Dr. Thompson was unconscious in the decompression chamber -- a round steel cell about 12 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 14 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 “ghost-writer,” 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 connexion 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.