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U.S. Author Gets Apology In Libel Case
An American author and his British publisher yesterday accepted substantial damages and an apology that effectively ended a libel action brought against them in English courts by Robert Maxwell and his newspaper company before his death.
The out-of-court settlement announced in High Court in London also ended a countersuit brought by the author, Seymour M. Hersh, and the publisher, Faber & Faber Ltd. The Maxwell lawsuit was prompted by Mr. Hersh's 1991 book "The Samson Option," about Israel's nuclear weapons program.
In yesterday's proceedings, a lawyer for the Mirror Group, which was controlled by Mr. Maxwell before his death in November 1991, said it acknowledged that Mr. Hersh "is an author of excellent reputation and of the highest integrity who would never write anything which he did not believe to be true and that he was in this instance fully justified in writing what he did." Ties to Mossad
Mr. Hersh's book said Mr. Maxwell had ties with Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, and that Nicholas Davies, foreign editor of The Daily Mirror, the flagship of Mr. Maxwell's newspaper empire, had helped arrange the sale of Israeli arms to Iran as well as help Israeli agents kidnap an Israeli nuclear technician.
Mr. Maxwell and Mr. Davies denied the allegations. The two men and the Mirror Group Newspapers filed their lawsuit in October 1991.
Mr. Maxwell's legal action died with him. Michael Nussbaum of Washington, Mr. Hersh's lawyer in the United States and a participant in the negotiations that led to the settlement, said Mr. Davies, who was later dismissed from The Daily Mirror, had not pursued the case.
The Mirror Group, in addition to apologizing to Mr. Hersh and Faber & Faber and agreeing to pay them damages, also agreed to pay their legal costs. Mr. Nussbaum said terms of the settlement precluded him from disclosing the exact amount of the damages.
Mr. Hersh won a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 1970 for exposing the My Lai massacre. He was later a reporter for The New York Times. He was not available for comment yesterday.
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