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"In the highly readable "Robber Baron" (ECW Press), Tombs plumbs Black's psychology objectively, but with a sharp insight"
CHICAGO The day I phoned George Tombs at his Montreal home office to talk about his new biography "Robber Baron: Lord Black of Crossharbour," the Canadian papers were filled with accounts of the bold-faced names who had written letters in support of Conrad Black to the judge who will sentence him for his convictions on fraud and obstruction of justice on Monday.
A long brief from the Black attorneys who specialize in sentencing quoted from a few of them, such as columnist George Will who said of the Montreal-born Black who renounced his Canadian citizenship that "Conrad loves this country with a deeply informed passion." His lawyers said they had about 100 similar letters from such notables as Elton John, Rush Limbaugh, former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and John Polanyi, the 1986 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry.
Impressive, no?
"There are a lot of names that are missing," Tombs quickly pointed out. "Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger, Richard Perle, a lot of big stockholders who were motivated to get him into federal court in Chicago."
True enough, people who are being sued by Black, or by the various companies that once controlled his worldwide newspaper empire, are not likely to urge the judge to be gentle with him.
Tombs won't be in the Everett McKinley Dirksen Courthouse when Black stands before U.S. District Court Judge Amy J. St. Eve at 10 a.m. Monday. But he was a close observer of the trial of Black and his three co-defendants accused of scheming to loot Hollinger International, the publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times now known as Sun-Times Media Group.
And he was something rarer before the trial -- a biographer of Black who actually got to spend quality time with him. "This is a huge story in Canada, and I think some in the press thought, who is this guy that gets access to Black?" Tombs' publishing house publicist had told me.
Tombs, a former editorial writer for the Montreal Gazette, is a professor of history, and that's likely why Black, who has written several well-regarded biographies of historical figures, let him in his life.
"He believed somehow he was destined to be the same kind of historical figure as his heroes," Tombs said. "And he fused himself with his heroes. It was not enough to write book about (Franklin) Roosevelt, but he also has buy as many of Roosevelt's papers as he can, and paper his walls with him."
In the highly readable "Robber Baron" (ECW Press), Tombs plumbs Black's psychology objectively, but with a sharp insight. It's something of a cliche to compare Black to Citizen Kane, and Black himself encourages the comparison. But what Tombs has done, arguably, is located the "Rosebud" in Black's life - a 1953 Atlantic cruise to England to witness the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. His wealthy father arranged to be on a ship as the British Navy sailed by as part of the celebrations.
"He'd never seen such a tremendous sweep of power in his life," Tombs said. "He was only seven -- and something switched on in him. He realized that all this was here because of the power of one person."
One of the myths that Tombs punctures is the idea that Black gathered powerful people around him -- inviting figures like Kissinger and Perle to the Hollinger board, for instance, and hosting events for Margaret Thatcher -- simply to enjoy reflective status from these rent-a-friends. Black was using them for their connections and insider knowledge, he says.
Tips from Kissinger, for instance, netted him "several tens of millions of dollars" in an investment, according to Tombs. And becoming friends with Peter Carrington, the former British defense secretary, allowed for impeccable timing of Black's ownership of the prestigious Daily Telegraph of London. He bought it for $60 million, and sold it for $1.5 billion, Tombs notes.
"His networking was not just of great and grand people, but people whose intelligence he could use," Tombs said.
Reporting for and writing "Robber Baron" was a "crazy ride" that found him interviewing many of those bold-faced names such as Kissinger. "Kissinger was so devious, he made me extremely uncomfortable," Tombs writes in the book. "Once the interview was over, I checked by my pocket to make sure my wallet wasn't missing."
Tombs first got together with Black in 2001, when the press baron was riding high, his empire intact and his grand entry into the House of Lords achieved.
It was that achievement which intrigued Tombs. "To become a lord was bizarre," he said. "It's the kind of thing you might find at the end of the 19th century in Canada -- but not since then."
At their first meeting in Black's mansion, Tombs recalled, "I had to make clear to him that there was no way he could have editorial control over the book. And he wanted editorial control."'
So Tombs was present as Black's life and businesses fell apart.
"Robber Baron" was first published in 2004, as Black's meltdown was beginning. It had almost no sales, though, because the publishing house almost immediately went bankrupt. ECW, the current publisher, contacted Tombs about updating the book last March, just as Black's trial was beginning.
Tombs covered the trial, but purposely avoided personal contact with Black. The baron's lawyers, of course, didn't want their man talking, but Tombs said he had another reason: "He's a charmer. He's a guy who's very good at pushing you his way. He's good at making you a pawn. And I didn't want to be his pawn."
"Robber Baron" is not a cut and paste hatchet job. Almost all of it is based on interviews by Tombs and other original sources, and he says proudly that only two people are quoted anonymously in the 450-page book.
Some readers, Tombs adds, have complained that his portrait is too empathetic. "I don't believe that," Tombs said. "I really disagreed with him on many things. I'm not a sensationalist journalist, but I had to find out something about him first-hand."
One thing Tombs concluded is that Black is indeed guilty, and that had he been on the federal jury that convicted Black, he would have felt like them. Not taking the stand, Tombs said, was a strategic mistake.
"The message (the jury) got from Black is, I'm not going to talk to you, I'm above this," he said. "I think the jury, had I been a member of the jury myself, would have noticed that in ... memos written by Black, he seemed to have total contempt for ordinary people."
And while Black is indisputably no ordinary man himself, Tombs final assessment of him, in the last lines of the book, chops Lord Black down to size: "What was Conrad Black's claim to historical greatness? Of all Canada's greatest robber barons, he was the one who got caught."
Mark Fitzgerald is E&P's editor-at-large
