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Comment by gyardley | Hacker News Reader

See, this is the problem - thanks to a decade's worth of state-sponsored smear campaigns, you think Conrad Black 'looted his own companies', when that's just not borne by the facts at all. I wish you luck finding someone who looks more sympathetic after the government finishes up with them.

And while I agree with your statement about 'most other countries', Americans should hold their government to a higher standard.

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I gave you a round of applause for stating that Americans should hold their government to a higher standard. Last time I checked we Americans walk around thinking we are the best and most free place in the world. Sometime's it feels like that's a facade though, because when things like feds reading all our emails for little to no reason occur they throw their hands up and say two things, first "I have nothing to hid so I'm not worried about this." followed by "at least we have freedom at all, in insert country name here women don't even have the right to vote." That's all fine and dandy, I'm glad we as a country are better in that regards. How much longer will it last like this though? With our rights eroding away like Niagara falls.

Can you set the record straight with respect to the Black case?

I'd have to write a book, it's a long and complex case. (If you do want to read a book, Conrad Black's own book on it is very good.)

Perhaps start with some of Mark Steyn's writing for the Canadian news magazine Macleans?

http://www.macleans.ca/columnists/article.jsp?content=200707...

Mark Steyn is not exactly a neutral party in the Black case, which has strong political overtones. The article we're commenting on also puts a fair bit of gloss on the affair; Conrad Black may very well be a well-regarded "historian", but what most reasonable people would call him is "one of the richest people in all of media"; he went into his legal troubles with something close to half a billion dollars in assets.

The dubious and controversial theory used against Black was "honest services fraud". The statute enforcing it does seem to have been perilously vague. But the moral/ethical/pragmatic reasoning behind it isn't; it boils down to maintaining a fiduciary duty to your shareholders or, in Rod Blagojevich's case, to the citizens of the state you govern. Also, Black wasn't merely charged with honest services fraud, but also with charges like obstructing justice and theft, charges that Richard Posner upheld.

Another perspective worth reading is that of the mutual fund company that originally pushed for a special board committee to investigate Black's compensation and other off-the-books financial arrangements with Hollinger. That committee (of the company's own board of directors) uncovered a number of questionable actions that eventually resulted in the criminal probe described in the Forbes article:

http://www.tweedy.com/resources/library_docs/reports/BAN0331...

(starting on page 11)

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