FRANK KERMODE
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no real understanding of this network of ex-agents and wartime old
boys. And though much less of a Candide now than I was then , I still
don't quite understand Rees's response to Conor Cruise O'Brien, nor
how it appeared in print. This column was a violent attack on O'Brien,
which might have passed had he used it for a routine rebuttal of the
charge that
Encounter
was under the control of the CIA; but he added
certain allegations about the Irish writer's conduct when he was a highly
placed U.N. representative in the Congo only a few years before, at the
time of its decolonization.
It
was arranged, or happened, that I did not see this article until it
was in print, or I would surely have questioned its wisdom, accuracy, and
propriety. Not surprisingly, O'Brien did. I suppose, in the ordinary way,
Lasky would have dealt with this affair, but he had gone off on his long
trip to South America. There now began the lengthy transatlantic tele–
phone negotiations. Bob Silvers, Editor of
The New York Review of
Books,
conveyed to me O'Brien's determination to sue for libel unless
we published a retraction.
We ran up very large phone bills, but in the end I declined to do as
Silvers suggested, and for two reasons. First, Rees assured me that he
could produce respectable witnesses to the truth of his account, and in–
deed he did introduce me to two journalists who said they were willing
to present themselves in that role; but I decided they were not credible.
Second, I sought counsel from a barrister reputed to be the best libel
lawyer in London. He gave me an exquisite little seminar on the law (I
can still see him counting off the main points on his fingers), at the end
of which he declared that we had a defense of qualified privilege and ad–
vised us to use it.
I don't remember the fine legal points, though I know that this de–
fense, involving a measure of retaliation, depends on one believing that
the retaliatory remarks complained of are believed to be true. My posi–
tion was that I had been given explicit and quite solemn assurances that
O'Brien's criticisms of
Encounter
were false, and had decided that if I was
to go on working for the magazine I must behave as if I fully accepted
those assurances. Everything I heard from Silvers tended to shake my faith
in them, but I couldn't yet bring myself to resign, and if I didn't do
that, then it seemed I had to defend the case. Here was another instance
of my deplorable record in the matter of ethical choices, for when given
a clearly defined alternative - choose between this and that course of
conduct - I have almost always, for what seemed at the time powerful
or virtuous reasons, chosen wrongly. So the writ for libel was served on
me.
