Giordano: Bush met Fox at Fox's ranch. I think he's learned from Clinton's mistake.

Fox was a guest of Hernandez, and some say with Zedillo, on July 7th, 2000, five days after his election, on the precise property where the cocaine trafficking photos were taken. We published that story July 9th, and it is one of the exhibits in the lawsuit.

Also, interestingly, even after we published all this, US Ambassador to Mexico Jeffrey Davidow - there under Clinton and still there under Bush - held his summer vacation as a guest of Hernandez in the same mansion in Yucatan where the Clinton-Zedillo summit was held in 1999. How much more naked can the arrogance be? Clearly, Davidow is a key mover in all of this.

Basically, you have this powerful banker who uses the presence of presidents and ambassadors on his properties - all leaked to the press - to send a message to all law enforcement officials that he is untouchable. When and if we do go to trial, we will be asking the direct questions about why this protection has been offered.

Disinformation: Is Hernandez at all implicated in Operation Casablanca? I've seen reports that Banamex was used by certain bankers to launder money, but was Banamex/Hernandez caught up in the investigation on a more substantial level? That you know of?

Giordano: Two Banamex bankers were charged, in US court for money laundering in Operation Casablanca. Recall that Hernandez' best friend, Zedillo, attacked the US, for conducting the operation.

Some months later, there was an Operation Casablanca II in which US agents, using false ID, did an undercover job at a Banamex branch in Mexico City. But their ID was poorly forged, and they were caught, even held by authorities, until they were allowed to escape back to the US. Zedillo personally lobbied the US government to back off - and Operation Casablanca has been dead ever since. This was reported in El Universal and briefly in one of the US business magazines - it might have been Forbes.

Disinformation: When did you first go to Mexico, why, and what originally piqued your interest in Banamex/Hernandez? The Clinton/Zedillo story?

Giordano: I went to Mexico in July of 1997, to Chiapas, with the intent of retiring from journalism and learning from the indigenous rebels, how to create a Zapatismo for my own homeland of New York. I admit I had desires to enlist. I found that the Indians of Chiapas didn't want me, or anyone, to become an Indian. They just wanted the right to be themselves, and for everyone in the world to have that same right. After talking, listening, living in their communities, I came to grasp what they were saying: "Don't try to be what you are not. Try to be who you are." I am a journalist in a profession that has forgotten authentic journalism. And slowly, largely through learning from the indigenous rebels, I have developed what might be called my own kind of journalistic zapatismo.

Slowly, I have learned to create a space to conduct authentic journalism as I see it, to be myself again! I owe them a lot for this simple lesson I should have known all along.

I stumbled on the Hernandez story quite by surprise. I went to Merida, to cover the Clinton-Zedillo summit in February 1999 because it was about drug policy. It was my first assignment from the Boston Phoenix, from any paper, in almost three years. The rest of the story is told on Narco News. It is now an exhibit in the lawsuit.

It was really the following month, when I received the infamous threatening phone call from Sam Dillon, then of the New York Times, trying to intimidate me from publishing the story that I realized how high this story went. I still don't know what Dillon's motives were, but my instinct - and this is just a personal opinion - is that he was not acting alone, that there were others who wanted me to back off this story. You must recall that weeks before I published the story, in May 1999 in the Boston Phoenix, Banamex bought a $3 million dollar mansion for Ernesto Zedillo in Mexico City, while he was still president. That is on record in the Mexico City treasurer's office, as reported by the weekly La Crisis news magazine, and in the column of Carlos Ramirez, Mexico's most read columnist. The documents don't say anything about Banamex holding the mortgage - which is always made clear in those titles - the documents, instead, say that Banamex bought the house! That's how high the impunity went before I published this story.

Well, I published it in mid-May and the explosions have been going off ever since. The fact that they are suing Narco News and I right now is further evidence of just how badly they want to stop this investigation. A lot is apparently at stake. That's why I don't want to default on the case - I have no assets, that's not at stake - because I want to get into discovery, to depose Hernandez and the public officials that protected him.

The trail leads to Washington. So Akin Gump's act of self-revelation by appearing suddenly as the lawyer for Hernandez and Banamex says a lot about what interests really are the ones who want to shut me up.

Disinformation: I've seen mention of volunteers who help out with Narco News. Are these folks also subject to the lawsuit? Do you still have any volunteers? Are you running Narco News entirely on your own?