NEW YORK
The Jewish Week
11/05/14
Hella Winston
Special To The Jewish Week
Sol Wachtler wasn’t a big fan of The Jewish Week’s coverage of the bribery and extortion prosecution of chasidic child abuse whistleblower Sam Kellner.
Or at least that’s how the former chief judge of New York’s highest court made it sound to his close friend, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles “Joe” Hynes, back in January of 2013, a week after the paper published the first story in what would become a multi-part series on the case.
“[I] forgot to mention the Jewish Week piece,” Wachtler wrote in an e-mail to Hynes, one of many obtained recently by The Jewish Week through a Freedom of Information Law request; in the email, Wachtler addresses Hynes as “Yos,” a Yiddish-y version of Joe.
“I read it twice, and I swear I cannot follow what the hell she’s talking about. …The only people who will have the patience to read and attempt to follow the story are the Hasids, and all but a handful will disagree with her conclusions (whatever they are). I would make three recommendations: 1) They send the story to Guantanamo and have it be read in lieu of water boarding, 2) Bennett Gershman [an ethics expert quoted in the story] be encouraged to retire, and 3) The Jewish Week Investigative Journalism Fund [which supported the reporting of the story] should get its money back.”
The story was indeed byzantine, with a plot even a sharp legal mind like Wachtler’s could not be expected to wrap itself around easily.
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