SUED BY MARIO, WANTS DEBATE
AUTHOR Greg Palast is laughing off Mario Cuomo's $15 million libel suit and vowing that the former governor "will not intimidate me."
Cuomo sued Palast and his publisher, Penguin, earlier this month for accusing him of fixing a court case in the 1980s in Palast's book "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." Palast - whose award-winning stories appear on BBC television and the Guardian Newspapers - says of the suit, "It's goofy."
Palast claims he was simply "reporting the news." He told PAGE SIX, "There are two Cuomos, Mario Jekyll and Mario Hyde. In public, Cuomo is the sanctimonious defender of the Bill of Rights and the working man, but here he's a bully-boy allergic to the First Amendment."
Cuomo's court papers charge that Palast and Penguin "overstepped the bounds of their protection under the First Amendment." The author is now challenging Cuomo to a public debate, but so far the one-time great orator is confining his remarks to court filings.
Palast says he wants to "give the governor and me a chance to set the record straight - no lawyers, just face to face and fact to fact."
Northeast Public Radio commentator Alan Chartock - who co-hosted a radio show with Cuomo for 18 years - has offered to host the debate.
As the suit goes forward, Palast says he looks forward to the chance to review until-now secret files of communications between the ex-governor, his political donors and benefactors.
"I stand by every word and comma," Palast says. "Cuomo's attempt to censor reports published in the public interest will not intimidate me. Thankfully, I have the support of my publisher."
The dispute centers on the period when Palast was chief investigator for Suffolk County in the successful prosecution of a civil racketeering case against the builders of the Shoreham nuclear plant. Long Island electricity customers received approximately $400 million in compensation in settlement of the litigation brought after Palast's discovery of alleged fraud.
Palast's book mentions Cuomo's involvement in that 1988 trial and settlement. "The real issue," said Palast, "is the right of a reporter to write the facts to the best of his knowledge free of the fear of financially ruinous lawsuits and intimidation."