Court sets aside Conrad Black conviction; sent to lower court

George Jonas, National Post:

The summer of 2007 was Conrad’s fourth year of being besmirched and calumniated. He had been attacked in countless ill-researched, vituperative flights of fancy by scandal-mongering purveyors of low gossip, most of whom didn’t know the first thing about Conrad, his family life, hobbies, habits, books, ideas, or business affairs.

Spurred by competitors and ideological opponents, bottom-feeding opportunists paraded their malicious ignorance in newspapers, periodicals and later in books and TV movies.

In 2006, when I described the indictments against Conrad as “a witch’s brew,” a well-meaning friend advised caution.

“Okay, so you’re Crossharbour’s friend,” he said. “You admire him as a public intellectual, a newspaper proprietor, a columnist, a historian — fine. But why go out on a limb and say he’s innocent? You don’t know.”

But I did know.

I wasn’t just Conrad’s friend. Ages ago, in another life, I was married to his wife, Barbara Amiel. I didn’t have to be familiar with Conrad’s business affairs to know that the slanderous stories assorted persecutors had been dishing out about Conrad and Barbara’s supposed greed, social ambition, snobbery, and venality were hogwash.

I could see through the vicious innuendos, the attempts to railroad Conrad by piggybacking the case against him on fiascos such as World.com or Enron. In what The Wall Street Journal would five years later call the “Enron political inferno of 2003,” allegations of corporate misdeeds were pursued in the spirit of Salem. The fact that Conrad’s company, Hollinger, didn’t lose investors a dime — on the contrary, it made them billions — didn’t matter. When caught in a witch hunt, not being a witch is no defence.

Witch hunts result in witch trials.

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As anyone who reads my blog knows Conrad Black is the real victim and I look forward to his vindication.

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