Ann Gabriel, a public relations professional who worked briefly with Michael Jackson’s PR team following the broadcast of Living With Michael Jackson, testified that she was hired by David LeGrand, an attorney, to work on crisis management, countering the negative publicity which arose from the programme.
Q [by Gordon Auchincloss] Okay. And were you hired by Mr. LeGrand to engage in crisis management?
A [by Ann Gabriel] Yes, I was.
Q For whom?
A For Michael Jackson.
Q And when did that occur?
A I was –
Q Or when were you hired, I should say?
A On the 9th of February, I believe.
Q Was there a period of time which you were recruited before that? Or was there a discussion?
A There was a discussion, yes, back and forth between David and I, yes.
Q So you were hired on the 9th. When did the discussions about working for Michael Jackson begin?
A Around the 27th of January.
Q All right. And tell me about the work that you were hired to do for Michael Jackson specifically?
A Well, specifically it was immediately after the Martin Bashir tape came out. And there was a lot of, of course, press that was going on describing the actions that were on the tape, a lot of talk about Michael being with [Gavin] and talking about them sleeping in the same bed, and those types of things. So my focus was to try to take the image that was being portrayed of Michael in the press and turn it around into a positive image rather than a negative one.
Q Did you see the Martin Bashir video?
A I never saw the video, no.
Q Did you see the segment involving [Gavin Arvizo]?
A Absolutely. Yes.
Q And based on your experience as a public relations expert, did you perceive that to be problematic for Mr. Jackson’s image?
A As a public relations expert, yes. Absolutely.
Q Okay. Did you form a plan of action?
A Yes, I did.
Q What was that?
A My plan of action was to be very proactive and to get back out into the press. What I wanted to do was to put the focus back on Michael Jackson’s music rather than on what was being portrayed in the press.
I had a friend of mine out of Chicago, Don Hancock, who has done video and audio work for almost 30 years now, to look at the tape. I wanted him to take a look at it to see if there was any inconsistencies or
what we could portray as inconsistencies in the tape in the media.
Q The Bashir’s tape?
A The Bashir tape, yes. Absolutely. And then I wanted to take whatever points may have been found in that, along with being able to try to rebuild Mr. Jackson’s image by focusing on his past accomplishments in music, rather than what was going on right now.
Q Were there other concerns other than the Bashir’s tape that were part of the crisis?
A There were my own personal concerns, if that’s what you’re asking me.
Q No, I’m asking you professionally.
A As they relate to Michael Jackson?
Q Yeah.
A Yes. My own personal concerns, not with the Martin Bashir tape, but I was personally concerned professionally for Michael about his financial condition, and several of the things that were happening that I was aware of in his life that I wanted to be able to talk about.
Q But in terms of the job that you were hired to do, were you hired to exclusively address the public relations image problems presented by the Martin Bashir’s?
A Yes.
Q Were there any other public relations image problems, apart from the Bashir’s tape that you were hired to help deal with?
A No. I mean, nobody said anything to me about it.
Q So it was just the Bashir’s tape. And was it — was it ever mentioned to you that there was — that you were specifically hired to deal with this one portion of the tape or one aspect of the tape dealing with [Gavin Arvizo]?
A No.
Q Okay. But you said you perceived that as being part of your –
A I perceived that as a public relations person as being the major crisis that needed to be handled. Yes.
Q Was there another crisis aspect of the Martin Bashir’s tape other than the [Gavin Arvizo] portion that you perceived to be something you needed to deal with?
A Yes, there was.
Q What was that?
A Michael’s state of mind, the way that he portrayed himself on the tape.
Ms Gabriel said she was one of a team working on the fallout from the program both in the US and the UK. Along with David LeGrand she said Ronald Konitzer, Marc Schaffel, and Stuart Backerman were working in the US, while PR consultancy firm Bell Yard was handling the crisis in the UK, along with “some other attorneys in the UK and also here in California”. She said Backerman was the official spokesperson, and Schaffel was in overall charge of the public relations effort, while Konitzer was “the boss”, though Mark Geragos was, in turn, responsible for the final decision on everything.
Q Okay. Was there another attorney that was involved with this group out of the Los Angeles area?
A Yes. Mark Geragos.
Q And what was his role, as far as you know?
A He — David told me that everything — David LeGrand told me that everything had to be run through Mark Geragos for final decisions.
Q Okay. So as far as the hierarchy or structure here, Konitzer is one of the people who’s in charge?
A Yes.
Q Geragos is also up here at the top because everything goes through him; is that correct?
A Yes. To make — on the legal side. Yes.
Q Okay. And Schaffel was perhaps underneath one of those two individuals –
A Absolutely. Yes.
Q Do you know which one Schaffel answered to?
A He worked through both.
Q Okay. And you answered to Schaffel?
A Yes.
Q But you also had contact with Mr. Konitzer?
A Yes, I did.
Q And with Mr. Geragos?
A Yes, I did.
Q And Mr. Backerman was kind of mixed up somewhere in the middle?
A Yes.
Q Okay. He wasn’t in a leadership role, is that fair to say?
A No.
Ms Gabriel opined that Martin Bashir’s programme had the potential to do “huge financial damage” to Michael Jackson. She said LeGrand had told her Jackson had debts amounting to $250 million, but the singer also had considerable assets that could be harmed by the adverse publicity generated the programme, namely the Sony ATV catalog.
Q Okay. And do you have any knowledge of Michael Jackson’s assets?
A No, I don’t.
Q Okay. Are you aware that he — whether or not her owns a catalog of musical rights?
A Yes. I’m sorry. Yes, he does. He’s a joint owner with Sony EMI. Yes.
Q Okay. And how do you know this?
A I know this through my conversations with David LeGrand and through public records.
Q Okay. So this is a matter of public knowledge in terms of the music industry?
A Yes. Absolutely.
Q And you are familiar, particularly familiar with the recording industry of these types of things?
A Yes. Yes.
Q And can you characterise for me the value of just that catalog?
A Yes. The catalog is owned jointly by Michael Jackson and Sony EMI.
Q What do you mean, first of all, when you say — when you’re talking about this catalog of music?
A Well, the catalog is a catalog of music that is some Beatles music, some Michael Jackson music, and there’s other artists that are also in there. And when you own a catalog like that, you own what are called the publishing rights. The publishing rights of any music, any popular music, can be extremely valuable.
So a 50/50 ownership means that the royalties that would be paid, because every time a song is played you have to pay a publishing royalty. Even radio stations have to pay what are called composers royalties. Those royalties that are collected on those songs. And they get paid to the owner of those copyrights.
So that’s — they own them jointly, the copyrights within those publishing — within that catalog.
Q Okay. And before you came in today — well, let me back up. What are ring tones?
A Ring tones are what you can get on your cell phone. If you program your cell phone and it plays a little song, that’s called a ring tone.
And a ring tone is what’s considered a mechanical royalty, because it is produced mechanically. It just makes a sound. It doesn’t actually sing a song. Like, let’s say, you actually hear the lyrics that Michael Jackson would sing in one of his songs. So you may hear the melody of the song reproduced through the phone. And that’s called a ring tone.
Q Can you sell those ring tones?
A Absolutely. Yes, you can.
Q And as far as the — if you were to estimate a value of just the ring tones — first of all, let me ask you this. The ring tone is just a portion of the value of the catalog?
A That’s correct. Because when you have royalties, there’s many different types of royalties that you can collect on. Some may be to use a song in a movie, or to use a song in a video, or to use it on a television show. But beyond that you can also use those songs or those melodies to sell ring tones for cell phones. So that’s a portion of it.
Q Okay. And is it fairly easy to estimate for you as an expert in this area — would you consider yourself an expert in this area?
A I have a vast amount of knowledge in this area. Yes, I do.
Q And the value of individual copy — or music rights for these songs?
A Yes. Uh-huh.
Q Is it easy to estimate an approximate value of the ring tones, just the ring tones –
A Yes, it is.
Q — for this catalog?
A Yes, it is.
Q I mean, what number — give me a range, conservative range of value?
A Well, ring tones right now are the fastest growing area of music being sold. So in my estimation, over the next five years or so the value for the ring tones alone of that catalog could be equal to what the catalog is worth today, which is between 500 and 700 million dollars.
Q All right. And in your estimation as a public relations expert, did this Bashir’s tape reduce the value of just those ring tones?
A If it wasn’t controlled, yes. It could have greatly reduced the value of the –
Q By millions of dollars?
A Absolutely. Yes.
Q By many millions of dollars?
A By many millions of dollars. Yes.
Ms Gabriel said she had never met or had a conversation with Michael Jackson or any member of the Arvizo family. However she became concerned for the Arvizos after the family disappeared from Neverland in the middle of the night.
Q At some point during your employment for Michael Jackson were you notified by a member of the team that you’ve described that there was a problem with the [Arvizo] family?
A Yes, I was.
Q Who was it that notified you of that problem?
A Marc Schaffel.
Q And do you recall the approximate date that he told you there was a problem with the [Arvizo] family?
A Yes. It was February 13th.
Q Are you sure of that date, or could it be one day or more either way?
A I’m as sure as I can be of that date. Because he called me on my cell phone, and at the time I was renting a car. And I had to physically go to the car rental location to renew the rental for another week. And my car rental started on a Thursday. And February 13th was a Thursday, the day before I went to Los Angeles. So I’m as sure as I can be without looking back.
Q Okay. And what did Mr. Schaffel tell you when he called you and informed you of a problem with the [Arvizo] family?
A He told me that there was a problem at the ranch. That [Janet] had taken the kids and left in the middle of the night or early in the morning. And he was very — extremely upset and agitated about it.
And he told me he was afraid that they had gone to — or she had gone to sell her story to a UK tabloid.
Q Did he ask you to take any action?
A No. At that time he told me that he was go — I told him that I was on my cell phone, that I was in a parking garage, and that I would need to get back to him because I had to go renew the lease for the car, and then I also had a conference call with attorneys in the UK.
And he told me that he was going to fax me a letter that he wanted me to put away for safekeeping. And I don’t remember if he said he would get back to me or that I would get back to him at that point.
Q Did you have, based on the context of your conversation, did you have any — any idea what this letter, fax letter was going to be about?
A No. I didn’t have any idea what the letter –
Q Did he ever send you a fax letter?
A No. He never sent me the letter.
Q So he made no indication to you what would be in this letter that he wanted you to hold for safekeeping?
A No, he did not. No.
Q If he had sent you that letter, how would you be — how would you handle the keeping of it for safekeeping?
A It would have depended on what it said.
Q Okay. All right. At sometime — sometime after you received that first phone call, did Mr. Schaffel contact you again concerning this same problem?
A Yes, he did. We spoke again, and I honestly don’t remember if he called me or if I called him. But probably he called me, because calling him was difficult to get through to him. And he told me that, these were his exact words, the the situation had been contained.
Q And did you ask him what he meant by that?
A No. I just — it was very clear to me. I mean, I didn’t ask for an explanation.
Q What else did he tell you?
A I don’t remember a whole lot about the rest of that conversation. I just — those words stuck very firmly in my mind.
Q Did you — did he tell you, “We found them and brought them back to the ranch”?
A Oh, I’m sorry. Yes. He did tell me that. He did tell me that.
Q And did that cause you some concern?
A It caused me a lot of concern, yes. I felt personally like this was something out of a very bad B movie. It made me sick to my stomach.
Q Were you disturbed?
A I was deeply disturbed, yes.
Q So was this a long conversation or short, do you recall?
A Most of my conversations with Marc were very short.
Q And do you remember everything that was said? You told us a couple of things that were said in that conversation. Do you remember anything else that was said?
A I can’t, off the top of my head sitting here right now, remember.
Q Okay. But based on the entire context of that conversation and what was said, what was your impression of what happened? What impression did Mr. Schaffel give you from that conversation of what had occurred?
A The impression that I got was whatever had occurred wasn’t good. And later in the day — I don’t know if it’s okay for me to talk about this right now or not.
Q You conversation with Mr. LeGrand?
A Yes.
Q Let’s go ahead with that. Did you talk to Mr. LeGrand later in the day?
A Yes, I did. Later in the day I called David LeGrand because we had to discuss some other things, things that were talked about in the conference call with the UK. And I said to him, you know, “Did I hear what I think that I heard?” I told him what Marc Schaffel had said to me.
And I said, “Don’t make me think that these people were basically hunted down like dogs and brought back to the ranch.” And David told me that he couldn’t talk about it. He couldn’t discuss it. He had other things that he had to do. I was deeply disturbed by that.
Q Did it strike you as odd that Mr. LeGrand had that response to you?
A No. He had that response to me a lot during that time.
Ms Gabriel was in a relationship with LeGrand up to the end of January 2003, though it was not made clear whether she was hired to work for Michael Jackson before or after their relationship ended. The fact of their relationship was not discussed until Ms Gabriel testified during Michael Jackson’s trial the following year.
Ms Gabriel said she was hired in late January by David LeGrand, who terminated her contract by email on February 16.
Q Okay. Let’s talk about that point that you brought up first. When were you terminated?
A On — I got an e-mail from David LeGrand on the 16th of February, which was Sunday.
Q Okay. And the e-mail was from whom?
A Was from David LeGrand.
Q And he informed you of what?
A He said, “Ronald has decided that you can — you may no longer continue with the team. Good effort.”
Q Good effort, like you made a good try?
A Like you did a good job, yes.
Q Was there any explanation if you’d done a good effort then why you were being terminated?
A No. No there wasn’t.
Ann Gabriel testified that before her contract was terminated she had arranged to be interviewed on the entertainment news show Access Hollywood as part of her work on ameliorating the damaging publicity generated by Living With Michael Jackson. She said Mark Geragos ordered her not to participate in this interview, and then asked her to sign a confidentiality agreement.
Q [by Gordon Auchincloss] What was your reason for going to Los Angeles?
A [by Ann Gabriel] To do an appearance on Access Hollywood.
Q Okay. And did that involve the Michael Jackson –
A Yes, it did.
Q — public relations effort?
A Yes, it did.
Q Okay. And what was going to take place at that particular show, in that interview?
A They had sent a list of about ten questions that we had pre-screened, and I had spoken with Mr. Geragos about, and about the replies. And so we were going to tape an interview based on the questions that they had sent.
Because no one from Michael’s team up to that point since the Martin Bashir tape had broken had actually gone out in public and spoken.
Q Okay. When you say “they”, you mean the people from Access Hollywood?
A Yes. That’s correct.
Q Did you actually go to the Access Hollywood studios?
A Yes, I did.
Q And were you preparing to carry on that interview?
A Absolutely. I was mic’d and sitting on the set.
Q And did you do that interview?
A No, I did not.
Q Why not?
A I was pulled off the set.
Q By whom?
A By Mark Geragos.
Q Okay. Did you talk to Mark Geragos –
A Yes, I did.
Q — that day? Did he explain to you why he was pulling you off the set?
A No. He never really gave me any explanation. I argued with him for about — for a while. At least 15 minutes or so, telling him that I felt in my professional opinion that this interview was something that really needed to take place.
And then he asked me to stay in town, to stay overnight and come to his office on Saturday. And that he wanted to put me under a private investigator’s confidentiality, and then he would fill me in at that point.
Q Okay. Had you ever heard of that before, being signed up as a private investigator for an attorney?
A No, I had not.
Q Did that strike you as odd?
A It struck me as very odd. Yes.
Q And if I understand you correctly, he wanted you to sign that agreement so that you could be protected under the attorney-client privilege? Did he mention anything like that?
A He didn’t mention anything about attorney-client privilege. My professional and personal thought was that it was something that was not a good thing for me. And I didn’t want to be shut up. So I wasn’t going to stay around and sign it.
Q So you perceived it as something that would silence you –
A Yes, I did.
Q — legally?
A Yes, I did.
Q And have you ever been a private investigator –
A No, I have not.
Q But he wanted you to sign an agreement saying you were?
A Yes, he did.
It should be noted that Geragos had, in fact, hired private investigator Bradley Miller a week before this incident because he was concerned about the motives of the Arvizo family, and Janet in particular. “One of the first things I did is involve a private investigator,” Geragos testified in May 2005. “And I involved a private investigator and I had some associates in the firm do some database searching on various players involved.
“The things that I was hearing about the Arvizos gave me great pause,” he later added. “Somebody had told me a story about Gavin being told to refer to Michael as ‘Daddy’, and that — that Michael was uncomfortable with that; that the person that was telling me was probably one of the people who were — it was either Weizner or Konitzer or somebody, somebody who was up there, and that that concerned him greatly. That obviously gave me pause, and so in response to that, I decided to run some database searches on the Arvizos.”
This initial search uncovered the details of the JC Penney case, and Geragos testified that he was “gravely concerned” at what he read. He asked Brad Miller to investigate the family further as a result of this. “I asked him to please find out where they were, and to document what they were doing, who they were meeting with, and whether or not they were either trying to sell a story to the tabloids, or meeting with lawyers, or anything even more grave than that, at least from my client’s standpoint,” he said.
Ms Gabriel, meanwhile, testified that she was frustrated by the public relations team’s failure to respond proactively to the crisis.
Q As far as public — the public relations business, are there different philosophies about how to handle crisis management?
A Yes, there are.
Q Can you describe the two ends of the continuum?
A The — yes. They’re the opposite ends. The one is to hunker down and be quiet and don’t really say anything and let all the bad press blow over. And usually those are the people that are of the school of thought that any press is good press, no matter what it is.
And then the opposite end, which is what I believe in, which is to be very protective. Because I believe that the theory is whoever attacks first wins. Because that’s what people believe.
Q Okay. And are you a strong advocate of your personal philosophy?
A Absolutely. Yes.
Q But there are those out there who have the philosophy of just hunker down, don’t say a word –
A Yes. Uh-huh.
Q — wait for things to blow over.
Okay. So did you have an impression, based upon your entire experience from this — with this team, as to whether or not they ascribed the proactive theory of public relations crisis management or the hunker down theory?
A The hunker down theory.
Q Why do you say that?
A Because everything that I brought up, everything that I asked to be able to take care of and to do was just totally dismissed.
Q Silenced?
A Yes.
Ann Gabriel testified that David LeGrand told her there were plans afoot to discredit anything Janet Arvizo said about Michael Jackson. She said LeGrand told her he had footage of Janet which he would use to make her look like “a crack whore”.
Q [by Gordon Auchincloss] Let’s talk about the next conversation which you had a — in which you talked about the [Arvizos].
A [by Ann Gabriel] Okay.
Q When did that occur?
A That was sometime later after I was terminated. And I don’t remember how much later. It may have been, you know, a week, it may have been 10 days. I don’t — everything was happening so fast and there was so much going on that I just really don’t remember the exact date of that.
Somehow we got on the subject of talking about her. And David told me, and I do remember his exact words because I repeated them to other people, was that, “We’ve got her on tape and we’re going to make her look like a crack whore.”
Q Did he say something along the lines of, “We don’t have to worry about her,” that type of thing?
A Yeah. I don’t remember what his exact words were. He was very flip about it. I mean, I used this word before to describe it. The only thing I can tell you adamantly is that he was absolutely gleeful when he said that to me. I mean, that is the word that I used to describe it.
Q Did that upset you?
A It upset me greatly. Yes.
Q And was it your impression that this was something they were going to fabricate or something that was true?
A That she was a crack whore?
Q Yes.
A I had no knowledge of Miss [Arvizo], so I didn’t know. But I believed that — I know, because I do video productions, that anything can be done with video. It can be edited in any number of ways.
Q Didn’t he say that “We are going to make her look like a crack whore”?
A Yes, he did.
Q Those were his exact words?
A Yes.
Q Okay. Okay. Do you remember anything else about that conversation, other than the fact it made you upset?
A Yes. I told him that I didn’t think that even if they had her on tape it would be anything that they could use against her in court, because I felt that it was taken under duress. And I didn’t see how anything like that could stand up in court.
The tape in question appears to the rebuttal interview recorded at the home of Marc Schaffel which was initially conceived as part of the programme Living With Michael Jackson, The Footage You Were Never Meant to See. Ms Gabriel said she heard that Schaffel had made this tape of the family.
Ms Gabriel also testified that she believed that there was “something very wrong” happening to the Arvizo family, an opinion based largely on the fact that Janet and her children had fled Neverland late at night. However she did not seem to be aware that the family was driven home by a Neverland employee.
Q Okay. Did you have any knowledge that it was taken under duress, or was that just your –
A I had just my personal feeling. I had — I assumed that if this woman left in the middle of the night, which is what Marc Schaffel told me, or early in the morning, that she obviously didn’t call and have a chauffeur driven limousine pull up and take her out of there.
I’m a mother. I have two children. If I was going to leave somewhere in the middle of the night it was probably because there was something very wrong.
Ms Gabriel opined that a statement attributed to Janet Arvizo, released by the UK public relations company Bell Yard in the wake of the broadcast of Living With Michael Jackson, was written by Bell Yard without Janet’s input. While this is a common practise in public relations, the statement uses language which is consistent with Janet’s own verbal utterances.
“The relationship that Michael has with Gavin, Star and Davellin is a beautiful, loving father, son and daughter,” the statement read. “He is their Daddy Michael. And to me and my children, he is our family. He cares for them as a good, loving father. Michael is their only father figure who loves and cares about them. They are not fatherless, because they have their Daddy Michael. My family consists of unconditional love.”
Q And I will back up. Just one thing, as far as 101 [the statement]. You don’t have any personal knowledge that — whether or not [Janet Arvizo] wrote this?
A No, I do not.
Q But based on your expertise, this is something that’s quite typically issued with or without the consent of the person who is –
A Yes, it is.
Q Or knowledge of the person who is supposedly making the statement?
A Yes.
Q All right. And before I leave that, how would something, a statement like this typically be generated?
A The team, whatever the team might be, would look at the specific situation and then decide what the best way to be to react to the press, or what — to be productive in the press.
So someone would sit down, look at the situation, write out the statement, insert the proper words, then send the statement out to the wires.
Q Okay. And the team in this case would be the entire team that you were part of, or the Bell Yard team?
A Well, whoever was handling — whoever was handling the — carrying out those types of statements. And at that point I believe it was Bell Yard.
So it’s not like everybody gets together and decides how to do it. One or two people are usually appointed to take care of it. When I was brought in I took care of it on the United States side.
When asked to estimate, on a scale of one to 10, how damaging the Bashir documentary was to Michael Jackson’s image, Ms Gabriel characterized it as “about a 25″. “I felt that the tape was put together in a way that would portray him very negatively,” she later added.
She said she was not aware of any interview being organised in Miami after the programme aired.
Ms Gabriel said she brought up many concerns she had with Living With Michael Jackson with members of PR team. She also raised her concerns about the Arvizo family with two media representatives.
Q [by Gordon Auchincloss] Well, if you thought people were hunted down like dogs and that upset you, why didn’t you call somebody in the — as far as the authorities or something?
A [by Ann Gabriel] Well, I had no proof to actually go to the authorities with, number one. And number two, I did have that conversation with David later, even though he wouldn’t talk to me on the 13th about it. And I couldn’t — I didn’t feel that I could go to Mark Geragos, because I believed that it was something that he was aware of.
So what I did was I called two people. I contacted Claudia Eaton, who is an executive vice president for Access Hollywood NBC. She’s also an attorney. And I told her the story. And I also spoke with Rita Cosby from Fox News. And I told her the story.
And I told them both under confidentiality, and explained to them that my concerns. And they were both very concerned for me too. They felt that it was something that needed to be explored. But they were concerned about my safety and the people around Michael. And so they wanted to explore it, but they wanted to try to do it without bringing me into it.
Q Are these personal friends of yours?
A I didn’t know them before the Michael Jackson.
Q Then why did you choose them to trust with this information?
A I trusted Claudia Eaton, because I’d met Claudia when I went out to Access Hollywood. She was the one I dealt with when I was pulled off of the set from Access Hollywood. And I felt very bad for her because there was a situation that had arisen previously with NBC that Marc Schaffel had engineered that made Claudia Eaton in particular look very bad. And so that’s number one.
And number two, when Rita Cosby contacted me and we talked about some things, she portrayed to me that she was very concerned about the whole situation also.
And I felt that if I covered myself by telling somebody from NBC, and all of this ever came out, and somebody from Fox, it was two separate networks that had nothing to gain out of it. So the credibility of what I said then wouldn’t –
Ms Gabriel conceded that she did not have “any evidence to go to the police” with her concerns about the Arvizo family. However she later stated that her approach to NBC was not about the Arvizo family, but rather about the bidding on the rebuttal programme made in response to Living With Michael Jackson.
Q And you — you made is sound a little bit like Miss Eaton was aware of the situation. Was she?
A Aware of what situation?
Q Some situation with the [Arvizos]. I can’t recall exactly how you said it. But was Miss Eaton aware of –
A No. What happened was NBC didn’t have anything to do with the [Arvizos]. It had to do with the actual bidding on videotape for the Take Two videos.
Q Okay. Okay. Did they know about the prospect of [Janet Arvizo] being on the Take Two video?
A I believe they did. Yes.
Ms Gabriel said she believed she was fired because she “asked lots of questions” and was uncomfortable working with Marc Schaffel.
Q Okay. Why do you think you were fired?
A Because I don’t know how to keep my mouth shut. I didn’t — I didn’t have the same philosophy as the rest of the team. So, it’s obvious to me.
Q Did you ask a lot of questions?
A I asked a lot of questions. Yes.
Q In fact, did you send e-mails out asking lists of questions about concerns you had?
A Yes, I did.
Q Did you ever get any response from any member of the team to your questions?
A No.
Q Were they tough questions?
A Yes, they were.
Q About the certain issues surrounding the whole public relations crisis?
A Yes, they were.
Q In an e-mail shown as evidence, which we’ve talked about, did you express a concern that Marc Schaffel was being retained for the PR effort?
A Yes, I did.
Q And did you express that in that e-mail?
A I expressed concern that Marc was involved.
Q Okay.
A Yes.
Q And how was your working relationship with Mr. Schaffel?
A Did we — are you asking me specifically did we talk, or how did I feel about him?
Q How would you characterize it? Was it a good working relationship, was it difficult, was it nonexistent? I –
A It was difficult because the first few days both he and Mr. Backerman were constantly on the phone with press from all over the United States. So when I would try to get ahold of Marc to pin him down, you know, to get a specific answer from him, it was nearly impossible. And I just never felt comfortable working, talking to Marc on the phone or working with him.
She said Schaffel had told her he could get people to say what he wanted them to on video.
Q Did Mr. Schaffel ever indicate to you whether or not he could get people to say what he wanted them to say for video purposes?
A Yes, he did.
Q Did he tell you that personally?
A Yes, he did.
Q Tell me the context of that conversation?
A This is when we were talking about the Take Two video. The way that the Take Two came about was that Marc Schaffel — I found out that Marc Schaffel had videotaped Martin Bashir videotaping Michael Jackson [in fact it was Hamid Moslehi who taped this footage; Schaffel produced the Take Two programme].
My concern was that Granada had all of this video footage, and we as a team had no access to it. So we didn’t know — my exact words were, what else would be out there that to come back to bite us.
And I felt very strongly that we needed to get ahold of that videotape. Then I was informed that Marc Schaffel had all of this extra video. And what they were going to do was take this video, this extra video, and make a rebuttal of what they called the Take Two tape.
We also discussed, Marc Schaffel and I, whether or not Michael Jackson would actually do an interview on that tape. And I don’t remember a lot about that conversation. I just remember it was my concern that we did get him on tape to talk about some of those things.
And then we talked about Debbie Rowe, and we talked about Lisa Marie Presley. And I asked him if, what we were going to do, if we were going to get them on tape. And he told me that he would get Debbie Rowe. It wouldn’t be a problem. He could get her to say whatever he wanted her to say.
He said Lisa Marie Presley was a little more — and I’m using my word here. I used the word squirrelly, like unpredictable, because you never really knew — he never really knew which way she was going to go.
Q So did he indicate whether he was going to keep her out of the video?
A Just what I said, she was a little more unpredictable. And that led me to believe that she wouldn’t be part of it. I felt that she would be the stronger interview because she had two children from a previous marriage, and so if she was on tape talking about it, then it would be better for Mr. Jackson.
Q Okay. And that’s you — that was your professional opinion?
A That was my professional opinion. Yes.
Q What are your feelings now in regard to being terminated from the team?
A Well, obviously, I’m — this has been a nightmare. This last year plus for me personally has been a nightmare. Because every time some — I mean, you cannot avoid hearing anything about Michael Jackson, reading anything about Michael Jackson.
The professional part of me is very sad. Because there is a man who had a great career and who made a lot of great music. And I felt that his public relations team should direct him back into the area of what he did with his music. So that made me deeply sad.
Personally I am, of course, relieved that I was never drawn in any deeper than what happened. I feel like I’m in deep enough.
Despite Ms Gabriel’s professional opinion, it is unlikely that concentrating on Jackson’s music would have adequately addressed the extremely negative inferences drawn from Living With Michael Jackson. Nor would it have benefited him to have someone on his public relations team who clearly believed that something sinister was afoot and who was discussing her concerns, and/or information regarding the commercial distribution of the rebuttal programme, with members of the media.
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