Con Job

Now this is the type of guy we want investigating the events of September 11, 2001.

The New York-based investment firm [Tweedy, Browne & Co.], which owns 18 percent of Hollinger's stock, said Monday that Hollinger's independent directors, including former Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson, should be held accountable for approving hundreds of millions of dollars in controversial fees to [Conrad] Black and other former executives.

Partner Christopher Browne said he made his case to the special committee of Hollinger's board that has been investigating the payments to Black, Radler and others.

...

In its amended lawsuit, Hollinger says Black and Radler engineered deals in which companies they controlled acquired newspapers from Hollinger for as little as $1 apiece--in some cases despite six-figure offers from competing companies.

The lawsuit acknowledges that Hollinger's audit committee, led by Thompson, approved millions of dollars in management fees paid annually to Black's Ravelston Corp. But the suit says Black, Radler and others "did not reveal what was going on behind the curtain at Ravelston since they had learned how to manipulate and dominate the audit committee."

That didn't assuage Browne, who said Thompson should have more aggressively scrutinized the payment requests.

"This board didn't know how to say no," Browne said. "There's no excuse for it. Jim Thompson is not an Isuzu salesman from Peoria."

But he is a fertilizer salesman for the Bush Administration.