Thursday, February 27, 2025

A Different Me

"Must be a different you,
To be a me with you.”
-- Nada Surf


Nowadays, most of the time I am what I appear to be — an older gentleman who politely observes social norms and rarely gets into trouble. I generally think before I speak or act, and so am a model of discretion.

It wasn’t always the case. Much of my career as an investigative journalist, for example, was based on the kind of risk-taking that led to some dicey moments.

When Howard Kohn and I wrote the first part of our three-part series of stories about Patty Hearst and the SLA in Rolling Stone in 1975, we found ourselves at the center of what can only be described as a media hysteria. The series of proofs at the top of this post date from a celebration we had in Jann Wenner's office at 625 Third Street in San Francisco on the first night of mass media coverage of our scoop.

At that age (28), I felt free to be reckless. My first death threat came over the phone from a woman who was the girlfriend of one of the SLA "soldiers" then imprisoned for assassinating Oakland School Superintendent, Marcus Foster. (The motive for this murder of the first black superintendent in Oakland history was such a twisted mess that no one of rational mind could possibly explain why these people killed this decent man.)

By the time that threat came in, those associated with the SLA had killed a number of innocent people besides Foster. Besides the death threat, we were getting all sorts of interesting phone calls. 

Among the worst was a conference call from Bill Kunstler and Lenny Weinglass, leftist attorneys and heroes of mine, who told us we would "never publish again" if we went ahead with publishing our stories. 

Then, the head of the FBI’s San Francisco office said he would “cut (us) off at the knees” if we didn’t show him our next draft before we published.

Both turned out to be empty threats.

Then, a much more intriguing call came -- from people who said they were those who had eluded the police and the FBI when Patty and her three closest companions (Bill and Emily Harris and Wendy Yoshimira) were captured. Without divulging the details. Howard, Jann and I determined that these guys were the people they claimed to be.

Their call dictated the terms of how we would get the information they wanted to give us. It was to be found in an envelope taped under the pay-telephone on a corner under a freeway in downtown San Francisco.

We all looked at one another in Jann's office and agreed I would be the one to fetch this potentially valuable package. Jann's secretary drove me in a van to the appointed place, and I then walked across the street in the open to retrieve the package. Anyone from any number of hidden vantages could have easily blown me away, and of course these guys had the weaponry to do so.

I remember being vaguely surprised at the lack of any gunfire when I reached the booth and located the manila envelope. The hardest part was walking back to the van, because any SLA soldier watching would know for sure by now that I was me.

That walk across Fifth Street back to the van and Jann's secretary was uneventful. No shots rang out, no bullets ripped into my flesh. We high-tailed it out of there, and back to the office. Unfortunately, the "communication" turned out to be worthless rhetorical crap; and I don't remember whether Howard and I even used it in Part Two of our series that October.

But, in a strange way I always knew I wouldn't die that day. So I suppose that “reckless” in those years meant ignoring death threats. There’d be more of them, along with legal threats, more hate from the PC crowd and so forth. It all went with the territory when I was young and strutting my stuff.

Later on, being “reckless” would come to be much more about feelings and women, wine, and writing. But that’s a story for another day.

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