The Derelict Gunslinger

Investigative reporters live in disappointment. We believe all our exposés should be award-winners that bring about change, disgrace wrong-doers, and remain forever embedded in the minds of readers, viewers and especially the folks we expose.  Rarely do our stories have that kind of impact. There are a few exceptions in my career.

Most notable were my stories about noted whore-monger, Brother Jimmy Lee Swaggart. Long before his pecker problems, I was saved by the preacher. Not my soul, but my career. He raised me from the Tomb of the Unknown Journalist at a time when I was in danger of sinking into an abyss obscurity. Even so, I wavered in my decision to put his picture on the cover of this book. A dozen years had passed since I encountered the televangelist. But Jimmy has a long memory.

On Easter morning, 2009, after it was too late to change the cover, the preacher disabused me of any concerns about in giving him the credit he deserves. “You won’t believe this,” a former colleague said in a call from Yuma, Arizona. “Swaggart just spent five minutes on today’s telecast attacking you.” It was hard to believe.

But I located video of the sermon on the Ministry’s website, and listened in amazement as he ranted about his long ago hatred of me. “I wouldn’t care if an eighteen-wheeler ate him for breakfast.” The diatribe was built around a fictional conversation he conjured between us for an article in his monthly magazine twenty-five years earlier.

Indeed, details of his fantasy were already included in the book to support my belief that the preacher is a pathological liar. By classifying his wild recent rhetoric under the heading, “He can’t help himself,” I now know to dive for cover if I see him behind the wheel of a big rig. I shouldn’t worry too much, though. Jimmy told the congregation that on instructions from God, he has forgiven me. But again, he is a serial prevaricator.

In contrast, this book is about truth. Or my version thereof. It tells the real and often untold stories about an array of stories, ranging from televangelism to Whitewater to the untold story of U.S. Military’s use of nerve gas in Vietnam to kill American soldiers. The characters I encountered in my years of mucking include Presidents, right-wing hate-mongers, dictators, drug smugglers and Mafia hoodlums.

But the central character of this book is me and my odyssey toward self-discovery.