Care for a Drink? Name Your Poison...

Arrested at the White House gates...

The restaurant is decidedly upmarket. Midtown Manhattan glitzy. Strictly an expense account destination. Well-dressed patrons chatting in hushed tones.

The waiter sidles over to our table to say that some of the other diners would rather not listen to a tape recording of folks committing mass suicide, so could we please hold it down a bit?

Let me back up for just a moment. Folks always say to me, “Bob, you were a journalist for like 40 years, so you must have had some really weird experiences, huh?”

I mean, there was that time Michael J. Fox stole my tape recorder, but I’ve already told you about that. And sure, I did have a dinner date with dragon lady Imelda Marcos, but I’ve related that, as well. Oh, and I did get to share hometown memories with Kurt Vonnegut, but that’s old news by now.

So, I guess you want the really, really, wackadoodle stuff. The things they don’t prepare you for in journalism school, which I never went to, anyway. Okay, here are some moments that have stuck with me.

**********

(Aftermath of Gaza convoy attack)

It’s a crisp October day, back in 2003. The ancient oak trees are turning glorious fall colors in the leafy neighborhood of Westmoreland Hills, where I live, just across from the Washington, DC city limits.

I can see my breath. It’s a great morning to be alive. I back my car out onto our quiet lane, waving to my neighbor who’s out in his bathrobe picking up his newspapers. He smiles, and waves back. Norman Rockwell sort of stuff.

When I get to the Reuters office, people are scrambling and shouting. There is the unmistakable energy of a breaking news story. I know it well. I sprint over to the center of the newsroom frenzy.

“Hey, what’s up?”

 “They bombed a U.S. convoy, in. Gaza. Three Americans dead, so far. Our bureau there can’t get the officials to say whether John Wolf was in the convoy, or if he was killed. Wolf is the head of the U.S. Peacekeeping team – if he’s dead, that’s huge! The peace process goes right off the rails!”

“We’re trying our State Department sources here, but so far, no luck. Several big news outlets are already reporting that Wolf was in the convoy, and they don’t know where he is now. It’s total chaos!”

“Yeah, well, you know, I don’t think I’d worry too much about that,” I said.

“What the hell do you mean, don’t worry about that? Are you nuts?”

“Well, it’s just that John Wolf lives across the street from me. We waved at each other just twenty minutes ago. I imagine he’s still in his bathrobe, reading his ‘New York Times…’”

**********

May Day, 1996. I’m the Reuters News Editor for North America. I oversee our news file from nearly two dozen bureaus. We’re in the middle of a presidential election, and the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is visiting the White House today, so I’m kind of busy. Our Washington, DC bureau chief calls me from his office one floor below mine in our H Street headquarters.

“Hey, Bob, Arafat just arrived at the White House.”

“Yeah, did that go okay?”

“Not exactly.”

“Meaning what?”

“They arrested our reporter who is traveling in his entourage. At the White House gate.”

“Wait. Are you fucking with me here?”

“They’re taking her to jail. You need to go meet her in court, to post bail.”

Okay, this obviously was not a good thing. It was time to saddle up my high horse. I mean, whatever they think our reporter did, they’re wrong. She’s a Palestinian, not a terrorist. We’re pretty careful about screening for stuff like that. This arrest had to be a monumental screw-up on somebody’s part.

In the taxi on the way to the lock-up, where I’m meeting our lawyer, I’m practicing my look of incandescent outrage and I’m memorizing the First Amendment. I don’t want to get confused and demand our Second Amendment rights, instead.

Our lawyer is already there, and he’s seen the court documents. I am about to erupt. Just bring it on, coppers!

“So, this is obviously, a mistake. What the hell are they saying she did? Terrorist connections? Did she have a gun? Did she make a threat?”

“No. She didn’t pay back her student loan.”

“Wait. She didn’t do what, now?”

“She went to college in Iowa. She got a loan and didn’t pay it back. She just left the country.”

“They don’t jail people for failing to repay tuition.”

“They do if there is a court proceeding about it and they don’t bother to show up.”

“Oh.” I fold up my miniature First Amendment and put it back in my wallet, then pull out my company Amex Card. It’s time to go meet the deadbeat.

**********

But hold on a minute, this story began with me sitting in a posh Manhattan restaurant, right? I’m quite sure it did. It’s just me and Mark Lane at our table. If you were alive in the last half of the 20^th century, you couldn’t avoid seeing his name.

Wherever conspiracy theories flourished, Mark Lane was there. He was a professional gadfly. His book about the JFK assassination, “Rush to Judgement,” spent two years on the bestseller list. He got involved in the Martin Luther King assassination case, the Vietnam War, Native American rights, and so on. The man spent his whole life getting noticed.

In 1978, while some 900 followers of Reverend Jim Jones died drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid down in Guyana, Lane was hiding nearby in the jungle. And now, a couple of years after barely escaping with his life, he’s written a book about it: “The Strongest Poison: How I Survived the Jonestown, Guyana, Massacre.”

But he doesn’t just have his book at our lunch. He also has a recording of the slaughter, which he made while he was hiding in the jungle. I’m interviewing him about the book, and he has one of those very large tape recorders we used to carry, and he says I need to listen to his tape.

Talk about not reading the room.

Mark punches PLAY, and just in case I can’t hear the carnage clearly enough, he ramps up the volume. Then, he gives it a little shove to my side of the table, circumnavigating the bread basket.

Not so fast, Mark Lane, I’m not going down for this one. With one deft push I send the recorder back to his side of the table. I hate to boast, but my timing is perfect. The device comes to rest against Mark’s water glass, so when the waiter gets to the table, he knows exactly who to blame.

“Sir, some of our customers are getting upset by all this screaming and crying.”

By the time the waiter bothers to cast his gaze in my direction I’ve slid mostly under the table, as far from Jim Jones’ exhortations as I can get.

“Sir, may I start you off with a drink?”

“You sure can. I’ll have anything but the Kool-Aid.”