Conrad Black’s craven bid for freedom

Conrad Black, the former Daily Telegraph proprietor now serving a six-and-a-half year sentence for corporate fraud, is not giving up on his desperate bid to win a presidential pardon from George Bush before he leaves office on January 20. Having so far failed with a direct approach to the White House, it seems Lord Black has gone into full grovel mode by heaping praise on Bush's economic record and the outcome of the War in Iraq in an article for the National Post, the Canadian paper he founded in 1998 but had to sell after only two years.

"The US annual economic growth rate has been 2.2 per cent through this presidency, the highest of any advanced country, and the economy expanded 19 per cent in this time, well ahead of other large economies," writes Black, or Prisoner No 18330-424 as he is known at his current address, the Coleman Correctional Center, Florida.

He goes on: "All who remember 9/11 will recall the very high concern that, as bin Laden promised in his belligerent videos at the time, there would be imminent and frequent sequels. Yet not so much as a firecracker has gone off in the Americas since then, and President Bush deserves much credit that he has not received for this fact."

The disgraced former media mogul then concludes: "I believe that something important and useful will come from the Iraqi operation, and that George W. Bush will ultimately be seen as a rather successful president.”

In case readers should get the wrong impression, Black goes on: “For the benefit of sceptics, I might add that this thesis - expanded into its current form at the request of my editor - has been my publicly stated view since well before there was any thought of asking this president to redress, in my own case, the failings of the American-justice system."

Meanwhile, the writer Ruth Dudley Edwards told the readers of the Irish Independent yesterday that she had emailed Black to warn him that his last article for the National Post, which contained a rant about the US justice system, was ill-advised. To this, Black blustered: "I don't see what complaint George W would have with it. Anyway, one does what one must."

Dudley Edwards helpfully suggests that Black’s best chance of receiving a "get out of jail free" card is to offer to write Bush's biography.