transcribed from audio interview at http://abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/mediarpt/audio/hunters290802.ram starting around minute 22 or so. (Not perfectly transcribed but mostly there) Note that the audio will not be available after a couple of weeks, so listen now.
Q: what I'd really like to know is your reactions on September 11th .. could I get you to tell that story ... (snip)
.... A: No, the event by itself would not have done that. I've seen planes hit the Empire State Building before, I've been blown totally out of my mind, people have been killed, but it was the way the administration was able to use that event and use it as a springboard for anything they wanted to do. Now that may tell you something. I remember when I was writing that column, you sort of wonder when something like that happens, well, who stands to benefit, You know, it's like murder, you know, who had the opportunity and the motive, you just kinda look at these basic things, and Uh, I don't know if I want to go into this on world-wide radio here, but
Q: You may as well
A: All right, I thought that the US government was gonna benefit, and the White House people. I thought, a distraction to take the mind of the public off of the crashing economy. Now you want to keep in mind that every time a person named Bush goes into office, the nation goes into a drastic --recession, they call it.
Q: It sounds almost like the plot of that film Wag the Dog, where film producers sort of concocted a national event to inspire patriotism to take the public's mind off misdemeanors committed by the president, I mean, it seems a very long bow to me, but are you sort of suggesting that this worked in the favor of the Bush administration?
A: absolutely, I sort of had time on the inside of the white house and of campaigns and I know enough to know that the public version of an event is never really what happened, and these people I think are willing to take that even further so that I don't assume that I know the truth about what went on that day and yeah, well, I just look around and who had the motive, who had the opportunity, the equipment, and the will. These people were looting the treasury and they knew that the economy was going into a spiral downward
Q: from this distance though it does seem extraordinarily conspiratorial that you, that you could sit there and you could see the hand of the US government in that rather than saying international terrorists bent on somehow hurting America and the American people. What sort of reaction did your views get amongst other journalists?
A: (Laughs) well, it was greeted universally with kind of nervousness and almost nobody agreed with me. No it was about 99 to 1. But since then...
Q: Did you publish those views anywhere?
A: I'm not sure if I've said that, but if I haven't I meant to, let's see..
Q: I was going to ask you for the reaction to them, because I mean I don't want to seem Pollyanaish here but it does seem an extraordinary conspiracy theory that you're putting forward, that your first reaction was that it was the US government rather than an enemy of the US government
A: well, you want to keep in mind that I have lived not just through but very close to a lot of real tragedies in this country, and let me ask you, do you think that you know who killed John Kennedy or Robert Kennedy?
Q: Look, I have to say that I was a boy at the time, and no I haven't read the warren commission report, but it seemed to me that in this case, there were so many more people involved, it would seem to be much less likely some sort of internal conspiracy
Rolling Stone - October 20, 2004
[full text at <<http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/6562575>http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/6562575>.]
"Four more years of George Bush will be like four more years of syphilis," the famed author said yesterday at a hastily called press conference near his home in Woody Creek, Colorado. "Only a fool or a sucker would vote for a dangerous loser like Bush," Dr. Thompson warned. "He hates everything we stand for, and he knows we will vote against him in November."
Thompson, long known for the eerie accuracy of his political instincts, went on to denounce Ralph Nader as "a worthless Judas Goat with no moral compass."
"I endorsed John Kerry a long time ago," he said, "and I will do everything in my power, short of roaming the streets with a meat hammer, to help him be the next President of the United States."
*****
Which is true. I said all those things, and I will say them again. Of course I will vote for John Kerry. I have known him for thirty years as a good man with a brave heart -- which is more than even the president's friends will tell you about George W. Bush, who is also an old acquaintance from the white-knuckle days of yesteryear. He is hated all over the world, including large parts of Texas, and he is taking us all down with him.
Bush is a natural-born loser with a filthy-rich daddy who pimped his son out to rich oil-mongers. He hates music, football and sex, in no particular order, and he is no fun at all.
I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, but I will not make that mistake again. The joke is over for Nader. He was funny once, but now he belongs to the dead. There is nothing funny about helping George Bush win Florida again. Nader is a fool, and so is anybody who votes for him in November -- with the obvious exception of professional Republicans who have paid big money to turn poor Ralph into a world-famous Judas Goat.
Nader has become so desperate and crazed that he's stooped to paying homeless people to gather signatures to get him on the ballot. In Pennsylvania, the petitions he submitted contained tens of thousands of phony signatures, including Fred Flintstone, Mickey Mouse and John Kerry. A judge dumped Ralph from the ballot there, saying the forms were "rife with forgeries" and calling it "the most deceitful and fraudulent exercise ever perpetrated upon this court."
But they will keep his name on the ballot in the long-suffering Hurricane State, which is ruled by the President's younger brother, Jeb, who also wants to be the next President of the United States. In 2000, when they sent Jim Baker down to Florida, I knew it was all over. The fix was in. In that election, 97,488 people voted for Nader in Florida, and Gore lost the state by 537 votes. You don't have to be from Texas to understand the moral of that story. It's like being out-coached in the Super Bowl. There are no rules in the passing lane. Only losers play fair, and all winners have blood on their hands.
*****
Back in June, when John Kerry was beginning to feel like a winner, I had a quick little rendezvous with him on a rain-soaked runway in Aspen, Colorado, where he was scheduled to meet with a harem of wealthy campaign contributors. As we rode to the event, I told him that Bush's vicious goons in the White House are perfectly capable of assassinating Nader and blaming it on him. His staff laughed, but the Secret Service men didn't. Kerry quickly suggested that I might make a good running mate, and we reminisced about trying to end the Vietnam War in 1972.
That was the year I first met him, at a riot on that elegant little street in front of the White House. He was yelling into a bullhorn and I was trying to throw a dead, bleeding rat over a black-spike fence and onto the president's lawn.
We were angry and righteous in those days, and there were millions of us. We kicked two chief executives out of the White House because they were stupid warmongers. We conquered Lyndon Johnson and we stomped on Richard Nixon -- which wise people said was impossible, but so what? It was fun. We were warriors then, and our tribe was strong like a river.
That river is still running. All we have to do is get out and vote, while it's still legal, and we will wash those crooked warmongers out of the White House.