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.”

-- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

“Rude Notes from a Decompression Chamber in Miami”. . . June '73

From : Raoul Duke, Sports Editor

To: Main/Edit Control

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

Subject: Imminent emergence of Dr. Thomspon from the Decompression Chamber in Miami, and probably 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. . .

EDITOR'S 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 Yucatan Coast of Mexico, at a depth of some 300 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.