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Alan Gregg: And your marriage? I can't believe that this experience would be easy on a relationship.
Conrad Black: It wasn't *** the relationship. It was very *** my wife. I mean it's a
terribly difficult thing. It was no day at the beach for me, but it was very difficult
for her. But it wasn't *** our relation. She knew that those charges were false, and
our relationship is so strong that I don't think that it was strained overly, but was
she was strained as a person as I was.
AG: Two years ago, you were granted bail while appealing your fraud cases and in fact the
Supreme Court...
CB: After... No, I was granted bail after the Supreme Court vacated the counts.
AG: And they had basically put aside all four convictions, but sent the case to a lower
court where in fact two of the convictions were ultimately upheld. What happened there?
CB: Well, in a perverse American manner, having excoriated the appeal panel chairman and accused
him amongst other things of demonstrating, and I quote Justice Ginsburg who wrote the
opinion for unanimous court. There was one Justice who refused, the former Solicitor
General, but it was eight nothing and one abstention. "Accused him of demonstrating
the infirmity of invented law, and I declared the statute on which the prosecution based
the case to be unconstitutional and ultra vires to the United States Congress." And
instead of doing what I would have thought would be done and what would be done in a
comparable case in this country and saying "If you want to convict this person, you're
gonna have to try him again," they remanded the four vacated counts back to the judge
they had just excoriated and told him to assess the gravity of his own errors.
CB: Now the Judge in question, Richard Posner, is in the running for the most colossal megalomaniac
in American history. He told the New Yorker Magazine that he was overlooked for nomination
to the Supreme Court of the United States because he favoured the legalization of marijuana,
as I wrote in one of my critiques of Justice Posner in the National Review. It might have
been some of his other brainwaves such as proposing that the adoption of children be
by auction to the highest bidder had something to do with it. So Posner, being the personality
that he is, retrieved on the most spurious conceivable grounds, two lesser counts. The
two main counts went, 90% of what was left went. But he retrieved two counts. And that
was what this great prosecution, these 17 counts they started with, with racketeering,
tax evasion, perjury, every manner of fraud, that was what they were reduced to. This fatuous
nonsense with these boxes in an office in a foreign country and $285,000 improperly
received, supposedly, even though it is uncontested in the evidence that it was approved by the
directors.
AG: During the period of appeal, you're a free man for a year. You had to go...
CB: It's a half life. It's not really a freedom. It was 14 months and you're right, but I was
free in the sense you mean it, but you're not really free. I'm free now, but I wasn't...
AG: But you had to go back for an additional seven months. How hard was that psychologically
knowing that...
CB: I knew that was going to happen. It wasn't easy, but I wasn't surprised. They were even
at that late stage, in that palace of corruption and hypocrisy of a court house in Chicago,
they all locked arms to preserve the pretence that there was ever any justification for
bringing this prosecution. It was, as I said to the London Guardian, hanging around their
necks like a toilet seat, but still they hung on to it.
AG: Now, you and I talked in that period, when the hard cover of this memoir came out
in New York, and I was amazed at how sanguine you seemed about the whole situation. But
I also understand, subsequent to that discussion is that you didn't fare that well in prison.
In fact when you were released, you were in fairly ill health.
CB: Now that would be an exaggeration. I fared well in terms of getting along with people.
Again, I had no difficulties. It was fine, but I had a couple of problems. I put on weight
because living in the room with me was a chef from Boston. And the people who run the kitchen
take stupefying amounts of food out. It's just vanishing inventory. It's called grazing
in the supermarket business. And they would come around and ask people what they would
like. And the currency is postage stamps. There is no money in there, so you pay with
postage stamps. And so we'd ask him for whatever and then this chef would prepare it in the
microwaves in the residential unit, and we would have quite a sumptuous dinner. There
was no wine, the silverware was nothing to write home about, but I ate well. And there
were big portions, and I'm a victim of an... I'm sure again, like many people here, our
mothers always told us to finish what was on our plate. It's a habit. And so I added
weight. And I think at times, I had problems with my blood pressure, but there was never
any evidence of that. I didn't faint or anything like that, but I had to take some pills for
blood pressure as well as cholesterol.
AG: But you clearly were not among those 20% who were clinging to the fences to stay there.
You wanted out and you were anxious that things might not go well.
CB: You mean before I went back there for seven months?
AG: No, no. Well, just upon your release, your final release.
CB: Oh no, I wasn't... Again, that was all worked out with the governments of both countries
some time before. And I had no problems of that kind. I know there was great speculation
in the press in this country about whether the Americans would detain me and confine
me with...
AG: Or even, may even control where you go.
CB: Or mixed with gang members something and whether Canada would admit me. But you see,
I can never take seriously the idea that anyone really suggested I should never be allowed
to set foot in this country. I'm not seeking to be a citizen, I just wanted to visit the
country.
AG: I wanna get to that too, but you...
CB: And on the American side, they made it clear early on, they were trying to detain
me, they just wanted... Their great problem is people that they declare to be ineligible
to remain in the country, they want them to leave. Once I explained to the immigration
official that came to visit me that he had to understand that he could not possibly imagine
how enthusiastic I was to leave his country and I could do so by flapping my arms if necessary.
Then we had... He said, "Oh well, in that case, we can... That will be fine."
AG: But in fact, the entire experience seems to have significantly cooled your ardour for
the United States. And you also write in the memoirs when you sold your home, and you came
to see Palm Beach as a vulgar infestation of fat, rich, dumb, gauche Americans. In fact,
you write explicitly that your love affair with America is over. Explain that.
CB: Am I explaining my comment on Palm Beach society or on the United States?
AG: Just that you would always... I mean, you in fact on many occasions previous to
this whole episode and would scold Canadians that there's much to be learnt from America
and that if Canadians really had their stuff together, we could be even better than American.
CB: Well yeah, but there was some truth to that when I said it, but the... Some truth
to it, but the, yeah... So let me give a fair answer here. On the Palm Beach part of it,
I was overstating it a bit there, but of course there's some nice people there and its a lovely
town in some ways, but the...
AG: And they were your neighbours.
CB: I wasn't specifically criticizing my neighbours. Actually my neighbours were quite nice. But
the... And I got on fine there, but what you'd get in Palm Beach is these people who have
made a huge amount of money in a very narrow specialty. And like actresses or sports figures
who try and transpose their celebrity in one area to another and go out campaigning politically,
things like that. They think they know everything about everything, and it's not like the higher
income echelon of a large city, where you get all kinds of different people. There tend
to be a profusion in that town of people who are absolutely insufferable know-it-alls.
We happen to be sitting next to them at dinner or something and they don't actually know
anything except how to make paper cups or something, you see. And it's just such a huge
market, you can make a large fortune in obscure areas, you see. And that's really what I was
referring to.
CB: And also, I'm giving you a broader answer than you wanted, but I was terribly disillusioned
by the failure of American capitalism in 2008. I was stupefied that nobody saw it coming.
And I, myself was warning until I was blue in the face about the dangers of an $800 billion
current account deficit, but I wasn't in the real estate business, and I knew nothing about
these non-commercial mortgages. And that the entire banking system would push trillions
of dollars of worthless securities that the rating agencies, whom I well remembered from
my days at securities is they were being quite demanding and exigent, would certify at all
to be investment grade as if it came from Hydro-Quebec of something.
CB: And they would shovel away... The great Goldman-Sachs would shovel billions of this
rubbish out on its clients at the same time that it was house accounts, at the back door
it was shorting them. I was truly shocked and nobody saw it coming. Not the... No bankers,
merchant bankers, investment bankers, lending bankers, central bankers, nobody. No one on
the political side, no financial journalist, and no economic academicians except for Nouriel
Roubini, who's a crank, who's now telling us that Greece should emulate Argentina. As
I wrote the other day in reference to him, even a clock that stopped tells the right
time twice a day. That's what he did. But nobody else saw it coming.
CB: So I... Anyway, that takes care of Palm Beach. On the United States itself, look it's...
It is of course the greatest country in the world. No, it is a great country, very great
country, incomparably great in some ways, but I am... Yes, I am... First of all, I think
it's in... It is in decline. It is not as distinguished a country as it has been at
the times in it's history, and secondly, it is a terribly corrupt country. I mean not
compared perhaps or definitely not compared to what used to be called Third World countries,
most of them, but compared to its natural peers, toward... Compared to other countries
of relatively comparable living standards it is and it's a rather delusional place in
some ways.
AG: The book also launches a very kind of comprehensive criticism of the US judicial
system, above and beyond the specifics of your case especially.
CB: Well, the whole justice system and not just the judiciary, but the legal profession
and the custodial system.
AG: But I expect... And in the over-incarceration systematically of the poor Blacks and Hispanics.
I mean reading it on...
CB: And people generally even if it was only Whites, still too many of them. The United
States has 5% of the world's population, 25% of its incarcerated people and 50% of its
lawyers. The lawyers take 10% of GDP, 1.5 trillion dollars. It's just another form of
taxation. Of course you have to have a society of laws, but before you have a Federal legislature
and 50 State legislatures and all the municipalities churning out laws and regulations all the
time creating more work for this, for this festering steroid-bloated cartel of lawyers,
it is going to... It's gonna end badly.
AG: You in particular have problems, very critical of the US system of plea bargaining
and again, in the book, you say that it is nakedly the exchange of altered testimony
for varied sentences. You think that was case? You think that's what happened with your old
partner, David Radler, when he testified against you?
CB: Yes. Yes. He was the one person in that whole thing who did in fact commit crimes,
and I was the chief victim of it and that came out in the trial and his misrepresentation
of the related party transaction where he told everyone he would have 25% of it and
in fact did 50%. And when this came to light, you see when disgruntled shareholders who
were just really green mailers trying to force the sale of the company, because they wanted
a quick gain for themselves, asked for a special committee, I said right away, "Fine. Let's
have a special committee. I mean we haven't done anything wrong. Let's have a special
committee that will clear the air." But I didn't know that it would come upon, and I
wouldn't change my answer if I had known, but I didn't know we would come upon misfeasances
of his. So when this came to light, he made his deal with the prosecutors that "Don't
worry, I'll give you a bigger fish," even if they have to take down some other people
with him, the company counsel and so forth in exchange for this. So that's what happened.
That's how the system works.
CB: Let's say they target... Let's say, we're in the United States and they target you for
some reason, and some of the motivations of prosecutors are pretty esoteric. Then they
go to your five or eight closest associates and whatever the potentially controversial
matter is and they say, "Look here, you'd better remember that Allen Gregg did such
and so." Well you know so the bad thing you see and the person says, "No, I don't recall
that and furthermore I know Allan and I don't believe he would that." And they say, "Well,
you better jog your memory or we're indicting you too." And that's what happened. So that's
how they operate. That's how it was.
AG: That's how the bargaining worked.
CB: It's just a straight intimidation and extortion game. It's a disgrace.
AG: You and Radler were partners for some 38 years. Have you spoke to him or talked
to him since the trial?
CB: No. Not for seven years.
AG: As much as your judicial battles, I think that probably what has formed public opinion
toward you more than anything else was your acceptance of the peerage and declining continued
Canadian citizenship and that while I think many would agree that the choice that then
Prime Minister Chretien offered you was an odious one. It was nonetheless a choice that
you made. Do you regret that with passage of time?
CB: No, that isn't quite what happened. There are a great many people who are Canadian citizens
who hold British honours of one kind or another and there is no reason, no legal reason why
this can't be done. And so when the leader of the opposition of the time, now the Foreign
Secretary William Hague asked me if I would be a peer, Conservative Party peer, and I
said that I would and then the Prime Minister, my relations with him were very good, Tony
Blair, still are very good and even though I was associated with the other party, well
he couldn't have been more cooperative. He took it upon himself to have the British high
commissioner in Ottawa ask the opinion of the Canadian government about whether anything
needed to be done here and the chief of protocol in the government of Canada said, "Now, this
is fine, but he should be a dual citizen and not use the title when he's in Canada." And
with that, Tony Blair phoned me himself and said, "This is what they've said. There's
no problem. I'm sending around to you an application for citizenship and put in Jack Straw, who
was the then Home Secretary and myself as your referees." The Prime Minister and the
Home Secretary, and the driver will wait for it.
CB: So I did. I filled it out and gave it back to him, and an hour later the driver
or some driver anyway, was back with the form that I was now a British citizen with a congratulatory
note from the Prime Minister, and this was what Canada wanted. Then somehow, and again,
I think it's quite well known and his own biographer Lawrence Martin wrote this, for
reasons that he objected to what he thought to be negative coverage in some of the newspapers
I was associated with, Chretien heard about this and became upset and said to the senior
advisor to the Queen that, Robert Fellowes it was at the time, Princess Diana's brother-in-law,
that Canadian law required him to object to this, which was rubbish. There's no such law.
And the Queen knew perfectly well that this was mistaken advice, but she asked Tony Blair,
"Please don't put me in the position of having to choose between the advice of two Prime
Ministers of countries where I'm the sovereign."
CB: And he told me this, and I said, well of course we can't do that and then, so my
appointment was delayed. Then we litigated in Canada on the issue of the ability of Chretien
to create a category of one person in a foreign country ineligible for an honour in that country
for services deemed to have been rendered in that country because he also happened to
be a citizen of Canada, a dual citizen. And again, there's a large number of Members of
the House of Lords in the same position. And Chretien made it clear for example, well to
a number of people but to name one, Peter Mandelson who was here in Toronto a few weeks
ago in one of these debates downtown with other... Niall Ferguson and others, and...
That there was really only one governing party federally in Canada and he, Chretien, named
the judges, and there'd be no problem with this. And indeed the first court and then
the court of appeal just rolled over like poodles and said they didn't have jurisdiction.
CB: So I made a statement... I withdrew as a Canadian citizen and said I would take it
back as soon as I could and why I was doing it. Now, I did not see it as it has been represented
as renouncing Canada for in order as, I think Jeffrey Stevens put it in The Globe and Mail
at the time, in order to go fox hunting or something with people and hunting things,
this kind of thing. And I saw it as the only legislature I was ever gonna get into because
it was an election of one, and there was only one so I didn't have to be re-elected.
AG: But knowing how it has been interpreted, if you had to do it over again, would you?
Would you follow the same course of action?
CB: As things stand now, no, I wouldn't and I... Look, I understand why people feel as
they do, but it isn't entirely fair. Now, a lot of things that aren't fair happen and
that's hardly something that I'm unaware of after all the events we've been talking about
or indeed was unaware of before, so I think the answer is yes. But I am hoping to make
clear over time to anyone who's interested whether I've been a pub bore about it, what
actually happened and a lot depends on whether I actually use that peerage. It's a wonderful
legislative house. It has absolutely unequalled amount of talent in it compared to any other
legislature in the world. It's not just inheritors of eight generations ago of famous people,
almost none of those left, and they have to go through the roughest election of all. The
96 hereditaries are chosen from amongst 1500 possible candidates amongst the hereditaries,
and they're only chosen for life. There are no hereditary peerages now amongst those who
actually serve in that house and you get a tremendous number of terribly interesting
people. The day I was inducted, the Conservative Whip said to me, "Remember, no matter what
the subject is, there's always somebody in this House who knows more about it than you
do." And that is true. You can't say that in every Parliament.