After Pottker read George's affidavit, she faxed it to her friend Dan Moldea, a well-known investigative reporter and author of several books, starting with "The Hoffa Wars," a 1978 bestseller. Moldea's beat is cops, the Mob and corruption, but even he was shocked.

"Jesus Christ," he said when he called Jan back. It was one of the most amazing documents he'd ever seen.

"I was completely stunned," Moldea says. "Every investigative journalist I know has moments of paranoia -- where we believe that higher powers are actively but covertly attempting to sabotage our work. But after reviewing the George affidavit, I had never seen such overwhelming evidence that just flat-out proved it."

One of Moldea's first questions for Pottker was where the document came from. She told him about Charles Smith, who was suing Feld for millions of dollars in stock options and other money he claimed the company owed him. Smith had gotten the affidavit from Clair George to support his allegation that Feld had used company funds for his private vendettas against her and animal rights groups.

"She was befuddled and puzzled by the document," Moldea recalled. "She didn't know what to make of it." Moldea wasn't sure either. But he told her it was strong evidence of "a concerted effort to destroy her efforts" to write about the Felds, and recommended she talk to his lawyer, Roger Simmons. Simmons was a tough puncher who'd carried Moldea's unprecedented suit against the New York Times for a defamatory book review all the way to the Supreme Court, only to lose by a hair. This year he also won huge cash judgments against CNN for its dismissal of two producers for their story on alleged U.S. poison gas attacks in Vietnam.

On Nov. 10, 1999, almost exactly a year to the day that Pottker answered that fateful knock on her door, Roger Simmons filed suit against Ken Feld; Feld Entertainment; the Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey Circus and other subsidiaries; Charles Smith; Clair George; the owner of National Press Books, which Feld had funneled money through to publish Jan Pottker's Mars book; and one Robert Eringer, an obscure journalist with ties to the CIA who had allegedly helped George short-circuit Pottker's life. Other as-yet unidentified individuals suspected of wiretapping Pottker, breaking into her home and investigating her friends, were cited as "The John Doe Company." The charge was "invasion of privacy ... intentional infliction of emotional distress ... breach of fiduciary duty," and related allegations. Simmons asked for a $1 million judgment and $10 million more in punitive damages for his clients, Jan Pottker and her husband Andrew Fishel. The suit is ongoing.

Simmons quickly found a half dozen of Washington's blue-chip law firms hired by Feld, et al., arrayed against him. Most, like Williams & Connolly, counsel to the Washington Post, had longtime close ties to the capital's media elite. Simmons soon faced a snowstorm of motions for dismissals, postponements, challenges to jurisdiction, requests for protective orders on Feld company documents and other evidence, instructions to clients not to answer questions, and other tactics commonly used by big firms to frustrate, outspend, and bury a lone, middle-class plaintiff in paper and bills. Simmons plowed ahead.

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