Conrad Black and David Radler are two varieties of cynic. Radler’s the type Oscar Wilde told us about–the man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Black’s a more romantic type, as certain of his own value as he is that he must make his way in a world overrun by dogs.
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Black took “their” money–“they” being the small shareholders of the company he used to run, Hollinger International–and if the cascade of criminal and civil litigation that’s all but buried him is to be believed, he rewarded them with a royal screwing. Radler, Black’s lifelong number two, was the publisher of the Sun-Times. The last time I talked to him, Radler let me know it was he who brokered the Sun-Times real estate deal with Donald Trump. To the serfs who toiled for him, Radler’s a snake who shut off the Sun-Times escalators to save pennies on electricity while robbing the company blind; that he’s turned state’s evidence in Black’s upcoming trial suggests he wouldn’t exactly deny it. But as the Trump tower began stretching to heaven where the squat Sun-Times building used to be, Radler wanted his props as a mover and shaker too.
The other day I stopped by the Dirksen Building to pick up a document in USA v. Conrad Black, and I looked it over during lunch at the Berghoff. Sorry, make that at 17 West at the Berghoff. The document was a proffer laying out in broad strokes the government’s case against Black and three lesser Hollinger officers. In Black’s case the charges are mail and wire fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, racketeering, and obstruction of justice–charges that Black, to judge from his public utterances, finds obtuse and absurd.
Healey later insisted to Radler and corporate counsel Mark Kipnis that Thompson, who hadn’t been at the meeting, needed to be told what happened there. “[Healey] learned that Radler then called Black in London and told Black that [Healey] was ‘being a Boy Scout.’” Black called Healey at home and told him, “It’s my company, and I’ll decide when and what to tell the board.” According to the proffer, Black never did inform the audit committee–i.e., Thompson.
The movie was constructed as a series of flashbacks triggered by interviews that, according to the publicity, capture “Black’s provocative love/hate relationship with the media.” The media are embodied in one reporter, played by Jason Priestley.
