Witness for the Prosecution — Page 2

In 1989, Hollinger outbid British press mogul Robert Maxwell for The Jerusalem Post. Radler became chairman. He slashed the head count from 450 to 210. Although it became briefly profitable, The Jerusalem Post came nowhere near the success of the U.S. papers. Running it, however, gave Radler credibility in the right-wing Jewish community.

Following the purchase of The Jerusalem Post, Radler branched out. Through the holding company Ravelston (Black owned 64 percent, Radler 14 percent) they purchased jewellery stores in the San Diego area. Radler managed the stores while maintaining his position as American Publishing president. Soon he was looking to land a bigger fish in the consolidating U.S. newspaper market. Black had moved to London to oversee the Telegraph Group, and Radler set his sights on the Chicago Sun-Times, the ninth-largest daily paper in the States. They bought it in 1993 for $180 million, giving Black the big U.S. newspaper he’d long coveted, and setting in motion a series of corporate moves that would eventually land the two men in federal court in Chicago.

It was by far American Publishing’s biggest single purchase. Radler’s plans included cutting 200 employees, carving $10 million out of non-salaried expenses and doubling profit margins to 14 percent. He ordered the escalator shut down to save $22,000 a year, and at lunch meetings on the sundeck of his Chicago office he usually served hot dogs.

Despite travelling and spending time in Chicago, Radler remained a devoted family man and maintained his home on South West Marine Drive. He’d interrupt meetings to take calls from his wife Rona or one of their two daughters. The elder, Melanie, graduated from Northwestern law school in 1999 and began work as a litigator at a Chicago law firm whose chairman, Jim Thompson, sat on the board of Hollinger International (and would testify that Radler repeatedly misled him). Younger daughter Melissa was on Hollinger’s payroll from 2001 to 2003 as a correspondent for The Jerusalem Post.

Rona Radler was also employed by Hollinger; she was paid $126,000 between 1998 and 2003 to administer the Chicago Sun-Times Charitable Trust. In 2002 the trust endowed a scholarship at the Weitzman Institute in Israel, an odd choice for a fund mandated to help the underprivileged of Chicago. It did, however, pay off for Radler, who was guest of honour at a Weitzman Institute gala at the Chicago Hilton.

In another coup, Radler and Black took control of Southam, the Canadian newspaper chain, in 1996. Two years later, Radler became deputy chairman of Southam and publisher of both The Vancouver Sun and The Province. In 2000, he asked Vancouver Sun and Province editors John Cruickshank and Michael Cooke to take up senior positions at the Sun-Times.

In a 1994 interview with Conrad Black’s biographer Richard Siklos, Radler explained that the Hollinger structure was “probably closer to an American-style brokerage company where guys have their own kinds of deal” than to a hierarchical corporation. “The rule of thumb was that whoever ‘did the deal’ within Hollinger looked after that particular business.” Black never interfered with Radler’s running of the U.S. community papers or The Jerusalem Post; Radler, in turn, avoided the Telegraph Group’s UK operations.

In the case of Southam, Black and Radler shared control. Here, it seems, is where the rift between the two men began. After years of negotiations, they bought the Financial Post for $110 million. Radler wasn’t keen on either the Post or what Black wanted to do with it: use it to launch a new national newspaper to compete with the venerable Globe and Mail.

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