-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: The Arizona Project Michael Wendland©1977 ISBN 0-8362-0728-9 Sheed Andrews and McMeel, Inc. 6700 Squibb Rd. Misson Kansas 66202 276 pps. - first edition - out-of-print New revised edition - available amazon.com Paperback, 304pp. ISBN: 0945165021 Blue Sky Press, Incorporated June 1988 --[3]-- -3- IRE and Punishment News reporters make enemies.. It comes with the territory. They step on toes, malign reputations and, occasionally, write stories so sensational that people go to jail. Investigative reporters, columnists and radio and television commentators make more enemies than general assignment reporters. Revenge is a constant occupational hazard and not a few journalists have been martyred for their work. Elijah P. Lovejoy was one of the first to die in the line of duty. Owner of the Alton (Illinois) Observer, Lovejoy was the prototype of the crusading editor. He began the small paper in July 1836, and soon afterwards lashed out against slavery on his editorial page. A mob of townsfolk reacted violently. They ransacked Lovejoy's office and tossed his printing press into the Mississippi. Antislavery news stories incited two similar incidents, and each time the Observer's press was destroyed. On September 20, 1837, a fourth printing press arrived. A crowd gathered on Alton's main street as Lovejoy and a group of thirty supporters supervised unloading and installation. The crowd became ugly by the night of the following day and demanded that Lovejoy leave town. He refused, vowing to continue his support for abolition. The mayor urged him to surrender the press but he stood firm. The mob finally stormed the Observer and burned it down. Lovejoy was shot in the chest and died. His murderer was never discovered. The martyrology of American journalism includes the following names: Wesley L. Robertson, editor of the Gallatin (Missouri) Democrat, shot in 1919 by a local politician for linking him to bootleggers. Don Mellet, editor of the Canton (Ohio) Daily News, shot in 1926 by a Canton policeman for exposing vice payoffs to city police. Gerald Buckley, radio commentator on Detroit's WTK, shot in 1930 by three unknown assailants within hours after broadcasting his promise to reveal startling facts on the city's organized crime and corruption on future programs, W. H. "Bill" Mason, radio commentator and sports editor of the Alice (Texas) Echo, shot in 1949 by a deputy sheriff after announcing on the air that the deputy's tavern doubled as a whorehouse. Emilio Milian, the forty-five-year-old news director of Miami's Spanish-language radio station WQBA, was luckier than Don Bolles. Six weeks before the Phoenix incident Milian lost his legs in a similar car bombing. A Cuban himself, he had delivered a number of scathing editorials denouncing a rash of shootings and bombings that had terrorized southeast Florida's large Cuban population that spring. Miami police believe that whoever booby-trapped his car was retaliating for those radio editorials. Despite fifty thousand dollars in reward money, the case was never solved. Until recent years, reporters had the public image of used car salesmen. Portrayed in movies as arrogant and compromising types with questionable ethics, they were perceived as scoop-hungry sensationalists, never willing to let the facts stand in the way of a good story. But then, a number of things happened. A grubby little war that took fifty thousand Americans in Indochina was probably the catalyst. Almost overnight the press started catching our government telling lies. The first lies -were about the war and our conduct of it. There was the My Lai massacre and the Pentagon Papers. Later, the lies seemed to spread everywhere. In 1972, there was a third-rate burglary whose cover-up was initially exposed in print; this was followed by revelations that the FBI and the CIA were not what they should be. On the local level hundreds of hometown reporters searched for mini-Watergates and found some. Government chicanery and corruption, unethical business alliances, organized crime and union racketeering were the targets of newsmen across the nation. Investigative reporters became our new folk heroes and Don Bolles had been one of them. His murder had scared those who practiced the craft. On the afternoon of the bombing Arizona Attorney General Bruce Babbitt extended the chill even further. "It's a departure from the unwritten rule of organized crime that you don't harm members of the press, the cops or the judges, " he said. " I suppose the message is, if it can happen to Don Bolles, then it can happen to anyone." Later, Maricopa County Attorney Don Harris was even more direct. "The Bolles bombing was done as a gesture to the news media to stop looking into this community." Nationwide, reporters got the message. And it made them both frightened and furious. Ron Koziol was late for work the morning of June 3, 1976. State construction crews were repairing the expressway he usually traveled from his southwest suburban home into the city and he sweltered in his Gremlin in stop-and-go traffic all the way downtown. It was too damn hot for the first week of June in Chicago. As he entered the huge city room of the Chicago Tribune, he sheepishly waved to the slot editors. The first edition deadline was over. It was time for coffee and a breather as the reporters and editors prepared for the second edition, three hours away. "This ain't San Francisco, Koziol," hollered one of the deskmen, looking at his watch. "The Hearst case is over, in case you haven't heard. You're ours again." Koziol thought the kidding would never end. From the time newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst was kidnapped in February 1974, to the day she was captured in the fall of 1975, Koziol had stayed on the story almost full time, at one stage living in a rented apartment in Oakland for three months straight. In all, he had made eight separate trips to California pursuing the story. His several nationwide exclusives won him the Tribune's Edward Scott Beck Award for outstanding domestic reporting. Though the Hearst case had ended months before, Koziol was still razzed for his year-and-a-half on the company expense account. He sat down at his desk, lit the first of the twenty cigars he smoked each day, and sipped a cup of coffee as he scanned the Trib's first editions. "Bomb Injures Phoenix Reporter," read the headline on page three. Below was an Associated Press account of the Bolles bombing. "Holy shit," he muttered, spilling his coffee. Ron Koziol knew Don Bolles. They had met in Arizona four years ago while Koziol was putting together a series of stories on the Emprise Corporation's alleged connections to organized crime in Illinois. Bolles was the Emprise expert, the first investigative reporter to dig deep into the background of the sports concession firm. He was glad to help an out-of-town reporter and saved Koziol a lot of legwork. The AP story quoted Bolles as saying "the mob ... Emprise got me." Koziol felt his stomach tighten. At forty-three, Koziol was a veteran newspaperman, who learned his business in the most competitive newspaper town in America, covering police news for almost five years on the city's tough South Side before launching into investigative reporting in 1972. He had been threatened many times. But now another reporter who worked the same story he did was mutilated in a bombing. In early 1974, Koziol disclosed that the firm held the majority stock in a downstate Illinois racetrack. His story led to an intensive investigation into Emprise by the Illinois Racing Board. If Don Bolles was bombed for his reporting on Emprise, Koziol wondered whether he might be next. But the more he thought about it, the more he doubted whether Emprise really had anything to do with it. It just didn't make sense. The scandal was too old and too many other journalists were involved. Koziol figured it was more likely that a minor hoodlum, angered by Bolles's reporting, decided it was time to even the score. And there were plenty of hoodlums in Phoenix. To hear Bolles tell it, half of the Chicago Mafia had moved to the sunny Southwest. Bolles had often telephoned Koziol in Chicago, asking him to check out the backgrounds of Illinois people who had turned up in Phoenix. Tom Carlvin, the Tribune's assistant wire editor, tossed an updated version of the AP story on Koziol's desk. He scanned it quickly and saw that it contained little new information. "You knew this Bolles guy, didn't you?" "Yeah, I knew him," said Koziol, realizing that they were already speaking of Bolles in the past tense. Carlvin shook his head and walked off, promising to send all the wire copy to Koziol so he could keep informed. As he sat there staring at the story, Koziol realized he had been talking about Don Bolles just the week before, as he went over preparations for the first annual convention of a group of unique journalists. In January 1975, during the height of the Hearst case, Koziol suggested to a reporter for Editor and Publisher, a newspaper trade magazine, that investigative reporters around the country should get together more often as a group. As he envisioned it, once a year investigative reporters would gather to swap story ideas and voice common concerns in an informal atmosphere away from their beats. There were a number of problems peculiar to their craft. Rather than relying on public statements and on-the-record interviews, they had to immerse themselves totally in the subject they were looking into. Confusing public records needed to be perused, confidential and usually anonymous sources developed. Loners by nature, often resented by their own staffs because of their odd hours and independence from such mundane newspaper jobs as preparing obituaries and covering routine press conferences, the investigative reporter more often than not found himself alone on a limb. It would be nice, thought Koziol, to meet some others perched on the same tree. His remarks were printed in Editor and Publisher. Koziol was surprised to find his phone at the Tribune ringing steadily from other reporters who agreed with the idea. There already were a number of press organizations. Sigma Delta Chi, a fraternal group for print and electronic newsmen, is the oldest and best known. The Reporters' Committee on Freedom of Information was recently formed to provide legal aid to newsmen who encountered difficulty in gaining access to public documents or who were subpoenaed to reveal the identity of one of their sources. The Fund for Investigative Journalism, supported by grants and donations from philanthropic foundations and civic organizations, was established to aid underfinanced projects like Seymour Hersh's original My Lai stories. But those groups were rather formal. Koziol preferred a looser, more service-minded operation. About the same time Koziol's proposal appeared in the trade magazine, a similar idea had arisen at the Indianapolis Star where reporters had received a $5,000 grant from the Lilly Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the huge pharmaceutical firm, to arrange for a caucus of investigative reporters. This meeting was held in Reston, Virginia, the weekend of February 22 and 23, 1975. Attending were such media heavies as syndicated columnist Jack Anderson and his associate Les Whitten; David Burnham of the New York Times; Len Downie, metropolitan editor of the Washington Post; Jack Landau, Newhouse Newspapers Washington correspondent; and Paul Williams, an Ohio State University journalism professor who won the Pulitzer Prize in the early seventies for his expose of Boys' Town. The Indianapolis Star reporters, Harley Bierce, thirty-three, and Myrta Pulliam, twenty-eight, the daughter of the Star's publisher and granddaughter of Nina Pulliam, the publisher of the Arizona Republic, explained the reason for the gathering. After a six-month investigation into Indianapolis's 1,100-man police department, a special Star investigative team exposed widespread bribery and extortion by Indianapolis police officers in a lengthy series of articles. The series won the Drew Pearson Award for Investigative Reporting. But it also suggested the need for a national network of reporters. "We found that there were trails involving local people which we couldn't follow because they went out of our area," explained Bierce. "Finding someone in another city or knowing where to look in another city was strictly guesswork." The conclave closed with an agreement and a name: the group would be known as the Investigative Reporters and Editors Association. And the next step would be organization. Bierce, Pulliam, Williams and Ed DeLaney, an Indianapolis attorney who had assisted the Star reporters, were named to an executive committee. Though Koziol was not present at the Reston meeting, his Editor and Publisher piece had been read there. He was called during the conference and asked to sit on the executive committee which was already being referred to by its acronym, IRE. The next year passed quickly for the new group. The Lilly Corporation endowed IRE with another $20,000. Plans were drawn up for a research center, where stories and material could be computerized for the membership. By May 1976, IRE was an official nonprofit corporation. Koziol was elected its first president and more than three hundred reporters from newspapers, radio and television outlets throughout the country had joined up. Don Bolles was one of the first members. Koziol had recommended Bolles's name to the board and extended the invitation himself. The IRE members were busy in May planning their first convention, a weekend-long gathering scheduled for June 19 and 20 in Indianapolis. Just before Memorial Day, Koziol was called at the Tribune by David Offer, investigative reporter for the Milwaukee Journal. Offer was to chair a roundtable discussion on reporters' ethics at the convention and wanted Bolles on the panel. Bolles was delighted by the request but explained that he couldn't afford the trip unless the Republic paid his way. Offer then wrote Bolles's editors to say how highly IRE regarded their employee and what a valuable participant he would make. Offer's call to Koziol was to say that he had just heard back from Bolles and the Republic had refused to pick up the expenses. "I really wanted him," Offer said. "He would have been perfect. That guy's been through the wringer out there. His telephone was tapped during the Emprise thing, he's been threatened and sued and gone through hell, and yet he still keeps his cool. He really wanted to come, too." The two discussed a replacement and hung up, promising to get back together the next week. But on Thursday, June 3, Ron Koziol was reading a page three story about Don Bolles's being torn apart in a bombing. Koziol rechecked the newspaper item and the wire copy. He reached for the telephone to call Phoenix, but didn't dial. Republic reporters were probably all working the story and he would just distract them. Mike McGuire came over to Koziol's desk. The two were close friends: they had started out together as general assignment reporters for the Tribune in 1961. McGuire, after a two-year stint as bureau chief in Moscow, was now the Trib's foreign editor. He, too, was shocked by what had occurred to Bolles. "I'm sorry, I know he was a friend. " Koziol shook his head. "No, I hardly knew him. We'd helped each other out on a couple of stories. That's all. It's just that it's hard to believe. Jesus, he was a reporter, just doing his job. I can't believe it." McGuire agreed. "Aren't you the head of that new reporters' group?" Koziol nodded. "Bolles was one of our members." "You know, as an organization, maybe you people ought to do something. Send a delegation out there. Find out what the hell happened that would cause somebody to bomb a reporter." McGuire left and Koziol relit his cigar. Maybe IRE could do something. Koziol picked up the phone again. This time he called the Indianapolis Star and reached Bierce, who had become the group's secretary-treasurer. Bierce was aware of the bombing. It was on page one of that day's Star. "Do you know that he's a member of IRE?" Koziol asked. Bierce didn't. "Shit, Harley, we should do something." "Like what?" "I don't know. At the convention. We should respond somehow. Bierce said he would toss it around and be back in touch with Koziol. He, too, felt there should be some sort of response from IRE. Koziol's next call was to Paul Williams, the Pulitzer Prize-winning OSU journalism professor who had been elected IRE's vice-president. "I was just going to call you," said Williams. "Did you hear about Don Bolles?" Williams wanted to know what Koziol thought IRE could do. A reward offer for information leading to those who ordered the bombing was the first possibility, he explained. But the Gazette and Republic, the two Pulliam papers in Phoenix, had already posted $25,000. Koziol repeated McGuire's suggestion, that IRE send some of its people to Arizona to find out the cause of the bombing. " I like that idea, " Williams replied. " Let's respond as journalists, the only way we know how. Professionally. Let's go into that state and turn it upside down if we have to, but let's find out what the hell happened." Nine days later, Don Bolles was dead. When the story moved across the wire services, Williams called Koziol. "The convention is just five days off," he said. "We've got to do something. I thought of inviting Bolles's editor, Bob Early, to come talk to us but he's too tied up handling the story. " "From what I've been able to find out, the cops have a pretty good hold on the case," replied Koziol. "They've got this Adamson dude pretty cold and it looks like the people who hired him are about to go down. Williams agreed. "I still think we have to do something as a group. The case itself seems pretty well wrapped up. If we still send somebody out there, I don't think it should be just to investigate the Bolles case alone." "What do you mean?" "I mean that the intent should not be to bring Don Bolles's killers to justice per se. The cops and the local papers are doing that right now. Instead, we should go into Arizona and describe the particular climate that caused his death. " "In other words, we should carry on Bolles's work, do the kind of stories that Don himself would have done if he had had the time and resources?" "Precisely." "The first IRE convention began on schedule. From the time newspeople began filing into Indianapolis's Atkinson Hotel Friday night, little else was discussed but the Bolles case. Word had spread quickly that there would be a resolution urging some sort of action. Williams and Koziol talked Friday night about who could handle the job of weighing the feasibility of such a project. There was only one choice: Bob Greene, the Suffolk County editor of the Long Island, New York, newspaper Newsday. Greene was the undisputed expert on team reporting. An obese, grey-haired man of forty-seven, he was one of the nation's most respected investigative reporters. He came to Newsday in 1967, after sleuthing for the old U.S. Senate Rackets Committee and the New York City Crime Commission. His first investigation for the paper was into payoffs of various Long Island zoning officials. Three years later, the exposes of "Greene's Berets," as the team was known, had resulted in twenty-one indictments and the resignations of nearly three dozen public officials. Newsday won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for meritorious public service. Four years later, another Greene team was awarded a second Pulitzer for an unprecedented year-long investigation into the way heroin reached the United States. He and his reporters worked in Istanbul, Vienna, Munich and Paris. They were the first journalists to watch the harvest of poppy fields, observe the clandestine laboratories of Marseilles. The series, called "The Heroin Trail," later became a primer for U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Europe. In between his two Pulitzers, Greene and his team produced a seventy-thousand-word series on former President Richard Nixon's questionable real estate dealings through his pal, Bebe Rebozo. Greene's prize was a spot on the White House enemies list and an audit of his tax returns. After his return from Europe in 1973 he had spent most of his time as a deskbound editor, contributing heavily to various seminars on investigative reporting but doing little himself. So Paul Williams figured Bob Greene was just itching to get back on the streets. The possibility of sending an IRE member to Phoenix was broached officially at a Saturday afternoon meeting of the board of directors to which Greene had recently been elected. After preliminary business, Paul Williams brought up the idea of the Arizona project. Koziol was watching Greene carefully for his reaction. Greene was seated to the left, his huge frame supported by a small metal folding chair that looked to Koziol as if it might collapse at any moment. A tight smile briefly crossed Greene's face and he rolled his eyes as Williams finished the presentation. Would he take the job and go to Phoenix for a quick feasibility study? Greene said he wasn't sure; he would have to think about the idea a little more. He promised an answer by the next day. The meeting went on to other matters. Later, before gathering for drinks in the hotel bar, Williams approached Koziol in a hallway. "Well?" "Prepare the resolution, Paul. He'll take it. It's too good a story for a guy like him to turn down." By Sunday morning, the IRE delegates spoke of nothing else. While most reporters favored this direct response to the Bolles killing, a handful of others were strongly opposed, claiming that it was nothing more than exploitation of the reporter's death. Some contended that a collective effort by journalists from competing papers would never work, that editors would never release a reporter for such a time-consuming project in another state, even if he was writing for just his own paper. Williams's resolution "to redouble our efforts to keep open the channels of communication to the people" in the wake of Bolles's death passed the board. "We are outraged at the apparent motives for Bolles's death and the obvious efforts to stifle and intimidate the free flow of information to the American people," it read. Greene would go to Phoenix and see what could be done. Back at Newsday, he conferred with his own editors and outlined the proposal. If there was to be a full-scale probe into Arizona, it would involve a number of newspapers which would have to put aside their natural competitiveness and work together on an identical story which would appear simultaneously in the participating papers. To be sure, nothing like this had ever been tried in the history of journalism in the United States. But if it worked, it would write a new chapter in newsgathering and be taught in journalism schools forever. Closer to home, such a project would give Newsday's reputation a badly needed shot in the arm. Since Greene had gone on the desk after the heroin series, the paper's investigative efforts had been spotty and produced little national impact. Greene was sure to head such a team, giving Newsday an edge over the other papers in controlling the story. His editors liked the idea and on June 29, nine days after the Indianapolis resolution was passed, Greene was in Phoenix. He spent two full days there, talking mostly with Republic city editor Bob Early and Early's key reporters. "This is your story," Greene told him. "We are here to offer you our help, not to take the story away from you. If you don't want us, we'll stay away. It's your decision. " Early had his doubts. Greene and his recruits would be outsiders. The whole proposal seemed like a journalistic gang bang, a posse of Eastern reporters riding into Arizona intent on doing the work the Republic itself should be doing. On the other hand, Early admitted that he needed help. His staff was good but small. Digging sixteenhour days seven days a week since the bombing, they had so many leads to pursue that it would take years to run them down. Then there was the family connection. Myrta Pulliam, of the Indianapolis Star, was not only a founder of IRE but the granddaughter of the Republic's publisher Nina Pulliam, as well as the daughter of the publisher of the Indianapolis Star. Such ties could not be ignored. Early voiced his support and tentatively pledged his paper's cooperation. Republic staffers would continue to work the Bolles case independent of any team effort by other newspapers. But as far as a broader investigation into the corruption and fraud of the state went, it would work hand-in-glove with the team. That was good enough for Greene, who immediately dipped into the Republic's files, familiarizing himself with every aspect of the Bolles case and the problems of the state. He quickly learned that Republic staffers felt Robert Goldwater, the brother of Senator Barry Goldwater, and Harry Rosenzweig, the former GOP boss in the state, were the secret power brokers behind most of the land fraud and political alliances in the state. Greene was amazed to find that despite these strong suspicions the Republic had never assembled a dossier on the backgrounds and business dealings of the two. Greene also learned that federal, state, and local law officials held a don't-rock-the-boat attitude, probably stemming, Republic reporters thought, from the Goldwater-Rosenzweig friendship with former U.S. Attorney General Richard Kleindienst, himself an Arizonan. Again, there had been no investigations into law enforcement corruption by the Republic. On organized crime, Republic staffers readily confessed that they were not too familiar with the modus operandi of the mob in Phoenix, though they were sure it flourished. The newspaper did not even know the hierarchy of its hoodlums though a virtual immigration of Mafiosi from Chicago, Detroit, and New Jersey had hit their city. They suspected that Phoenix was closely tied to the mob in Tucson, some 160 miles to the south, where the dominance of Peter "Horseface" Licavoli, head of the old Detroit Purple Gang, and Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno, the transplanted New York Mafia don, had long been established. Greene could not believe that a similar structure did not exist in Phoenix. There were plenty of fertile areas to plow, Greene concluded. The next question was where to set camp for the team. The obvious location would be in the Republic itself. Early offered facilities but Greene decided it would be better to maintain separate headquarters. The management of the Adams Hotel, a large and comfortable downtown hotel just two blocks from the Republic office, volunteered cooperation. The Adams agreed to supply rooms at $500 a month each, considerably below its $34 daily rate. Most of the cost would be picked up by the reporters' own newspapers. A minimum of four automobiles would be required, office furniture and typewriters would have to be rented, telephones installed and a full-time staff of at least two secretary- stenographers would have to be hired. Greene guessed that extra help from college graduate students could be obtained free from the state's two journalism schools. Total office costs to be borne by IRE would be close to $25,000. The entire project would take a minimum of ninety days, maybe considerably longer. Persuading newspapers to pay the out-of-town expenses of their reporters for so long would not be easy. On June 30, he returned to Long Island. Twenty days later he submitted his five-page feasibility study to the IRE board. It would be difficult, he wrote, but the success probability was better than 50 percent. He reiterated the purpose of the probe-to uncover the intertwined political corruption, land fraud and organized crime activities that existed in Arizona. "The idea is to exert heavy pressure on every possible pocket of corruption whether it directly relates to the Bolles murder or not," Greene proposed, comparing the project to the response of law enforcement to a cop killing. "The minimum effect then, would be to give heavy exposure to the corrupt element in a community in which an investigative reporter has been murdered. The community and other like communities would reflect on what has happened, and hopefully would think twice about killing reporters. For all of usparticularly newspapers with high investigative profiles-this is eminently self-serving. We are buying life insurance on our own reporters. If we accomplish only this, we have succeeded." IRE's effort would be essentially punitive, he noted. "It would be a concerted statement by the press of America and working newspaper people that the assassination of one of our own results in more problems than it is worth." By August, the IRE board had approved the project. It would begin in late September or early October. Meantime, Greene began assembling files and choosing his team. His first selection was Tom Renner, an old friend and a veteran of other Greene-led teams: At forty-eight, Renner was one of the American press's leading experts on organized crime and the Mafia. He had written three books on the mob. His police and underworld informants were distributed from coast to coast and his incredibly detailed files were as complete as most police agencies. Though Renner had recently been ill with a stomach ulcer, he readily agreed to Greene's solicitation. The Arizona Republic assigned a full-time reporter and The Arizona Daily Star in Tucson detailed two of its best people. Myrta Pulliam from the Indianapolis Star would be available for several weeks of labor; Koziol from the Chicago Tribune could be counted on for help, and the University of Arizona (Tucson) and Arizona State University in suburban Phoenix agreed to create special intern programs which would free competent journalism students for minor team work. As publicity about the project appeared in Newsweek magazine and the various journalism journals, offers of help from two dozen newspapers poured into Greene's Newsday offices. While most could not send reporters to Arizona, they were willing to gather pertinent information in their own cities. Slowly, the files thickened. Renner was sent out on the road for eight days in late August, picking up information from police and organized crime sources in a half-dozen states that pointed to a virtual mob fiefdom in Arizona, ruled primarily by the Bonanno family in Tucson. There were also strong indications that mob money was heavily invested in the multi-million-dollar agri-business in southern California and Arizona. Other files detailed Arizona's sudden emergence as the country's major narcotics corridor (via Mexico) and pointed to the involvement of some of the state's most prominent businessmen. "I am convinced that before we leave for Arizona we could literally write a major series of the crime takeover in that state," Greene reported to the IRE board in early September. Meanwhile, Renner was doing some recruitment of his own. One of his on-the-road forays had taken him to Michigan where he had gathered files on the background of racketeer Pete Licavoli, Sr., who migrated to Tucson in the 1940s from Detroit. While there, he telephoned Mike Wendland, an investigative reporter for the Detroit News, America's largest evening newspaper. Wendland was out of town on assignment for his paper, so Renner left a message to telephone him back at Newsday. The two were friends, though they had never met in person. At thirty, Wendland had specialized in the mob and government corruption stories since the early 1970s. As frequently happens with reporters, he and Renner had met over the telephone while chasing identical leads on the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa during the fall of 1975. When Wendland returned the call, Renner mentioned the Arizona Project. Wendland was interested because he too had benefited from Bolles's generosity. In 1972 he had spent ten days in Arizona inivestigating land fraud and had called on Bolles, who characteristically provided several leads. "How tied up are you for the rest of the year?" Renner asked. Wendland was swamped. Besides his investigative reporting, he also wrote, on his own time, a column on the Citizens Band radio craze which was sweeping the nation. Syndicated in nearly two hundred newspapers across the country, the column led him to write one book on the hobby the previous spring. He was in the midst of completing his second book when Renner called. "You've got to be kidding, " he said. "Maybe I could get away for a week or two but that would be it." Renner suggested Wendland think it over. After they hung up, Wendland opened one of his file drawers and pulled out a manila envelope marked "Arizona." He reread his old clippings on land fraud and his research notes, which reflected his contact with Bolles. Then he read the clippings he had kept on the Bolles bombing. Like the other reporters, he felt rage over the tragedy. That night, he broached the subject with his wife, Jennifer. She was less than thrilled. The Hoffa-Teamsters case had kept him out of town for weeks; he was almost a stranger to their three young children. He gave her several articles about the Bolles killing. When she finished reading-them she told him there was really no choice. The next day, he cleared the idea with his editors and called Renner. "I'm in," he said. "I already knew," replied Renner. "In fact Greene already has you budgeted. Plan on three months. It's going to be a bitch, but it's good stuff." The project would commence the first week of October. pps. 23-36 --{cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. 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