write so I could answer your question about how the Home Folks feel about Greg Stillson now that he is “on the job. ” I was home this last weekend, and I’ll tell you all I can. Asked my dad first and he said, “Is Johnny still interested in that guy?” Isaid, “He’s showing his fundamental bad taste by wanting your opinion. ” Then he goes to my mother, “See, prep school is turning him into a smartass. I thought it would. ”
Well, to make a long story short, most people are pretty surprised by how well Stillson’s doing. My dad said this: “If people of a congressman’s home district had to give a report card on how well the guy was doing after 10 months, Stillson would get mostly Bs, plus an A for his work on Carter’s energy bill and his own home heating-oil ceiling bill. Also an A for effort.” Dad told me to tell you that maybe he was wrong about Stillson being the village fool.
Other comments from people I talked to when I was home: they like it around here that he doesn’t dress up in a business suit. Mrs. Jarvis who runs the Quik-Pik (sorry about the spelling, man, but that’s what they call it) says she thinks Stillson is not afraid of “the big interests. ” Henry Burke, who runs The Bucket—that el scuzzo tavern downtown—says he thinks Stillson has done “a double-damn good job. ” Most other comments are similar. They contrast what Stillson has done with what Carter hasn’t done, most of them are really disappointed in him and are kicking themselves for having voted for him. I asked some of them if they weren’t worried that those iron horsemen were still hanging around and that fellow Sonny Elliman was serving as one of Stillson’s aides. None of them seemed too upset. The guy who runs the Record Rock put it to me this way: “If Tom Hayden can go straight and Eldridge Cleaver can get Jesus, why can’t some bikies join the establishment? Forgive and forget.”
So there you are. I would write more, but football practice is coming up. This weekend we are scheduled to be trounced by the Barre Wildcats. I just hope I survive the season. Keep well, my man.
Chuck
From the New York Times, March 4, 1978:FBI AGENT MURDERED IN OKLAHOMA
Special to the Times—Edgar Lancte, 37, a ten-year veteran of the FBI, was apparently murdered last night in an Oklahoma City parking garage. Police say that a dynamite bomb wired to the ignition of his car exploded when Mr. Lancte turned the key. The gangland-style execution was similar in style to the murder of Arizona investigative reporter Don Bolles two years ago, but FBI chief William Webster would not speculate on any possible connection. Mr. Webster would also neither confirm nor deny that Mr. Lancte had been investigating shady land deals and possible links to local politicians.
There appears to be some mystery surrounding exactly what Mr. Lancte’s current assignment was, and one source in the Justice Department claims that Mr. Lancte was not investigating possible land fraud at all but a national security matter.
Mr. Lancte joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1968 and ...
Chapter 25
1
The notebooks in Johnny’s bureau drawer grew from four to five, and by the fall of 1978 to seven. In the fall of 1978, between the deaths of two Popes in rapid succession, Greg Stillson had become national news.
He was reelected to the House of Representatives in a landslide, and with the country tending toward Proposition 13 conservatism, he had formed the America Now party. Most startling, several members of the House had reneged on their original party standing and had “jined up,” as Greg liked to put it. Most of them held very similar beliefs, which Johnny had defined as superficially liberal on domestic issues and moderate to very conservative on issues of foreign policy. There was not a one of them who had voted on the Carter side of the Panama Canal treaties. And when you peeled back the liberal veneer on domestic positions, they turned out to be pretty conservative, too. The America Now party wanted bad trouble for big-time dopers, they wanted the cities to have to sink or swim on their own (“There is no need for a struggling dairy farmer to have to subsidize New York City’s methadone programs with his taxes,” Greg proclaimed), they wanted a crackdown on welfare benefits to whores, pimps, bums, and people