Persecution of a Carib journalist

Basil Wilson, Contributor

ON FRIDAY, July 22, 2011, a throng of outraged members of the Caribbean Diaspora in New York entered a federal courthouse in Washington, DC to witness the sentencing of Karl Rodney, the publisher of Carib News. Rodney appeared before the Federal bench with a guilty plea of lying to the Ethics Committee in the House of Representatives.

The presiding Judge, Emmet Sullivan, queried the publisher of the 29-year-Caribbean weekly, why a journalist who had devoted most of his life to public service was appearing before the Federal bench on felony charges? Judge Sullivan was cognisant of the unjust nature of the charges and was impressed by members of the community in the court and the many letters of support that poured into the Judge's chambers from members of the Caribbean community.

Karl Rodney's appearance before Judge Sullivan stemmed from an inquiry that was an outgrowth of an international business conference held in St Maarten, November 2007. The initial target of the investigation was not Karl Rodney or Carib News but the five members of the Black Congressional Caucus who had attended the conference.

The Democratic Party had won a majority of the House seats in the 2006 election and Speaker Nancy Pelosi made the ethics rules more exacting to reduce the possibility of corruption. The Carib News Business Conference began over 14 years ago. The annual conference brought together members of the Caribbean Diaspora, elected officials and businessmen throughout the Caribbean, and enterprises in the United States doing business in the Caribbean. Plenary and panel discussions incorporated trade relations between the two regions but also delved into matters of immigration, deportees, remittances, etc.

Staff unclear

In filling out pre-authorisation forms for members of the Black Congressional Caucus, Carib News sought the advice of the counsel of the Ethics Committee. The regulations were new and even the staff of the Ethics Committee was unclear about the travel regulations. Carib News sought and received authorisation for the five members of the Black Congressional Caucus to attend the 2007 conference.

The matter took on a new dimension when the President of the National Legal and Policy Centre, Peter Flaherty, requested the Ethics Committee to investigate the travel of the Congressional delegation under the presumption that the conference had been sponsored by corporations. Flaherty and the National Legal and Policy Centre, a gadfly organisation based in Washington, DC published a letter dated May 15, 2009, soliciting funds from would-be donors on the pretence that Rep Charles Rangel (D-NY) intended to raise taxes on the American people. The letter stated, "He is a very powerful man and we have him on the run! I am writing to ask for your help. We want to finish him off".

Flaherty's preoccupation was not Karl Rodney or Carib News but the black Chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee where all tax legislation has to originate.

As a result of the Ethics Committee investigation, unrelated to Carib News, the Democratic Party's House Leadership forced Rangel to step down from the Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee. Charles Rangel was eventually censured for ethical violations by the full House of Representatives. The Justice Department's inquiry of Karl Rodney appeared to be an indirect way of embarking on a fishing expedition aimed at bringing criminal charges against Charles Rangel. The presumption was that the Caribbean publisher had information that was incriminating. The inquiry produced no such evidence. The Justice Department expended millions of dollars to prosecute a good and decent man for lying to the Ethics Committee. The completion of the travel forms took place under the advisement of the Committee's staff. There was no motive for the veteran journalist Karl Rodney not to tell the truth and no conflict of interest at the conference was ever seriously entertained by the Ethics Committee.

Abuse of power

Why plead guilty to a charge when one knows that one is innocent? Federal prosecutors are quite capable of abusing their power, even though the Department is under the management of the Attorney General, Eric Holder, a member of President Obama's Cabinet and one with Caribbean roots.

The investigation was damaging to Karl Rodney and Carib News. Eighty per cent of the newspaper's revenues evaporated. A trial would have cost more than US$1 million. There were threats of prosecuting other family members. Facing this juggernaut of injustice, Karl Rodney opted for a plea and received two years' probation.

Judge Sullivan raised the appropriate question. What was a 72-year-old Jamaican with American citizenship doing in a federal courthouse facing felony charges? Karl Rodney had spent most of his life being a good shepherd. He and Harry Belafonte were instrumental in putting together an annual fund-raising event for the University of the West Indies. Twenty-nine years ago he founded and continues to publish Carib News, a weekly published in New York.

One expects that the oldest democracy in the world would have fine-tuned its justice system. In the case of Karl Rodney, who has been an extraordinary Jamaican and citizen of the world, the American justice system committed a gross injustice. Martin Luther King, Jr eloquently stated that truth crushed to ground will rise again. Hopefully, sometime in the near future, the truth concerning the Rodney case will rise to the fore and this good and decent man will be vindicated in a court of justice.

Basil Wilson, PhD is provost emeritus of John Jay College of Criminal Justice and currently dean of Monroe College's master's programme in criminal justice.