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The meeting with Kahan took place in a conference room in the offices of Prime Minister Shimon Peres in Jerusalem on Sunday, Jan. 6. Time Inc. was represented by Haim Zadok, a former Israeli Minister of Justice; Sharon was represented by Dov Weisglass, a Tel Aviv lawyer. At the outset of the examination, Zadok learned that he would not be permitted to see testimony gathered by the commission's investigators, who had the power to subpoena witnesses and require them to testify.
Zadok immediately protested and subsequently wrote a letter expressing his objections to that restriction. "This was no fishing expedition," explained Harry Johnston, general counsel for the Time Inc. Magazine Group. "At that late stage, Time was looking for specific testimony that it thought would help its case."
Meanwhile, Time Inc. General Counsel William Guttman, who had flown to Israel to await the outcome of the Kahan meeting, was informed that he too must sign a secrecy agreement. Only after Guttman did so was he told that the Israeli Attorney General had decided to make public Kahan's answers, which concluded that Appendix B and other documents examined did not contain "any evidence or suggestion" that Sharon had discussed revenge with the Phalangists. The government, however, refused to release Zadok's letter of reservations. As far as Time Inc. was concerned, this was a clear breach of its understanding that the findings would be transmitted in confidence to Judge Sofaer.
Zadok's letter continued to be embroiled in disputes last week. On Wednesday, Judge Sofaer asked reporters and spectators to leave the courtroom while he read Zadok's reservations to the jury. Attorneys representing various news organizations appeared before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals the next day to challenge Sofaer's decision to close the courtroom. "Does Judge Sofaer have the power to make an agreement with a foreign country that bars the American public from an American trial?" asked Floyd Abrams, a well-known First Amendment lawyer. The appeals court decided to reserve judgment on the case.
Before Time Attorney Barr began his summation on Thursday, Sofaer narrowed the range of possible interpretations of the paragraph that would support Sharon's suit. He told the jurors that they could find that TIME had defamed Sharon only if they interpreted the contested paragraph to say that Sharon "consciously intended" or "actively encouraged" the Phalangists to kill civilians in the camps.
In his five-hour summation to the jury on Thursday, Barr told the jurors to reread the disputed paragraph and ask themselves if it fit the judge's test * of defamation. "Look at the words again," Barr said. "Do the words say that? Do the words mean that to you?" If not, he said, "that's it. The case is over." Barr reminded the jurors of the testimony of TIME Senior Writer William E. Smith, who wrote the cover story. If Smith had meant to convey that Sharon consciously intended or encouraged a massacre, Barr argued, "he would have said so in a direct and clear way."