Tangled Webs.

• Author: Mandell, David

Tangled Webs

By James B. Stewart

Is America facing an epidemic of perjury? James B. Stewart believes justice is undermined by witnesses who swear to tell the truth, then brazenly violate their oaths. In Tangled Webs, Stewart examines four high profile perjury cases: Martha Stewart, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Barry Bonds, and Bernard Madoff. Despite access to the best legal advice, all were convicted.

The book starts with Martha Stewart's trial, and the author shows how her involvement was largely self inflicted. Martha Stewart's daughter had dated Sam Waksal, founder of ImClone Systems, a drug development company. Martha Stewart then purchased about 4,000 shares, a small part of her fortune. But the FDA rejected ImClone's primary product, and Waksal knew its stock price would plummet. He ordered his broker, Stewart's future codefendant, Peter Baconovic, to sell his stock before the news became public. Baconovic, in turn, informed Stewart. She sold her shares and famously remarked to her companions how nice it was to have a broker that tells you things. Once the FDA denial became public, ImClone's value tumbled, and regulators noticed that Waksal and Stewart had sold their shares before the FDA announcement and began investigating.

The author shows how Martha Stewart was her own worst enemy. She and Bacanovic insisted that their knowledge had no bearing on her sale. Their claim that Stewart had a stop loss order was easily exposed as false, and, as the author demonstrates, it was largely unnecessary. Unlike Waksal, Ms. Stewart was not clearly an insider and was charged with perjury rather than insider trading. The author asks why someone would risk her freedom when the option of telling the truth or exercising fifth amendment rights would have so better served her. The answer seems to be that deceit has become so routine that it is a normal response.

Next, James Stewart deals with the perjury trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, an assistant to former Vice President Dick Cheney. During the preparation for the war to remove Saddam Hussein from power, the CIA sent a retired diplomat, Joe Wilson, to Niger to investigate whether Iraq was seeking nuclear material. Wilson's conclusion--that there was no evidence of it--went largely unnoticed until he went public and encountered columnist Robert Novak. Novak reported that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA agent, had arranged for her husband to get his assignment. Since revealing the identity of a...