Media Roundup: Memory Lapses

The reports on the Conrad Black trial are beginning to proliferate again, as "Big Jim" Thompson is challenged by "Fast Eddie" Greenspan:

1. From Rudolph Bush and David Greising of the Chicago Tribune, a lengthy write-up which reports that Csr. Greenspan suggested that Mr. Thompson himself availed of the facilities offered by Hollinger International. Two perks enjoyed by Mr. Thompson are mentioned which, Csr. Grenspan intimated, were comparable in cost to Barbara Black's birthday party and the Bora Bora Vacation. It notes that Mr. Thompson testified under direct examination that none of the suspicious transactions were approved by the audit committee, and that "Thompson at times came across as obstinate on cross-examination." A slightly briefer version of the same report is webbed here.

2. The San Jose Mercury News has webbed an AP report by Mike Robinson, which discloses that Mr. Thompson testified under cross-examination to staying at Claridge's of London for three days, at Hollinger Int'l's expense, before recounting his testimony made under direct examination.

3. From Law.com, a report that focuses on Mr. Thompson's direct testimony. It discloses that he testified that he depended upon Mark Kipnis to inform him and the rest of the audit committee about each transaction.

4. A New York Times webbing of a Bloomberg report also recounts testimony made under direct examination. It relates that Mr. Thompson answered "No" when asked about all of the non-compete payments made in 1998 and 1999 to entities other than Hollinger Int'l.

5. From the Globe and Mail's "Bar Talk," a note that Csr. Greenspan has shouldered the role of the bad-boy attorney.

6. Also from the Globe, a Christie Blatchford column which begins by noting that "an important prosecution witness was yesterday confronted with an example of his own hand in the corporate cookie jar." Its theme is, the corporate-governance movement doesn't appear that practical-minded when a real would-be hero of the movement shows the everyday casualness, if not laxity, that Mr. Thompson did when audit-committe chair. "In several bizarre exchanges with Mr. Sussman, Mr. Thompson would say flatly, 'I don't recall anything,' and then spend minutes being asked a series of specific questions about whatever meeting or memo he didn't remember in the first place. Unsurprisingly, his answer was usually, 'I don't recall.'" Ms. Blatchford opined that Mr. Thompson's testimony so far, including what was said under cross-examination, has neither helped nor hurt Conrad Black's defense.

7. The Daily Herald of Illinois reports on both the direct and the cross-examination.

8. Rick Westhead of the Toronto Star reports that Mr. Thompson's testimony, that Mr. Black and David Radler worked closely together, "may prove crippling to Black's defence." The article also contains excerpts from the Breeden Report, while noting that it was ruled inadmissible as evidence. An excerpt from it has been webbed by Free Market News.

9. Another report in the Globe, this one by Paul Waldie, focuses upon the testimony made under direct examination.

10. Mary Wisniewski of the Chicago Sun-Times has a report entitled "Thompson: What fees?" From it: "Thompson did approve $26.4 million in non-compete payments to Black, Radler and others in 2000 in relation to the sale of Hollinger's Canadian papers. Thompson said that when the issue first came up, he told Radler that he had never heard of executives being paid personally to sign agreements not to compete with the buyer. Thompson asked for industry precedent.... Radler never gave Thompson the 'comparables' he sought. Instead, the committee was told that the Canadian payments were much smaller as a percentage of the sale than non-competes paid in U.S. Hollinger sales."

11. Also from the Sun-Times: a column by Mark Brown that takes Mr. Thompson to task for his laxity while on the board of Hollinger Int'l: "[I]n the process, Thompson let a lot of people down." The body of the column elaborates on this complaint.

12. The Montreal Gazette has a report by Mary Vallis on Mr. Thompson's testimony so far.

13. The New York Post's Janet Whitman has written a report on the testimony of Marie-Josée Kravis, which includes an admission by her, while being cross-examined by Benito Romano, that it "would have been embarrassing and harmful to [her] business career" to have been fingered as negligent by regulators or litigators for the approval the individual non-compete payments.

14. From "Financial Director," a quick summary.

15. CBC News has webbed a report, focusing on the testimony given under direct, that's credited to the Canadian Press.

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Conrad Black is mentioned as a mainstreamer with regard to the supposed Clark coup attempt of 1934 in a Boston Globe column by Alex Beam, entitled "The dark history of Sterling Clark."

Also, from the Toronto Life Conrad Black trial blog, Douglas Bell noted last night that "Thompson’s cross-examination promises to be a real donnybrook." (No argument with that observation.) Mark Steyn relates that he, along with Christie Blatchford, is rather enjoying the donnybrook so far: "The Canadian contingent on the press benches is rather proud of our thuggish QC: After decades of my-name-is-Joe-and-I-am-a-peacekeeping-wimp maple boosterism, it’s rather heartening to watch Greenspan do to a Chicago courtroom what Rumsfeld did to European Union confabs." Everyone, it seems, has a taste for grandee-bashing.

Even Americans, according to this followup post. It also has a brief description of Mr. Thompson wilting on the stand, and it ends with a depiction of Eric Sussman as nervous when the boss, Patrick Fitzgerald, was around.