Ye gods! It was her! Jilly! My long-lost bride from Sacramento.
Woody Creek, May i, 1989
RETURN TO THE RIVIERA CAFE
CHARACTER IS DESTINY
Richard nixon told me that, the first time we met, and I have never forgotten it. He was wrong from the start, but he won constantly at the polls. Nixon was elected to every office he ever ran for, except the governorship of California, which he lost in a frenzy of rage that caused him to quit poHtics and screech at the press: "Okay, you sons of bitches. This is it. You won't have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore!"
It was, of course, a lie—the first of many huge ones, and the bugger is still at it: now he is telling Selected Insiders that George Bush will soon offer him the ambassador's job in China. . . .
But that is nonsense. George will send me to China before he will send Nixon. I have never claimed to have a secret grasp on the complexities of the Oriental mind, but I am somehow in perfect tune with the Chinese sense of humor. . . . They laugh with Nixon—which is hard work—but they laugh at me, which is fun; and in truth I have never met a Chinaman I didn't like. I have traveled extensively in the Orient—usually on the Chinese Network—and I have always been treated graciously, on a level of communication far deeper than any language. If it is true that Character is, in fact. Destiny, then I will end my political career as the U.S. Ambassador to China . . . much in the manner of former Senator Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.) who finally saw the light: after running the Senate in his own image for thirty-three years, he quit and moved to Tokyo and lived like an emperor on the roof of the U.S. Embassy, like an echo of Douglas MacArthur. . . .
Or almost. MacArthur ruled the Japanese, and now the Japanese rule the world.
What? Is that true?
No. It is a classic Political Exaggeration. . . . But so what? The diplomatic business is always a two-way street, and since Mansfield went to Tokyo the Japs have been persuaded to abandon their tra-
ditional low sense of self-esteem and somehow purchased Rockefeller Center, The Bank of America, etc., etc., etc., and Mike will be buried in Kyoto.
Shit happens.
But never mind. I digress. We were talking about Sheridan Square and the many beatings I received there, for no good reason at all. The Riviera Cafe has been a main anchor of my socio-political universe for many years. I used to get my mail there, in one of the pigeonhole boxes next to the bulletin board just inside the front door. . . . That was when I was just another one of the neighborhood kids, a dumb brute with a huge brain and no money.
Indeed. But we overcame that. I picked up the torch dropped by Kerouac and went on to become rich and famous, more or less. . . . That is the conventional wisdom, and I have done my best to honor it and lend it credibility for lo these many years.
The truth is that I am still poor as a church-house rat and I have been severely beaten many times, just for trying to tell the truth. My life has been a series of tragic misunderstandings and my body is covered with scars—many of them incurred within crawling distance of the front door of the infamous Riviera Cafe. . . . The most recent incident, a clash with a gang of skinheads while I was on my way to Washington, happened within weeks of the thirtieth anniversary of the night when I tried to deliver a fifty-pound bag of what they called "lye" to the executive bar manager and was beaten stupid for my efforts. That is a true story, and so is the next one, which I wrote under an assumed name in an unpublished novel titled Prince Jellyfish, in 1959 when I lived in an illegal sub-basement at 57 Perry Street and learned most of what I know today, in re: Personal and Professional Relationships, from the relentlessly brutal Superintendent, a sixty-year-old black man named Sam who ran his building the same way Ronald Reagan ran the world. . . .
It was mainly a matter of illusion, but they both got away with it ... so far, at least: Sam is dead and Reagan, if there is any justice in the world, will soon be forced by our spastic court system to yield up his personal diaries and be impeached in absentia, along with his creature, George Bush.
You bet. One of the first things I learned at the Columbia Law School is that "justice is the whim of the judge," and I have never forgotten it—along with Mr. Nixon's wisdom about Character and Destiny.
The world is still a weird place, despite my efforts to make clear
and perfect sense of it. I have been cheated, beaten, and duped for thirty-three straight years, since Sam sent me out on the Proud Highway with his one main whack of advice: *'We are right, and we must have our way."
I have tried to do this—just as the hapless Welbum Kemp (see "Prince Jellyfish") was right in his brain and pure in his heart when he followed that woman home from the subway station, because he sensed she was lonely. . . .
Res Ipsa Loquitor.
Woody Creek, 1989
AVERY: MAKING SENSE OF THE'60s
Edftor's Note
In response to numerous inquiries as to the whereabouts of Dr. Thompson, we reprint the following intercepted communique from the doctor's private secretary in reply to an invitation to be interviewed for a PBS documentary on the meaning of the '60s.
To: Carol Rissman/Character Research
From: HST/Avery
Re: "Making Sense of the '60s"
We RECEIVED YOUR Fax message about the Doomed Generation '60s program and Dr. Thompson was profoundly excited by it. You'll be happy to know that he is recovering satisfactorily from his recent accident, when he was run over by a tractor pulling a Bush Hog. We can only pray that his memory returns by Labor Day. But in
any case he is eager to talk with you. . . . Indeed, he speaks of little else, and he has asked me to give you a list of high-powered electric gimcracks that he hopes you can locate and bring with you on the first major shoot. I will send you the Hst just as soon as we get a grip on Dr. Thompson's projected role in this saga. ... He has his own notions, of course, but I no longer fear them and I know we can all work together on a plane of perfect happiness.
Don't worry. I can handle him.
You're aware, I'm sure, that he has recently become an avid polo player and also an award-winning male model in both Europe and the U.S.—none of which will be affected in any way by his persistent abuUa and memory loss, although at the moment he remembers nothing prior to July i, 1989. Only music can reach him now, but his physician. Dr. Walker, assures us that total restoration is inevitable, and that it might occur at any moment.
Don't worry. We are not talking about a normal human being here. Dr. Thompson once had his whole right hand cut off by a Cigarette Boat propeller, and then grew another hand back in its place before they could get him to the hospital.
It was eerie, but it worked, and nobody ever mentioned it again. The hand is his only vanity. And it still works perfectly. He has amazing Feel-and-Fling with the polo mallet, and it is well to remember that, in his youth, he was a famous local jockey at Churchill Downs, where he began as an exercise boy.
Yeah. And that's about it, Carol. I am not prepared, at this time, to get into the character issue. There are some things you just don't need at this hour of the morning, and discussing that evil bastard's character is one of them.
Only one person has ever dared to do that in public—and that was the eminent White House factotum, Patrick Buchanan, who will go down in history as the man who first introduced Dr. Thompson to Richard Nixon and also arranged their famous Midnight Summit Conference on the Nature and Fate of Football in America in a yellow Mercury on the Mass Turnpike in March of 1968.
(Jesus! Is that true?
Yeah. It is. That bastard! That swinish pig-eyed bully! To throw a cub reporter from Haight Street and Berkeley, wearing a ski jacket and a red SDS button, into a personal no-exit pit with Richard Nixon in the sudden full flower of his comeback. . . .
That is mean. That is extremely bad karma. . . .)
And Buchanan had better hope that God is not really a Buddhist
like they say, because he will come back in the Next Life as a dung-eating rat in Calcutta, scuttling around the garbage heaps on drenching monsoon nights with only a dim genetic leak in his memory to remind him of those days of power and glory when he walked tall like a yeti in Washington and wrote speeches for Spiro Agnew and counseled Nixon to bum all his Watergate tapes and even taught Ronald Reagan how to deal with the media forever and George Bush how to act innocent in front of a TV camera. . . .
Good old Patrick. He thought Gold water was a pansy and confiscated mini-bottles of gin out of Nixon's shaving kit. ... It is horrible, but true: The Black Irish will always be with us. Like hyenas. Cruel and Besotted. Always with blood under their fingernails and their eyes crazy for revenge. . . . How long, O Lord, how long?
Ah, but I digress. It is late, and the sudden sight of The Doctor loading his ponies into a long silver trailer has made me giddy. . . . There is a woman with him, but I can't see her face. She has long blonde hair and laughs constantly while he does most of the horse-work.
I think he is crazy. How can a person be sane when a Bush Hog cuts off one leg and half of your skull? The leg grew back immediately, but the skull is a different matter. There is only so much magic in the world. . . .
Yes. Never doubt it, Carol. The fat can go into the fire at any moment, and we will all be fried like offal. I look forward to working with you, but I fear it—as I fear almost everything these days, and just because I'm religious doesn't mean I can't get weird.
Sincerely,
Avery
Woody Creek, 1989
GERMAN DECADE: THE RISE OF THE FOURTH REICH
A TALL BLOND MAN with flashing blue eyes came into the Riviera Cafe and started slapping people around. "Sieg heil!" he screamed. "Ich bin ein Berliner!"
It was midnight on Saturday in Greenwich Village, and I was hunkered down at the bar, watching the news on TV—gangs of wild Germans swarmed over the Berlin Wall. A huge crowd on both sides of the Brandenburg Gate was singing "Deutschland iiber Alles" while others waved fistfuls of money.
"Free at last!" a man screamed. ''Down with the Communist pigs! We will march on a road of bones."
Indeed the war was over. The Red Menace was on the run. Total victory and no blood. The beast with two backs had finally come together.
A woman sitting next to me dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief and said, 'T wish I could be with George Bush tonight."
"Why?" I asked. For some queer reason, I had been thinking the same thing myself.
"You know why," she said, a faraway look in her eyes. "There is something magic about the man."
Which was true. George is a winner. He had triumphed—and now he was presiding over the collapse of the whole Communist empire. Sieg heil, democracy! They laughed at Woodrow Wilson.
Bush has inherited the wind once again. He is a human windsock. Whatever happens in Germany or anywhere else can never be blamed on him. George has been a success in every job he's had. He's a damage-control expert, a very good driver in a very fast lane, and we haven't given him credit for that.
The woman leaned over and seized me by the arm. "Let's go to Washington!" she said. "I want to be with him."
Why not? I thought. I was, after all, a charter member of the Presidental Task Force. It was time to call in some chips. The woman had her own reasons, but so what? We were patriots, and I had a fast car.
Suddenly a fight broke out in the doorway. The tall blond man had the manager in a headlock and was screaming in German.
We fled, but there was another fight in the street. A gang of skinheads had attacked some elderly Jews and was trying to shave their heads. Others were painting swastikas on parked cars.
The woman was dragged away by strangers. I tried to help her but I was clubbed on the head and fell unconscious.
Later, from jail, I spoke directly to the White House and had many people arrested. But I never saw the woman again.
CROMWELL'S FEARS
The incident traumatized me, and by midnight I was back home in the mountains. To hell with these trips to the East Coast, I thought. The whole place is a festering chancre. I chained my front gate and swore to lay low for a while.
Then my old friend Cromwell showed up with his son, Manque, and bashed the lock off the gate. It was long after midnight, but he was desperate, he said. Nazis had burned his house. His eyes were small and red from driving for hours through a blizzard on a Fat Bob Harley, and I could see that his nerves had gone raw.
"We will soon be the Germans' slaves," he said. "This is the time of the Living Dead. We are doomed."
"Nonsense," I said. "Come inside. I have a fire and whiskey and powerful music. We will crank up the speakers and torch the propane tank. Never mind Nazis. This is the American Century."
Cromwell was a warrior, a true wild boy. We had been friends for many years and many savage moments. But now he seemed demoralized, which made me nervous.
He'd broken his back twice in the past months driving on black ice, but he'd taken little notice of it. His wife had been fingered in a federal murder investigation, and her life had been repeatedly threatened by criminally insane thugs.
But these things had not fazed Cromwell. He had no fear of men or murder or laws. But he was desperately worried now about the fate of his son and himself and the nation, and everything he loved and trusted and stood for.
It was the end of the decade that terrified him. It was like the coming of the midnight hour, with the screaming of the banshee and graveyard bells and the stench of the shroud all at once. It was not just the end
of another failed decade that made him whine and quiver hke Jell-O. No. What he feared was the final decade—the 1990s—and his horror of seeing his son a slave to Germany.
"The U.S. will become a colony—a cheap labor pool for Europe and a tree farm for Japan. The Chinese will take over Mexico and Canada will seal its borders. We will be a nation of unemployed refugees. My son will be standing in line at the German Embassy, begging for a work visa hke all the others." He hurled his whiskey into the fire and cried out:
"Oh God! It's too horrible! He'll be better off if I put a bullet through his brain right now!" He jerked a stainless-steel .45 automatic out of a kidney holster on his belt and cranked a slug into the chamber, then aimed the gun at his huge blond son, sleeping peacefully in front of the fire.
I seized him by the neck and clamped my thumb on the hammer of the .45. "Be calm," I hissed. "George Bush is in charge now. Your son is safe. We are still Number One."
He went limp and meekly surrendered the weapon. I was lying, but it seemed necessary. I didn't need a murder in my house. I handed the .45 to his son. "Here, hold this," I said. "It's loaded."
"Good," said the son, then pointed the weapon at Cromwell and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. It misfired. Old .45 ammo is like that.
New York City, 1989
TURBO MUST DIE
"Champion bull doomed in $10 million sperm bomb sacrifice at famous sporting club"
By Raoul Duke
The world-famed Woody Creek Rod and Gun Club will host a combined bull-sperm auction and prize animal sacrifice on January 26-
27, in conjunction with the annual Unlimited Class Firepower Demonstration at the club's secluded Bomb and Blasting Range on unpaved dead-end Lenado Road in upper Woody Creek.
According to press spokesman Semmes Luckett, who announced the event yesterday in a brief statement that was hailed by local cattlemen as ^'heroically brilliant" and "a masterpiece of understated genius."
The unprecedented sperm auction is expected to attract exotic cattle breeders from all over the world and climax with a record-setting $10 million sale bid for the sperm of Grand National Champion breeding bull "Turbo," who will die in a spectacular "sacrifice explosion" at the end of the auction ceremony personally performed by the bull's owner, Woody Creek rancher George Stranahan, who says he will donate all profits from the historic auction/sacrifice of his prize animal to the club's prestigious Bomb Research Endowment Fund.
Stranahan, a nuclear research physicist and dominant breeder of the ancient Limosin beef line, is the famed sporting club's vice-president for experimental explosions and a ranking expert in bull marketing strategies.
His neo-priceless Limosin strain dates back 20,000 years to the Bull Worship Era in the Limoges province of France, when bulls allegedly ruled the world.
Stranahan, a misogynistic recluse whose personal fortune has been estimated at $44 billion, said the public will not be invited to the bizarre auction/sacrifice and "if any intruders are captured, they will be chained to the neck of the doomed bull at dot-zero in the bomb area and will never be seen again."
The auction, he said, will begin with a catered lunch of wild lichen and gallbladders of recently killed bears—and will end only after a limited edition of one thousand vials of the prize bull's sperm are sold off to bidders at no less than $10,000 each.
"I feel wonderful about this thing," Stranahan said. "It's the smartest idea I ever had. With one jerk on the fuse puller we will finalize Turbo's price at ten million dollars and then blow him to smithereens."
The guest list of profoundly wealthy bidders expected to attend the event, said Luckett, "was top secret until yesterday," when a disgruntled animal rights activist revealed the names of Donald Trump, publisher Rupert Murdoch, Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, and actor Jack Nicholson, a long-time member of the defiantly secretive club and a vocal defender of its frequently criticized traditions.
Membership in the Woody Creek Rod and Gun Club is so exclusive that no list of members is believed to exist, and the name of the club's president has never been revealed. Members communicate with each other by code names, and monthly gatherings are shrouded in secrecy and conducted in what spokesman Luckett described as "effectively utter darkness."
"Many of the two hundred twenty-two members are prominent and extremely beautiful women," he said, and "privacy is our dominant ethic."
"Loose lips are sealed quickly," he added, "by fire and other methods, which we will never admit or explain."
Woody Creek, 1989
MEMO TO JAY JOHNSON,
NIGHT EDITOR, SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER
To: Jay Johnson/Night Editor, San Francisco Examiner
From: Doctor Thompson
Subject: Why there will be no column this week/Kill it
Comment: Sorry/Extreme domestic violence/Police and jail/Attacked
by The New Rich/Send money/Thanx
Well... I could start off with that old-timey bullshit about "You'll never beheve this."
But I have a feehng you will, once you check the Sunday AP wire out of Denver. . . .
Or maybe Monday—on the slim chance that the local police spokesperson might keep a lid on the story until then; but in fact I figure you've already seen it by now.
I refer, of course, to the shit train of eight (8) felony-assault, etc., charges that were brought against me by a maniac neighbor at dawn on Saturday morning, not long after he tried several times to strangle
me for poisoning his dog, shooting his mules, and trying to force him to eat cocaine after spraying his trout ponds with gunfire while in the throes of a lethal psychotic episode that caused him to fear for his life.
Indeed. It was a king-hell bitch of a wrong Friday night in Woody Creek, and it ain't over yet. The fool wants to take the whole berserk package into court—where he spends about half his waking hours, anyway—to win a landmark decision establishing the right of a millionaire thug from Miami to move north and create a bastard replica of Disneyland and East St. Louis in a once-peaceful valley 8,000 feet up in the Rockies where he claims he can't sleep at night because of a cruel angst brought on by his new neighbors calling him a White Trash Swine behind his back and salting his pastures with Agent Orange to poison his water and kill off his mules and mock The American Dream.
Yeah, Jay—this is true.
Welcome to Floyd Watkins country. He is like the whole Manson Family compressed into one person like a huge tube of blood sausage with a head and two legs. . . . Not even Thomas Edison could have invented this monster. If you saw him in a crosswalk you would instinctively step on the gas.
Anyway, that's what happened with Friday night. It was Uke being on that DC-io that went into Sioux City. About 10:30 on Saturday morning I heard many voices outside my bedroom window, croaking: "It's all over now, Doc." . . . 'They're on their way out here with a warrant to search your house from top to bottom for guns, drugs, or anything else."
"Wake up and run now. Your only hope is to get to Moab by noon." "Get out of the state." "Never mind clothes and give us all your money and drugs." I lost a pound of weed, four guns, and $1,500 to a lawyer in less than forty-four minutes, before we fled along back roads in a Yugo toward the border.
All day long. Hiding in picnic areas with the lawyer who kept asking for $100 bills and teUing me I was doomed unless I hid out in Moab all weekend with my new secretary who was scheduled to go to Princeton in three weeks on a fellowship that might turn utterly queer when this thing hits the front page on Monday: ''Sex and Violence in Woody Creek: Crazed Gonzo Writer Flees with Mystery Woman After Midnight Gun Battle with Rich Miami Wife Beater; Cocaine and Whiskey Blamed in Orgy of the Doomed; Dogs Poisoned, Mules Slaughtered, Police Dragnet for Thompson in Three States as Noose Tightens on 'Last Dope Fiend: "
Yeah. So we didn't get much writing done. Terry almost died from eating rancid lox and bagels. My lawyer thinks I'm in Moab, but I
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285
slithered back home around midnight and chained the gate shut with Harley-Davidson locks.
Call me tonight. We can get the column done if these fuckers leave me alone for six hours. I feel like I was shot through the looking glass. OK.
Woody Creek, 1989
WARNING IS ISSUED ON COCAINE USE WITH SEX AFTER MAN LOSES LIMBS
by Lawrence K. Altman
The New York Times, June 3, 1988
In an unusual warning, doctors have reported the case of a man who injected cocaine into his urethra to heighten sexual pleasure and then, through "extravagant complications," suffered gangrene that led to the loss of both legs, nine fingers and his penis.
The authors of the report, three psychiatrists from New York Hospital, said it was not clear how the unusual cocaine use led to the compHcations. The doctors, John C. Mahler, Samuel Perry and Bruce Sutton, described the case in a letter in the current issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
The use of cocaine in the belief that it enhances sexual pleasure has often been reported. Several experts on sexuality and on drug abuse said they had heard of people rubbing cocaine on genital organs or injecting it into the urethra, the tube that carries urine out of the body. But they said it did not appear to be a widespread practice.
Cocaine use has been associated with a variety of medical problems including heart attack, stroke and death. But Dr. John Money, an expert in sexuality at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, said it would be unusual for cocaine alone to produce the extreme complications. Dr. Money questioned whether some other factor, such as an impurity in the
cocaine, might have been at fault. Dr. Mahler said his team had considered that possibility but had no evidence to document it. He said his team had also speculated that the man might have developed an undetected infection or that attempts to treat him might have somehow led to additional complications.
Experts said cocaine would be absorbed into the bloodstream through the mucous membranes of the urethra as it would through any other mucous membrane, such as the nose, and presumably would have the same effect.
Priapism, Then a Blood Clot
Dr. Mahler said the New York Hospital case involved a 34-year-old man who told doctors he occasionally squirted a cocaine solution into his urethra. The last time he did so, in June 1987, he suffered a persistent painful erection immediately after intercourse with his girlfriend. His priapism lasted three days and he sought medical help.
Soon afterward, he developed blood clots in his genitals, arms and legs, back and chest.
By the 12th day in the hospital, gangrene had developed to such an extent that the man lost his legs, nine fingers and his penis.
Welcome to the
MNETES
WELCOME TO JAIL
IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
This past term the United States Supreme Court held that police can:
Search your home upon the consent of someone who has no authority to give same^
Stop your car based upon an "anonymous tip," which the Supreme Court described as ''completely lacking in the necessary indicia of reliability"2,
Subject a motorist to mandatory sobriety tests without any indication they have been drinking or their driving is impaired^
Almost 62 years ago, Justice Brandeis reminded us that
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are bene-ficient. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding" . . .
'Illinois V. Rodriguez, U.S. (June 21, 1990) [58 LW 4892].
^Alabama v. White, no S. Ct. 2412 (June 11, 1990).
^Michigan Department of State Police v. Sitz, U.S. no L.Ed.2d 412 (June 14, 1990).
288
EDITOR'S NOTE
The 1990s HAD barely begun when Dr. Thompson was struck down, as if by lightning, and our whole book production process was derailed and utterly destroyed by a series of events that staggered the faith of miUions all over the world and panicked our production department into sending this book to press immediately and marketing the first 100,000 copies in a plain black box.
Dr. Thompson was clearly doomed. He had been seized by the forces of Law and Order and was apparently headed for prison—a sad and ignominious fate for the so-called Prince of Gonzo Journalism, or whatever it is that the crazy criminal snake tries to call himself.
Publishing Dr. Thompson has never been an easy job, but this recent episode was over the line and sent demoralizing shock waves through the whole organization, which for many years has stood behind him Uke a tall and solid rock. We lived in his shadow and endured his terrible excesses—clinging always to the promise that he would sooner or later make sense of his original assignment: The Death of the American Dream. . . .
So it was with a sense of shock, fear, and betrayal that we received the news that he was about to go to prison for a sudden, unexplainable outburst of cheap crimes, misdemeanors, and stupid felony loss leaders that made no sense at all. And it made people angry.
Tom Wolfe, after all, had never disgraced his pubHsher by running amok in public or twisting women's nipples. . . . and Norman Mailer has stabbed more people than Brutus, and they never put him in prison.
In any case, we were wrong. Strange things happened with baffling speed and soon we lost touch with reality. Except to know that we were wrong. And our decision to terminate the Doctor's mythology and send the remnants to market in a cheap black box for 990 each also proved to be hasty and was eventually reversed, at great cost.
SONGS OF THE DOOMED
Meanwhile, for reasons that have not yet been made entirely clear, Dr. Thompson's legal position took a series of wild turns that made many people wish that they'd been stolen out of their cradles by wolves. The whole case flipped and took off so opposite that it was like a golf ball hitting a steel wall, and many were left in confusion.
Dr. Thompson somehow seized control of the legal machinery and turned it back on the prosecution. All charges against him were suddenly dismissed and his team of savage lawyers filed massive civil actions against everybody they could reach, including the district attorney, a judge, two cabdrivers, and even his own publisher.
Fortunately, our contract allowed us to go to press with whatever sections of the book we already had our hands on—despite the author's objections and bizarre motions filed by his attorneys in courts all over the country, including New York and Nevada. . . . So we were, therefore, denied access to all written material on Thompson's case except those documents entered in evidence as Matter of Record.
It was a meager yield, at best, but we got enough to slap a fast chronology of The Case together in time to make our press deadline and beat that cruel whiskey-dumb geek at his own game. . . . And we were also able to hire the services of a premier investigator, Raoul Duke, who spent forty-four days with no sleep while putting together his report, which follows. We make no apology for Duke's hazy, slipshod report, which is mainly a bag of news clippings, rumors, and tedious court documents. Because it was all we could get, at the time, and it was all we needed to know. Res Ipsa Loquitor.
NOTHING BUT CRUMBS
D. A. SNAGS THOMPSON IN SEX CASE
by David Matthews-Price Times Daily Staff Writer
Aspen Times Daily, February 28, 1990
Hunter S. Thompson, in an episode reminiscent of some of his books, has been charged with sexually assaulting a
woman writer who came to his house ostensibly to interview him last week. Thompson, 52, surrendered at the dis-
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
291
trict attorney's office on Monday and is free on $2,500 bond.
Thompson told the Times Daily he's innocent and beheves the alleged victim isn't so much a writer as she is a business woman who wants publicity for her new venture, which is selling sexual aids and lingerie.
"She's a business person in the sex business," Thompson said.
He said he's also suspicious of the motives of the district attorney, who had six officers search his Woody Creek house on Monday for drugs. Officers said they found a small quantity of suspected cocaine and marijuana.
Thompson offered his own headline for the case: lifestyle police raid home of "crazed" gonzo journalist; eleven-hour SEARCH BY SIX TRAINED INVESTIGATORS YIELDS NOTHING BUT CRUMBS.
Lab Results Pending
District Attorney Milt Blakey said he's waiting for the results of lab tests before deciding whether to bring drug charges.
Thompson is already facing charges of third-degree sexual assault for allegedly grabbing the woman's left breast and third-degree simple assault for supposedly punching her during an argument about whether the interview should take place in a hot tub. Both misdemeanors carry a maximum two-year sentence in county jail.
The woman making the allegations is a 35-year-old self-employed writer from St. Clair, Mich., who said she was visiting Snow-mass Village with her husband last week.
The Times Daily was unable to contact the alleged victim on Tuesday. However, her story about the Feb. 21 incident was detailed in an affidavit for an arrest warrant written by the district attorney's investigator Michael Kelly.
Affidavit Tells Story
The woman said she had written Thompson before arriving in Snowmass to request an interview. Such interviews are the fascination of out-of-town journalists. Just last week Time magazine published a first-person account of another writer's attempt to interview Thompson, a colum-
nist for the San Francisco Examiner and national editor of Rolling Stone magazine. The woman said she arrived at Thompson's house in a taxicab, on Woody Creek Road, and was greeted by a woman named Kat who introduced her to Thompson and two of his friends, identified in the affidavit as Semmes and Tim.
Drug Suspicions
"Within a few minutes, the woman suspected the group had been using drugs," the affidavit stated.
"She suspected some members of the group might be using drugs because from time to time they would get up and go into the other room and then return in a minute or so," the affidavit stated.
Then, about three hours after arriving at the house, the alleged victim said she saw Thompson carrying a green grinder that produced a white powdery substance, according to the affidavit.
"This substance, which she believed to be cocaine, was then passed around to the group and that with the exception of Tim and herself each ingested (snorted) some of it into their noses by means of a straw," the affidavit said.
Paranoid Group
"She observed the group becoming increasingly suspicious and paranoid," the affidavit said.
The woman writer said she got up and called her husband, a move which made the group suspicious that she might be an undercover agent.
She assured them that she wasn't an agent, she explained. Then Semmes and Tim left the house and Thompson gave her a tour of the residence.
She said Thompson showed her his "favorite" room, which contained a hot tub, and he supposedly suggested that she join him for a dip in the water.
Next, she claimed that Kat attempted to persuade her to join Hunter in the hot tub by telling her things such as "He's a harmless guy"; "[He's] a little crazy at-times, but he will never hurt you"; "He'd really like you to get in the hot tub with him"; etc., according to the affidavit.
ARREST WARRANT AND CHARGES
IN THE DISTRICT COURT IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF
PITKIN AND STATE OF COLORADO
ARREST WARRANT Warrant No
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF COLORADO
TO: ANY PEACE OFFICER IN THE STATE OF COLORADO, INTO WHOSE HANDS THIS WARRANT SHALL COME, GREETING:
WHEREAS, MICHAEL J. KELLY has made an AppUcaUon and Affidavit for the issuance of an Arrest Warrant:
AND WHEREAS, the Apphcation appears proper, and this Court is satisfied that there is probable cause to heheve that the person named in the application has committed the offenses of: SEXUAL ASSAULT IN THE THIRD DEGREE in violation of C.R.S. 18-3-404, as amended, and ASSAULT IN THE THIRD DEGREE in violation of C.R.S. 18-3-204.
YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED to arrest HUNTER STOCKTON THOMPSON and bring him without imnecessary delay before the nearest available Judge of the County or District Court.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Bond is set in the amount of ^T'^up ikoHu^nJ dollars, the Bond to be approved!:^ the Sheriff of the Coimty wherein the arrest occurs, or other Officer authorized by Law to admit to bail.
DONE this z^ day ofJ^A*^, 1990
BY THE COURT
STATE OF COLORADO )
) s. RETURN OF SERVICE
) I duly served the within Warrant by arresting HUNTER STOCKTON THOMPSON as required therein, on Mq k^p^AX ^^ Tfi. & <^ Cb
HUNTER S THOMPSON: Those Charges in Full
IN THE DISTRICT COURT, COUNTY OF PITKIN, STATE OF COLORADO Criminal Action No. 90-CR-40
INFORMATION THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF COLORADO
vs.
HUNTER S THOMPSON Defendent
COMES NOW MILTON K BLAKEY, District Attorney in and for the Ninth Judicial District, State of Colorado, in the name and by the authority of the People of the State of Colorado, and informs the Court that:
COUNT ONE On or about February 26,1990, in the County of Rtkin, State of Colorado, HUNTER S THOMPSON did unlawfully, feloniously and knowingly possess a Schedule I controlled substance to-wit: lysergic Acid Diethylamide; thereby committing the crime of UNLAWFUL POSSESSION OF A CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE SCHEDULE I, in violation of C.R.S. 12-22-309 and 18-18-105(l)(a)(2)(a)(I), as amended, contrary to the statute in such case made and provided and against the peace and dignity of the People of Colorado.(F-3).
COUNT TWO On or about February 26,1990, in the County of Pitkin, State of Colorado, HUNTER S THOMPSON did unlawfully, feloniously and knowingly possess a Schedule II controlled substance, to-wit: Cocaine; thereby committing the crime of UNLAWFUL POSSESSION OF A CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE SCHEDULE II, in violation of C.R.S. 12-22-310 and 18-18-105(l)(a)(2)(a)(I), as amended, contrary to the statute in such case made and provided and against the peace and dignity of the People of Colorado.(F-3).
COUNT THREE On or about February 26,1990, in the County of Pitkin, State of Colorado, HUNTER S THOMPSON did unlawfully, feloniously and knowingly possess a Schedule IV controlled substance, to-wit: Diazepam, thereby committing the crime of UNLAWFUL POSSESSION OF A CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE SCHEDULE IV, in violation of C.R.S. 12-22-312 and 18-18-105(l)(a)(2)(a)(I), as amended, contrary to the statute in such case made and provided and against the peace and dignity of the people of Colorado.(F-5).
COUNT FOUR On or between Februaiy 21, 1990, and February 22, 1990 in the County of Pitkin, State of Colorado, HUNTER S THOMPSON did unlawfully, knowingly and recklessly cause bodily injury to Gall Palmer-Slater; thereby committing the crime of ASSAULT IN THE THIRD DEGREE, in violaUon of C.R.S. 18-3-204 as amended, contrary to the statute in such case made and provided and against the peaxje and dignity of the People of Colo-rado.(M-l).
COUNT FIVE On ajid between February 21,1990, and Februaiy 22,1990 in the County of Pitkin, State of Colorado, HUNTER S THOMPSON did unlawfully and knowingly subject GaU Palmer-Slater to sexual contact knowing that Gall Palmer-Slater did not consent; thereby committing the crime of SEXUAL ASSAULT IN THE THIRD DEGREE, in violation of C.R.S. 18-3-404.
COUNT SIX On and between February 21,1990, and February 22,1990 in the County of Pitkin, State of Colorado, HUNTER S THOMPSON did unlawfully, knowingly and feloniously use a controlled substance Schedule II, to-wit: Cocaine; thereby committing the crime of UNLAWFUL USE OF A CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE, in violation of C.R.S. 18-18-104(1), as amended, contrary to the statute in such case made and provided and against the peace and dignity of the People of Colorado.(F-6).
COUNT SEVEN On or about February 26,1990, in the County of Rtkin, State of Colorado, HUNTER S THOMPSON did unlawfully, knowingly possess more than one ounce of marjjuana, but less than eight ounces of marijuana; thereby committing the crime of POSSESSION OF MORE THAN ONE OUNCE OF MARIJUANA BUT LESS THAN EIGHT OUNCES OF MARIJUANA, in violation of C.R.S. 18-18-106(4)(a), as amended, contrary to the statute in such case made and provided and against the peace and dignity of the People of Colorado.(M-l).
COUNT EIGHT On or about February 26,1990, in the County of Pitkin, State of Colorado, HUNTER S THOMPSON did unlawfully, feloniously and knowingly possess and control an explosive and incendiaiy device, to-wit; dynamite and blasting caps; thereby committing the crime of UNLAWFUL POSSESSION, USE AND REMOVAL OF EXPLOSIVES AND INCENDLARY DEVICES, in violation of C.R.S. 18-12-109(2) as amended, contrary to the statute in such case made and provided and against the peace and dignity of the People of Colorado.(F-4).
Dated this 6th day of April, 1990
Respectfully submitted
MILTON K BLAKEY
District Attorney
By:
/OiIuS^^^*n> Charles B. McCrory #10601 L/^^^^r^ ^Chief Deputy District Attorney
BEWARE
Today: the Doctor Tomorrow: You
The Hunter S. Thompson Legal Defense Fund Box 274, Woody Creek, Colorado 81656
Paid for George Stranahan and Michael Solheim
TfflS IS A POLITICAL TRIAL . . .
A LOT OF PEOPLE are going to court these days and many are going to jail. Crime is rampant. The court dockets are overloaded and all the prisons are full. They are building more of them. Many more. The new prison business is booming, especially in the private sector.
Private prisons, free enterprise. If I were on better terms with the government right now I could apply to build a prison right here in my back yard. I might even get it. . . . Hell, I should get it. I am a solid citizen—a hard-working rancher. I am known as an honest man and a good neighbor. A pillar of the community, as it were. A gentleman and a scholar, with many friends in the valley.
I am a writer, a professional journahst with serious credentials in Crime, Craziness, and Politics. I have mingled with dangerous criminals and attended many trials. . . . from Hell's Angels, Black Panthers, and Chicano street fighters to Roxanne Pulitzer and even Richard Nixon, back in the good old days before he was run out of the White House for fraud, perjury, graft, and criminal negligence.
But they were always other people's trials. I have never been in the dock. I have never been on trial. Never accused of felonies.
All that has changed now. . . . Now I am under arrest and charged with eight felonies.
I am facing forty-four years in prison, sixteen with good behavior. The New York Times estimated, 'Tf he is convicted, he could go to prison for decades." The Village Voice said "... next century."
These are ugly things to read over morning coffee, but these are eerie times. The hog is out of the tunnel. The dark underbelly of the American dream is beginning to surface.
Nobody seems to know what my crimes are. The Charges are vague, but . . .
I am actually on trial for Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll . . . The too much Fun club The Passing Lane Queer Street
I
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
297
This is a Political Trial, and I am nothing if not a pohtician. I understand vengence.
This case is as important to me as it was that Nixon be impeached because they both involve abuse of political power for political reasons.
Nixon turned the White House into a national secret police headquarters; the hallways teemed night and day with hired burglars, political hitmen, and vengeful thugs who had a license to so anything the White House wanted done.
This time I am looking forward to going to court. . . .
Woody Creek, April 1990
THOMPSON HIT WITH 5 FELONIES
by David Matthews-Price
Aspen Times Daily April 10, 1990
"This is a low-rent, back-alley cheap shot," Thompson muttered about the charges. He observed that many defendants get religion when they want mercy
from the court. "When you see me coming out for Jesus you'll know they really have something on me," Thompson told the Times Daily.
MEMO TO HAL HADDON: ATTACK NOW
To: Hal Haddon From: HST Date: May 6, 1990
Never mind that bullshit about 'The Scopes Trial of Drug Use in the Home." No, counselor, that is wrong. . . .
The only mention of drug use in this case comes from a browbeaten female witness who was drunk at the time and dopey with fear and booze and bad nerves.
This is a Fourth Amendment case. It is not about sex or drugs or violence. It is about police power.
Do the police have a right to search my/your home tomorrow on the word(s) of three kinky complainants who flatter the Three Stooges and who lie to each other by accident and who now say the "victim" would rather flee than testify? And who then had their sordid squabble taken out of their hands by vengeful cops and Jesus freaks who would never have touched the case in the first place if they hadn't been convinced somehow by incredibly bungled investigatory procedures by the Pitkin County Sheriffs Dept., who then dumped it on the DA's doorstep as a sure-fire arrestable Felony Menacing case (". . . drew a gun on her") that turned out to be utter bullshit unless they could somehow make it stick with some kind of guaranteed whack—like a search that could not fail to turn up something. Even .09 grams.
By Friday afternoon at least three sheriffs deputies had made such a Three Stooges-style mess of 'The Thompson Crime(s)" that Sheriff Braudis was frantic to get it off his hands and into the hungry maw of the DA at all costs. Even if it meant lying briefly to the DA's investigator, Mike Kelly, about the bogus "gun to her head" charge against me that went up in smoke before sundown and left the DA no option except a 100 percent sure search.
Indeed—Kelly had been hung out to dry again: unless he could come up with at least one felony, and never mind that rumor about use in the home. It was too flimsy. Only a search would do the trick— drive a stake through the monster's heart.
Yeah, it was you^ Charley. I'm going to send Braudis forty silver dimes wrapped up in that nice new corduroy sheriffs hat he gave me.
Indeed—and don't even think of making me a doomed symbol of some giddy liberal crusade for "Your Right to Use Drugs in the Home," etc.
Not me, Jack. All I care about is not being raided by cops for provably wrong and evil reasons that still fester in the once-righteous heart of Mike Kelly. He knows he was suckered by Braudis and now yearns for a chance to roll over and confess.
Let me remind you, counselor, that John Scopes lost the "Monkey Trial." He was convicted and fined $100—then released on probation to a chain gang near Way cross, Georgia, where he soon ran afoul of the rules and was red-flagged and stabbed to death by a liberal prisoner
who claimed to love him like a brother against all odds and forever. . . . But what the hell? Forever is hke a dime in the fast lane, and the Times, of course, were changing. . . .
This low-rent treacherous case should be thrown out in the first twenty minutes of the preliminary hearing. Judge Crater should croak it in ten. ... No guilt, no business. No Pasaran. . . . Thanx.
—Doc
THE ART OF HimNG THE ONE IRON
'Not even God can win a preliminary hearing.'' — Hal Haddon, May 22, 1990
I CURSED Haddon when he told me this. "You lazy money-mad bastard," I shouted. "Lee Trevino said not even God can hit a one iron . . . which proved to be true, in his case—but so what? "I can hit a one iron," I said. "I can kick the shit out of a one iron." Which was true, for some reason. The Ping Eye 2 Beryllium One iron is my favorite club. All golfers fear and hate the One. It has no angley no pitch, no loft. ... It is straight up and down, like a putter, and the chances of a normal person getting a ball up in the air with it are usually about 1,000 to i against. . . . The one iron is a confidence-crusher, a Fear Trip, an almost certain guarantee of Shame, Failure, Dumbness, and Humiliation if you ever use it in public. Few PGA pros ever touch the One, and most amateurs won't even carry it in their bags. The One is so ugly, they will tell you, so evil and wrong by nature that its mere presence in the bag poisons all the other clubs. A used One is usually the cheapest club in the "33 Percent Off" barrel at any pro shop. Charles Manson once said he would rather use a
wooden-shafted Frances Ouimet Two iron than a Ping Eye 2 BerylHum One.
So it was weird when I picked up the Ping One and lashed five or six straight balls off the tee like line-drive homers at 240 yards each. ... A deathly silence fell on the crowd at the driving range. They watched in amazement, and said nothing, as I continued to bash low-rising 240-yarders like a golf robot who couldn't miss.
Hot damn, I thought. This is wonderful. These people are frozen and stunned, Hke members of a vision . . . they have made me an object of worship, a Hero of Golf. . . .
They were Hke law students watching my old friend Ed WiUiams (deceased) win five (5) prehminaries in a row, always in the face of huge odds. . . . Indeed. One of my first Combat Memos on this case asked, ''Where is Edward Bennett Williams? Now that I finally need him?"
Ed could not hit the One, but he was hell on wheels in a courtroom.
Woody Creek, May 1990
MOTION AND ORDER TO DISMISS THE CASE
IN THE DISTRICT COURT, COUNTY OF PITKIN, STATE OF COLORADO Criminal Action No. 90CR41
MOTION AND ORDER TO DISMISS CASE
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF COLORADO
vs.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON Defendajit.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
301
COMES NOW MILTON K. BLAKEY, District Attorney in and for the Ninth Judicial District of the State of Colorado, and moves this Honorable Court to dismiss this case and as grounds therefor states that:
The People would he unable to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Dated this 30th day of May, 1990.
Respectfully submitted, MILTON K. BLAKEY DistrictAttornoy
t?y:—^ r^^i>
Charles B. MaCrory; #10601 Chief Deputy District Attorney
ORDER
The People's Motion to dismiss this case is hereby granted this 30
dayof_/iy4^ ^
1990.
HUNTER HAILS LEGAL TRIUMPH FOR AMERICANS
by Mark Huffman
Times Daily Staff Writer
Aspen Times Daily June I, 1990
Hunter Thompson apologized Thursday for mumbling when he denied drug, dynamite, and sex assault charges in February.
But he wasn't sorry for anything else.
Thompson, the Gonzo journalist of Woody Creek, was triumphant Thursday as prosecutors who tried to nail him formally dropped the charges. Thompson proclaimed his victory a victory for all Americans, a victory for the Constitutional right to privacy in a person's home.
"I've been accused of mumbling. I didn't mean to mumble when I said, 'Not guilty,' Thompson mumbled to Judge Charles Buss. "I should have said it more clearly."
Selective Prosecution
Thompson called himself "a victim of selective, malicious prosecution.
"I'm the point man for a lot of people," he said. "This is just part of what I think is a long series of abuses of the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees all of us, even judges, the right not to be subjected to unwarranted search and seizure."
Judge Buss accepted the motion from Chief Deputy Attorney Chip McCrory to drop the charges, but wasn't very happy with the timing.
"Why couldn't you have made this decision before you filed?" he asked McCrory.
SONGS OF THE DOOMED
McCrory told him a wavering witness and new findings about just how difficuh it would have been to get a conviction against Thompson came only after last week's preliminary hearing.
Thompson was bound over for trial on all but a single count of cocaine use at that hearing.
Fight for Rights
Denver attorney Hal Haddon, Thompson's main defender in the case, called dismissal of the charges a significant Constitutional development.
"In this country privacy is only as safe as we are willing to fight for," Haddon said from the courthouse steps after the lo-minute session. "That's why this is an important case, why Hunter Thompson is important—because he fought for it."
Houston attorney Gerry Goldstein, a Constitutional expert in town to lend a hand, said Americans today are "alarmingly anxious to throw away their rights" and that it was "important to see someone like Dr. Thompson fight for his."
Thompson, who emerged from the courthouse videotaping the crowd of photographers waiting for their own shots, told the crowd of press, well-wishers, and hangers-on that "we are all, in all of our houses, a little safer than we were yesterday."
Like Goldstein, he said he was dismayed that so many people seem unwilling to fight as he did.
"We've grown accustomed to letting anyone with a badge walk over us," he said.
She "Got Sloppy "
And, as he had earlier, Thompson denied charges by Gail Palmer-Slater that he'd assaulted her.
Her complaint to police after a visit to Thompson's house Feb. 21—when she said he used cocaine and threatened and assaulted her after she rebuffed his sexual advances—led to an 11-hour search that turned up a variety of drugs and explosives.
"I didn't beat that woman up," Thompson said. "She came to my house and got sloppy, got rude. I don't have a right to beat anybody up. I didn't."
Dismissal of the charges by Judge Buss "without prejudice" means they cannot be refiled.
The only possibility of another hearing is if there's a dispute between prosecutors and defenders about return of property seized in the search of Thompson's house. Everything except "contraband" will be returned, prosecutor McCrory said.
But when it appeared that deciding what constitutes "contraband" might be a problem, and McCrory said he wasn't prepared to argue the matter Thursday, Judge Buss said he would "find my way back to Pitkin County" if another session is essential.
"Let's have another hearing," Buss deadpanned. "That'd be fun."
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
303
PRESS RELEASE, OWL FARM,
5/31/90
THOMPSON FACES WILD CROWD
Photo Missing*
*WRIT OF
SEIZURE
FILED BY
AUTHOR'S ATTORNEYS
AND FOREIGN PUBLISHERS
Woody Creek, Colo., May 31, 1990— Famed Gonzo journalist Dr. Hunter S. Thompson waves to a frenzied mob of his "supporters" at yesterday's press conference on the steps of the Pitkin County Courthouse . . . where all charges on Sex, Drugs, Bombs, and Violence crimes against The Doctor were Dismissed With Prejudice by District Court Judge
Charles Buss, who called Thompson "a perfect gentleman" and excoriated the District Attorney for Negligence, Malfeasance, and Criminal Abuse of Police Power. Spectators applauded as Dep. Dist. Atty. Chip "Shiteyes" McCrory wept openly at the verdict and was led from the courtroom by bailiffs. Thompson denounced the Dismissal as
SONGS OF THE DOOMED
"pure cowardice" and said he would "appeal it at once" to the Colorado Supreme Court.
Thompson described the District Attorney's "whole goddamn staff' as "thugs liars crooks" and "lazy human scum. . . . These stupid brutes tried to destroy my life," he said, "and now they tell me to just forget it.
''Fuck thatr he screeched. "They are guilty! They should all be hung by their heels from iron telephone poles on the road to Woody Creek!"
The crowd roared and surged forward, chanting, ''Yes! Now! Hang them nowT
A man with a pitchfork rushed up the ancient stone steps and attempted to enter the courthouse, but he was hurled away by Thompson, who blocked the doorway and told the mob to "be calm."
"Not now!" he shouted. "Not today! But soon! Yes! We will PUNISH them! We will chop off their fingers and gnaw on their skulls and feed their flesh to our animals!"
The crowd responded by ripping up trees in the courtyard and hammering cra-zily on the hoods of nearby police cars. "Death to the Weird," they howled. "They shall not pass! PUNISH them!" At this point Dr. Thompson was seized from behind by his two high-powered attorneys and rushed to a waiting car, which departed at high speed.
Later, from his heavily guarded fortress called "Owl Farm," Thompson's lawyers issued a statement that called him "a hero, a saint . . . and the bravest man in America. . . . Dr. Thompson is a great poet," they said, "who often speaks in apocalyptic terms.
"His comments earlier today about
Death, Cannibalism, and Vengeance should not be construed in any way as a threat to the physical safety of any living thing:'
The statement was hailed by the press as "further proof that Dr. Thompson should be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace."
"The Doctor will have no further comment on The Case," his attorneys said, "for legal reasons stemming from his $22 million civil lawsuit against the District Attorney's Office, which will be formally filed next week."
Later that night, however, the restive Gonzo journalist issued a mysterious "personal statement" that local authorities called "very gracious, very strange, and very bloodthirsty all at once."
He spoke of a "historical mandate," citing mysterious blood feuds. He refused to talk about his rumored blood relationship to Genghis Khan, Cassius Clay, John Gotti, and other legendary warriors.
"But you forget," he said. "I am Lono. I am He. When the great bell rings, I will be there."
Thompson refused to elaborate on his claim to be Someone Else, and his aides brusquely turned aside press queries. Reporters who persisted were roughed up by burly "advisers" wearing bulletproof vests and "Owl Farm/Security" badges. One TV journalist, who begged not to be named, said he was taken to "a cistern somewhere in the compound" and forced to strip naked while standing knee-deep in "ice-cold water rushing up from an underground river." For "many hours," he said, he was tormented by drunken lawyers and mocked by what appeared to be naked women.
FINAL ANALYSIS: GERALD GOLDSTEIN, ESQ.
LAW OFFICES
GOLDSTEIN, GOLDSTEIN AND HILLEY
Eli Goldstein
29TH FLOOR TOWER LIFE BUILDING Area Code 512 Gerald H. Goldstein Telephone 226-1463
Van G. Milley San Antonio, Texas 78205
Robert O. Switzer Area Code 512
Patricia T. Peranteau Telefax 226-8367
Cynthia Hujar Orr
June 2, 1990
Dr. Hunter S. Thompson Owl Creek Farm Woody Creek Aspen, Colorado
Re: "Saving Us from Ourselves"
Random Reflections on What It All Meant
Dear Doc;
After dallying too long in your hospitality Thursday last, I gave some thought to what your ordeal has meant to me and others while en route back to Deep East Texas where the War on Drugs is currently venting its spleen over five black kids in an all-white courtroom.
Your persecutor, muttering something about his ethical code, said he could not proceed with the hanging because he had little faith in the credibility of his sole source of information. The Judge gratuitously queried why he could not have made such a decision before dragging you through the streets.
The real question that has to be asked is why the authorities cannot
make such determinations before they break down a citizen's door and rummage through their homes and lives in the first place.^
IF THEY CAN DO THIS TO THE RICH AND FAMOUS
If they can do this to you over spilled cranberry juice, imagine what they must be doing to the poor and ignominious every day in courtrooms across this country.
What you did, Hunter, the reason Fd fly back halfway across the country to stand with you again, is that you had the huevos to fight back, to say you would not tolerate the system's intolerance. Things are not going to change in this country until the famous and not so infamous alike are willing to hold their ground and say enough is enough.
We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.
There is hysteria running rampant in our nation's capital and our local statehouses. Of late, it has been accompanied by serious talk of reducing citizen rights in an effort to combat the dreaded plague of drugs. To demagogue about drugs is certainly simpler, and much more popular, than the difficult task of balancing budgets. But escalating the punishment for drug offenders, bankrupting our state and national coffers warehousing these poor souls, will hardly solve our nation's social ills. It is only going to create more poverty. And poverty is a greater root cause of crime than drugs could ever hope to be.
In the late '60s and early '70s the law in my fair state provided life imprisonment for possession of one marijuana cigarette. In 1973 there
^V/ho will protect us from our protectors?
That is what Justice Jackson was talking about when he opined over forty years ago:
"[Fourth Amendment rights] ... are not mere second-class rights but belong in the catalog of indispensable freedoms. Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart. Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government. . . . "But the right to be secure against searches and seizures is one of the most difficult to protect. Since the officers are themselves the chief invaders, there is no enforcement outside the court." Brinegar v. U.S., at 180-181 (1949) (Jackson, J., dissenting).
were thirteen individuals serving life sentences for possession of small quantities of that drug. Yet, during that same period of time, first-time use of marijuana rose at a greater rate than during any other period in our history.
The last five administrations have declared war on drugs. Last term in Mistretta v. U.S.^ 109 S.Ct. 647 (1989), the Supreme Court approved the Federal Sentencing Guidelines which upped punishments, eliminated parole, and virtually did away with probation. The 1984 Incomprehensible Crime Control Act raised everything from minimum mandatory sentences to prosecutors' salaries. And the incessant Anti-Drug Abuse Control Amendments simply add insult to the injury. Under these enactments, many of our clients begin serving their sentences at the time of arrest, rather than conviction.
"No, no!" said Queen. "Sentence first—verdict afterwards." Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.
In Solerno v. U.S., 481 U.S. 739 (1987), the Supreme Court upheld Bail Reform Act amendments providing for the detention of presumptively innocent citizens, without bail, prior to any trial or determination of their guilt. We often house these presumptively innocent citizens under deplorable conditions, without rehabilitation, education, or recreation. Then, after we convict them, send them to a "Club Fed" for punishment.
With many citizens not getting bail, none getting paroled, and all facing the prospect of higher minimum mandatories under the Sentencing Guidelines, there soon will be no more room at the Inn. The Federal Bureau of Prisons, now running at 150 percent of capacity, estimates that their inmate population will quintuple in the next five years.
The Fatal Shore, a popular book a few years back, depicted a period in English history when over two hundred property crimes carried the death penalty, yet they couldn't kill people fast enough. Prison overcrowding had become such a problem that "private" prisons were created to deal with the overflow. Ultimately they took 160,000 of their most incorrigible inmates, put them on "prison ships," and banished them to an island in the South Pacific, which Captain Cook had visited seventeen years before and no one had seen since. We do not have an Australia. And unless we intend simply to fence off Oklahoma, we are not going to be able to build prisons fast enough.
The Third Reich did not impose its will upon an unwilling, unre-
ceptive public. Hitler rode into power on a groundswell of public opinion, fueled by law-and-order rhetoric and scare tactics, not unlike those being unleashed in our legislatures today.
What may appear to be innocuous incursions in the face of this perceived fear have a cumulative impact. None of us complained when our bodies and our baggage became the subject of scrutiny at our airports in the face of repeated hijackings and terrorist attacks. Yet, if our grandparents had been told their persons and personal effects would be searched before they could board a means of public transportation, they would have been shocked. And it was these very airport "security checks" that served as an example for the Supreme Court's approval last term of intrusions into our bodily fluids. See: National Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. (1989) [approving urine tests of certain government employees]. Almost one hundred years before, that same Court had noted:
"It may be that it is the obnoxious thing in its mildest and least repulsive form; but illegitimate and unconstitutional practices get their first footing in that way, namely by silent approaches and slight deviations from legal modes of procedure. This can only be obviated by adhering to the rule that constitutional provisions for the security of person and property should be liberally construed. A close and literal construction deprives them of half their efficacy, and leads to gradual depreciation of the right, as if it consisted more in sound than in substance. It is the duty of the Courts to be watchful for the Constitutional rights of the citizen, and to guard against any stealthy encroachments thereon. Their motto should be ohsta principiis.'' Boyd v. U.S., 116 U.S. 616, 635 (1886).
Last year, as if our skies were not unsafe enough already. Congress narrowly missed passing a statute permitting drug agents to shoot down suspected drug smugglers. And, exalting form over substance, recreated the federal crime of flag desecration. While encouraging the crass commercial and partisan political exploitation of our national symbol, our legislators have seen fit to criminalize its symbolic use by those with whom they do not agree. President Bush even ate an American flag birthday cake for the television cameras, and one must assume excreted what was left the following day. That would appear to make defecation of our flag a laudable gesture, while burning it, as a form of pure political speech, constitutes a federal crime.
However the public may view the so-called drug problem, stripping the citizenry of two hundred years of civil liberties is not the solution. And beating the public into a frenzy, willing to throw their own pro-
tections away, poses even greater dangers than whatever evil they seek to prevent. When the Supreme Court addressed our government's newfound interest in its own agents' bodily functions, it was surprisingly Ray-gun's appointee Justice Scalia who retorted:
"There is irony in the Government's citation, in support of its position, of Justice Brandeis's statement in,Olmstead . . . that '[f]or good or ill, [our Government] teaches the whole people by its example.' Brandeis was there dissenting from the Court's admission of evidence obtained through an unlawful Govemmen;t wiretap. He was not praising the Government's example of vigor and enthusiasm in combating crime, but condemning its example that *the end justifies the means.' An even more apt quotation from the famous Brandeis dissent would have been the following:
"[I]t is . . . immaterial that the intrusion was in aid of law enforcement. Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect Uberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their Uberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding. . . .'
"Those who lose because of the lack of understanding that begot the present exercise in symbolism are not just the Customs Service employees, whose dignity is thus offended, but all of us—who suffer a coarsening of our national manners that ultimately give the Fourth Amendment its content, and who become subject to the administration of federal officials whose respect for our privacy can hardly be greater than the small respect they have been taught to have for their own." National Treasury Employees Union v. Van Raab, 489 U.S. (1989) (ScaUa, J., dissenting).
What you did was important. Thank you for letting me be a small part of it. As J. Frank Dobie said: "You'll do to ride the river with."
Sincerely,
Gerald H. Goldstein
for Goldstein, Goldstein and Hilley
A LETTER TO THE CHAMPION: A PUBLICATION
OF THE NATIONAL
ASSOCIATION OF CRIMINAL
DEFENSE LAWYERS, KEITH
STROUP, EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR
Well, Keith, what can I say? Except thanks to you and your gang: The Long Riders from NACDL.
Your boys are OK. When the Great Whistle blew, NACDL members Gerry Goldstein and Hal Haddon were warriors, and saved me from going to prison
Which is no small thing in these times, as you know. That number "8" in 1984 was a typo. In the original manuscript Orwell wrote 1994, but he was so far behind on his deadline that his publisher refused to let him make any changes.
Publishers are notoriously slothful about numbers, unless they're attached to dollar signs—unlike journalists, quarterbacks, and felony criminal defendants who tend to be keenly aware of numbers at all times.
The key number in my case was *'8"—the number of crimes I was falsely and maliciously charged with—and the number of years I was expected to spend in prison seemed to go up in multiples of 8, depending on who was doing the math. Each felony charge, for instance, carried 16 years, which led The New York Times to estimate that I could spend 8 "decades" in prison, if convicted, and caused The Village Voice to guess that I would be behind bars "until well into the next century."
It was grim. Especially with a new D.A. who had come into office boasting that he was "going to hang [my] ass—a threat which I failed
to take seriously since I knew the man to be a vicious, low-rent punk and dumber than nine chickens. Even grimmer was the fact that my original/erstwhile attorney (a local boy and former sheriff's deputy who had never tried a criminal case) was/is a crusading ex-drunk AA leader who didn't mind saying that Re-Hab was the best place for me anyway and was eager to begin the plea bargaining process ASAP in order to get me on supervised court probation and safely "within the system."
The story gets longer and uglier, but we have no time for it now. In a nut, I was doomed to the impossible life of a convicted felon, even though I'd committed no crime(s) and was clearly the victim of a greedy amateurish setup. Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.
Ah ha! But now the story changes. The worm turns, the wind shifts one-eighty, and the firestorm turns back on the arsonists, who had been operating with impunity for so long that they'd forgotten the feeling of Heat. The D.A. was a half-bright meatball who had run unopposed for reelection three times and had rarely been challenged in court; the judge was a Reformed Alcoholic who hated the sight of a drinker. The D.A. was a failed rodeo cowboy who is still trying to put a twenty-two-year-old girl in state prison for allegedly "slapping a jailer"; and the D.A.'s investigator was a born-again Christian. It was like going up against The Meese Gang, in their own court with their own rules and facing the rest of your life in prison if you lost.
Ho-ho. These lame cheap jack bulhes had reckoned without the Long Riders from NACDL, who came over the horizon on both flanks and swept down on them hke Jeb Stuart at the first Battle of Bull Run, and I will never forget the feeling of wild happiness and raw courage I felt when I saw them coming and knew that I finally had not just the troops, but Generals . . . and, Mother of Babbling Christ, I even had credit.
Try it sometime, folks, it's a rush you'll remember forever. They seemed to come all at once, in what clearly was my darkest hour. Mike Stepanian from San Francisco, Hal Haddon from Denver, Keith Stroup from Washington, and the ineffable maestro of motions, Gerry Goldstein from San Antonio.
Suddenly I had my own gang. My own army, my people, my friends, my warriors. . . . They came from all points of the compass and all points in time, and we stomped on the terra like champions. It was
something to see, folks, and it was a beautiful war to be part of. . . . Haddon stomped through the courtroom like one of the Gallo brothers mashing grapes, and Goldstein gave them nightmares at high noon just by sitting at the Defense table with that fine cheetah's grin on his face and shooting his cuffs now and then with obvious impatience at having to wait so long for the meal he knew was coming.
It was a rout, folks. The D.A.'s cheap bunglers collapsed in a heap and fled like rats into whatever darkness they could find, which was not much. They are on the run now. Some are resigning and others are under arrest; the judge is finished, and the D.A's dream of a judgeship is now a bad joke.
And, yes . . . there is more to this hellish story, but the magazine is going to press and Keith is going crazy, so I have to quit now; but the tale is not finished. All I can say now is Thanks, once again. You boys are OK when you get the right music to dance to, and I was proud and goddamn happy for the chance to dance with you.
With great respect and affection, I remain, your friend,
Dr. Hunter S. Thompson Woody Creek, July 1990
LATER THAT YEAR . . .
On August 22,1990, Dr. Thompson and his relentless criminal lawyer, Hal Haddon, made a formal appearance in the ancient brick Pitkin County Courthouse on Main Street in Aspen, Colorado, and filed Notice of Intent to whack the District Attorney's office, collectively and individually, with a $22 million civil lawsuit for Malicious Prose-cutioriy Gross Negligence and Criminal Malfeasance with Harmful Intent.
Simultaneously, Haddon secured from the District Court a formal Purge and Seal order for all official records concerning Thompson's
alleged connection with the ill-fated and ill-advised case brought against him by the D.A., who is currently under investigation by a Special Prosecutor, for Conspiracy to Commit Perjury, a felony crime carrying a 5-year sentence in the massively overcrowded State Prison at Canon City.
Dr. Thompson was more specific. "They are doomed," he said. "They will soon be in prison. Those bastards have no more respect for the law than any screwhead thief in Washington. They will meet the same fate as Charles Manson and Neil Bush."
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Times have changed now, but not much. Alphonse Karr was right: "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Jesus! Only a cynical Frog could have written a thing like that. . . . But he was right, I think, and his wisdom has shaped many lives, for good or ill. But not mine. I have changed constantly all my life, usually at top speed, and it has always been with the total, permanent finality of a thing fed into an atom smasher. My soul and my body chemistry are like that of a chameleon, a lizard with no pulse. . . . People praise me for this, but they are all foreigners and they know nothing. When I go to Mexico or Germany they call me "Lizard Man," and I laugh smugly. . . . "To get along, go along." That's what I say.
Woody Creek, August 1990
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
THE HONOR ROLL
315
Ralph Steadman Michael Solheim Terry Sabonis-Chafee David Matthews-Price Jim Mitchell Artie Mitchell Jeff Armstrong Virginia Ray Thompson George McGovern Jack Nicholson Jesse Barron Lyle Lovett Julie Oppenheimer
Christine Nelson Jay Johnson Susie Sterling Mark Breslin Semmes Luckett Tim Charles Tony Yerkovich Joe Bergquist Andy Hall The Cowboy Junkies Warren Hinckle Dr. Bob Geiger
And all the others who ride for the Gonzo Brand. Responsibility for any and all errors found in this book will be shared among them.
'7 turn to simplicity; I turn again to purity. — Genghis Khan, 1221
The first and greatest of all the Khans had these words carved on a simple stone pillar somewhere between Persia and Mongolia as he and his victorious troops rode home along the same invasion route that they'd been using for decades to conquer the entire Middle East, and that his generals would soon be using again for the invasion of Russia and then Europe. . . . But his stunning conquest of MuhammedAli Shah's whole empire in less than a year had left the Khan weary of war. He had proven his point and now he was going back home, leaving his generals, Jebe and Subedi, to pillage the rest of the world in his name. The splendors of the fallen Persian empire had amazed him at first, he said, but he soon tired of one golden temple after another full of veiled dancing girls and endless feasts in his honor. ''My sons will live to desire such lands and cities as these," he said, ''but I cannot."
Hunter S. Thompson is a humble man who writes books for a living and spends the rest of his time bogged down in strange and crazy wars. He is the author of many violent books (see below) and brilliant political essays, which his friends and henchmen in the international media have managed for many years to pass off as "Gonzo Journalism."
The reasons for this are myriad, and we will speak of them later. In the meantime, Dr. Thompson lives the Hfe of a freelance country gentleman in Woody Creek, Colorado, and exists in a profoundly active Balance of Terror with the local police authorities. He is currently at work on gg Days: The Trial of Hunter S. Thompson and a long-awaited sex book. Polo Is My Life.
i
(continued from copyright page)
by permission. Extract from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons, an imprint of Macmillian Publishing Company, copyright 1925 by Charles Scribner's Sons, renewed 1953 by Frances Scott Fitzgerald Lanahan. "Warning Is Issued on Cocaine Use with Sex After Man Loses Limbs," by Lawrence K. Altman, June 3, 1988; copyright © 1988 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission. Letter: "Final Analysis: Gerald Goldstein, Esq." copyright Gerald Goldstein, used by permission. "D. A. Snags Thompson in Sex Case" and "Thompson Hit with 5 Felonies" copyright David Matthews-Price, used by permission. "Hunter Hails Legal Triumph for Americans" copyright Mark Huffman, used by permission. "American Pie" words and music by Don McLean © copyright 1971, 1972 by Music Corporation of America, Inc., and Benny Bird Music; rights administered by MCA Music Publishing, a Division of MCA Inc., New York, NY 10019; used by permission. Extract from The Quiet American by Graham Greene copyright © 1955 by Graham Greene; reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin, a Division of Penguin Books USA Inc. Extract from "Where Are You Tonight?" written by Michael Timmins © 1990 Paz Junk Music and BMG Songs, Inc., used by permission; all rights reserved. "Sacred Elegy V" from George Barker Collected Poems reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd.
About the Author
Hunter S. Thompson is a humble man who writes books for a living and spends the rest of his time bogged down in strange and crazy wars. He is the author of many violent books (see below) and brilliant political essays, which his friends and henchmen in the international media have managed for many years to pass off as "Gonzo Journalism."
The reasons for this are myriad, and we will speak of them later. In the meantime, Dr. Thompson lives the life of a free-lance country gentleman in Woody Creek, Colorado, and exists in a profoundly active Balance of Terror with the local police authorities. He is currently at work on 99 Days: The Trial of Hunter S. Thompson and a long-awaited sex book. Polo Is My Life.
Jacket design by Paul Bacon
Jacket photograph copyright © 1990 by Paul Chesley
Author photograph copyright © 1990 by Paul Chesley
Printed in the U.S.A. Copyright © 1990 Simon & Schuster Inc. Distributed by Simon & Schuster Inc.