The author of a new book about Conrad Black says the embattled former media baron told him he had expected to be acquitted of all charges against him in the days leading up to the verdict.
Black was eventually convicted on three counts of fraud and one count of obstruction of justice. He is currently free on bail -- though unable to leave the U.S. -- while awaiting his sentencing hearing later this month.
The author of the new book, "Robber Baron: Lord Black of Crossharbour," appeared on CTV's Canada AM on Monday morning. In one of several meetings he had with Black, George Tombs said it was clear he wasn't expecting the jury to rule against him.
He met with Black during the final days of his trial in Chicago.
"I wanted to hold back a little bit, and I said to him finally just because I was about to head back to Montreal where I live, 'What about that drink we were going to have?' and he said 'Okay, come up to my hotel.' We had a talk about it, and he was convinced that he would be acquitted on all counts."
Tombs, who interviewed Black a number of times in London, New York and Toronto, said his challenge was always to get to the core of who Black really was.
"It was a challenge to find what was going on -- in a way to try to decode the personality of someone who's always had control of his public image until July of this year with the verdict in Chicago. And as a biographer, I really wanted to try to get to know him as well as I could while maintaining my independence," Tombs said.
Following Black's rise and fall over the years, Tombs said he began to notice his tendency to associate himself with individuals who had accomplished great things, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Richard Nixon -- both subjects of biographies written by Black.
Tombs said he found the tendency surprising, because Black has accomplished so much in his own career.
"I found it kind of odd considering that this man has such obvious gifts, such tremendous talent and drive, that deep down, he was haunted by a kind of insecurity that gnawed at him and he really couldn't deal with it."
In a chapter titled "Entering the Labyrinth," Tombs touches on the issue.
"I entered the inner sanctum of Black's private mythology, had the habit of fusing his personality with his political heroes, papering his walls with rich symbols of power as if some of their magnificence would rub off on him."
Even as a young man, Black was a unique individual who went his own way, Tombs said, citing family members.
"Somehow he was lost in a larger, very athletic, very successful, very attractive group of people, and he was much more cerebral, he was interested in word play and he developed his phenomenal memory as a way of standing out and impressing people by reciting the names of galleons of the Spanish Armada or what have you," Tombs said.
"He was already, as a young person, a kind of loner or outsider in a very large family with a lot of expectations of how he should be behaving."
Black is scheduled to reappear in court for his sentencing on Nov. 30.
