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May
19, 2003
John
Chuckman
Blair's Awkward Lies
Elaine
Cassel
Clarence Thomas, Still Whining After All These Years
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Play It Again, O-Sam-a
May
17 / 18, 2003
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May
19, 2003
Withdraws Defamation Suit
"Terror"
Slut Steve Emerson Eats Crow (Just for Starters)
CounterPunch Wire
Self-styled "terrorism expert" Steven
Emerson has filed for dismissal of a multi-million-dollar defamation
suit against a Florida newspaper and its senior editor. The "notice
of voluntary dismissal" (Case No. 00-03739) filed in the
Circuit Court in and for Hillsborough County, Fla., states: "Plaintiff
Steven Emersonherewith serves notice of his dismissal of this
action, without prejudice, against defendants John Sugg and The
Weekly Planet, Inc."
"This lawsuit did not have any merit,
and I believe it was filed in bad faith to deter us and others
from telling the truth about Emerson. I think that 'pseudo-journalist'
is a perfect description for Steven Emerson," said Sugg,
currently senior editor of Creative Loafing in Atlanta, Ga.
Sugg added: "We reported the truth. In four years of litigation,
Emerson has been unwilling or unable to come up with any evidence
that what we reported was false. Now that we were close to forcing
him to back up his claims, he has run away."
Emerson's lawsuit alleged that Sugg,
then senior editor of Florida's Weekly Planet newspaper, "maliciously
and repeatedly published false and defamatory utterances"
in an "ongoing campaign to undermine Emerson's credibility
and damage his professional and personal reputation." Emerson
sought one million dollars in actual damages and ten million
dollars in punitive damages on each of three causes of action.
The complaint centered on allegations
reported by Sugg that two Associated Press reporters said Emerson
gave them a document on terrorism supposedly from FBI files:
"One reporter thought he'd seen the material before, and
in checking found a paper Emerson had supplied earlier containing
his own unsupported allegations. The two documents were almost
identical, except that Emerson's authorship was deleted from
the one purported to be from the FBI. 'It was really his work,'
one reporter says. 'He sold it to us trying to make it look like
a really interesting FBI document.'" (Weekly Planet, May
1998) In that same article, Sugg quoted AP reporter Richard
Cole saying: "'We were not really clear on the origin of
his [Emerson's] material.' Because of that, Cole recalls, much
of Emerson's information was sliced from the series." (Cole
was the lead writer of a 1997 AP series on terrorism.)
The lawsuit also disputed allegations
that Emerson gave false information to a Senate subcommittee
during testimony in 1998. In an article headlined "Ties
to Spies?" Sugg wrote: "In a missive submitted to
a U.S. Senate subcommittee in February, Emerson stated that a
federal lawman and other authorities in 1995 told him 'radical
Islamic fundamentalists had been assigned to carry out an assassination
of me. An actual hit team had been dispatched...' Emerson claimed
the authorities said he could probably 'get permission to enter
the Witness Security Program' "After I sent Emerson's
document to the Justice Department's Terrorism and Violent Crimes
Section, this on-the-record response was made by spokesman John
Russell on May 5.
"'You pushed the right button asking
about your friend Steve Emerson,' Russell said. 'We've never
given any thought to putting him in the witness protection program.'
Is there any truth to the allegation of an assassination team?
'No, none at all,' Russell responded."
In documents filed with the court, Emerson
said he was "notified by U.S. government officials in 1995
of a death threat against him."
Emerson is best known for his controversial
1994 PBS production "Jihad in America." Muslims say
he has a long history of defamatory and inaccurate attacks on
the Islamic community in this country.
Today's
Features
Leah
Wells
In Iraq Water and Oil Do Mix
Ben Tripp
Fear Itself
Sharon
Smith
The Resegregation of US Schools
Ramzy Baroud
Does Defeat Have to be So Humiliating?
Sam
Hamod
A Nation of Fear
Phil Reeves
Baghdad Pays the Price
Robert
McChesney
The FCC's Big Grab
Mark Engler
Those Who Don't Count
Steve
Perry
We're All
Extras in Bush's Movie
Website
of the Day
Iraq and Our
Energy Future
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