A man named Bolles October 5, 2006
A FILIPINO reporter from Chicago brought this to my attention after I spoke on the killings in the Philippines last weekend in Honolulu. You might want to look up the case of Don Bolles, he said, you might find it interesting. I did, and did.
The case of Don Bolles is now a watershed in American journalism. Bolles was a reporter of the Arizona Republic in the 1960s and 1970s. He specialized in ferreting out wrongdoing. Which took the form of organized crime, specifically as practiced by the Mafia, and corruption in high places, specifically as committed by state water and tax commissioners. He honed his investigative skills over the years, developing an uncanny ability to sniff out irregularities and finding proof for them. He was intrepid to the core, probably way up there as one of the leaders of “X-investigative journalism,” if there was such a category. Once, he gathered the names of around 200 Mafia members and their associates operating in Arizona and exposed them in an article.
His articles catapulted him to the top of the heap, making him a member of the journalism elite. But success came with a terrible price. He started getting death threats, and after a while he took precautions against them. Every day, he taped the hood of his car with a Scotch tape to make sure his engine hadn’t been tampered with. Legend has it he eventually got tired of doing it and so paid the price. On the day he left his hood untouched, his car exploded from a bomb in downtown Arizona.
The truth wasn’t less dramatic. It was his eighth wedding anniversary that day, June 2, 1976, and he and his wife had planned to go out after work. But that noon, he got a call from an informant about a crooked land deal involving top state officials. He left a note on his typewriter saying he would be going to a hotel downtown and would be back at 1:30 p.m. He got to the Hotel Clarendon past noon and spoke with someone on the phone. After that, he went back to his car in the parking lot near the hotel and started the engine. As he was backing out, his car exploded.
Six sticks of dynamite had been planted underneath it and set off by remote. Even if he had taped the hood of his car that day, he would still have died.
The murder set off a tidal wave of grief and anger not just in Arizona but across the land. If his murderers had thought to cow the media and the community, they thought wrong. Mourning swiftly turned to outrage. The American media community came together and in a magnificent, unprecedented, and never-to-be-repeated show of solidarity, 38 journalists from 28 newspapers and TV stations mounted a collective effort to pursue the story Bolles began. Some were paid for by their organizations, others did it on their own time. They were headed by one of my favorite writers, Bob Greene. The result of their efforts was a 23-part series that appeared in newspapers across the country. The national attention forced the Arizona legislature to put public deals under a microscope. It also wiped out Mafia activity in Arizona.
The killers were apprehended and brought to justice. On June 13 that year, 11 days after Bolles’ car exploded, police arrested John Harvey Adamson, a racing-dog owner. He admitted planting the bomb, turned state witness and pointed to two others, Max Dunlap, a Phoenix contractor, and James Robison, as being part of the plot. The following year, Dunlap and Robison were found guilty and sentenced to death.
Next year, Bolles will be honored with a place in the Newseum in Washington, D.C., when it reopens. It is a museum dedicated to recollecting the life and work of outstanding journalists. Since the nation’s journalists descended on Arizona to finish what Bolles began, no journalist has been murdered in America.
I don’t know why we can’t take off from that lead. I don’t know why our national media can’t bestir itself and go beyond token condemnations of the murders of the journalists in the countryside -- which, to repeat, is where they are happening -- and form a team from the different newspapers, TV and radio stations to investigate the murder of at least one journalist who was patently doing his job. Preferably with the backing of our organizations -- we can forget government intervention, we will be hindered, not helped, by it -- and the moral, if not financial, backing of the international media and human rights organizations. I don’t know why we can’t publish or air our findings locally and internationally and make the killers at least morally reprehensible and at most legally indictable.
I don’t know why we can’t put up a small-scale equivalent of a Newseum to extol the virtues of the heroic dead and, better still, to provide subsidy for those they left behind. Alongside putting the fear of God and global censure in the hearts of malefactors, it should help to put inspiration in the minds of those who are in the profession or dream of being so.
The point is to show the warlords, drug and gambling lords, and overbearing lords in public office, civilian, military and police, who are responsible for a great many of these killings that those killings can be epically counterproductive. That those killings carry with them a huge price tag. That with the help of the national and international media, their illegal activities can at least be severely curbed, if not wiped off the face of the earth.
I grant it’s not easy. Nothing good is, in this country more than others. But I don’t know how much longer we can survive, physically and spiritually, with unrelenting proof that doon po sa amin” -- where we live -- good is always punished and evil rewarded. There is only one thing worse than being dead, as I keep saying.
That is being dead while being alive.
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=24852
The case of Don Bolles is now a watershed in American journalism. Bolles was a reporter of the Arizona Republic in the 1960s and 1970s. He specialized in ferreting out wrongdoing. Which took the form of organized crime, specifically as practiced by the Mafia, and corruption in high places, specifically as committed by state water and tax commissioners. He honed his investigative skills over the years, developing an uncanny ability to sniff out irregularities and finding proof for them. He was intrepid to the core, probably way up there as one of the leaders of “X-investigative journalism,” if there was such a category. Once, he gathered the names of around 200 Mafia members and their associates operating in Arizona and exposed them in an article.
His articles catapulted him to the top of the heap, making him a member of the journalism elite. But success came with a terrible price. He started getting death threats, and after a while he took precautions against them. Every day, he taped the hood of his car with a Scotch tape to make sure his engine hadn’t been tampered with. Legend has it he eventually got tired of doing it and so paid the price. On the day he left his hood untouched, his car exploded from a bomb in downtown Arizona.
The truth wasn’t less dramatic. It was his eighth wedding anniversary that day, June 2, 1976, and he and his wife had planned to go out after work. But that noon, he got a call from an informant about a crooked land deal involving top state officials. He left a note on his typewriter saying he would be going to a hotel downtown and would be back at 1:30 p.m. He got to the Hotel Clarendon past noon and spoke with someone on the phone. After that, he went back to his car in the parking lot near the hotel and started the engine. As he was backing out, his car exploded.
Six sticks of dynamite had been planted underneath it and set off by remote. Even if he had taped the hood of his car that day, he would still have died.
The murder set off a tidal wave of grief and anger not just in Arizona but across the land. If his murderers had thought to cow the media and the community, they thought wrong. Mourning swiftly turned to outrage. The American media community came together and in a magnificent, unprecedented, and never-to-be-repeated show of solidarity, 38 journalists from 28 newspapers and TV stations mounted a collective effort to pursue the story Bolles began. Some were paid for by their organizations, others did it on their own time. They were headed by one of my favorite writers, Bob Greene. The result of their efforts was a 23-part series that appeared in newspapers across the country. The national attention forced the Arizona legislature to put public deals under a microscope. It also wiped out Mafia activity in Arizona.
The killers were apprehended and brought to justice. On June 13 that year, 11 days after Bolles’ car exploded, police arrested John Harvey Adamson, a racing-dog owner. He admitted planting the bomb, turned state witness and pointed to two others, Max Dunlap, a Phoenix contractor, and James Robison, as being part of the plot. The following year, Dunlap and Robison were found guilty and sentenced to death.
Next year, Bolles will be honored with a place in the Newseum in Washington, D.C., when it reopens. It is a museum dedicated to recollecting the life and work of outstanding journalists. Since the nation’s journalists descended on Arizona to finish what Bolles began, no journalist has been murdered in America.
I don’t know why we can’t take off from that lead. I don’t know why our national media can’t bestir itself and go beyond token condemnations of the murders of the journalists in the countryside -- which, to repeat, is where they are happening -- and form a team from the different newspapers, TV and radio stations to investigate the murder of at least one journalist who was patently doing his job. Preferably with the backing of our organizations -- we can forget government intervention, we will be hindered, not helped, by it -- and the moral, if not financial, backing of the international media and human rights organizations. I don’t know why we can’t publish or air our findings locally and internationally and make the killers at least morally reprehensible and at most legally indictable.
I don’t know why we can’t put up a small-scale equivalent of a Newseum to extol the virtues of the heroic dead and, better still, to provide subsidy for those they left behind. Alongside putting the fear of God and global censure in the hearts of malefactors, it should help to put inspiration in the minds of those who are in the profession or dream of being so.
The point is to show the warlords, drug and gambling lords, and overbearing lords in public office, civilian, military and police, who are responsible for a great many of these killings that those killings can be epically counterproductive. That those killings carry with them a huge price tag. That with the help of the national and international media, their illegal activities can at least be severely curbed, if not wiped off the face of the earth.
I grant it’s not easy. Nothing good is, in this country more than others. But I don’t know how much longer we can survive, physically and spiritually, with unrelenting proof that doon po sa amin” -- where we live -- good is always punished and evil rewarded. There is only one thing worse than being dead, as I keep saying.
That is being dead while being alive.
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=24852
posted by dqfan06 @ 9:20 AM
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