The Cambridge settlement also involves a document called the “Golden Chain,” a list of 20 wealthy Saudi donors, including the bin Mahfouz family, that was found in a 2002 raid on the Sarajevo offices of an Islamic charity. In “Alms for Jihad,” the authors say the document was a list of Qaeda financiers, an assertion also made in several other news accounts. Bin Mahfouz’s lawyers counter that he himself was never included on the list; that even according to United States prosecutors, the list was of donors to the mujahedeen, not to Al Qaeda; and that the document was deemed inadmissible as evidence in cases in England and America, where judges in both places ruled it was not proof of support for Al Qaeda.

In its apology, Cambridge said it accepted “that at no time has any member” of the bin Mahfouz family “contributed to any terrorist organization, nor has the family ever had reason to believe that funds it has given over the years to a wide variety of charities ... have been used other than for the charitable purposes intended.”

Kevin Taylor, of Cambridge’s legal team, said a challenge to bin Mahfouz’s case would have been “absurd, suicidal and not in anyone’s interest,” since the courts had found some of the same statements defamatory before. Taylor said the press would now be more vigilant in its fact-checking and would consider “toning down statements” so “such actions won’t stick, even under English libel law.” “Our basic academic principles have not been undermined by this,” he said. “It’s more about process.”

Meanwhile, Rachel Ehrenfeld has refused to acknowledge the English ruling that awarded bin Mahfouz $225,900 in damages and ordered her to apologize and destroy all copies of “Funding Evil.” An independent researcher who directs the American Center for Democracy, a group that “monitors and exposes the enemies of freedom,” Ehrenfeld said she didn’t have the resources to contest the case. Instead, she has asked a federal court in Manhattan to rule that the English libel judgment is unenforceable in New York, on the grounds that it is effectively silencing her in America. In June, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit declared her case “ripe” for hearing. “The issue may implicate the First Amendment rights of many New Yorkers, and thus concerns important public policy of the state,” the court wrote.

In a watershed case last fall, England’s highest court ruled that The Wall Street Journal’s European edition was working “in the public interest” when it reported in 2002 that Saudi Arabia, at the request of the United States, had been monitoring the bank accounts of several prominent businesses to see if they were being used to finance terrorist groups. Previously, even to report that someone was under government investigation was tantamount to defamation. In the ruling, one judge wrote that England needed “more such serious journalism, ... and our defamation law should encourage rather than discourage it.”

For their part, Burr and Collins recently reobtained the copyright to “Alms for Jihad” from Cambridge. They’re now awaiting word from several American publishers who have expressed interest. If the book is published here, Collins said he would correct two errors: that the bin Mahfouz family intermarried with the bin Laden family, and that bin Mahfouz was chief executive of B.C.C.I., when in fact he was a director. Beyond that, he said, any changes would be up to the publisher. “There are three options,” Collins said. To leave the book “as it is”; to “sanitize it”; or to “just delete Mahfouz the 11 times he appears.”