Fear and Loathing in America

by Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson had admired Jimmy Carter since he heard the Democrat’s Law Day address at the University of Georgia on May 4, 1974. In fact, he would write, “I have never heard a sustained piece of political oratory that impressed me any more than the speech Jimmy Carter made on that Saturday afternoon.” Nearly two years before the 1976 election Thompson began acting as an informal adviser to the Georgia governor’s nascent presidential campaign.

  February 5, 1975

  Plains, GA

  To Hunter Thompson:

  We’ll contact your friend Dixon.1

  Maybe I’ll see you while campaigning, unless you’ve graduated to favorites & are traveling with Scoop.2

  Everything looks good so far. It’s a great country & I am enjoying the campaign & intend to win.

  Come to see us.

  Jimmy

  TO JANN WENNER, ROLLING STONE:

  Thompson was frustrated by his undefined relationship with Rolling Stone.

  March 10, 1975

  Woody Creek, CO

  Jann …

  I’ve been trying to get into the Coors memo for about two hours & I just figured out why I’m having so much trouble getting started on it—to wit: I am immensely fucking pissed off about that vicious sandbag job you laid on me vis-à-vis the C-76 book contract. I’ve spent the past 72 hours skiing, shooting & eating acid in a deliberate attempt to keep my mind off the whole stinking business—but now that I’m back at the machine I feel like I’m sitting in a bathtub full of pus and my sense of humor is still locked in reverse.

  I haven’t talked to either you or Lynn since Thursday night, so I have no idea if or whether there are any new developments or possible solutions … which would be nice, but I can’t conceive of anything right now that could effectively remove the memory of you sitting out here in my living room with the fire & the music & the coke (and even Bangkok Fred), acting like a human being while we worked over that proposal of yours … and then going back to San Francisco & driving a stake through the heart of the whole relationship so casually that you only saw fit to mention it as an afterthought in an hour-long conversation when I happened to bring it up about 10 days later—which still leaves me wondering when you might have gotten around to telling me about the tragic & unforeseen “death of the book division” if I hadn’t asked specifically about that contract you said you were going to send.

  … and there is the ugly nut of it: not that money problems or other, more ominous factors forced the demise of the book company, but that you came out here and laid a near-perfect con job on me while wallowing in an atmosphere of friendliness and hospitality that might be hard to revive on your next visit. The next time you feel like accusing ex-RS editors of “taking advantage,” think back on your recent vacation out here.

  Anyway, by the time you get this I assume we’ll be into another round of haggling—which depresses the shit out of me, but I can’t see any way around it unless we just take a goddamn public hammer to the whole relationship and let the bone chips fall where they may. I am frankly not in favor of this course, but I’ve given it enough thought to feel pretty certain I’ll survive the worst that can happen if you want to seriously get it on.

  Meanwhile, I am sitting here on a massive pile of work projects (pending visits to Carter, Harris,3 Chicago, etc., plus Coors, Zaire, the Brown-Davis tapes, the HST anthology tapes, “Guts Ball”… Jesus, there’s no end to it) … and I still have no focus or framework for any of it, except that hazy one-page contract that has never—as we both know from long experience—been anything more than a reference point for that “spirit of the contract” that I’ve tried to explain to you as long and persistently as you’ve refused to even recognize it.

  God’s mercy on your ass when your time comes to explain yourself to the Lords of Karma (sp?), but in the meantime we should make some kind of legally & financially binding agreement as to my professional relationship with The Empire, however arthritic it may or may not be at this point. At the moment, we have the existing “contract,” which [John] Clancy assures me is valid inre: fees & expenses—but which we both know is useless in a fog of either personal or professional animosity. No doubt there are numerous ambitious typists who’d be happy to “cover politics” on the cheap for RS, and if that’s what you think you need, why not just write me a letter and say so? There’s no need to skulk around like Sidney Zion; just send a memo down to Baker4 and have me declared a non-person … and then send Cockburn5 a note about what a flaky greedhead I am.

  Until then, however, I have to proceed on the assumption that I’ll be covering the ’76 campaign, more or less, for RS and also for a book of some kind, for somebody. To the best of my recollection & taking all the obvious risks into consideration, I think we agreed that you’re prepared to pay for twelve (12) relatively short articles, one each month throughout 1976, in exchange for a $25K salary and a $30K expense budget … which is okay, I guess, but without a book contract it leaves me in a fairly obvious no-profit situation—due to a heavy cut in fees because of the shorter articles and also an expense budget $2500 short of what I required in ’72 and so clearly on the low side that not even you, thus far, have argued that it might be adequate to cover my real expenses.

  But I can live with that, just as long as we get the details in writing—so we won’t spend the whole goddamn year haggling about whether I really needed a red convertible to cover the Texas primary or whether my reimbursement for out-of-pocket expenses depends entirely on the printed word-yield from every conversation with any candidate or staffer, regardless of the circumstances. This puts me in a position, for instance, of having to pay my own way if I want to spend three days raving drunk with Fred Harris in Nova Scotia—a situation I obviously couldn’t use in print, and therefore wouldn’t get paid for. Only an editor with cheap shit for brains would put me, of all people, into that kind of a crippling bind; it not only robs us of all the natural edge I built up during the ’72 campaign, but it puts me in a position of having to carefully censor my copy for RS and save vast chunks of otherwise inimitable copy for the pages of some book that may or may not ever see print. The only parallel that comes quickly to mind is that week I spent in Chicago in August of ’68, filling notebooks for some book that never happened and with no magazine assignment for a story I still regard as the heaviest thing I ever covered … and if I wanted to get genuinely ugly on this point, I could look back in the bound copies of RS and find the RS pre-convention “coverage” on Chicago. It was, as I recall, very much like your pre-Woodstock coverage a year or so later.

  And so much for all that. I have to think you’ve divined the nature of what I’ve been trying to say for the past hours…. No doubt there are areas where I seem to misunderstand the essential truth & beauty of your real intentions, and if so I’m prepared to apologize when you pinpoint my errors. But before you get started on that chore, let me remind you once again that for the purposes of this letter I’ve systematically discounted all verbal agreements or once-natural assumptions that may or may not have previously seemed to exist between us. I have listened to too many tapes of our other summit meetings (remember the “Half-Moon Conference”?) and scanned too many hand-scrawled notes from your recent visit to have any faith, for now, in anything but legally binding documents.

  And we are stark fucking naked of those, with regard to C-76. What, for instance, is the status of the “Paris provision” at this point? Or where does a thing like my “Billy the Geek” odds-making feature fit into RS’s C-76 coverage? If it turns out that Scoop Jackson is heavily into Kitameen [sic]6 during the primaries, will I be allotted (and paid for) enough space in RS to deal with that? Or will it have to be saved for the book? Or sold quick to somebody else? I don’t mind keeping those elegant tangents off the RS Mojo Wire, but I sure as hell don’t intend to disregard them just because you want tighter & cheaper copy. If you want Time & Newsweek–style squibs on the ’76 campaign, I understand former Newsweek political reporter Dick Stout is out of work & I c
ould almost certainly get you his phone number.

  Jesus … it’s 6:44 on Monday morning now and I still haven’t touched all this Coors garbage stacked up to the left of the typewriter. But I haven’t written a real letter to anybody in a while, and I think it’s sort of nice to have this one for the record, if nothing else. I don’t have the slightest fucking idea what you’ll make of it, and until I hear from you I’m going to keep on acting like a writer who plans on covering the ’76 campaign for RS …but not on credit cards, old sport. I’ve been down that dirty road before.

  The one thing you can be sure of, though, is that I’ll have a room at the Wayfarer Motor Inn during the New Hampshire primary, and I’ll be writing for somebody. In the words of my associate, Herr Bloor: “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

  Either way, we should get this thing firmly settled very soon. No doubt you’ve already spoken with Lynn, and if that fails you’ll be hearing from Clancy … and then Bloor. I never expected to find myself writing you a letter like this; but then life is full of surprises, eh? I think Bob Dylan wrote a song about it.

  Cazart,

  HST

  TO PAUL SCANLON, ROLLING STONE:

  Thompson traveled to Southeast Asia in April 1975 to cover the fall of Saigon and its aftermath for Rolling Stone.

  April 21, 1975

  Saigon

  Paul the phone lines are temporarily out of order here and I can’t call so here is how I see the situation. I will file another 2000/ two thousand or maybe a bit more if possible, which should start reaching you Monday afternoon or Monday night and Tuesday morning. If you don’t have room for that much or my timetable is wrong, you must repeat must telex me back here immediately so I can adjust. Also I must repeat must know something definite from you about my arrangement with Palmer7 who is already working so this is important. Thanx, Hunter.

  TO COLONEL VO DAN GIANG, PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT OF VIETNAM:

  Colonel Vo Dan Giang was spokesman in Saigon for the PRG, or Vietcong.

  April 22, 1975

  Continental Palace Hotel

  Suite 37

  Saigon

  Col. Vo Dan Giang, PRG

  c/o Ton San Nhut Airbase

  Saigon

  Dear Colonel Giang …

  I am the National Affairs editor of Rolling Stone, a San Francisco–based magazine with offices in New York, Washington and London that is one of the most influential journalistic voices in America right now—particularly among the young and admittedly left-oriented survivors of the anti-war Peace Movement in the 1960s. I’m not an especially good typist, but I am one of the best writers currently using the English language as both a musical instrument and a political weapon …and if there is any way you can possibly arrange it in the near future, I’d be very honored to have a private meeting with you and talk for an hour or so about your own personal thoughts right now.

  We would need the help of one of your interpreters, because my French is a joke, my Spanish is embarrassing and my command of Vietnamese is nonexistent. I came to Saigon two weeks ago, just after the panic at Da Nang, because I wanted to see the end of this stinking war with my own eyes after fighting it in the streets of Berkeley and Washington for the past ten years.

  And the reason I’m writing you this note is that I was very much impressed by the way you handled your Saturday press conference the first time I attended, on the Saturday before last. That was the one in which you made three or four specific references to the dark fate awaiting “American military advisors posing as journalists”—and each time you mentioned that phrase, you seemed to be looking directly at me.

  Which is understandable, on one level, because I’ve been told by my friend Jean-Claude Labbe that I definitely look like that type. But we both know that “looks” are very often deceiving, and almost anybody among the American press in Saigon today will tell you that—despite my grim appearance—I am the most obvious and most well-known politically radical journalist in your country today.

  In any case: Shortly after leaving your press conference I called my associate, Tom Hayden, at his home in Los Angeles and asked him what he knew about you. Tom, as you know, is married to the American actress Jane Fonda, and they have both been among the strongest voices in the Peace Movement for the past ten years. Tom Hayden is also an editor of Rolling Stone, as you can see by the enclosed masthead … and when I asked him about you on the phone, he said I should make every effort to meet you because he considered you one of the most intelligent and humane leaders of the PRG. He also said you have a sense of humor and that I’d probably like you personally.

  I had already picked up that feeling, after watching your press conference, and I am writing you now with the hope that we can arrange a brief and informal private meeting very soon. I think I understand the political reality of the PRG, but I’m not sure I understand the Human reality—and I have a sense that you could help me on that latter point. You might be surprised to know how many of the American journalists in Saigon today admire you and call you their friend.

  I understand that a letter like this one puts you in a difficult position at this time, so I won’t be personally offended if you decide against having a talk with me … but I trust you to understand that, as a professional para-journalist, I am in the same situation today that you were as a para-military professional about three years ago … and if you have any serious doubts about my personal and political views, please ask one of your friends to stop by the Hotel Continental, #37, and pick up a copy of my book on the 1972 presidential campaign in America. I will give the book to anybody who asks me for “the book for Che.” Or I’ll bring it to you myself, if there is any way you can invite me into your compound out there…. And, as a matter of fact, if there is going to be any real “battle for Saigon,” I think I’d feel safer out there with you and your people than I would in the midst of some doomed and stupid “American Evacuation Plan,” dreamed up by that senile death-monger, Graham Martin.8

  If you think it might be of any help to you to have a well-known American writer with you out there in the compound when the “battle” starts, I’ll be happy to join you for a few days in your bunker…. But that is not the kind of arrangement I can make on my own; it would require some help from you, to let me pass quietly through the checkpoints outside your compound … and I give you my word that I’ll do that, if you can make the arrangements and let me know.

  Okay for now. I hope to see you soon … but even if I don’t, allow me to offer my personal congratulations for the work you’ve done and the very pure and dramatic victory you’ve accomplished. I can only feel saddened by all the pain and death and suffering this ugly war has caused on all sides … but your victory, I think, is a victory for all of us who believe that man is still capable of making this world a better, more peaceful and generous place for all our sons and daughters to live in.

  This is the kind of thing I’d like to talk to you about—not such things as “battle strategy” or your current political plans. That is not my style—as a journalist or a human being—and besides, you’ll soon be getting all the questions you can handle on those subjects. No pack of jackals has ever been more single-mindedly obtuse in their hunger for news/meat than the army of standard-brand American journalists who will soon be hounding you for wisdom and explanations. I can only wish you luck with that problem, and I hope we can have a quick and friendly private visit before you get caught up on that tiresome merry-go-round.

  As for me, I won’t stay in Vietnam much longer, unless I hear from you in the next few days. I may return in a few months, but I am homesick for the peace and quiet of my log-house in Colorado and I want to get back there as soon as possible. My home address in America is Owl Farm, Woody Creek, Colorado 81656—or you can reach me in care of any one of the Rolling Stone offices listed on the enclosed masthead. I am also a friend of Senator George McGovern, Senators Gary Hart and Ted Kennedy, and former Senators Eugene McCarthy and Fr
ed Harris … so if I can be of any help to you as a friendly contact in Washington, feel free to communicate with me at any time and I’ll do whatever I can … but in the meantime, I hope you’ll let me know, by whatever means you think best, if there is any chance for us to get together: perhaps even here in the Continental for a quiet bit of drink and talk with a few of your friends in the American press. I have a feeling you’ll be a welcome guest in this place fairly soon and I think you’ll enjoy it.

  And that’s all I have to say at this time. It is five minutes before six in the morning and I need to get some sleep, so I’ll end this letter now and take it around to my friend who plans to deliver it to you.

  Very sincerely,

  Hunter S. Thompson

  TO JANN WENNER, ROLLING STONE:

  Uncomfortable, unproductive, and eager to leave Vietnam, Thompson was outraged by the lack of communication from his employer—especially after Rolling Stone canceled his insurance policy and reneged on paying his expenses in Indochina. This missive marks an ongoing dispute between Thompson and Wenner that remains a source of contention.

  April, 1975

  On the Road, somewhere

  in Indochina

  Jann your most recent emission of lunatic, greed-crazed instructions to me was good for a lot of laughs here in Saigon … especially among people who are being paid war-risk salaries, operating with unlimited war-risk expense-budgets and whose employers are paying their special seventy-five dollar a day war-risk life insurance … while my own life insurance policy was automatically cancelled on the day I got here and your obviously deliberate failure to reply in any repeat any way to my numerous requests by phone, cable and carrier for some clarification vis-à-vis what the fuck I might or might not be paid for whatever I’m doing out here makes a stupid, dimesucker’s joke of your idea that I’m going to lounge around out here in the middle of a war at my own expense and with no idea as to what I might write, on spec, about your mythical chopper evacuation and my notes on my summer vacation in “tent city” at Subic Bay. You ought to read my copy from last week before you start jabbering about what I should do next. Or did you ever receive my copy from last week?