A telling illustration of how the fate of Hamdan can encompass untold numbers, not only of suspected terrorists but also Americans, is the March 25 statement on C-SPAN of Navy Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, Hamdan's military lawyer. Swift has long been persistently, publicly critical of the mockery of due process by these military commissions that the president and Donald Rumsfeld invented.

Said Swift: "Mr. Bush and his lawyers have made it clear that he wants a precedent [from this case] that says the president, as commander in chief, can arrest any person in the world and then put that person on trial before a military tribunal (or commission).

"They've made it very clear that these powers can be exercised against American citizens right here at home. The president talks about the global war on terror and his lawyers have gone into court frequently saying the United States is a battlefield in this war." (Emphasis added.)

Indeed, I remember the chill when John Ashcroft said the very same thing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and his successor Alberto Gonzales, a faithful vassal of the president, is also a true believer in this war. George W. Bush is the law.

The prisoner, whose fate in this court may, at last, markedly bring the president down to constitutional size, was a driver for Osama bin Laden. A citizen of Yemen, he was picked up in Afghanistan in late 2001 by a warlord and turned over to the United States for a bounty. As Stuart Taylor pointed out in the March 25 National Journal:

"He is charged only with a single count of conspiring to murder civilians, based on allegations so nebulous that a real court might throw the case out. The government has not even claimed that Hamdan helped plot any terrorist attacks or committed any specific criminal act."

Moreover, as his lawyer, Neal Katyal, told the Supreme Court during oral arguments, the laws of war don't permit the stand-alone offense of conspiracy because it's too vague, adding:

"The world rejects conspiracy because, if it's adopted, it allows so many individuals to get swept up within its net. And so, for example, a little old lady in Switzerland who donates money to Al Qaeda and that turns out to be a front for a terrorist act . . . might be swept up within this broad definition of conspiracy. And that's why international law has so rejected the concept of conspiracy."

There are many more dimensions to Hamdan v.Rumsfeld, including-as the government maintains-whether the Supreme Court even has the right to hear it. In the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, a large, clueless majority of Congress passed a provision originated by the anti-constitutionalist South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham and supported by the president that stripped all prisoners at Guantánamo of their most basic rights of habeas corpus, including the right to petition against their confinement and the conditions under which they're imprisoned. This nullifies Senator John McCain's amendment prohibiting cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and McCain remains silent on its vanishing.

This Bush dismissal of habeas, which inflamed several justices of the court during oral arguments, will be part of next week's probe of the president's insatiable expansion of executive powers, along with his blunt rejection of the international Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners.

When I first started covering the Supreme Court-Earl Warren was the chief justice-seasoned reporters warned me not to make any predictions on the outcome of cases based on what appeared to be the justices' leanings during oral arguments.

Nonetheless, I predict that we the people, and the Constitution, will win, 5-3, thereby significantly slowing George W. Bush's kneecapping of the separation of powers. Next week, I'll tell you why. We probably won't know if I'm right until June. Also next week: a seeming victory at the Supreme Court in the Padilla case that will actually turn out to be a major defeat for Bush.

"It is the American government which is responsible for the good and the bad in the world, and they (the Americans) have found the ideal person to blame," said Aicha el-Wafi in a telephone interview with the Paris bureau of AFP.

"My son is going to be condemned to death for things he did not do and he is going to die because he is an Arab," she said.

Moussaoui, a French national of Moroccan origin, has confessed to being an al-Qaeda conspirator, but he has maintained he was due to fly a jetliner into the White House in follow-up attacks and not in the September 11 strikes.

For his mother, Osama bin Laden's terror network is also at fault for abandoning Moussaoui in the wake of the 2001 attacks.

"I would like to know what has happened to all those al-Qaeda chiefs, they must out there somewhere, laughing, while my son is going to die."

She says he is "fed up with this circus, and he is paying for the Islamists and the Americans. He is not responsible for the September 11 attacks."

On Monday, the jury at a court in Alexandria, Virginia, ruled that Moussaoui was eligible for the death penalty. They are now being asked to weigh mitigating or aggravating factors before deciding whether to impose capital punishment.

Until last month in the suburban Washington courtroom, el-Wafi had not seen her youngest son since July 2002.

When asked about her son's sometimes aggressive behavior - even suicidal - and outbursts during court appearances, she said he "wanted to end his life."

"My son told me (on the telephone)'I know that they want my head so I give it to them'," she said.

Her 37-year-old son has his reasons for being aggressive.

"Each time that he asked to see parts of his dossier, the Americans told him that it was a 'state secret'. It is easy to say that but it is a state lie."

She still does not know if she will return to the United States to attend the death penalty phase of his trial.

"I know that the worst is going to happen," she said, convinced that her son will face execution.

Moussaoui who suffers from arthritis wears "an electric belt around his waist" and has swelled up. "They say he is drugged," el-Wafi said.

Moussaoui, a self-proclaimed "slave of Allah," had a rough childhood in southwestern France before hearing the call to jihad for the first time at mosques in London, where he studied international business.

He was arrested in August 2001, weeks before the world's deadliest terror attack, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

But prosecutors contend he knew in advance of the strike and did not mention it to FBI investigators, so he is as guilty as the September 11 hijackers who steered airliners into landmark buildings in New York and Washington.

His court-appointed lawyers, trying to save him from death by lethal injection, have described him as a bit of a buffoon, quoting one terror suspect who branded Moussaoui "cuckoo in the head", claiming he was kicked off the team by "real terrorists" who found him a "headache".

According to his mother, Moussasaoui has been locked up in a "two meters by three" cell where "he doesn't know if it is day or night," his mother said.

He does not have a television or radio, and the only way he gets news is "from his guards who pass him messages" about what "is happening outside" the prison, she said.

"I would like to see him and speak to him calmly, like a mother to a son, away from journalists, from everyone," she said.

The mother also had harsh words for the French authorities who "have done nothing to help my son" and who, once "he is condemned to death," will only then rise up "to say they are against capital punishment."

"My son is an Islamist, I do not deny that, but is that a reason to kill him?" she asked.

The new report - "Below the radar: Secret flights to torture and disappearance" - describes a U.S. covert operation in which people are arrested or abducted, transferred and held in secret or handed over to countries where they have faced torture and other ill-treatment.

Amnesty lists dozens of destinations around the world where planes associated with "rendition" flights have landed and taken off -- and lists private airlines with permission to land at U.S. military bases worldwide.

The organization says it has records of nearly 1,000 flights directly linked to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), most of which have used European airspace. It claims these flights have been carried out by planes that "appear to have been permanently operated by the CIA through front companies."

While the U.S. has acknowledged that it uses rendition -- a fact widely reported in the international press and on television - the new Amnesty report is likely to further complicate Dr. Rice's current efforts to "win the hearts and minds" of Arabs and other Muslims.

In recent weeks, the Secretary has met with a variety of Muslim groups in the U.S. and abroad. Their view of U.S. policies in the "Global War on Terror" has sometimes been respectful, sometimes raucous, but largely accusatory, skeptical and passionate.

For example, in a recent meeting with British Muslims, Rice heard

complaints about U.S. policies in Iraq, Israeli treatment of Palestinians, and the American-run detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Representatives of such groups were present almost everywhere the secretary went during what was billed as a goodwill visit. Many are also telling Rice that the Bush administration should engage, not isolate, the new Hamas government in the Palestinian areas, because it was elected in a process Washington backed.

Local editorial commentary on Rice's two-day outreach visit to northwest England has been correspondingly harsh. Britain's Guardian newspaper carried a half-page cartoon showing Rice and her host, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, holding a banner saying: "The Case for War." The banner was riddled with holes and the caption read, "Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire," a reference to a line in the Beatles song "A Day in the Life."

Dissatisfaction with U.S. policies has also complicated the work of Rice's public diplomacy chief, Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes, a Bush Administration insider tasked by the president to improve the U.S. image in the Muslim world.

During their visit to the United Kingdom, Rice and Hughes defended the continued use of the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where some terrorist suspects have been held for years without trial. Rice said the U.S. doesn't want to keep the prison open longer than necessary, but added: "If the alternative is to release people back on the street so they can do harm again, that we're not going to do."

Rice said, "The United States recognizes ... that there are questions about American foreign policy." But, she asked Muslims to give the Bush administration credit for ending a six-decade policy of backing dictators in the Middle East and promoting democracy instead.

Virtually every public opinion poll taken in Europe, Asia and the Middle East shows increasing hostility toward the U.S. and plummeting approval for its foreign policies.

Amnesty's report is unlikely to improve the situation. It details the destinations and ownership of specific aircraft linked to people interviewed by the organization who have been transferred illegally. For example one particular aircraft is known to have made over 100 stops in Guantanamo Bay. Another took a detainee to Egypt from Germany after he was kidnapped in Italy. Amnesty says there were 488 recorded landings or take-offs between February 2001 and July 2005.

The new report says the U.S. "is manipulating commercial arrangements in order to be able to transfer people in violation of international law." Amnesty's Secretary General, Irene Khan, said, "It demonstrates the length to which the U.S. government will go to conceal these abductions."

She added, "The callous and calculated multiplicity of abuses is shocking. People captured have been subjected to a range of abuses of human rights by a number of governments acting in collusion, and all of this has been shrouded by secrecy and deceit."

The organization urged the aviation sector to ensure that aviation companies do not lease their aircraft in circumstances in which they may be used in renditions. Specifically, it called on governments to insist that any plane or helicopter used to carry out the missions of the intelligence services be declared a 'state' flight, regardless of whether they are carried out using civilian aircraft, prohibit the use of airspace and airports for renditions and actively investigate suspected rendition cases, and disclose the full extent of these practices and the fate of those whose whereabouts are still unknown.

Egypt has been a prime destination for victims of renditions. The Egyptian prime minister noted in 2005 that the U.S. has transferred some 60-70 detainees to that country, and a former CIA agent with experience in the region believes that "hundreds" of detainees may have been sent by the U.S. to prisons in other Middle Eastern countries.

The U.S. has acknowledged the capture of about 30 "high value" detainees whose whereabouts remain unknown, and its Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is reportedly investigating some three dozen additional cases of "erroneous rendition", in which people were detained based on flawed evidence or confusion over names.

Criticism of the rendition practice has not been limited to U.S. officials. In Britain, the House of Commons foreign affairs committee has accused ministers of failing in their duty to find out whether Britain has been complicit in US policy. The U.K. government has admitted that 200 suspect CIA flights had used British airspace.

In a report highly critical of the government's attitude toward human rights abuses, members of the committee say they have not been told the full story despite months of trying. They summoned the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, to give evidence again on the issue.

The Council of Europe earlier named five countries that failed to explain what steps they were taking to protect people from being detained and mistreated through rendition.

Meanwhile, criticism continues from human rights and religious leaders in the U.S.

Prof. George Hunsinger, who teaches at Princeton University Theological Seminary and is organizing a National Religious Campaign Against Torture, told IPS, "Outsourcing torture to other regimes is the moral equivalent of practicing it ourselves. How did we enter into league with the world's most despicable torturers? Where is the outcry? What is happening to our country?"

Brian J. Foley, a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law, told IPS that rendition "is a symptom of the great illness afflicting our nation, secrecy." He added, "We need more than just Amnesty International to shine light on these practices -- the American people must stand up and demand knowledge and accountability."

Jo Guldi, a historian at the University of California at Berkeley, told IPS, "No threat is so great that we can afford to cannibalize the very democratic principles upon which our own freedoms turn."

And Angelina Fisher, Arthur Helton Fellow at advocacy group Human Rights First, told IPS, "Failure by the United States to address the allegations of extraordinary rendition undermines the United States' stated commitment to the Convention Against Torture and raises serious questions about the government's respect for the principles of international cooperation."

Fisher was one of the primary researchers and authors of a report on rendition issued by the Bar Association of the City of New York and Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the New York University School of Law.

It's unclear - and intelligence experts say improbable - whether in the face of worldwide and persistent criticism, the U.S. has discontinued its rendition program. It has received far harsher criticism of its prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and that facility remains very much open for business - and very much in the news.

Yet, given these kinds of policies, one has to wonder whether the Public Diplomacy job that President Bush gave his old Texas buddy, Karen Hughes, is do-able at all. Mr. Bush should know from his training as an MBA that professional marketing can do only so much to sell a flawed product.

The intruder, identified as 40-year-old Brian Lee Patterson, wore blue jeans and a ragged white T-shirt with the words "God Bless America" on it, said the spokesman.

Bearded Patterson scaled the While House fence and ran onto the front lawn, waving his arms and repeatedly screamed "I am a victim of terrorism!"

A dozen members of the Secret Service emergency response team, some crouching with guns drawn and one holding a barking dog, chased Patterson and surrounded him near the row of cameras set up for television broadcasts.

"I have intelligence information for the president," said Patterson waving his arms in the air, "I am not afraid of you," he screamed. He was soon forced to his knees, handcuffed and led away.

The incident lasted just a few minutes.

Zahren said the man made "no spoken threats against" the president, but he would be charged with unlawful entry and contempt of court for violating a judge's orders to stay away from the White House.

Patterson has climbed the White House fence three times before. It is not known how he got over the heavily-guarded boundary this time.

With an overhaul of immigration law stalled in Congress, demonstrators urged lawmakers to help an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants settle legally in the United States.

The massive turnout at Sunday's protests - police estimated 350,000 to 500,000 in Dallas - continued to surprise organizers and police.

"This is a force, an energy here," said Amir Krummell, a U.S. citizen born in Panama, who marched to Dallas' city hall amid shouts of "Si Se Puede!", Spanish for "Yes, we can!"

In Salt Lake City, a rally expected to draw about 3,000 instead attracted about 20,000, police said, and 50,000 turned out in San Diego. Other demonstrations were held in New Mexico, Michigan, Iowa, Alabama, Oregon and Idaho.

"If we don't protest they'll never hear us," said Oscar Cruz, 23, a construction worker who marched in San Diego. Cruz, who came illegally to the U.S. in 2003, said he had feared a crackdown but felt emboldened by the large marches across the country in recent weeks.

In Birmingham, Ala., demonstrators marched along the same streets where civil rights activists clashed with police in the 1960s and rallied at a park where a statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stands as a reminder of the fight for equal rights and the violence that once plagued the city.

"We've got to get back in touch with the Statue of Liberty," said the Rev. Lawton Higgs, a United Methodist pastor and activist. "We've got to get back in touch with the civil rights movement, because that's what this is about."

The rallies also drew counter-demonstrators.

In Salt Lake City, Jerry Owens, 59, a Navy veteran from Midway wearing a blue Minuteman T-shirt and camouflage pants, held a yellow "Don't Tread on Me" flag.

"I think it's real sad because these people are really saying it's OK to be illegal aliens," Owens said. "What Americans are saying is 'Yes, come here. But come here legally.' And I think that's the big problem."

Many groups had been preparing to rally since December, when the House passed a bill to build more walls along the U.S.-Mexico border, make it a crime to help undocumented immigrants and make it a felony to be in the country illegally. It is now a civil violation.

Since then, local and regional protests, supported by popular Spanish-language disc jockeys, quickly merged into national plans after hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in dozens of cities last month, culminating March 25 with a 500,000-strong rally in Los Angeles.

"We don't have a leader like Martin Luther King or Cesar Chavez, but this is now a national immigrant rights movement," said Joshua Hoyt, director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which has helped organize rallies around Chicago.

In Minnesota, Latin dance music blared, Mexican flags waved and even a mariachi band in full costume marched to the state Capitol. Homemade signs dotted the crowd: "I'm a taxpayer." "I'm a worker." "I got rights." "I am not a criminal."

Tapia, who plans to study graphic design at a community college, said life has been hard for his family - especially his mother, who has raised him and his sister working a variety of jobs. He hopes that will change.

"All we want," he said, "is a good American life."

All democracies have lobbies. Shrill insistence that no groups promote Israel is ludicrous. Opinions differ on the long-term costs and benefits for both nations, but the lobby's views of Israel's interests have become the basis of U.S. Middle East policies. That this influence largely results from the efforts of people determined to exercise their democratic prerogatives is not open to question-or to challenge.

The dangerous, unacceptable result of that lobbying, however, is the stifling of public debate. Knowing the fiercely negative reactions to accurate, detailed reporting of controversies surrounding Israel, the media fail to cover Israel's violations of every principle for which the United States-and Israel-loudly proclaim they stand. There is only rare, skimpy coverage of the ongoing Israeli mass punishments, house demolitions, illegal settlements, assassinations, settler brutality, curfews and beatings. On the other hand, the blind Palestinian rage generated by decades of receiving humiliating, savage suppression in their homeland is reported in lurid, bloody detail.

The lobby's effectiveness at control was illustrated two years ago. Both government and media condemned China when it arrested, and accused of espionage, a Chinese citizen-Green Card holder visiting from the U.S. Neither the U.S. government nor media has ever protested-has never even mentioned-Israel's years-long multiple arrests and protracted detentions of American citizens, without charge or trial. In September 2000, CNN interviewed four Americans who had been tortured, the only report on this compelling story, and the network has since been forced to refuse selling recordings of that news segment, "Americans Mistreated in Israeli Jails." America would have been fully informed had any other country committed these acts.

The lobby also recently blocked the New York staging of a play, following its successful London run, based on the words of peace activist Rachel Corrie. She was crushed by an armored Caterpillar bulldozer while attempting to prevent demolition of a Palestinian home in Gaza. The driver failed to notice her blaze orange vest, yellow hard hat and bullhorn.

No rational American wants anything bad to happen to Israelis or Palestinians or Americans.. But they have happened, are happening, will continue to happen. Israel's actions often involve violations of human rights, international law, and UN resolutions, undertaken at the expense of a helpless, brutalized Palestine, thus denying Israel peace, security, and international support. Worse, they also lead to violent reactions, which are often recognized under the UN Charter as legitimate resistance to occupation.

Israeli actions also generate anti-Semitism, the very label the lobby uses to bludgeon into silence anyone in America who questions relations with Israel and its expansionist policies. This effectively blocks broad public understanding that Israel's interests and America's, sometimes in agreement, are sometimes sharply divergent. Of greater and entirely justifiable concern, the lobby has succeeded in pressuring successive administrations into actions and statements blatantly contrary to announced American principles and the advancement of U.S. objectives.

As the only nation unstintingly providing Israel with vast amounts of money, arms and unhesitating political protection, the United States is perceived as the key facilitator of 40 years of occupation and oppression. The massive, growing political, economic and human costs of continuing that close relationship merit public knowledge, discussion and debate. The Israel lobby prevents it, as Mearsheimer and Walt have carefully documented.

Ambassador Edward Peck is an Advisory Board Member for the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute, was Deputy Director of the Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism in the Reagan White House and former Chief of Mission in Iraq, and was in Jerusalem and the West bank as an international observer of the presidential elections in 2005, and in Gaza for the Legislative Council elections in 2006.

But while the accusations against Mr. Stern are serious, it is the specter - raised by at least three people who say they know what is on the tapes - that Mr. Stern implicated several celebrities and New York power figures in an undisclosed, symbiotic relationship with Page Six that prompted an extraordinary day of full-throated and at times gleeful gossip among those who love, hate and avidly read the column.

Those who say they know what is on the tape said Mr. Stern named Harvey Weinstein, the co-founder of Miramax films, and Ronald O. Perelman, the chairman of Revlon, as being among those who have had their coverage on the page finessed. Through a spokesman, Mr. Weinstein flatly denied any improper relationship with the column and its main editor, Richard Johnson.

Mr. Perelman's company once hired the fiancée of Mr. Johnson, Sessa von Richthofen, whom he is marrying today, as an administrative assistant. The executive who hired her said yesterday she had not been pressured into hiring her.

In the recordings, Mr. Stern never asserted that money had been used for preferential coverage.

Mr. Rubenstein, who said that lawyers for the newspaper were reviewing Mr. Stern's work, added that the authorities had not asked for information concerning any other reporters for the gossip column. He said the paper was preserving Mr. Stern's computer records and other material for the authorities to review.

One federal law enforcement official said the investigation was in its early stages and that it was unclear if any charges would be brought against Mr. Stern.

Mr. Stern's lawyer, Edward Hayes, defended the writer, who has also edited a Page Six magazine for The Post. "Jared did not and could not guarantee him good coverage or protect him from bad coverage," he said of Mr. Stern's dealings with Mr. Burkle. "Jared made a mistake. He's sorry if it embarrassed The Post and nothing actually happened, and hopefully it will be over and done with."

Mr. Stern said last night, "I apologize for causing The New York Post any embarrassment after almost 11 years of loyal and dedicated service, and hope they would not rush to judgment."

Gary Ginsberg, an executive vice president with the News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch's international media company that owns The Post, said of the investigation, "We're taking it very seriously."

But he added that the allegations had no broader implications for The Post, and noted that Mr. Stern was a part-time contributor. He said that the Page Six magazine had appeared only once. "No one's trying to make any excuses for his alleged behavior, but in terms of what it means for the franchise, I think the franchise is as strong as any in journalism. This is highly aberrational," he said.

The investigation was front-page news for The Post's top rival, The Daily News, which first reported many of the details of the accusations against Mr. Stern.

The scandal that is rattling Page Six began about a year ago, when items about Mr. Burkle, a supermarket magnate and Democratic fund-raiser, began appearing in the column more often.

The accounts of Mr. Burkle's dealings with Mr. Stern and The Post are based on interviews with several associates of Mr. Burkle, as well as two other people who said they knew what is on the tapes. They all refused to be named because of the federal investigation.

Associates of Mr. Burkle said that Page Six items about the billionaire began appearing last year that were wildly inaccurate, without Mr. Burkle's even being called for comment.

Last summer, one associate said, Mr. Burkle arranged to meet Mr. Stern at the Palace Hotel in Manhattan after a friend suggested Mr. Stern could give him some insight into Page Six. There, Mr. Stern asked Mr. Burkle to become a source, dishing on his famous acquaintances. Mr. Burkle declined but as a favor agreed to buy 60 shirts from Skull and Bones, Mr. Stern's clothing line.

The associate said Mr. Burkle protested to editors, including Mr. Johnson and even wrote a personal letter of complaint to Mr. Murdoch, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. "Every time I am mentioned in your newspaper," the letter read, "the facts are just plain wrong."

The letter concluded: "I hate to bother you with this; but at the end of the day, it is your newspaper."

Colin Myler, the paper's executive editor, wrote back and promised to correct any errors, the associate said. Mr. Burkle also had his lawyer, Martin D. Singer, send several letters threatening litigation, according to several people with knowledge of the correspondence.

On March 14, the associate said, an employee of Mr. Burkle's received an e-mail message from Mr. Stern, a contributor who worked two days a week for Page Six, suggesting that Mr. Burkle had "the means" to change the column's treatment of him.

"I understand Ron is upset about the press he's been getting," the e-mail message read. "If he's really concerned, he needs a strategy for dealing with it and regulating it rather than merely reacting. It's not easy to accomplish, but he certainly has the means to do so."

At that point, Mr. Burkle suspected he was being extorted, the associate said. Then, "he reached out to his attorney, who then reached out to law enforcement," the associate said.

According to many people involved in the episode, Mr. Stern agreed to meet Mr. Burkle face to face at least two times at Mr. Burkle's loft in TriBeCa, the first of which was on March 22. Mr. Burkle's security team, aided by a New York City-based private investigations firm, recorded the meetings in the loft over the last few weeks, according a person who was briefed on the sessions and was granted anonymity because the investigation is continuing. At the final meeting, on March 31, a federal agent and an assistant United States attorney were with Mr. Burkle's security detail to monitor the recording. The recordings were turned over to the federal authorities.

In their meetings, Mr. Stern described three levels of "protection" he could offer Mr. Burkle, according to those with knowledge of what is captured on the tapes.

When Mr. Burkle pressed Mr. Stern to explain how this would work, Mr. Stern at first cited a few examples involving Mr. Johnson, saying that his boss had a "script deal" with Mr. Weinstein - something the movie executive denied yesterday. "The New York Post and Page Six have always been above board with our company," said a Weinstein company spokesman.

Mr. Stern also said that Mr. Johnson's fiancée, Ms. von Richthofen, had been employed by Mr. Perelman, the financier. Last year, Ms. Richthofen was hired as an administrative assistant to Christine Taylor, the senior vice president of corporate communications of McAndrews and Forbes, Mr. Perelman's Manhattan-based holding company. Ms. Taylor said she knew Ms. Richthofen and had not been pressured to hire her. Ms. Richthofen, who resigned from the company a month ago, was paid no differently than anyone else would be in the position, she said. Mr. Perelman could not be reached for comment yesterday.

When Mr. Burkle asked Mr. Stern in the tapes if he should hire Ms. Richthofen, Mr. Stern steered the discussion of payments back to himself, according to one person involved in the investigation.

Mr. Johnson referred calls to Mr. Rubenstein.

The accusations against Mr. Stern were striking for the boldness of his alleged behavior and the amount of money he is accused of requesting. But gossip columns have always occupied a murky corner in the realm of journalistic standards, which traditionally preclude writers and editors from accepting gifts from those they cover.

Mr. Stern also cited the example of Joe Francis, the creator of the "Girls Gone Wild" video series, who Mr. Stern said had offered to fly much of the staff of Page Six to a place Mr. Francis owns in Mexico on his private jet for Mr. Johnson's bachelor party. According to Mr. Rubenstein, Mr. Francis was a friend of Mr. Johnson's. In March, an item appeared in The Post saying that Mr. Francis could be the next Hugh Hefner. Mr. Francis could not be reached yesterday.

Mr. Johnson also accepted a free trip to the Academy Awards last month, courtesy of ABC and Mercedes-Benz, including first-class airfare and a three-night stay at the Four Seasons Hotel. Mercedes-Benz also provided a car and driver for Mr. Johnson throughout the weekend, a spokesman for Mercedes-Benz, Geoff Day, confirmed.

Mr. Stern, 35, began working full time for The Post in 1997. In 2003, Bonnie Fuller hired him to be the executive editor of Star, a position he left within a year. He returned to The Post as a contributor. In addition he wrote for other publications, including two articles for The Times.

In the March 31 meeting, Mr. Burkle mainly haggled with Mr. Stern over how his payments should be made: in cash, as Mr. Stern wanted, or by wire transfer, as the authorities had pressed Mr. Burkle to insist, according to a person involved in the investigation.

In that meeting, the person involved in the investigation said, Mr. Stern spoke of Page Six's power.

"We know how to destroy people," Mr. Stern said, according to a person reading a transcript of the meeting. "It's what we do. We do it without creating liability. That's our specialty."