harassment activities
against online freedom of speech at:
http://www.villagevoice.com/
And you may read a free speech
scholar's analysis of our case at:
http://www.narconews.com/drugwarontrial3.html
We don't seek to win our battle
for free speech through censorship. To the contrary, we write
today to ask you NOT to censor the Banamex-Akin Gump web site
- even if and when they ask you to take it down.
All the documents on that web
site are public documents, property of the US courts, and thus,
the American people. There is no copyright upon them. They are
now part of the public record. Having filed them in a court of
law, Banamex and Akin Gump have lost all claim of ownership on
those words (indeed, the most truthful words in that complaint
were taken from Narco News, and we thank them for providing more
readers for the facts and truth we publish, and for making these
texts available at yet another Internet site).
Thus, if Akin Gump or Banamex
comes to you - now that we have, once again, turned their bitter
litigious lemons into the sweet and refreshing lemonade of Free
Expression - and if they ask you to take the site down, we call
upon you to maintain the site as a historical archive of how
huge companies in the private sector try to use their money and
power to censor the Internet, the Press and Freedom of Expression.
Finally, we hope that your
wealthy clients paid you in advance for the web site, and that
perhaps you can find a worthy free speech organization like the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties
Union, or another charity of your choice, to support with the
funds of those who, in bad faith and hostility to freedom, seek
to censor the Internet.
Thank you, Jared, for your
time and consideration. We wish you continued success.
For an Internet that stays
proud and free,
From somewhere in a country
called América,
Al Giordano, Publisher The Narco News Bulletin
narconews@hotmail.com
Mexican
Banker Sues 'Narco News': Drug War Goes on Trial
Press Clips by Cynthia
Cotts, From the Village Voice, December 20 to 26,
2000, New York City Cott's'
original story referred to in the lawsuit
The managers of Voxel Dot Net
Inc, a small Internet-service provider in Troy, hardly imagined
that they would ever become embroiled in an international dispute
over drug trafficking. But this month, that's exactly what happened.
Last Thursday (Dec. 14), Voxel
was contacted by representatives of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer
& Feld, a Washington, D.C. law firm representing the Mexican
bank Banamex. Through a lawsuit filed in federal District Court
in New York City, Banamex is waging a legal battle to discredit
media reports indicating that its president, Roberto Hernández
Ramírez, is a drug trafficker whose activities are allegedly
protected by powerful politicians in both Mexico and the United
States.
Since last April, Voxel has
provided Internet access to the Narco News Bulletin, a news service
that seeks to expose the alleged hypocrisies of the U.S.-led
war against drugs-which enters its next phase in January with
the start of a military operation in southern Colombia targeting
coca growers. Akin Gump reportedly asked Voxel to dismantle the
Narco News Web site (www.narconews.com), but the company refused,
citing free speech concerns.
"This has the makings
of a huge, huge case," said Raj Dutt, the corporate spokesman
for Voxel in Troy. Dutt said he could not comment specifically
on any legal action that might be taken against his company.
"We're not being held responsible. We are the host"
of Narco News, he said.
Dutt added that the news bulletin
was "providing a public service" and that Voxel would
continue providing Internet access "until we get a court
order basically telling us to take the site down."
"I'm not authorized to
speak to the press on behalf of our client," said Akin Gump
spokesman Tom McLish, who has been attempting to serve the legal
papers related to a lawsuit brought against the Narco News publisher,
former Boston Phoenix political writer Al Giordano.
In July, Narco News translated
a series of articles published in Por Esto!, Mexico's third-largest
daily newspaper, which documented how the Hernández property
in the state of Quintana Roo has become a prime shipping point
for Colombian cocaine. The paper went so far as to call the Hernández
ranch, located on Mexico's Caribbean coast, "the cocaine
peninsula." Hernández filed lawsuits against the
editor and publisher of Por Esto!, along with several of the
paper's reporters, to force a retraction of its investigative
stories. But top Mexican judges ruled against him, saying the
stories were "based on the facts," according to Narco
News.
Other Mexican papers have reported
how Hernández hosted a private reception at his ranch
this year that was attended by newly elected Mexican President
Vincente Fox, U.S. ambassador to Mexico Jeffrey Davidow and President
Bill Clinton.
|
Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
