Stranger than Fiction: Ringling's CIA Spy Headed to Court

August 16, 2008

By Jeff Stein | August 15, 2008 3:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A court date is finally looming for a top former Central Intelligence Agency official and others accused of conducting a dirty tricks campaign against a freelance writer on behalf of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus.

In the latest chapter in one of the most bizarre stories in the annals of espionage, a District of Columbia judge ruled yesterday that a civil suit filed against former CIA operations chief Clair E. George and others accused of conspiring to derail the career of local writer Jan Pottker could proceed to trial.

Ringling Bros. owner Ken Feld had asked the court for a summary dismissal of the charges against him, George and others who allegedly ran a "con game," in the words of D.C Superior Court Judge Brook Hedge, to derail Pottker's planned book on the Feld family and circus.

Court documents show that Feld had been angered by a 1990 magazine piece that Pottker wrote revealing intimate details about the Feld family patriarch, Irvin, who had bought the struggling Ringling Bros. for $8 million in 1967 and turned it into a multi-billion dollar global entertainment business.

Hedge's Aug. 14 decision described an elaborate scheme carried out by George (who had retired after being convicted of perjury in the so-called Iran-Contra, arms-for-hostges scandal) and Robert Eringer, a sometime informant for the FBI, to approach Pottker under the guise of being a book packager and distract her from the Feld project.

Pottker is seeking $10 million in compensatory damages and $60 million in punitive damages for her alleged psychological distress and damage done to her writing career.

In 2006 a jury cleared Feld of similar accusations in a suit brought by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, which charged him with spying on the organizaiton.

On a separate legal track, detailed by the San Francisco Bay Guardian's Steven T. Jones, a suit by three animal welfare groups and a former Ringling Bros elephant handler is scheduled to be heard Oct. 7 in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

The Ringling Bros espionage operations first surfaced in my two-part article for the online magazine Salon in August 2001.

"We are estatic," said Pottker's attorney, Roger C. Simmons. "It is actually a win on all the big money issues that sweeps away all side issues and makes trial easier."

No date has been set yet for that trial.