Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone (45 page)

August 2, 1973

There is no joy in Woody Creek tonight—at least not in the twisted bowels of this sinkhole of political iniquity called the Owl Farm—because, two thousand miles away in the swampy heat of Washington, D.C., my old football buddy, Dick Nixon, is lashing around in bad trouble . . . The vultures are coming home to roost—like he always feared they would, in the end—and it hurts me in a way nobody would publish if I properly described it, to know that I can’t be with him on the sweaty ramparts today, stomping those dirty buzzards like Davy Crockett bashing spics off the walls of the Alamo.

“Delta Dawn . . . What’s that flower you have on?”

Fine music on my radio as dawn comes up on the Rockies . . . But suddenly the music ends and ABC (American Entertainment Network) News interrupts: Martha Mitchell is demanding that “Mister President” either resign or be impeached, for reasons her addled tongue can only hint at . . . and Charles “Tex” Colson, the president’s erstwhile
special counsel
, is denying all statements & sworn testimony, by anybody, linking him to burglaries, fire-bombings, wire-tappings, perjuries, payoffs, and other routine felonies in connection with his job at the White House . . . and President Nixon is relaxing, as it were, in his personal beach-front mansion at San Clemente, California, surrounded by the scuzzy remnants of his once imperial guard . . . Indeed, you can almost
hear the rattle of martini-cups along the airwaves as Gerald Warren—Ron Ziegler’s doomed replacement—cranks another hastily rewritten paragraph (Amendment No. 67 to Paragraph No. 13 of President Nixon’s original statement denying everything) . . . into the overheated Dex machine to the White House, for immediate release to the national media . . . and the White House pressroom is boiling with guilt-crazed journalists, ready to pounce on any new statement like a pack of wild African dogs, to atone for all the things they knew but never wrote when Nixon was riding high . . .

Why does Nixon use the clumsy Dex, instead of the Mojo? Why does he drink martinis, instead of Wild Turkey? Why does he wear boxer shorts? Why is his life a grim monument to everything plastic, de-sexed, and nonsensual? When I look at Nixon’s White House, I have a sense of
absolute
personal alienation. The president and I seem to disagree on almost
everything
—except pro football, and Nixon’s addiction to that has caused me to view it with a freshly jaundiced eye, or what the late John Foster Dulles called “an agonizing reappraisal.” Anything Nixon likes
must
be suspect. Like cottage cheese and catsup . . .

“The Dex machine.” Jesus! Learning that Nixon and his people use
this
—instead of the smaller, quicker, more versatile (and portable) Mojo Wire—was almost the final insult: coming on the heels of the Gross Sense of Injury I felt when I saw that my name was not included on the infamous “Enemies of the White House” list.

I would almost have preferred a vindictive tax audit to that kind of crippling exclusion. Christ! What kind of waterheads compiled that list? How can I show my face in the Jerome Bar when word finally reaches Aspen that I wasn’t on it?

Fortunately, the list was drawn up in the summer of ’71—which partially explains why my name was missing. It was not until the autumn of ’72 that I began referring to the president, in nationally circulated print, as a Cheapjack Punk and a Lust-Maddened Werewolf, whose very existence was (and remains) a bad cancer on the American political tradition. Every ad the publishers prepared for my book on the 1972 campaign led off with a savage slur on all that Richard Nixon ever hoped to represent or stand for. The man is a walking embarrassment to the human race—and especially, as Bobby Kennedy once noted, to that high,
optimistic potential that fueled men like Jefferson and Madison, and which Abe Lincoln once described as “the last, best hope of man.”

There is slim satisfaction in the knowledge that my exclusion from the (1971) list of “White House enemies” has more to do with timing and Ron Ziegler’s refusal to read
Rolling Stone
than with the validity of all the things I’ve said and written about that evil bastard.

I was, after all, the only accredited journalist covering the 1972 presidential campaign to compare Nixon with Adolf Hitler . . . I was the only one to describe him as a congenital thug, a fixer with the personal principles of a used-car salesman. And when these distasteful excesses were privately censured by the docile White House press corps, I compounded my flirtation with Bad Taste by describing the White House correspondents as a gang of lame whores & sheep without the balls to even argue with Ron Ziegler—who kept them all dancing to Nixon’s bogus tune until it became suddenly fashionable to see him for the hired liar he was and has been all along.

The nut of my complaint here—in addition to being left off The List—is rooted in a powerful resentment at not being recognized (not even by Ziegler) for the insults I heaped on Nixon
before
he was laid low. This is a matter of journalistic ethics—or perhaps even “sportsmanship”—and I take a certain pride in knowing that I kicked Nixon before he went down. Not afterward—though I plan to do
that
, too, as soon as possible.

And I feel no more guilt about it than I would about setting a rat trap in my kitchen, if it ever seemed necessary—and certainly no more guilt than I know Nixon would feel about hiring some thug like Gordon Liddy to set me up for a felony charge, if my name turned up on his List.

When they update the bugger, I plan to be on it. My attorney is even now preparing my tax records, with an eye to confrontation. When the next list of “White House enemies” comes out, I want to be on it. My son will never forgive me—ten years from now—if I fail to clear my name and get grouped, for the record, with those whom Richard Milhous Nixon considered dangerous.

Dick Tuck feels the same way. He was sitting in my kitchen, watching the TV set, when Sam Donaldson began reading The List on ABC-TV.

“Holy shit!” Tuck muttered. “We’re not
on
it.”

“Don’t worry,” I said grimly. “We
will
be.”

“What can we
do
?” he asked.

“Kick out the jams,” I said. “Don’t worry, Dick. When the next list comes out, we’ll
be there
. I guarantee that.”

MEMO:

FROM:
Raoul Duke, Sports Editor

TO:
Main/Edit Control

C.C.:
Legal, Finance, Security, et al.

SUBJECT:
Imminent emergence of Dr. Thompson from the Decompression Chamber in Miami, and probable inability of the Sports Desk or anyone else to control his movements at that time . . . especially in connection with his ill-conceived plan to move the National Affairs desk back to Washington and bring Ralph Steadman over from England to cause trouble at the Watergate hearings . . .

EDITORS’ NOTE:

The following intra-corporate memo arrived by Mojo Wire from Colorado shortly before deadline time for this issue. It was greeted with mixed emotions by all those potentially afflicted . . . and because of the implications, we felt a certain obligation to lash up a quick, last-minute explanation . . . primarily for those who have never understood the real function of Raoul Duke (whose official title is “sports editor”), and also for the many readers whose attempts to reach Dr. Thompson by mail, phone, & other means have not borne fruit.

The circumstances of Dr. Thompson’s removal from the Public World have been a carefully guarded secret for the past several months. During the last week of March—after a strange encounter with Henry Kissinger while on “vacation” in Acapulco—Dr. Thompson almost drowned
when his scuba tanks unexplainably ran out of air while diving for black coral off the Yucatán Coast of Mexico, at a depth of some three hundred feet. His rapid emergence from these depths—according to witnesses—resulted in a near-fatal case of the bends, and an emergency-chartered/night-flight to the nearest decompression chamber, which happened to be in Miami.

Dr. Thompson was unconscious in the decompression chamber—a round steel cell about twelve feet in diameter—for almost three weeks. When he finally regained his wits, it was impossible to speak with him, except by means of a cracked loudspeaker tube & brief handwritten notes held up to the window. A television set was introduced into The Chamber at his insistence and, by extremely complicated maneuvering, he was able to watch the Watergate hearings . . . but, due to the dangerous differences in pressurization, he was unable to communicate anything but garbled notes on his impressions to Duke, his long-time friend and associate, who flew to Miami immediately, at his own expense.

When it became apparent that Dr. Thompson would be in The Chamber indefinitely, Duke left him in Miami—breathing easily in The Chamber with a TV set & several notebooks—and returned to Colorado, where he spent the past three months handling The Doktor’s personal & business affairs, in addition to organizing the skeletal framework for his 1974 senate race.

It was a familiar role for Duke, who has been Dr. Thompson’s close friend & adviser since 1968—after fourteen years of distinguished service in the CIA, the FBI, and the Pittsburgh (Pa.) Police Intelligence Unit. His duties, since hiring on with Dr. Thompson, have been understandably varied. He has been described as “a weapons expert,” a “ghostwriter,” a “bodyguard,” a “wizard,” and a “brutal fixer.”

“Compared to the things I’ve done for Thompson,” Duke says, “both Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt were stone
punks
.”

It is clear, from this memo, that Duke has spent a good bit of his time in Colorado watching the Watergate hearings on TV—but it is also clear that his tentative conclusions are very different from the ones Dr. Thompson reached, from his admittedly singular vantage point in that decompression chamber in downtown Miami.

The editors of
Rolling Stone
would prefer not to comment on
either
of these viewpoints at this time, nor to comment on the nightmare/blizzard of expense vouchers submitted, by Duke, in connection with this dubious memo. In accordance with our long tradition, however, we are placing the Public Interest (publication of Duke’s memo, in this case) on a plane far above and beyond our inevitably mundane haggling about the cost of breakfast and lunch.

What follows, then, is a jangled mix of Duke’s official communications with this office, and Thompson’s “Watergate Notes” (forwarded to us, by Duke) from his decompression chamber in Miami. The chronology is not entirely consistent. Duke’s opening note, for instance, reflects his concern & alarm with Dr. Thompson’s decision to go directly from Miami—once the doctors have confirmed his ability to function in normal air-pressures—to the harsh & politically volatile atmosphere in Washington, D.C. Unlike Duke, he seems blindly obsessed with the day-to-day details of the Watergate hearings . . . and what is also clear from this memo is that Dr. Thompson has maintained regular contact (despite all medical and physical realities, according to the doctors in charge of his Chamber in Miami) with his familiar, campaign trail allies, Tim Crouse and Ralph Steadman. An invoice received only yesterday from the manager of the Watergate Hotel indicates that somebody has reserved a top-floor river-view suite, under the names of “Thompson, Steadman & Crouse” . . . four adjoining rooms at $277 a day, with a long list of special equipment and an unlimited in-house expense authorization.

Needless to say, we will . . . but, why mention that now? The dumb buggers are already into it, and
something
is bound to emerge. We can save the bargaining for later . . .

—The Editors

DUKE MEMO No. 9, July 2, 1973

Gentlemen:

This will confirm my previous warnings in re: the dangerously unstable condition of Dr. Thompson, whose most recent communications leave no doubt in my mind that he still considers himself the National Affairs Editor of
Rolling Stone
—and in that capacity he has somehow made arrangements to fly immediately from Miami to Washington,
upon his release, to “cover” the remaining episodes of the Watergate hearings. I have no idea what he really means by the word “cover”—but a phone-talk late last night with his doctors gave me serious pause. He will leave The Chamber at the end of this week, and he’s talking in terms of “saturation coverage.” According to the doctors, there is no way to communicate with him in The Chamber except by notes held up to the glass window—but I suspect he has a phone in there, because he has obviously communicated at length with Crouse, Steadman, Mankiewicz, and several others. A person resembling Crouse was seen loitering around The Chamber last Monday night around three thirty . . . and a call to Steadman’s agent in London confirmed that Ralph has left his hide-out in the south of France and is booked on a Paris-Washington flight next Thursday, the day before Thompson’s release.

Mankiewicz denies everything, as usual, but I talked to Sam Brown in Denver yesterday, and he said the word around Washington is that Frank is “acting very nervous” and also ordering Wild Turkey “by the case” from Chevy Chase Liquors. This indicates, to me, that Frank knows something. He has probably been talking to Crouse, but Tim’s number in Boston won’t answer, so I can’t confirm anything there.