TESTIFYING FOR DOLLARS

By Richard Zoglin

ROSS BECKER SAYS HE WAS fed up with tabloid television when he left his job as a local TV anchorman in Los Angeles last year and moved to Kentucky, where he now owns an FM radio station. But that didn't stop him from becoming a featured player in the most fervently followed tabloid story of the decade. A week before Christmas, he got a call from an acquaintance, infomercial producer Tony Hoffman, who asked whether Becker would like to conduct the first extended interview with O.J. Simpson since his acquittal on murder charges last October.

Three days later, Becker was back in Los Angeles, preparing for the interview coveted by practically every journalist in America. Not that the resulting 90-minute session can be justly described as journalism. The taping was orchestrated by Simpson as a way of making money and packaged (with a Simpson-conducted evidence tour of his Brentwood estate) as a $29.95 videocassette, to be sold via 800-number mail order and released on Feb. 1.

As with most developments in the O.J. saga, the video was the occasion for another flurry of state-of-the-art media exploitation. Though the interview itself is being kept under wraps, TV viewers got a tantalizing foretaste of it in a video about the video, which Simpson friend and co-author Lawrence Schiller sold to the ever receptive Hard Copy. In it Simpson disputes the police version of events on the night of the murders--denying, for example, that he bumped into the air-conditioning unit outside his house, as prosecutor Marcia Clark theorized. "I've lived in this house 17 years," he says. "There ain't no way I'm going to run into an air conditioner."

Some of Simpson's statements in the interview, say sources who have seen it, are "pretty explosive.'' For one, Simpson claims that Nicole Brown Simpson's friend Faye Resnick, who was living at Nicole's house, sold drugs there--and that the murders were committed by drug dealers. "I don't enjoy being defamed in this way," Resnick told TIME; her lawyers are awaiting a copy of the tape and considering legal action.

Members of Simpson's camp pronounced themselves satisfied with his performance. "It's O.J. just being himself," says a source. "The guy asking the questions didn't know what to ask him, so O.J. pretty much tells the story the way he wants it to be told. I'd say it's a B or a B-plus performance." Yet his attorneys reportedly tried to talk Simpson out of doing the interview (as they did three months ago, when he agreed to and later backed out of an interview with NBC's Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric). Their worry is that any contradictions between comments by Simpson on the tape and those he has made previously can be used against him in the civil case scheduled to begin in early April. But Simpson brushed aside their warnings, saying he needed the money. According to one insider, Simpson is broke and owes his lawyers, including Johnnie Cochran, hundreds of thousands of dollars: the video will earn him a reported $3 million.

Its moneymaking prospects, however, are cloudy. One cable network, CNBC, has already turned down the ads; several others, including TNT, USA and ESPN, say they have not been approached. Meanwhile, women's groups, Internet users and some Los Angeles disk jockeys have urged a boycott of the video; some have suggested callers tie up the 800 lines. Hoffman, producer of the video, is threatening to take legal steps against anyone who does so.

Meanwhile, Becker, who was paid what he calls a "not exorbitant'' five-figure fee, is valiantly defending his role in this dubious enterprise. Though he admits he had little time to prepare questions, he insists there were no restrictions on what he could ask (outside of four taboo areas: Simpson's kids, his finances, the upcoming civil trial and attorney-client discussions). He also says he kept a copy of the uncut interview and will "blow the whistle" if it is distorted by editing. Asked by Dateline NBC last week whether he felt Simpson had lied to him, Becker replied, "Sure." Talking with TIME, he was a bit more circumspect: "As a reporter, I'm skeptical. My guess is he probably twisted the truth during the interview. [But] it doesn't matter what I believe. I asked the questions; we got the answers. It's recorded for posterity, and people will have to decide for themselves." If only the rest of the Simpson case were so simple.

--Reported by Elaine Lafferty and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

With reporting by Elaine Lafferty and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles