Opinion ID: 712057
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Fabrication of the Elliot Richardson endorsement of Ben-Menashe's credibility

Text: 41 McFarlane claims that October Surprise artificially boosted Ben-Menashe's credibility, fabricating a pedigree for him with quotations from Elliot Richardson--referred to in the article as the moral hero of Watergate--purporting to show that Richardson took Ben-Menashe seriously. First, recall that the disputed passage includes the following sentence: 42 In a sworn affidavit submitted by Elliott [sic] Richardson on behalf of one of his clients, a computer-software company called Inslaw, Ben-Menashe states that both McFarlane and Brian had a special relationship with Israeli intelligence, McFarlane having been recruited by Rafi Eitan, a legendary Israeli agent who was the model for a leading character in John LeCarre's Little Drummer Girl. 43 The statement is technically false in one narrow respect--Richardson evidently did not appear as counsel of record in the Inslaw case. But he later said (and it is not disputed) that he was on the legal team for Inslaw, and he evidently so represented himself to Unger, who was Esquire's only claimed source of information about Ben-Menashe's Inslaw affidavit. 44 The sentence has a far more serious flaw. Its latter part, beginning with McFarlane having been recruited by Rafi Eitan, is not in the affidavit. Nor indeed is there anything in the affidavit remotely supporting the statement in the article's following sentences, making McFarlane out to be an equivalent of Pollard--a spy who had pled guilty to, in effect, selling masses of top secret U.S. material to the Israelis. While McFarlane does not dispute that Ben-Menashe made these assertions to Unger, the text of the affidavit supports only the idea of a special relationship. Thus, says McFarlane, Esquire stretched the Richardson imprimatur from the relatively innocent special relationship all the way to the charge of espionage. 45 Esquire offers two answers. First, it now argues that there is no material difference between the recruited by and special relationship phrases. This is fanciful. Special relationship seems infinitely elastic, while recruited, in context, suggests a switch of allegiance to a foreign power. Second, Esquire's editors testified that they recognized that the passage might appear to suggest that the whole accusation was in the affidavit, but that they ordered changes--their recollection was the addition of the comma--to indicate the contrary. Their brief also notes that the affidavit surely would not have cited Little Drummer Girl, alerting the reader to the fact that the spy charge was not advanced in the affidavit. Although we find the comma theory pretty thin, this imprimatur stretch seems as consistent with linguistic muddle as with reckless disregard, and in context not enough, even in conjunction with other evidence, to show actual malice by Esquire editors. 46 McFarlane puts more stress on Esquire's use of a truncated quote from Richardson in a mention of the Ben-Menashe affidavit in the course of a generic canvassing of Ben-Menashe's spotty credibility: 47 And former attorney general Elliott [sic] Richardson ... has submitted sworn affidavits by Ben-Menashe on behalf of a client. A standard legal gambit, perhaps, but Richardson finds Ari Ben-Menashe a compelling witness. I take him seriously as being who he says he is, says Richardson. 48 Richardson's actual comment, as reflected in Unger's earlier draft and substantially corroborated in his notes, was, Quite apart from what he knows, I take him seriously as being who he says he is. Esquire's editors removed the first clause from Unger's draft, in McFarlane's view greatly increasing the intensity of the endorsement. 49 Esquire argues that any problem here is solved by an affidavit of Richardson, filed in this litigation, saying that [t]he statements and quotations attributed to me accurately reflect statements I made to Mr. Unger, and accurately reflect my views of Mr. Ben-Menashe. But while the statement may aid Esquire in a defense of truth (on a rather peripheral matter, not the defamatory material itself), it does not dispose of the question of actual malice, which turns on Esquire's subjective beliefs and purposes at the time of publication. Esquire saw Unger's notes, and they speak for themselves. 50 Nonetheless, we think the explanation by Esquire--that they deleted the clause because of space considerations and because of its ambiguity--altogether plausible. Quite apart from what he knows could be taken to mean that Richardson believed Ben-Menashe's claimed identity but not his statements, or it could mean that Richardson wanted to emphasize his belief in Ben-Menashe's identity, not simply Ben-Menashe's apparent knowledge. The clause is ambiguous. And with or without it this Richardson endorsement seems to add up to very little. 51 We are more troubled about a different discrepancy between Unger's notes and the final article. The notes, quoting Richardson's statements to Unger about Ben-Menashe, say (correcting obvious typographical errors): 1 52 [O]ne thing that is true of people like him is that they live in a world of such constant deception [ ] that they are used to moving without misstep between truth and fabrication so he doesn't help much with the October surprise story to verify the truth. 53 As Esquire put most of its eggs in the Ben-Menashe basket, both for October Surprise generally and for the accusation against McFarlane, this seems a sharp renunciation of its star witness by his putative champion. The statement is in Unger's notes of his talks with Richardson, and it is undisputed that Mark Warren browsed in precisely those notes. But at no time, so far as we can tell, did McFarlane's counsel ever ask Warren whether he'd spotted this passage and, if so, what he made of it. Accordingly, its presence, though puzzling, cannot much help McFarlane. 54 We are also troubled by the fact of Unger's uncontradicted testimony that he sent to Esquire a draft including a quote about Ben-Menashe from Richardson, I can't tell if the son of a bitch is telling the truth. The editors apparently removed it, with the purpose, according to Unger, of maintaining the integrity of what Mr. Richardson said. This appears to be some sort of jargon for suppressing material inconsistent with a broad effort to build up Ben-Menashe's credibility. Still, in view of the article's inclusion of solid material damning Ben-Menashe, the removal gets only limited weight.