For 27 years I was a drug dealer. Circumstances have forced my retirement, but it was jolly good fun while it lasted. Naturally many will find this to be offensive, but then, what do you gentle souls really know about “the trade”? The drug trade is merely business. A risky business, but business nonetheless, the bastard child of the great pharmaceutical houses. The demand they created lives on, and we are only here to fill it.

I personally donated various sums of money to Tom and WAR.

Helen Redman

It was collection day on a pleasant Wednesday in September 1989. I was on my way down to Paulie’s TV and VCR repair shop to pick up a couple grand. My supplier wanted his money, Paulie would want another ounce of coke, I had bills to pay, and the customers were gearing up for the weekend. The usual stuff.

Paulie is an affable and intelligent white boy, 33 years old or so but always claiming to be 28. In those days he sold a shit pot full of material for me. It was easy money.

Paulie didn’t look or act it, but he was and is a tremendous cocaine addict. For all that he moved for me, he was forever short on his bill. It was the classic situation. A man that sells dynamite shouldn’t be a firebug.

But he kept his act together exceptionally well, considering his 12-year habit. He was quite proud that he never took a drink and that he kept his little shop running despite slack business most of the time. He should have made a fortune selling the white powder, given his considerable retail clientele. But as it was, I kept him alive and at the same time I feared I was killing him. He was a money-maker though, and that is all that counts.

“Hey, chief!” he whooped at me as I sauntered into the shop. It was located in the midst of a dozen little businesses in one of San Marcos’s many industrial mazes.

“How are receipts?” I asked as we walked to the back of the place and into the bathroom. That was the “office.”

Paulie dug a big wad of cash, mostly 20s, from his pants pocket and counted out about $1500. “There’s more, chief,” he muttered hurriedly. “I gotta shake it outta some deadbeats. I’ll have another 500 for you by Friday. Maybe more.”

How many times had I heard that one, but Paulie could almost always be counted on.

“Can I still have the new unit?” he asked nervously.

“No problemento,” I replied. “Just do your best. Keep a tight grip on the funds. The money is important.”

I reached into my pants pocket and removed a double-bagged ounce of soft, sparkly cocaine. Paulie felt its oily texture, smelled its ether wash. As always, he laid a huge line on a dirty mirror he kept in the cabinet, borrowed back a 20 from me to roll into a tube, and in one humungus snort, the whole business was up, up, and away. A broad smile crept across his mug, and he let out a whoop. Then, all dignity, he said, “Nice, chief. Very nice.”

We then returned to the main room filled with old TVs and radios, slot machines from collectors, and sundry oscilloscopes, soldering irons, and the equipment of the repairman.

“Hey, guess what,” he suddenly exclaimed. “Guess who came into the shop yesterday afternoon.”

I had a sudden feeling of disquiet. “The DEA,” I answered.

“Metzger, man! Tom Metzger himself. He brought in a shit pot full of TVs. He wants me to repair them for him because he’s so busy with all his race shit and stuff. Outta sight, huh?”

Paulie and I had had many a laugh about the Big T. That scene on Geraldo was especially hilarious, when little Johnny Metzger started the free-for-all and Geraldo got it in the schnozz with the folding chair. That was theater of the absurd. But this, the country’s leading neo-Nazi gracing our very active business endeavor with his overflow work? Well, let me be honest. I didn’t like it.

Though he was a bright lad, the danger here seemed to be lost on Paulie. He argued that he really needed the business. Business was always shitty. The shop was Paulie’s life, and any port in a storm, etc.

“Paul,” I moaned. “This man is certainly being followed. He’s notorious. We don’t need this exposure.”

“That’s exaggerated,” he.countered.

“Where in hell did you meet him?” I asked.

“I met his daughter at a party a few weeks ago, and I told her I fixed sets, and I guess she passed it along. He just showed up. Great, huh?”

“What if, Paulie,” I postulated, “what if the man is followed and what if, simultaneously, the narcs get on to us in here? I been in this racket a long time. I’ve seen it happen, let’s be real. Then the feds make their case that goes something like this. ‘Major white separatist linked to cocaine ring in North County!’ What do you think this man might do at that point? This is the former Grand Dragon himself. He has legions of fanatics at his beck and call. Don’t you think it would really be an awkward situation? And I know the feds want to nail this guy. Anybody can figure that one out. He’s been in riots and turmoil for 15 years. The cops have no integrity, and they would love to bag us all and call it drugs.”

Well, the upshot was simple. No way was Paulie going to listen to me. I valued Paulie’s business too much to walk; and even though Paulie could never find a supplier that was as generous or had as good a quality product, he had such a bad habit that all he could see was a bunch of lousy television sets.

“Okay, Paulie,” I finally said. “You can keep the Nazi, but here is the clicker. In order for us to distance ourselves from Tom and his activities, we reach an accommodation with the police. We call the FBI and we work with them on this. If you don’t agree, I leave.”

“Jesus!” Paulie muttered, beads of perspiration appearing on his furrowed brow.

“One or the other, Paul. Tom Metzger is big trouble. I don’t see any other way. We curry favor with the cops, we might get safety. We just got to be real careful Tom doesn’t find out. And besides, it could be a free pass for us or a friend down the line. You think about it. I’m outta here.”

Paulie went along with the idea, and we set about to prepare our presentation to the FBI. I dug out my portable, voice-activated Radio Shack tape recorder and had Paul hide it in a spot where it would pick up a conversation adequately. A few weeks had passed, and we were into November. A murderous fanatic had bombed a federal judge and a civil rights lawyer in the deep South. Tom was due in that afternoon.

“Hey!” Metzger’s voice boomed as he walked in the front door. “How’s it going?”

Paulie muttered some profanities as he bent over a Japanese television, feigning difficulty with some adjustments.

“I knew we were in trouble when we dropped those bombs on the little bastards,” Tom joked.

“Oh, you mean World War II,” Paulie replied. He burst into that maniacal laugh of his, and the two men discussed and cussed the Sony TV set. Metzger particularly found the cost of the parts reprehensible. My first bugging of the little fascist went like that. Nothing earth-shaking but I had accomplished my purpose. I could prove to the Federales we were close and we had his ear.

I sat down and wrote the college boys a letter explaining how we were civic-minded types, and this fellow Metzger was bringing his overflow work into our shop, and we didn’t wish to be mistakenly associated with his “movement.” I enclosed the little tape, and off it went in the post. I was in Sacramento about two weeks later when I learned a Mr. Sullivan had called. He had left a phone number, and I called him from my motel room about two in the afternoon.

“This is Agent Sullivan,” a crisp voice greeted me from the other end. I ran it down who I was, and we arranged to meet.

“Do you want me to come to you?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “We’ll come to you. How about the shop?”

“That wouldn’t be a good idea. You see, Tom has this tendency to drop by quite often. It might be awkward. How about my house, say, next Tuesday?” “Sounds good,” the fed answered. “I’ll probably bring along a local guy, if that’s all right. Someone from the sheriffs office. We’ll see what you guys got.”

The day of the meet, Paulie and I sat around for two hours waiting for those mugs. Finally there was a knock on the door. I opened it to greet a nattily dressed younger man, around 38, three-piece suit, and a second, older fellow, casually dressed, tall with a mustache. Agent Michael Sullivan, FBI and Det. Tim Carroll, San Diego Sheriffs Criminal Investigative Unit. For the next two hours we shot the shit about the new right, skinheads, hate crimes, and the notorious Tom Metzger.

I found Agent Sullivan a trifle self-important and not very well versed on the white separatist movement. Hell, he didn’t even remember George Lincoln Rockwell. Det. Carroll, on the other hand, was really up on this stuff. He liked to sit out front of Metzger’s house in the dark and just watch. Someone had recently fired a crossbow at Tom’s head, right through a window, and Carroll howled over how Tom had called the cops.

What they basically wanted from us was this. Anything. Whenever Tom went someplace out of town, there were angry demonstrators, and crowd control was high priority. During the ill-fated Sonoma Aryan Fest, for instance, the year before, only a dozen skinheads had showed up, but 5000 pissed-off anti-Nazi protesters made it a major shambles. Cost to the County of Sonoma: $350,000 in law enforcement and general damages.

Agent Sullivan had one big item on his agenda. Back in the early ’80s, about the time Metzger ran for the Congress and almost won, a wild group of seditious white separatists known generally as the Order and led by the great patron saint of neo-Naziism, Robert Mathews, counterfeited currency and robbed armored cars. In one monumental heist in Northern California, the Order stole around 4 million bucks. Very good money for one day’s work.

Mathews was a generous soul, and in an effort to forward the cause of the purity of the white race, he handed out a great deal of these funds to various and sundry racist groups around the country. These included Aryan Nation in Idaho, several Klan groups in the deep South, and the sum of $250,000 to one Tom Metzger of Southern California. The FBI traced and recovered virtually all these monies except Tom’s quarter million.

The FBI is a tidy bunch, and they don’t consider a case closed until every penny is accounted for. They are still after Metzger on that one. Later on down the line, I paid Paulie one gram of pure cola to point out to Metzger this money story culled from the book Brotherhood of Silence. Paulie dutifully asked Tom if he still had the moolah. Tom raised his eyes to the heavens and simply said, “Paul, you cannot believe all the stories you read about me.” To this day I think Tom has that money. Detective Carroll didn’t think it was still around, but as we got to know the Klansman better, it became clear that he was a shrewd man with a buck. I think of him as a racial racketeer, and after all, it takes one to recognize another.

Of course, everyone knows that Tom Metzger got into a lot of trouble over the next few years. The big one was Portland. He and his son John were accused by that big-time crusader for the moral high ground, Mo Dees, of causing the death of an Ethiopian immigrant through the brutality of skinhead agents sent there by the Metzgers.

As these events unfolded in the summer and fall of 1990, I personally donated various sums of money to Tom and WAR. I chatted with him at the shop on several occasions about my own days as a member of the John Birch Society. He had started out as a Bircher himself as do so many of the fanatic right. We all wanted to kick those commies’ asses. Tom remembered Mr. Booth, now long deceased. He had been my chapter leader. I was establishing my own kindredship with the big guy. In all I gave him maybe $1500 dollars in cash and checks over the period of time I worked on this case. I wanted to do a good job, and money always talks.

For every bit and piece of data Paulie passed on to Detective Carroll, I paid Paulie in coke. Lots and lots of coke. This was dangerous work, and Paulie couldn’t be expected to do this stuff for free. The police gobbled it up. Carroll took Paul to lunch constantly to debrief him. The lunches were the only payment the cops ever made to us. I had instructed Paul and had told Carroll myself that we wanted no money. I, of course, had my own agenda, but informant blood money was not a part of it.

Whenever anything new in the way of “race products” came out, such as the History of War II, Tom would give Paulie one of the first copies, I paid for a duplicate, and the cops had it in their hot little hands before Tom’s considerable racist public could send in their 10 bucks and see it for themselves. Tom Metzger in later times actually placed his WAR Hotline through Paul’s shop. I don’t believe it still goes through there, but for a time the police controlled the outgoing diatribes of “the most dangerous racist in America.” We were very efficient.

As Tom’s trial neared, around October, the whole loony business reached a crescendo, with Tom zooming in and out of the shop, tidying up his TV repair arrangement with Paul, cursing Mo Dees and the cops, always dropping tidbits of raw intelligence, and arranging to leave for Portland. As soon as he would depart, the phone would ring and Tim Carroll would be on the other end, eagerly awaiting the latest poop from his echo-chamberlike office phone. The last day I saw Tom before he was on his way, I leaped out of my truck, shoved a $50 bill in his hand and, with a rather left-wing clenched fist, urged him on to victory. Then he was gone and the rest is history. Morris Dees and his Southern Poverty Law Center made hamburger out of him, and they got the big judgment that has pretty well wrecked Metzger financially.

My little pal Felipe was in the garment business. He owned a couple of small shops that catered to Latinos in the Oceanside area, and he also ran a fairly profitable booth at the Oceanside swap meet on the weekends. He was a short, portly young man of 30. He was incredibly industrious and loyal to his family, particularly his aging momma.

Born in Tijuana but raised in California, Felipe was my kind of guy. You just had to admire his intense dedication to bettering himself. He had a few faults, of course. He was, like many of his people, superstitious and wore an odd little wrist amulet given to him by his “witch.”

“It’s really scary, James,” he would tell me, “how this woman just seems to know what’s gonna happen next!”

This sort of thing made me groan, but I kept it to myself.

Perhaps another sad mistake Felipe made was getting involved in the methamphetamine trade. He had relatives that had made millions doing it in the county, and he wanted in.

Let me explain a few facts about the meth business. First, it takes about six different chemical precursors, not to mention the glasswear, hot plates, and other miscellaneous apparatus to cook this stuff up. The two most difficult items to obtain are hydriatic acid 47 percent and ephedrine. The rest is not so tough, but these two wicked items are highly controlled substances, and to obtain them is a real trick.

So one day Felipe just vanished into Mexico, and no one saw him for a couple months. This was in early 1990, and all his friends and family were concerned. Just as suddenly he was back. He had been down there arranging for the E.

On one occasion, I was paid to travel to Tucson and drive back with 55 pounds of the white crap. I waited a week in a motel. I met Juan and Miguel, two flinty-eyed hombres that didn’t trust my white ass one little bit. They said they were waiting for the right moment to run the stuff across the border at Nogales, claiming the border patrol would throw up secondary stops constantly along the 50-mile route between those cities. After a week, I parked my car at the airport and flew home. No sooner did I arrive back and check in with the little man down at the swap meet than he told me it had showed up in Tucson and I must go back. How very tedious. This is the sort of thing that happens constantly in the drug trade. But back I went, and I carried $5000 with me for Juan and Miguel.

When I got there on that rocky flight Sunday night, I retrieved my car and went to a motel. I called the boys right away, rolled a joint, had a drink, and went to sleep. Around five in the morning they were banging on my door. I staggered to open it, and in they charged, looking more paranoid than the last time. Did I have the money? “I got it, amigos, do you have the product?” “Sí, we got it.” I handed the lads the dough and they raced out and loaded my little Dodge Colt with three huge bags of grainy, off-white crystalline material. Then they had to go to work. Never believe Mexicans are lazy.

I made the long drive back to San Diego. It took all day. I had to make one pass through an agricultural check, but since I was white, no problemento. Then up and through the strange, majestic, and weird rock outcroppings that wind from the Imperial Valley and lead eventually into town 100 miles farther. I was buzzed by a compact and noisy little helicopter that I took for one of the numerous police presences one finds in that lonely country that abuts the U.S.-Mexico border. My police scanner crackled from channel to channel all the way. I held my breath all the way too, but I got home around seven that night.

Felipe was right over, and we unloaded the stuff into his cousin’s souped-up little truck. It turned out to be the wrong kind of ephedrine. Pseudo-ephedrine, not China White ephedrine. Felipe discovered this sad news when they set up a batch and it didn’t click. I got paid anyway.

Felipe was a good man, and eventually he perfected his E connections. For many months, almost weekly, smugglers arrived at my garage, squeezed their various vehicles inside, and we’d closed the door. Out from under the dashboard or from behind the back seats, the bags of pure, crystalline ephedrine would emerge. They would stack them up, back out, and be gone. A day or so later, my little friend would come and gather it up. Sometimes I would stash the stuff in my personal storage unit. It was easy work once it got rolling, and I made pretty good money.

Considering I once had a severe methamphetamine habit myself and know very well the nightmare that it is, and also knowing the kind of individual one deals with and the trouble they can be and the grief they cause and the danger and sorrow they are to the community — believe it or not, I was not terribly pleased to be involved in this sort of activity. With meth, trouble is always on the hoof, disaster constantly nearby. I counseled Felipe to drop it or at least slow down. He did not do drugs. Like me, he respected their terrible danger on a personal basis, but he was a man with a mission. He wanted a million bucks and he wanted it NOW.

One day I walked into his shop and his brother was behind the desk. This lad was not involved in any of this. “They got Felipe, Jim,” he told me.

I was not surprised. “How?”

The second most difficult precursor of meth is the hydriatic acid 47 percent. Apparently the little man and his numerous partners had walked into a reverse sting run by the FBI. It was engineered by a notorious paid informant. To give this scumbag credibility, the feds allowed him to carry kilos of coke around. He freebased wildly and was paid very well. Felipe and crew attempted to purchase 55 gallons of hydriatic. On the street this stuff is valued at $2000 dollars a gallon and up. To assume you could march into some store and leave with a controlled substance of such magnitude was a trifle naive, to put it mildly, but they had done just that.

The only funny thing about it all was that the FBI in their brilliance had allowed the barrel to leave their immediate control. That’s enough acid to make a million bucks’ worth of crank. Apparently they expected to raid the lab site, find a whole bunch of finished material, and get their juice back as well. Someone in the crowd had his own plan and swiped the acid. Gone! Big-time embarrassment. Tits in wringers, etc. It was most likely their own snitch. That’s the way these things so often go. It could’ve been a cop also. Whatever the case, the law never got their acid back and only busted a couple pounds of speed. It was enough, though. Felipe was now looking at 35 years in federal prison.

The Camarena crime family is an institution among the narcos of San Diego County. They are very bad news, and the tales told of them are the stuff of lore. Murder, mayhem, and meth. They are also into legit stuff such as catering to the immigrant workers, video shops, and of course low riding.

Illustration of a warped television

Helen Redman

Latin Style was Hector and Rica’s club. Red’s was where they spent their dough getting those fancy cars to bounce.

It was regrettable but with my little friend facing so much time for being bad, and considering this very dubious lawyer he had hired, I was asked to pull some stringy. Call in the marker. Get that free pass we had earned with the Metzger deal. I at first wrote Det. Carroll and outlined the dilemma, attempting to put the best light on what was not such a pretty situation. I was in Sonoma County when word reached me that he had called. With trepidation I called him back.

“Jim,” he scolded, “your little friend is in deep shit. You ought to watch out who you hang with.”

“I’m real sorry, Tim,” I replied. “I just know a lot of characters. Like Tom Metzger, for instance. You don’t get the dirt on people like that if you teach Sunday school. What can I say? We have done you people a lot of work, isn’t there anything you can do for Felipe? He is willing to cooperate to the fullest. He can get inside places no white boy could.”

“Well, I know his case agent personally,” he replied. “Let me talk to him and we’ll get together in a few days. I can tell you this, the guy is looking at a long sentence, and he’ll really have to work his ass off to mitigate it.”

“You’re a prince, Tim,” I chortled. “I’ll talk to you soon.” I hung up feeling that the kid had a chance. I was wrong.

Before you could count to two, Felipe’s trial had begun. Hardly any warning. The lad had expected to have months to prepare. There was a lot of commentary from the cognoscenti about Felipe’s lawyer, Merle. What kind of a lawyer is it that doesn’t keep his client apprised? Does this guy know what he’s doing? Isn’t he the same joker that lost on Felipe’s brother and got him five years for the pot smuggling? Isn’t he hooked up with the Camarenas? In another bit of poor judgment, Felipe stuck with Merle.

In the drug trade there are as many crooked lawyers as policemen and crooks combined. Many will sell you out to the law or play different sides of the fence. Merle was that sort of guy. I called him and wrote him several letters, and he used the tried and true maneuver with me each time. He shined me on.

One night during the trial, Felipe came over and informed me that “my name had come up.” “Really?” I replied with arched brow. “Lovely. I wasn’t involved with any cooking. How come my name comes up?” Probably just my business card in Felipe’s wallet, I was assured. Not to worry.

For the next week I was followed. Narcotics task force was my guess because they were so amateurish. One morning I went to the bank, and suddenly there is this young man in a construction-looking truck right behind me at El Camino Real in Carlsbad. I knew he was a ringer. Many years of all this silly stuff and you just know, so I drove past the lagoon that abuts highway 78 and then pulled over quickly. The guy passes me and I follow him. We wind our way through the city streets down to Home Savings, where I had planned to pull a 20 out of the ATM.

I think this clown was getting rattled because quite by coincidence he pulled into that little parking lot, trying, I was quite sure, to ditch me. I pulled in beside him. So now he was forced to get out, walk to the ATM machine, and feign a transaction. I stood behind him. He had no card, he got no cash. He fiddled with some leftover receipts, turned angrily, and went back to his truck.

“Is the machine acting up?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Looks like it.”

I was pretty annoyed by all this. Here I was, a great help to the law, a man with this sense of purpose, and I was being tailed. And so poorly! It was embarrassing.

Felipe’s trial went on for about two weeks, and each night he would come over for dinner and we’d chat. He was always upbeat. Merle was doing great. Merle was-going to beat this nonsense. Merle was a champ.

“Merle says that if the informer, Jamie, would just go south, it would be a lot better,” Felipe said to me one night. He repeated that very expression several times during that week. “Go south, go south.”

An expression like that is not the sort of language my young friend would use. I was certain Merle had been telling him that Jamie should definitely “go south,” in other words, take a powder.

“Felipe,” I said, “when a man says that someone should ‘go south,’ that means to disappear. Is your lawyer telling you to have this informant threatened? To murder him? What is Merle suggesting here?”

“Merle says it would be real better if Jamie was gone, because he cut a deal with the government and he’s gonna sink all of us.”

A couple days later I got a call from Felipe’s brother. “Someone threatened Jamie. They arrested Felipe at the end of yesterday’s session. The FBI was out at our house looking for a typewriter.”

Go south. I have never seen Felipe again. He went south, straight into MCC. He lost his case and got 15 years for one count of conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine. I am not a lawyer but I should have known. If a government witness is ever threatened, it’s immediate arrest and incarceration for the defendant, no ifs, ands, or buts. Merle should have known.

A few days later, Tim Carroll stopped by my house to discuss Felipe. We talked for two hours about all sorts of stuff. I handed him the latest tape from Metzger, Aryan Fest 90. I reviewed a portion of the tape where all these skinheads are running around firing fully automatic weapons at a Japanese motorcycle. AK-47s, M-16s. Probably conversions. To my amazement, there was this one little guy with a neat little machine gun, clearly fitted with a silencer. You could hardly hear this thing fire, but there was no doubt it worked because one could clearly discern spent cartridges flying from the breach. A very impressive and illegal display, if I ever saw one.

“Tim,” I asked, “isn’t Tom handing you guys his head on a silver platter? Isn’t all this machine gun stuff enough to arrest him? Check out that silencer.”

“Yeah, well, we thought we had them last year for guns, but turns out someone was a Class III dealer.”

Give me a break! Let’s not forget that a decade ago in Colorado, the Jewish talk show host Allan Burg was murdered by the Order with a Mac 10 fitted with a silencer. It was a sensation at the time. I was beginning to weary of this whole scene. I was seeing that this was a game. Tim Carroll got to travel all over the country following poor old Nazi Tom around, keeping tabs, compiling useless data. Never any arrests though, never any real action. I knew a milk job when I saw one. I had spent 11 years in the Navy, for God’s sake!

Finally Carroll left, and as I walked him to the front steps, he looked at me. And in a low voice, that nonchalant drawl said, “Is Paul on dope? Sometimes he seems so jumpy, and other times I find him conked out on his sofa in the middle of the day.”

“Tim,” I replied, “Paulie is coked to the gills. If he didn’t have his powder, he wouldn’t stay awake long enough to be a spy.”

“Where does he get it?”

“I get it for him. Have all along. I told you before, I paid for this effort. Am I in trouble?”

“Paul does a great job. Do what is necessary.”

Felipe did many months at MCC before he was finally transferred to Terminal Island at San Pedro. He wrote and called me collect often. He had worked so hard and lost so much.

I sent Detective Carroll a letter in November 1990 specifically asking to be dismissed from the Metzger caper. I outlined my disillusionment with the whole business. By then Tom had eaten it big time in Portland with the huge judgment and was under the gun by those pesty lawyers from Mo Dees. They were opening his mail, grabbing all his funds and contributions, snagging his bank accounts, and carting off anything that wasn’t tied down. Eventually they seized the house that he’d owned for 30 years. I bet they dug up his back yard looking for the quarter million too. Carroll ignored my request.

By now I had given up my old line of work and started writing. I was well into my novel. The Mysterious Billy Glass, a thinly veiled but more or less fictional version of what had gone down in the past couple years, when Detective Carroll phoned me. Suddenly hearing this cop’s voice on the line gave me the willies. Had he heard I was writing? How, for God’s sake?

“Tim,” I said, “how about those Iraqis? Crazy over there, huh?” Tim Carroll is, if nothing else, a talker. We chatted about the gulf for a while, then I finally asked, “So what can I do for you, my friend?”

“They tell me he’s gone” was the reply.

“Gone? Who’s gone?”

“Rica Camarena. They got an arrest warrant out on him for dope and can’t find him. They think he went to Mexico with his money. Do you think your little friend Felipe could help us out on this?” My spirits soared. “He calls me from MCC all the time, Tim. Next time I’ll find out for you. Will you put in a good word?”

“You got it. Hear from you soon.”

Felipe called me later that day. I was pretty excited. I had been trying to help him for months. God, how they owed us. I laid the big question on him. Where was Rica? Was he in Mexico?

“Aw, man, he ain’t in Mexico. You go down to Oceanside and find a bookstore. Buy this month’s copy of Low Rider magazine and look on page 70 and 72. And he has a house in Temecula, and he hangs around Red’s in San Diego.”

I did as I was told, and bigger than shit on pages 70 and 72 there was chubby Rica Camarena posing with his'bouncing short. Right there in front of God, the U.S. government, and anyone that cared to look.

I sent a letter that night to Carroll’s P.O. box with a copy of the magazine and all that I had been told. Two weeks later the feds picked up Rica at Red’s, and off he went to do a couple of years. Tim Carroll never said thanks, never called back, never did a thing for Felipe — except put his life in severe jeopardy. What a guy.

I attempted to get Tom Metzger to rant about all this to the press when my book was published in May of ’91. But the cagey old Nazi brushed it off as a joke and said he barely remembered me. A while later I got a personal letter from him: “I hope you made a bundle off the stupid cops...” “The fact is I know exactly who you are and it doesn’t really bother me...” “Your lifestyle will ultimately end you up doing time or iced in an alley someplace...” “You are not Hemingway — don’t expect a Pulitzer. This type of book you read in a shit house and then use it to wipe your ass—.” He closed with an affectionate, “We will meet one day. Sincerely, Tom Metzger.”

I was very flattered, but I then realized Tom didn’t have a clue as to what really went down or why. It is not hard to deceive a major media character like Tom Metzger. In his defense he has been spied upon and infiltrated for years. It isn’t Metzger’s fault if the occasional clever spy curries his trust. Most spies do it for money. I did it for my own purposes, and those were never realized. I started to feel bad, so I wrote Metzger and apologized. All of a sudden, we were at least on semi-cordial terms.

I cannot abide Tom Metzger’s vision of a separated world. My own real attitudes are extremely liberal as regards race and reason. I will probably be forever linked to him in a sense as an ultra-nationalist.

I made Metzger an offer. I would put all my data and experiences at his disposal, and we would sue the bejeebers out of the authorities for violations of his civil rights and collusion between the cops and Mo Dees. It would all come out; nothing would be held back. I had been bad and I was sorry. I ran an experiment and it failed. Tom got screwed, Felipe got really screwed, and the police got all the “atta boys.” Very one-sided.

Illustration of a man in jail

Helen Redman

Now Tom knew all about Det. Tim Carroll, his perennial nemesis. Tom cursed Carroll on his WAR Hotline and, when they came face to face some months back, threatened to shoot him. I recall asking Carroll at our first meeting how great the danger was of getting killed. Not to worry, he assured me. Metzger has never been known to knock anyone off.

So as time passed and Tom went to jail for the cross burning, we continued to communicate, only by mail because, as Tim Carroll had told me once long ago, “We occasionally monitor Metzger’s phone.” Translated that means he’s got a perennial tap.

I drafted a lawsuit myself and filed claims against the County of San Diego and the FBI. The statute of limitations was running out. To be timely, we would have to do this ourselves and then find an attorney. It could be a potentially sensational case. Win, lose, or draw, there would be an uproar. Tom Metzger and I are still pen pals, and I listen to him threaten the “mother of all lawsuits” against “Sleaze Dees” on the WAR Hotline. It’s coming, so he says, just as sure as that great flood of white anger this whole world over. It will drown the “mongrelizers” and enemies of the white race in their own sorry blood. The man has a way with words.

As I was told at the onset, any information that reached Carroll was passed along to Sullivan at the FBI, so I consider Carroll a surrogate FBI agent. Actually, we seldom saw Agent Sullivan. He would show up at the shop with Car-roll now and then to take Paulie to lunch. Paul told me how Sullivan fantasized about hanging out at the shop and when Tom would come in, strike up a conversation with him — win over the little man’s confidence. Maybe find that quarter million bucks. I presume all the stuff we gathered on Metzger and I paid for ended up with this guy on his ‘terrorist desk.’

I recently received a response from the FBI’s litigation section regarding my claim. They asked me six interesting questions, and I sent in my response promptly. I also informed them I was writing an article for possible publication and that they had two weeks to get back to me. The FBI is sort of an unpredictable bunch. It took them six months to even respond. I don’t know what they are up to. I don’t care what they are up to. I can only speculate. They sound concerned about Felipe. They don’t mention Metzger. Somehow I think this really involves Metzger.

Under the current federal guidelines on sentencing, Felipe will do at least 83 percent of his sentence, about 12 years. For a long time I received mournful letters from him. They all said the same thing:

“I am here for no reason at all doing my time just one day at a time. They got me working, which is good, but I only make 75 cents a day. But that’s okay because it makes the time go by.”

The second to last letter informed me his entire family had deserted him and he had lost all contact with them. On a more sinister note, he informed me his house had been “burned down.”

He could not understand why the prison wouldn’t put my name on the visiting list. They were claiming I had a felony conviction. I did not and had sent the prison all my legal records and dispositions. They would not respond to any queries.

At that point I sent Felipe a letter, urged him to start keeping good notes, study the law whenever he could, and that I was preparing this mega in pro lawsuit that would involve him as a plaintiff, Tom Metzger, and me. I reminded him that he had done his government many valuable services and that they owed him. They owed him what he had been promised, and they owed him protection.

Although it was a breach of safety, I felt Felipe must see with his own eyes the actual lawsuit and copies of the claims filed. His lawyer. Merle, was allegedly pursuing an appeal on his conviction. Naturally, the naive Mexican believed this character was still on his side and he would prevail. Given Merle’s track record, I didn’t think there was a snowball’s chance in hell.

I sent Merle a letter detailing my own legal efforts, a copy of the suit, and this suggestion: “When you get in front of those judges, Merle, if you do not mention that Felipe and I had a deal with the government, that Felipe has rendered valuable assistance, and his promised mitigation was not forthcoming, I will be very surprised at you.” Merle never responded, of course, but on March 24,1992,1 received my final letter from Felipe. He told me in his broken English that he was very fearful of any further help from me and that he must “do the time.” I should leave his name off of any lawsuits; he would prefer to do his many years “the best I can do.”

He also implied I was just out to enrich myself and this was goodbye. He was sorry our long friendship had come to this.

Merle, fearful of disbarment, conflict of interest, or perhaps terrified of his real clients, had put this bug into Felipe’s ear. Felipe, foolish in the ways of this wicked world, has always believed his lawyer.

I wrote back to the little guy and said, “Siire, amigo. It’s your life, do what you wish. Do your 12 years. Goodbye.”

What a villain I am, right? Playing both sides against the middle. Making tapes, taking notes, taking big chances. Well, the drug trade has changed beyond belief since I started as a hippie-dippie in the middle ’60s. Once it was an honorable profession practiced by almost mystical purveyors of sweet dreams and flower power. That is how I began.

Then as the years passed, it got nasty and seedy and the drugs of choice changed from pot and acid to coke and junk. Tactics to survive got more desperate and innovative as the penalties soared. Informing became a necessity. I quit blaming people for rolling years ago because with the swords the cops hang over your head getting sharper, it was like torture. Who could blame anyone? And murder became the standard form of retribution if you ratted.

The dealer must learn early that he has no friends, only customers and suppliers. They love you when you’re on top, but when you lose, you lose it all. And there are dirty cops and real cops. The hypocrisy in the drug game is so immense. This little regional tale only touches on it briefly.