Harry Turner had worked as a chauffeur for Jack Kent Cooke, the owner of the Washington Redskins. In the December 1989 issue of Washingtonian magazine, Turner, after being fired by Cooke, published a story about his experiences with his former boss.
Immediately after publication, Cooke filed a $30-million libel suit against Turner and the magazine, challenging three stated facts in the article. First, Cooke denied Turner's allegation that he had expressed support for Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder after the colorful oddsmaker had aired his racist views about black athletes during a television interview. Second, Cooke denied Turner's charge that he had used his political influence to fix a traffic ticket.
Finally—and, obviously, most significantly—Cooke denied Turner's allegation that the owner of the Redskins had once warned him not to bet on NFL games, because they "can be fixed."
Although Turner never alleged that Cooke personally participated in game fixing, Cooke clearly felt it necessary to challenge this statement. Of course, the NFL agreed with his position and supported this litigation while vigorously resisting subpoenas from the magazine's defense attorneys.
In spite of all evidence to the contrary, NFL officials had continued to claim that no professional football game had ever been successfully fixed since the creation of the league in 1920.
After Cooke filed his complaint, an attorney for Washingtonian contacted me. Since the release of my book, not one reporter, covering either news or sports, had ever asked to examine my evidence of game fixing in the NFL. Thus, I had been searching for a forum—other than the media—to release this documentation, especially after the filing of Moldea v. New York Times.
I told the Washingtonian lawyer to have Jack Limpert, the magazine's long-time executive editor, personally invite me onto their defense team. At that time, my relationship with Limpert was lukewarm at best. He had been stalling an answer to a proposed article I wanted to write for the magazine about the Black Mafia in Washington. So, before we discussed anything else, I wanted an answer to that.
After not hearing from him for several months, Limpert finally called me in mid‑August 1990 with his hat in his hand, asking for my help with his magazine's defense. During our conversation, he addressed me as "Mr. Moldea" and "Sir," a manner in which he had never before referred to me.
Perplexed by Limpert's unfamiliar tone, I then called a close friend and source, asking him to find out how much trouble Washingtonian was really in over the Cooke case. Twenty minutes later, my friend called back, laughing. When I asked him what was so funny, he told me that Harry Turner—the sole source for the story and the key witness in this $30 million libel suit—had once claimed to have been kidnapped by space aliens and taken to another planet.
Essentially, Turner had self-destructed. The magazine's only hope was to use outsiders and their evidence to prove that the three contested allegations in his article were actually true.
Because I am not a negotiator, I immediately called my attorney, Roger Simmons, and asked him to work out my deal with Washingtonian, providing him with our newfound bargaining power.
According to the spectacular arrangement he worked out for me, I agreed to serve as an expert witness for the defense during which time I would be required to turn over my documentation of the game fixing in the NFL. In addition, I pledged to provide Washingtonian's legal team with at least two other experts who could testify that NFL games "can be fixed."
Clearly, Washingtonian's attorneys felt that if they could get past the NFL game‑fixing count then they could win the entire case.
I provided the attorneys with the promised list of law‑enforcement experts who agreed to testify about NFL game fixing. However, instead of only providing two witnesses, as my contract with Washingtonian required, I gave them six. From this list, the magazine's attorneys selected three to sit for depositions—in addition to my own testimony.
The other witnesses were: Herbert Hinchman, a former top federal agent with the Criminal Investigative Division of the Internal Revenue Service; Carl Shoffler, a former detective with the intelligence division of the Washington, D.C. police department; and Leo Halper, another former IRS/CID agent, who headed Project Layoff, a federal sports‑gambling probe in Nevada.
All four of us testified under oath that not only can NFL games be fixed, but that, in fact, they have been fixed.
During my sworn deposition on February 11, 1991, I was asked about my documentation in Interference. Also, Cooke's attorney peppered me with questions about my evidence of game fixing, especially the role of Don Dawson in the thirty‑two fixed NFL games:
Question: Did you bring Dawson's allegations to the attention of any law‑enforcement officials, apart from publishing it in the book?
Moldea: It was more like the law‑enforcement officials brought it to my attention.
Question: In what way?
Moldea: Well, when I first got into this whole investigation, I went to a top organized‑crime investigator with the Michigan State Attorney General's office, and he told me, "If you're going to do something on the NFL, you're going to have to investigate Don Dawson, because he was fixing games. We knew it." So then I went to my friends and sources at the IRS, the criminal intelligence division, and they told me the same thing: Don Dawson was fixing games. They knew it. Their investigations were quashed.
Question: Is fixing games a federal crime?
Moldea: It would be a violation of the Sports Bribery Act.
Question: I take it, it might involve other crimes like income tax evasion?
Moldea: Absolutely. . . .
Question: It was [also an IRS official] who indicated to you that you should pursue Dawson. Is that correct?
Moldea: Right. At that point, I had enough evidence to say, "Allegedly, according to law enforcement sources, Don Dawson had been fixing NFL games." But I went that extra step and jumped through the hoops and interviewed Dawson. And he confessed. So law enforcement agents made charges; he confessed. That was evidence in a court of law as far as I was concerned.
Question: Did Dawson understand when he confessed that he was exposing himself to criminal prosecution?
Moldea: I made it very, very clear to him that I was publishing this material. Again, I went out to him. I showed him the manuscripts. I showed him the galleys. I sent his son, who is an attorney, the galleys so his son would know.
Question: I'm not suggesting you did anything wrong to him. I was just trying to figure what your understanding of his state of mind was.
Moldea: I made it very clear to him that he was going to be published and was going to get famous.
Question: Now, do you have any idea why no federal authority—I mean, in our parlance, this is a lay‑down case—
Moldea: Statute of limitations.
Question: Oh, the statute of limitations. He believed that he was okay because of the statute of limitations?
Moldea: I don't know if that's what he was thinking. He was not, per se, a target of my investigation. Not really. What I was simply trying to show is that despite the NFL's claims that they're investigating organized crime, the fact is that these things are going on.
In the wake of our depositions, Washingtonian filed a motion for summary judgment, asking the presiding judge to dismiss the Cooke case. The judge took the matter under consideration.
On July 25, the judge ruled on the motion. After weighing "the various pleadings and the record," he dismissed the NFL game‑fixing count.
Clearly, the judge had given Washingtonian a major victory with this ruling.
Further, during a conference call with all of the attorneys in the case, the judge told Cooke's lawyers that he would permit them to present their case on the other two minor counts at trial. However, the judge warned that before Washingtonian had to present its defense, he would consider a directed verdict on Washingtonian's behalf.
In other words, Cooke's case was in very serious trouble. Washingtonian's talented attorneys had taken an extremely difficult case and turned it into a likely winner.
The judge scheduled the trial—which would concentrate on the lesser issues of Cooke's alleged support for Jimmy the Greek and the circumstances revolving around the traffic ticket—for September 10. Washingtonian's attorneys—as well as those of us who served as their expert witnesses—were ecstatic. All of us who had been deposed on the magazine's behalf about game-fixing in the NFL were now out of the case. We had no further responsibilities.
Then, suddenly, on Thursday, August 8, Washingtonian settled out of court with Cooke.
Washingtonian, with its victory at hand, inexplicably admitted "a lapse in editorial judgment" and accepted defeat.
Even those of us who were now out of the case were in complete shock.
As part of the settlement, Washingtonian actually agreed to apologize publicly to Cooke for all three of the challenged passages in the article and to make a “substantial” contribution to Cooke’s favorite charity. The apology would include the NFL game‑fixing count, which had already been dismissed by the judge!
Also, the principals agreed not to comment about the case.
To make matters worse, the depositions of our expert witnesses—all of whom documented evidence of NFL game fixing—were sealed as part of the final settlement.
Shortly after the case ended, the magazine's executive editor, Jack Limpert, appeared in Jack Kent Cooke's owner's box at RFK stadium for the Washington Redskins’ 1991 home opener.