Jury Says Hersh Didn’t Libel Ex-Statesman

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh did not libel former Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai in a book that called the Indian official a paid CIA informant, a federal jury found Friday.

Desai, prime minister from 1977 to 1979, contended that Hersh libeled him in his 1983 book “The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House.”

Desai’s lawyer, Cyriac D. Kappil, had asked the six-member jury to award $3.5 million to his client. Desai, 94 and living in Bombay, is ill and did not appear at the trial.

“It’s a terribly important victory for any journalist,” Hersh said outside the courtroom after the verdict.

“I think it’s going to make it easier for all the people in my profession,” he said. “Nonetheless, it’s also very chilling. It’s also very frightening to realize that you can write things that can put you through a process like this.”

Kappil said he disagreed with instructions U.S. District Judge Charles R. Norgle gave the jury after the three-week trial. The attorney said Desai’s dispute centered on two chapters in the book, but jurors were allowed to consider the whole book.

“The book went in (to the jury room) in its entirety. My lawsuit dealt only with Chapter 32 and portions of 33,” Kappil said, adding that jurors’ access to the book may have strengthened their belief the disputed chapters were factual.

Jurors deliberated less than six hours over two days.

Kappil said he would confer with his client before deciding whether to appeal.

Kappil said in closing arguments Wednesday that Hersh libeled Desai by writing that he had been paid $20,000 a year by the CIA and had been considered a valuable “asset” to the U.S. government during the administrations of Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.

“With the stroke of a pen, Mr. Hersh assassinated his reputation, his honor,” Kappil said.

Defense lawyer Bernard J. Nussbaum countered that Hersh had based his assertions about Desai on consistent information from half a dozen high-level government sources.

“When you have that kind of information, doesn’t the journalist have a responsibility to publish it?” Nussbaum said Wednesday.

To reach a finding that libel occurred, jurors must conclude that Hersh knowingly printed false material with malice, or with reckless disregard for whether it was true.