In his book, Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel (Rutgers University Press, 1992), biographer Marty Jezer wrote that "œAbbie saw in Al a younger version of himself." Giordano collaborated with Hoffman throughout the 1980s in environmental and pro-democracy projects along the Saint Lawrence and Delaware Rivers, in Nicaragua and in New York City. He continues to work closely with Johanna Lawrenson, Hoffman's widow, and Lisa Fithian, the other key Hoffman protege, who helped organize the Seattle, Prague, and Los Angeles Democratic National "Shadow" Convention protests against globalization. Fithian was part of the Narco News journalistic team that was covering the Zapatista Caravan in Mexico in February and March 2001. Giordano publishes reportage by Latin American journalists that would not otherwise be available in English. He has become embroiled,along with Mario Menendez, publisher of Por Esto newspaper, in a libel suit filed August 9, 2000, in the US District Court of the Southern District of New York by the Washington, DC lobbyist-law firm Akin, Gump, Strauss Hauer and Feld, on behalf of Roberto Hernandez Ramirez, President and owner of Banamex, the third largest bank in Mexico. The two journalists are now under 'flak' attack for reporting repeatedly the fact that Hernandez's property has been used for cocaine trafficking, and other unseemly allegations about the powerful banker.

Giordano took the time recently to discuss with Disinformation the background of the allegations against Hernandez. He explained the significance of the lawsuit against him and Menendez for journalists who are engaged in honest reporting on the political and financial behind-the-scenes machinations that are driving the War on Some Drugs. Politican and financial machinations, Giordano has discovered, that extended far beyond the North/South divide.

Disinformation: How can Roberto Hernandez Ramirez, through Akin Gump, be suing you and Menendez in the US if the Mexican courts have twice found the reporting to be based on facts?

Al Giordano: In America anyone can sue anyone, if they can afford to do it. If the defendant is not wealthy, the lawsuit itself becomes the harassment and punishment.

Courts are backlogged. It sometimes takes years to get to trial and get the facts out. By then they count on our giving up.

The first stage of the case - filing the response and then the discovery process, is the most expensive and time consuming. In a civil case, against a big law firm like Akin Gump, one really needs professional legal help. It's not anywhere near as simple as a criminal defense. The procedural issues are all based on complex nit-picking points of process in the law that have little to do with the larger issues that will come out if and when this goes to trial. That is what is presenting the headache at this point, and in that sense, the lawsuit is already serving its purpose.

Disinformation: If you can't raise the money for legal help Gary Webb mentions you need, what then? Although Webb notes this case may stop you from reporting and translating for a while, it obviously won't go forever.

Giordano: It could go on for a year or more. It could cause us to lose momentum and readers.

Also, although I have always been my own attorney in various political cases, they have been mainly criminal cases - I have never been a civil lawsuit defendant before. [I've had] 1,000 stories published in the US press between 1988 and the present and not once been sued for libel! This is a whole new world for me. I have some doubts in my own abilities as a prose defendant in navigating the complex legal issues. I have no doubts in the rightness of the cause, the factualness of the stories in question and our eventual triumph at trial. It's getting to trial that is going to be the hard part.

Disinformation: What exactly are Hernandez/Akin Gump trying to do to, or get from, you? Are they seeking damages? Or are they only trying to shut you down?

Giordano: We know they want to shut us down because they wrote, on December 14th [2000], to our Internet Service Provider. Voxel.net showed real backbone and committment to free speech when they replied that Narco News offers a public service and they won't close us without a direct order from a judge - which, under the law, will never arrive.

They are seeking unspecified damages. They claim to have lost major business clients and profits because of our reports. They don't say it, but Banamex did lose its bid to buy the second biggest bank in Mexico, Bancomer, last year.

They lost out to BBVA (Banco Bisbao Viscaya Argentina, a Spanish bank now with major business in Argentina), and now Bancomer-BBVA has replaced Banamex as the largest bank in Mexico. Are they going to blame that on us? That would mean they will ask for hundreds of millions of dollars! It's absurd, but they are not seeking small change here.

Disinformation: The Latin/Central American (and other foreign) press, according to all the info you've translated, are now very aware of the Hernandez links to drug trafficking. Why aren't more US press giving this issue the same attention?

Giordano: That's an excellent question to ask the US press. Now there's even a First Amendment issue they are refusing to report on. Not a single US daily newspaper has mentioned this case.

First of all, ALL the Mexico corresponents for US dailies got caught with their pants down on this story - none of them printed the information in February of 1999 when Clinton and Zedillo held their "anti-drug" summit, on the property of the banker most widely seen as a narcotrafficker by the people of the Yucatan peninsula, where the meeting was held. Ex-New York Times bureau chief Sam Dillon admitted to the Village Voice that he knew the facts about Hernandez but chose to withhold them from Times readers. This has led to his long nightmare - he's gone from the Mexico bureau, and others have since reported that he withheld information from the Pulitzer committee in 1997 for a story that, we now know, but he never said, was spoon fed him by the same Zedillo that was protected by his failure to report on the facts about Hernandez, host of the anti drug summit.

So none of these papers want to now justify the story because it makes them look bad.