The Weekly Standard's scathing July 1, 1996 piece on Deepak Chopra, best-selling New Age health and spirituality author and speaker, stood out from the conservative political weekly's usual fare, particularly the part about "strong evidence that the guru to the stars has hired a prostitute on numerous occasions."
 The magazine's abject apology for the piece one year later also stood out. The half-page note from the editors in the June 30 edition conceded that the cover story contained "false" and "misleading" allegations - that the health guru patronized the prostitute, committed plagiarism, and sold mail-order herbal remedies that contained high levels of rodent hairs. The editors further apologized for terms like "huckster" and "Hindu televangelist," for "inappropriate and unjust" cover art, and for "the general tone" of the article.

 Along with an undisclosed amount of money, the retraction settles a $35 million libel suit Chopra was pursuing against the Standard and its reporter, Matt Labash, in Washington, D.C.'s federal District Court.

 What happened? The Standard had gone to unusual lengths to check the article's facts. To back up on-the-record comments from the prostitute, Judy Bangert, the magazine obtained receipts from her escort service bearing Chopra's American Express card imprint

 and signature. The Standard also had a copy of the bill from the hotel where three trysts allegedly occurred in 1991.

 The magazine even subjected Bangert, who says she is now a student in Florida, to a lie-detector test and hired a handwriting expert to make sure that the signature on the receipts was Chopra's. Libel experts say that this kind of caution should have been more than enough to show that the Standard was not acting with malice.

 So was the article as wrong as the magazine now admits? Or did the weekly cave in to high-pressure legal tactics?

 As part of the confidential settlement both sides have pledged not to talk about the inner wrangling of the case. Chopra's lawyer, Michael Flynn, and The Weekly Standard's editor and publisher, William Kristol, would say only that the case was settled to the mutual satisfaction of the parties.

 Still, there are clues. Clearly, the settlement is a victory for Chopra. The Standard, meanwhile, is left embarrassed but not as poor as it could have been if the suit had gone to trial and the magazine had to pay legal fees and possibly damages.

 That a verdict might go against the Standard was not out of the question. As the suit progressed it was clear that the magazine was slowly losing its grip on the case. Topping the list of the magazine's problems was Bangert, who recanted her story in an affidavit about six months into the litigation. Originally named in the libel suit as a defendant, she was dropped from it after changing her story. And she was dropped from a separate suit filed in San Diego that claimed she was trying to extort money from Chopra. Labash was also sued by Chopra in San Diego - along with two local lawyers and two private investigators. That suit charges that the group conspired to extort $1 million from Chopra in return for not publicizing the prostitute's allegations. As part of the settlement with the Standard, Labash has also been dropped from the San Diego case.

 The suit against the Standard also brought to light a potentially embarrassing aspect of Labash's reporting, namely that he taped some conversations with sources without their knowledge, sometimes from his home in Maryland where such secret taping is a felony. In a court brief, another Chopra lawyer, William Bradford Reynolds, a Justice Department official in the Reagan years, described Labash, a staff writer for the Standard, as a "brash young 25-year-old cub reporter, admittedly untrained and untutored in the ethics or etiquette of his profession."

 Court filings also reveal that attorney Flynn offered to meet with Kristol, executive editor Fred Barnes, and the Standard's lawyer, to present proof - a passport allegedly showing the doctor was speaking in India during part of the time when the prostitute claimed liaisons - that Chopra did not have sex with Bangert. But the editors rebuffed Flynn. Transcripts of Labash's interviews also showed, however, that Flynn had refused to give Labash the copy of the passport.

 While libel experts say that Labash's surreptitious taping and the editors' decision not to meet with Flynn should not have been enough to turn the case against the Standard, they could certainly be used to embarrass it. More important, juries can be unpredictable. Recent history has shown that they can skip over the intricacies of law and focus on a journalist's attitude and actions.
 Media-law specialists say that a decision to settle a libel case often involves a cost-benefit analysis that takes into account more than the simple truth of the story. "There are three kinds of costs in libel cases," explains D.C. lawyer Lee Levine, who defends news organizations. "One is the cost of the judgment, the second is the cost of the defense, and the third is the loss of reputation and prestige of the defendant, whether or not it wins at the end of the day."

 Transcripts of Labash's interviews, meanwhile, seem to cut both ways. They show that Labash repeatedly asked for documentation that would prove Chopra's story, and that Flynn, in effect, dared the reporter to go ahead and print the story, saying, "My advice to Chopra, like a lot of these celebrities, is now [to] ignore these journalists with illegitimate motives. Ignore them. Let them print it, then go after them to stop the illegitimate motives . . . Hit them where it hurts - in the pocketbook."

 Which is what the guru and his lawyers targeted.

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