Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

by Hunter S. Thompson

  Ed: Which what? Which in turn would make McGovern look good?

  HST: Yeah, if Eagleton had turned out… if the records had been available… See, Eagleton never showed McGovern his medical records. He kept saying he would bring them to South Dakota.

  Ed: Did McGovern keep asking him?

  HST: Oh, yes. They kept… they couldn’t believe it when he didn’t show up with them in South Dakota.

  Ed: He promised that he was going to bring them?

  HST: He promised it for about ten days and finally he said that the psychiatrists wouldn’t release them, the Mayo Clinic wouldn’t release them, the Barnes Hospital wouldn’t release them.

  Ed: Why wouldn’t the hospital release records to a patient?

  HST: Well, the answer is… the question is the answer.

  Ed: So it wasn’t true. He just did not bring the records for his own reasons.

  HST: Well, would you want to go… would you go to a psychiatrist who you thought would release his own personal diagnosis of your condition?

  Ed: No, but he promised McGovern the records and he did not produce the records. He could have produced the records.

  HST: Yes, he could have.

  Ed: Yes, he could have.

  HST: By the end of the campaign McGovern had still not seen the records, but at that point… he didn’t care anymore.

  Ed: Okay, now back to perception and reality—and Mankiewicz.

  HST: When I talked to Mankiewicz about the Eagleton records, he denied knowing anything about it at all, whereas, in fact, he knew exactly what I’d just said about… severe psychosis and so forth…

  Ed: What he later told Haynes.

  HST: I gave him the same words, exactly.

  Ed: And he denied it.

  HST: Right. He denied it. But what he told me was that I should go out to St. Louis and look… and look for the records on my own. He said, “I’m surprised that some of you people haven’t gone out there and worked on it,” speaking of the journalists. He was hinting that the records were there, but that was as far as he would go. They were afraid, as I said… well, they knew that the information had to come from somebody other than from the McGovern camp in order to have any kind of credibility, or otherwise it would look like…

  Ed: Like they were trying to make Eagleton look bad.

  HST: Yeah, and Eagleton kept accusing them of it… constantly… saying that these bastards have not only spiked my career but now they’re trying to make it look worse in order to make themselves look good. Whereas, in fact, McGovern and about six of his top people knew that the information was there to get their hands on, but they couldn’t do it… What I tried to do was to go out and buy them or find somebody who would steal them out of the safe at Rennard Hospital.

  Ed: At what hospital?

  HST: Rennard Hospital. That’s where they are… in St. Louis.

  Ed: They’re still there?

  HST: Yeah, but they’re not public “records” in any real public sense.

  Ed: I understand, but they could be released at the request of a patient.

  HST: Yes, at the request of the patient.

  Ed: So the public perceived McGovern to be the bad guy, when in fact it was really Eagleton. And McGovern never recovered from that change in his image.

  HST: No, to the extent that it damaged him… Pat Caddell has very convincing figures on that. Their polling from July, September to November shows that the Eagleton affair had hurt McGovern so badly that the fact is the figures went off the end of the board. It was totally impossible to recover from that… the damage was so great particularly among the younger voters where McGovern’s potential strength lay.

  Ed: Why were there so many defections over Eagleton among McGovern’s youngest supporters?

  HST: They were the people who would be more inclined to be sympathetic—because they were more sophisticated—to a person who had been treated for nervous tension, even if he had gone to the extent of having electro-shock treatments. They were not the kind of people who would say, “Oh, that nut—get rid of him.” They were also the same kind of people who had earlier seen McGovern as an anti-politician… or the “white knight,” as some people called him… The honest man… Not the kind of person who would say one thing and do another. And at that point with Eagleton, as he said, he was behind him 1000 percent. Then he turned around and asked him to get off the ticket.

  Ed: It was at that point McGovern said “1000 percent?”

  HST: One of the weird unanswered questions is whether McGovern actually said 1000 percent to anyone but Eagleton.

  Ed: Well, who reported that McGovern said, “I was behind you 1000 percent?”

  HST: Eagleton reported it.

  Ed: Eagleton reported it, but McGovern never denied it… he couldn’t have, of course.

  HST: He didn’t deny it and Mankiewicz explained to me… he said, we had to do that. We came to a point where we either had to back him totally, or dump him. There was no middle way.

  Ed: So they decided to back him totally. What made them change their minds?

  HST: The reaction from all over the country… the party hierarchy… mainly the financial people. The money flow stopped completely.

  Ed: The money flow stopped completely because of Eagleton? Was there ever any… in other words, the money people said, you have to get rid of Eagleton or we’re not going to put any more money into this campaign.

  HST: Oh, it wasn’t just the money people… They said that… But it was also Jean Westwood, Larry O’Brien, Mayor Daley, all the pros, who said we simply can’t do it. Mankiewicz had said the same thing. Just as soon as the Eagleton story broke. He said: “Let’s get rid of this guy.”

  Ed: Frank said that? “Let’s get rid of this guy?” Right away?

  HST: Yeah. In the Haynes Johnson story Mankiewicz said that he was speaking both for himself and Gary Hart when he went to McGovern right after they found out about the information on Eagleton, the initial information, the stuff that was published. He said, “I remember that night I called him ‘George’ which I vowed I would not do during the campaign. I indicated I was speaking for Gary and myself.” Mankiewicz told McGovern, “Let’s get rid of this guy.”

  Ed: That was the first time he had called Senator McGovern George? That seems unusual.

  HST: Yeah, that puzzled me all throughout the campaign, because I remember when I first met McGovern over at Tom Braden’s house back in December… He came over for dinner, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to call him George… like I had called Tom Braden, columnist from the Washington Post “Tom,” and… people would call Robert Kennedy “Bobby.” One of the… sort of… consistent indicators of the tone of the McGovern campaign and McGovern’s personality was the fact that nobody in the campaign, including Mankiewicz, who was the closest person to him in the campaign, ever called him anything but “The Senator” or addressed him as “Senator,” which struck me as very peculiar.

  HST: At first I called him George, but then I began to feel weird, because I was the only person that called him that. My wife called him that… I never heard anyone else call him “George.”

  Ed: What did you call Hubert Humphrey? Did you speak to him first face to face?

  HST: I didn’t get the chance to address Humphrey directly. I was introduced to him once, though… He had a habit of wandering up and down the aisle of his plane.

  Ed: This was on the Humphrey campaign plane?

  HST: In California, yeah. I went out there… after I called him all these wretched things. I figured I owed them a free shot at me since I’d taken so many at them. I went out to the Lockheed factory with Hubert… whoever makes the L-1011. Yeah, it must be Lockheed… in Palmdale, I think it was.

  Ed: In California?

  HST: Yeah, it was during the California primary. I figured I should spend at least one day on the Humphrey plane… so I called his press office at the Beverly Hilton and I said I’d be on it—and I thought, well Jesus
, here we go—I’ll get a beating now…. And when I came on Humphrey was walking up and down the aisle. One of his press aides was sort of escorting him and saying this is so and so, from so and so… Then he got to me and said, “Who are you?” And I said I was Hunter Thompson from Rolling Stone, and he said how do you spell that… So at the top of his voice he insisted that I spell Hunter Thompson… then I had to spell Rolling Stone.

  Ed: They’d never heard of you?

  HST: Of course they had—Newsweek had just quoted me in two consecutive issues, calling Humphrey “a treacherous, gutless old ward-heeler”—that bullshit about spelling was just their way of getting back at me. I guess they thought I’d be embarrassed. The whole Humphrey trip was run by waterheads… but there was no way I could avoid that crap and I figured… you know… they deserved a free shot by that time.

  Ed: When you spoke to Nixon, how did you address him?

  HST: I don’t think I did. I’m very uncomfortable with titles.

  Ed: What did Nixon call you?

  HST: “Hunter”… We were talking about football. He was feeling very relaxed.

  Ed: We seem to be getting off the track. We were discussing the difference between “perception” and “reality” in the handling of the Eagleton affair. The public perceived Eagleton to be the good guy…

  HST: Excuse me, but I think I see a mescaline dealer down there in the street.

  Ed: No… pull the curtains, pull the curtains.

  HST: I should call my attorney.

  Ed: Maybe we should get your personal physician back here. You’re acting very tense, very nervous… we can’t even think about mescaline dealers right now. We’re on a crisis schedule with this book…. Do you want to say anything further about the way McGovern handled the Eagleton problem?

  HST: I think he handled it very badly. There were two people in the campaign… in the sort of top echelon, who made the strongest possible case with George for unloading Eagleton.

  Ed: Who? When was this?

  HST: Right after it happened, the day the story broke. It was a Tuesday, as I recall—the last Tuesday in July.

  Ed: Who argued for dumping Eagleton?

  HST: Well… Eleanor McGovern was the first one. But that’s not what I mean here, because she wanted to dump him in Miami, about two minutes after she heard he’d been selected to be on the ticket. She was the only person in Miami who was openly, out-front opposed to Eagleton right from the start—except me, of course, but people like Hart and Mankiewicz never took my opinions very seriously anyway… and in Miami I wasn’t down on Eagleton because I knew any foul secrets about him; neither did Eleanor…. But when I was talking to Stearns and Bill Dougherty [McGovern advisor, William Dougherty, Lieutenant Governor of South Dakota] on the beach that Saturday afternoon after the convention, I told him Eagleton looked like the first big mistake they’d made, up to then—because he seemed out of place in that campaign; he was a hack, just another one of these cheap hustlers—and Dougherty said it was kind of funny to hear me saying almost exactly the same things Eleanor had been saying about Eagleton….

  Ed: Bill Dougherty said that? In Miami?

  HST: Yeah, but I didn’t print it. Stearns and I were out on the beach drinking beer when Bill saw us… He just came over and sat down, without realizing I had my tape recorder going, so I figured it wasn’t fair to use some of the brutally frank things he said that day…. I edited them out of the tape transcription.

  Ed: Too bad—but let’s get back to what happened when the Eagleton story actually broke. Who wanted to dump him?

  HST: Mankiewicz didn’t even want him to come to South Dakota—he wanted to dump him the minute he heard about it—the shock treatments.

  Ed: Mankiewicz wanted to dump Eagleton immediately? And McGovern said no?

  HST: McGovern wasn’t sure.

  Ed: So you say Mankiewicz handled the situation badly.

  HST: Well, you can’t blame it on Frank. Mankiewicz couldn’t dump him; McGovern had to. And Gary Hart was… at first… under the impression that they should ride it out, or at least, try to ride it out. That was the rationale behind the 1000 percent… let’s back him… they couldn’t back him 99 percent… or 84 percent… they had to back him 1000 percent… or a million percent, or whatever… In other words, they had to back him or dump him.

  Ed: And they wound up doing neither, really.

  HST: Right, and that was the pattern of their blunders all through the campaign. It happened with welfare, the thousand dollar per person scheme; it happened with the Salinger trip to Paris to talk with the Viet Cong.

  Ed: Did Salinger go to Hanoi or did he go to Paris?

  HST: To Paris.

  Ed: To negotiate with the Viet Cong representatives? To make a deal of some kind?

  HST: Not really to make a deal, but to establish a contact… McGovern told him to do it and then denied it.

  Ed: I see. McGovern had sent Salinger to Paris and then denied it.

  HST: No, he didn’t send him, he asked him to go—Pierre was going to Paris anyway, he lives there. So McGovern asked him to see what he could find out about getting some POW’s released.

  Ed: So the public’s perception of McGovern was distorted—but you think that McGovern essentially was at the root of that distortion.

  “I had three main reasons. The first was political and personal—he had lied to us and we couldn’t have him around… the second was the public reaction that inevitably would come from these kinds of reports… and the third was patriotism. In other words, did we want this man to be in the position to be President?” ANNIE LEIBOVITZ

  HST: I think his indecisiveness was at the root of that distortion. At every crisis in the campaign McGovern appeared to be—was perceived to be—and, in fact, was indecisive… for unnatural periods of time.

  Ed: Unnatural periods of time?

  HST: Well, unsettling periods of time. The selection of a replacement for Eagleton was one of the most heinous botches in the history of politics. Here he was calling Humphrey and Muskie and offering it to them publicly—and then being turned down… He had also offered it to Humphrey at the convention… I didn’t realize that until later.

  Ed: He had offered it to Humphrey before he offered it to Eagleton?

  HST: Yeah. Informally. Like a peace offering—symbolic.

  Ed: Informally, symbolic. Very subtle, eh?

  HST: And Humphrey turned it down informally. Humphrey was in a fit of pique at the convention.

  Ed: So throughout the campaign McGovern exhibited these alarming tendencies, which the public perceived to be indecision.

  HST: It was indecision.

  Ed: But nevertheless, you think that Eagleton was really more of a villain than the public ever knew.

  HST: Absolutely.

  Ed: Let’s get back to the airplane… The last thing I remember was that the pilot had his clothes off and you were landing in… where was it… were you back in Sioux Falls?

  HST: Sacramento.

  Ed: Sacramento?

  HST: That was a flashback.

  Ed: Well, let’s focus on Sioux Falls. The Zoo Plane and the Dakota Queen are landing in Sioux Falls and it’s the night before the election…. You said previously that everyone’s mood was somewhat sober, that most of the key people in McGovern’s staff knew at this point there was no chance.

  HST: Everybody on both planes knew what was going to happen. But the dimensions of the defeat—that was a real shock—but nobody thought McGovern was going to win. It was out of the question. And because of that, I think, there was a mood of suspended hysteria on the Zoo Plane, which would probably have happened on the other plane too, if McGovern hadn’t been there. But in deference to the candidate, his wife, his family, his close personal friends, all those people, the mood there was… almost a sort of peaceful resignation.

  Ed: Is it true that McGovern has an illegitimate twenty-two-year-old son?

  HST: Hmmm… Well, I think you’d better… ah… let’s
call him and ask. I have his number over here in this book….

  Ed: One last question about this trip from Long Beach to Sioux Falls: Why was this second plane called the Zoo Plane and how widespread was the use of dangerous narcotics in the campaign and on this particular trip?

  HST: Well, let’s first deal with the fact that “drugs” are not necessarily narcotics. We want to get that clear in our minds. The narcotic is one type of drug and…

  Ed: Excuse me, I…

  HST: Coffee is a drug… yes, there were drugs being used… booze is a drug… many drugs…. They’re all around us these days.

  Ed: I understand you’re an expert….

  HST: Well… I’ve been studying drugs for years.

  Ed: A student of pharmacology.

  HST: I make a point of knowing what I’m putting into myself. Yes…. The Zoo Plane: I’m not sure who named it that, but the name derived from the nature of the behavior of the people on it… It was very much like a human zoo, and I recall particularly that last flight from Long Beach to Sioux Falls… I remember Tim Crouse’s description of how the older and straighter press people must have felt when they saw five or six freaks reeling around in the cockpit on takeoff and landing, passing joints around. As Tim said, you can imagine how these guys felt. They had heard all these terrible things, they’d read stories about how people in dark corners gathered to pass drugs around, and they always thought that it happened in urine-soaked doorways around Times Square. But all of a sudden here we were covering a presidential campaign and there were joints being passed up and down the aisle: weird people in the cockpit… drug addicts… lunatics… crowding into the cockpit just to get high and wired on the lights. The cockpit had millions of lights all around it… green lights… red lights… all kinds of blinking things—a wonderful place to be. That surge of power in a jet… you don’t get any real sense of it back in the passenger seats, but the feeling… up in front is like riding God’s own motorcycle. You can feel that incredible… at takeoff… that incredible surge of power behind you… in the 727 the engines are way back in the back and you feel like you’re just being lifted off the ground by some kind of hellish force. And the climb angle is something like 45 or 50 degrees… maybe 60 degrees… and then all these green lights blinking and these dials going and there are things buzzing and humming… and looking down seeing the lights here and there… and cities passing and mountain ranges… a wonderful way to go. I think I’m going to have to get a flying license very soon, and maybe one of those Lear jets. Jesus—the possibilities! It beats motorcycles all to hell.