By Mark Ames

    I met Paul Klebnikov for an interview in late October, 1996. I had no idea why he, a Forbes editor, would want to talk to me, editor of an annoying little Moscow paper called "Living Here". We met at what is now the Murena Bar on Gazetny Pereulok. Klebnikov didn't look like a typical frumpy journalist. His clean narrow face, coiffed dark hair and healthy physique made him look like a sort of corporate Adam Sandler. A very un-Jewish Adam Sandler, as I was to later discover.
    At the start of our interview, Klebnikov put a tape recorder on the table and started the tape. He asked me about Living Here and : life among the expats. Back then, I didn't go out or socialize much; I wanted to talk about Russian politics. I noticed that my answers disappointed him. Then he asked me about some local expat tradition whereby a large group of American expats would charter a jet to Transvylania for a ribald Halloween at Dracula's castle. I told him I had no idea what that was about. So I referred him to a couple of white- baseball-capped expats who could tell him more. At that moment in our interview, a strange thing happened: Klebnikov grabbed his tape recorder, clicked the buttons, shook it, opened the tape, examined it, opened the battery case, took out the batteries and put them back in, then clicked the buttons some more. Finally he gave up.
    "It doesn't seem to work," he told me. "Do you mind if I just take notes and don't record it?"
    After our interview, he asked me to take him to a massive Halloween party near Smolensky Ploschad, thrown by the legendary Otto and gang. On our way there, Klebnikov, who proudly told me that he'd descended from White Russian emigres, passionately defended the regime of Nikolai II. He'd written his PhD on the economics of the last Tsar's regime, and claimed that it was neither as failed nor as doomed as its reputation had been, and that it was actually on the right path all along. I found that strange coming from a Berkeley grad and Forbes editor, but I still hadn't put two and two together.
    Vodka flowed freely. I lost Klebnikov somewhere near the coat check, where he'd cornered another White Russian descendent and friend of mine, whose name I will leave out since she still reads this newspaper.
    After the party, she and I went home together.
    "Who was that asshole Paul Klebnikov?" she kept asking, furious. "Is he a friend of yours?"
    "No, he's an editor of Forbes who came to interview me," I said. I thought he'd make me look good; I was wrong.
    "He's an unbelievable anti-Semite," she said. "All he would talk about is how the Jews are destroying Russia. He thought that since I'm a White Russian descendant, I'd agree. I didn't, but he wouldn't stop. He went on and on for hours about the Jews. He's the worst anti-Semite I've ever met in my life!" When his article in Forbes, "Moscow Cowboys", came out a couple of months later, I finally understood why his tape machine conveniently conked out. Here's how he quoted me then, and again in his Jew- baiting book on Berezovsky: "'Moscow is a party town,' said Mark Ames, L 31, grinning, noticeably -Ithe worse for drink. 'Ninety-nine percent of the expats came here to make a buck, but they stayed for the women'the women here are awesome [...] This party is nothing,' noted Ames. 'There's a group of 100 expats traveling down to Transylvania to spend Halloween in Dracula's castle.'" I remember being shocked when I first read that. My first big-time quotes ever, and I hadn't said a word of it. And the liar knew I hadn't! It made me lose what little faith I had in the sanctity of journalistic ethics - hell, even at Living Here we didn't intentionally misquote people, and we had no standards to speak of.
    I remember at one point in our interview, Klebnikov asked me if I was Russian. I told him that I had a Ukrainian-Jewish grandmother. That must be what sealed it for me. Judging by his Berezovsky book's Third Reich cover, and his distinctly negative treatment of Jewish oligarchs versus his positive treatment of Christian oli-garchs, I can see now that it wasn't a mistake. I'd been marked for a smear.