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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, May 6, 1980
Page 6
So the discovery phase of the lawsuit will proceed without the intervention
we felt we needed. Again, "discovery" is the pre-trial procedure of gain
ing information from the opposing party through depositions, interrogato
ries and requests for documents. Mr. Rader especially wanted to make very
clear a point he has made before regarding depositions and the turning over
of documents:
"A lot of emphasis has been placed repeatedly by the press on our so
called refusal to make available documents, and our refusal to make our
selves available for deposition or for testimony. And what they do not
make plain is that that is true, but only true with respect to the Attorney
General. We have cooperated fully with every other agency of the federal
and state governments that have evinced an interest in knowing anything at
all about us. Even Mr. Armstrong has made himself available.
"So what we have done is simply thrown up a stone wall in front of our
selves vis-a-vis the Attorney General, because he has lied and he has
invented and he has maligned and he has slandered.
He is a totally dis
honest man.
"But we have cooperated with everybody else to a much greater extent than
we will ever cooperate with the Attorney General under any conceivable
set of circumstances. It's one thing to sit down with people who treat
you as they should, who treat what you give them in a confidential manner,
and are only interested in satisfying whatever obligation they feel they
have.
"It's another thing to be accused of all kinds of wrongdoing, [and] to
have that, as Mr. Armstrong said, plastered over all the newspapers around
the country.
"The other agencies have not done that. They have worked with us in such
a way as we were able to give them the answers to every single question
they have had and every scrap of paper. Even our auditors, Arthur Ander
son, know very well that they will never find another client that is so
cooperative, never.... Even Mr. Armstrong has made himself available.
That's very, very important.
Summing up the weeks ahead of us in the pre-trial aspects of the lawsuit,
Mr. Rader said, "The next step will be when they ask us questions that we
feel we cannot answer or they ask us for documents that we do not think
under any conceivable circumstances we can turn over, etc."
Controversy Over Law, Not the Facts
Observers of the lawsuit have noticed that there is basically little real
controversy over the facts in this case, although Mr. Rader noted at the
press conference that the Attorney General doesn't want to admit it yet.
James J. Kilpatrick, a syndicated columnist, didn't overlook that in his
very insightful and favorable article when he said, "The facts are not
even significantly in dispute."
Mr. Rader told the media that many of the facts that' are still being put
forward as sinister and indicative of "self-dealing" and "fraud" have been
volunteered in a lengthy affidavit by Mr. Rader early in January! "Conse
quently, everything the Attorney General has done in the last 18 months
has been designed to work the media up and the courts into believing that