By Paul Redmond
Many of my friends and supporters have enthusiastically encouraged me to sue Robert Baer for defamation regarding his book, The Fourth Man. They have also expressed disappointment at my not doing so.
The reasons for my decision are as follows:
I have good grounds to sue Baer for defamation. Through my lawyers, I made a demand to his lawyers for a statement acknowledging the falsehoods in the book, an apology and a monetary payment for the damages they caused me and my family.
They refused to make any such statement or to pay damages.
I have concluded that litigation would be very lengthy, highly confrontational and expensive.
Much of the information I would need to make my case remains classified and I was not confident the CIA and the FBI would agree to declassify it. And the use of classified information in civil cases is problematic.
Moreover, it was clear that the lawyers for Baer’s publisher had “lawyered” the book carefully in anticipation of a defamation suit so as to take maximum advantage of the First Amendment protections afforded to the press.
In addition I did not want to give Baer the inevitable publicity surrounding a lawsuit against him and his publisher which might serve to sell more copies of his wretched book.
Finally, and most importantly, I did not wish to subject my family to the distress and expense of years of litigation, to say nothing of the defamatory nonsense he would continue to direct at me.
Therefore, I decided not to proceed with a suit against Baer and his publisher Hachette.
The website, to which the above statement is an introduction, is designed for starters to bring together for the record all of the very detailed, authoritative, common sense criticisms of Baer’s book.