Vindication Has Its Price p. 11

By: Dorothy Giobbe

Six years after he was acquitted of federal conspiracy and
extortion charges, investigative reporter Gus Payne wonders why
the newspaper industry won't invite him to an open forum sp.

R.E. "GUS" PAYNE doesn't mind if some reporters see him as a sucker who got set up by the FBI.
He doesn't care if others call him a stoolie and a snitch.
What irks him is that he's been ignored.
But being snubbed by his cronies in the newspaper business hasn't kept the award-winning investigative reporter quiet. Six years after he was acquitted of federal conspiracy and extortion charges, Payne is back with a new book and a healthy dose of criticism for his former colleagues.
Most journalists remember the 53- year-old newsman from his well-publicized 1988 trial. Payne, then a reporter for the St. Tammany (La.) News-Banner, had been persuaded by the FBI to participate in an undercover investigation.
But, not surprisingly, when something went wrong with the investigation, the FBI didn't protect Payne. He ended up being charged with conspiracy and extortion. According to the government, Payne was guilty of threatening to reveal a local businessman's criminal record unless he was given a public relations job with the executive's company.
Payne stood his ground, telling anyone who would listen that he had been acting on the FBI's instructions. But the bureau denied even knowing him. It was only after internal FBI memos were introduced in court that Payne's story was confirmed. Eventually, he was acquitted of all the charges.
Vindication had its price though. Payne was left financially and emotionally strapped by the ordeal. And while it was over long ago, he remains haunted by the experience. More than that, he's baffled by what he sees as a total indifference from others in his profession.
Payne knows that going to bed with the FBI is against everything journalism stands for. But he attributes his blunder to na?vet? and ambition ? the FBI told him that if he cooperated with their investigation, they would give him the inside track on the story for the News-Banner.
At the very least, he feels, his experience should serve as a cautionary tale.
Caught in the Crossfire, the recently published account of his ordeal, is an attempt at long last to tell his side of the story.
"There are journalists all over the country who are like plums, waiting to be picked up by the FBI," Payne said. "Editors and publishers are foolish if they don't find out who they are.
"It's a lesson that needs to be learned and told to journalists, particularly students," he added.
Not everyone turned their backs on Payne. During the trial, James Gill, a columnist for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, first published the internal FBI documents that proved Payne was working with the Bureau. Payne believes the article kept him out of prison.
And after the trial, the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) wrote a letter to the FBI, protesting the recruitment of journalists as informants. Amazingly, the bad press didn't stop the FBI.
In fact, Gill recently revealed that the FBI tried to recruit him as an informant, despite the Payne fiasco.
"Now we have an FBI that can recruit one newspaperman, try its best to put him in prison for a long stretch, and then ask another to deliver crooked politicians' heads on a platter," Gill wrote in the Times-Picayune last year.