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The Current Transcript for July 12, 2016

Host: Mike Finnerty

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

She is purely academic, and so we're all very baffled by what is going on, and why she's such a strong person. So we just hope she can keep up that strength.

MIKE FINNERTY: Montreal anthropologist Homa Hoodfar has been indicted and continues to be held in an Iranian prison. But the mystery persists as to why - the charges aren't known. Is she being used as a pawn? And if so, to what end? Most importantly, will she be safe? What can Canada can do to save Homa Hoodfar? That's coming up in just a moment. Also today, fear, loathing, and loving.

SOUNDCLIP

He drinks a lot, he does his drugs, he gets angry, and that's, that's who he is, and there's nothing I can do to change it, so how can I accept that, and try to connect with him.

MF: Juan F. Thompson reflects on what it was like to grow up with a famous writer dad: Gonzo journalist, Hunter S. Thompson. I'm Mike Finnerty, welcome to the summer edition of The Current.

Indictment of Montreal professor tests Canada’s diplomatic ties with Iran

Guests: Vrinda Narain, Nader Hashemi

SOUNDCLIP

Thousands of Iranians, many of them innocent Iranians, have died, have been tortured, and have been killed inside Evin prison. So that prison is really synonymous with torture and murder.

MIKE FINNERTY: That's Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, on The Current last year. And when he speaks about Iran's notorious Evin prison, he speaks from experience. Maziar Bahari spent 118 days imprisoned there in 2009. And now, another Canadian finds herself in that same infamous jail. Homa Hoodfar, she's 65 years old, she's an anthropologist, and she is a retired professor emeritus at Montreal's Concordia University. She was arrested in March by the counter-intelligence unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, and she's been detained since then. Yesterday, an announcement was finally made in state media that she had been indicted, though the charges are unknown. Needless to say, her family is extremely worried for her safety. Ms. Hoodfar's niece Amanda Ghahremani spoke to The Current last month.

SOUNDCLIP

Two days before her departure she was taken in for interrogation, her computer and other belongings were confiscated; her passports were taken from here so she was not allowed to leave the country. And for the last 3 months, she has been repeatedly summoned for interrogation. She suffers from a degenerative neurological condition, for which she needs medication, and she has not had access to that medicine since her detention. And we are very concerned about her health deteriorating, and the circumstances of her detainment and her not having access to these.

MF: Homa Hoodfar's niece Amanda Ghahremani on The Current last month. Amanda released a statement overnight explaining she wouldn't be available for interviews, we'll discuss that statement in some more detail in a moment. First, Vrinda Narain, who is a law professor at McGill University, also in Montreal. She is also a friend of Homa Hoodfar's and she joins us this morning from Delhi, in India. Hello.

VRINDA NARAIN: Hello.

MF: What do you make of the news of the indictment now that's come out in state media in Iran?

VRINDA NARAIN: I think the indictment makes it all the more serious now. We were hoping that matters would get resolved earlier, but now it seems as if they're really serious about this, and it's not the mistake we thought it might have been.

MF: And yet, we still don't know what the charges are.

VRINDA NARAIN: Yes, we still don't know what the exact charges are, but usually, in these kinds of situations, it's things like political conspiracy against the Islamic Republic, or sedition, these are the usual charges in these kinds of situations.

MF: When she was originally taken, did you think it was, what, a case of mistaken identity, or how did you explain it?

VRINDA NARAIN: We thought it was just a mistake that they had made, and that they would realize soon enough that she wasn't a political activist, and really not someone who was of interest to them.

MF: There is a petition that's been signed by 1,500 professors in support of her release, and part of it reads, "Her academic research seems to have been interpreted as a threat to national security on the basis of her comparative research on women's status law development and the family in different Muslim contexts." Would you agree with that assessment?

VRINDA NARAIN: Yes, it seems that that may be something that is the premise for her arrest.

MF: And why would that be of such a concern for the authorities in Iran?

VRINDA NARAIN: Yes, well, that's the puzzling bit. Really, nothing in her work, nothing in the entire body of her work should suggest that there's anything that challenges the regime in any way. In fact, a lot of her work has been on the veil in the West and the sort of fighting off the stereotypes about Muslim women and Islamic tradition. So in fact, there really is nothing there that should cause them to arrest her. Quite the contrary.

MF: And there's no way of knowing whether, for instance, they think she is a spy, which might be a reason, obviously, that they would hold her?

VRINDA NARAIN: Yes, but the thing is that we have no information, really, but it would be a bit ludicrous if they thought that, because she's a retired 65-year-old professor with no history of kind of political activism. So it really doesn't make sense.

MF: When was your last conversation with her?

VRINDA NARAIN: My last conversation with her was about maybe three days before she left, we had dinner together. She had come over to my place for dinner.

MF: What was her mood like?

VRINDA NARAIN: Oh, she was very excited, happy to be going, because she hadn't been back for a while and this was a first trip back to Iran after the death of her husband last Christmas.

MF: So I mean, what was it that she was really looking forward to in the trip back to Iran?

VRINDA NARAIN: I think that she was looking to reconnect with friends and family, and also to feel the pulse of the nation, to see what's happening in her country of birth.

MF: Because the trip coincided with, or was it planned especially to coincide with elections that were being held, and there are a number of women who were standing?

VRINDA NARAIN: No, I think it was just a time for her to go back because it also coincided with the when the Iranian new year, Norooz. So that's a very special time, and that was that when she was there, so it coincided with that.

MF: How often would she go back? How close was her attachment to Iran?

VRINDA NARAIN: Well, I think it had been a couple of years since she went back, but after the death of a husband, this was the first time that she was going back.

MF: You had a conversation with her prior to her departure, but you were in contact via e-mail, is that right, once she arrived in Iran?

VRINDA NARAIN: Yes.

MF: And was that before or after she'd been arrested? She was arrested and released.

VRINDA NARAIN: It was after.

MF: And what did she say about it?

VRINDA NARAIN: She was positive, and she was hoping that it would get resolved fairly quickly, because she really couldn't see any reason why they would want her, or why they would want to detain her.

MF: And at that point, how concerned was she?

VRINDA NARAIN: Well, when you are arrested and released on bail, she was subject to interrogations before that, and also during. So of course, I mean, one is concerned. But at the same time, she was absolutely certain that there was nothing in her work or in anything that she had done, or statements that she had made, that would make her a person of interest for the Revolutionary Guard.

MF: The Government of Canada is in a difficult place on this one, because it's getting conflicting advice. Some people who believe it should shut down efforts to normalize relations with Iran as a punishment for this case, and others who think that the government should move ahead with those efforts, which it was planning on doing, anyway. Maybe even cut a deal for the sake of Professor Hoodfar and her safety. What's your view on that?

VRINDA NARAIN: My view is that the Canadian government should reopen dialogue, or continue initiating a dialogue with Iran. I think it's essential to have some kind of avenue that's open for these kinds of dialogues to happen. As far as cutting the deal, I really am not in a good position to say anything about that, except that Canada was making some kind of overtures to Iran to open sort of a trade deal. And I think that it would be reasonable to suggest that the release of Professor Hoodfar is a very important priority for the Canadian government, and to make the Iranian government understand that it is, in fact, a top priority, that Canadians should not be arrested in this arbitrary way.

MF: She's a friend. If you could speak to her now, what would you say?

VRINDA NARAIN: I would say we miss you, Homa, come back safely.

MF: And what do you think the chances are that she will be able to come back to Montreal safely?

VRINDA NARAIN: I'm hoping that they're excellent chances, and I think that we have to remain hopeful and positive, particularly because there really is nothing in her record to justify this sort of detention.

MF: And are you confident that this government is in a better position to negotiate something than the past government, which had strained and then no relations with Iran?

VRINDA NARAIN: I think that for sure we're a better position with this government. The last government in 2012 had shut down the embassy, and I think that this government is perhaps better placed to secure her release.

MF: Vrinda Narain, thank you for speaking to us.

VRINDA NARAIN: Thank you.

MF: Vrinda Narain is a law professor at McGill University in Montreal. She is a friend of Homa Hoodfar and she spoke to us this morning from India, from Delhi. Nader Hashemi is a Canadian expert on Iran who's been watching this case very closely. He is Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver, and he's with us this morning in our Toronto studio. Professor Hashemi, good morning, thanks for coming in.

NADER HASHEMI: Good morning.

MF: That statement I referred to a few minutes ago from the family reads-- it came out overnight, and it reads in part: "According to Iranian law, once the formal interrogations are concluded, the decision to make an indictment is issued. That point should lead to the family being able to have some sort of contact, she should be released from solitary confinement to a general ward, and possibly even released on bail." Is that your understanding?

NADER HASHEMI: In theory, yes, that's how the law is supposed to work. But we're talking about an authoritarian political system where the rule of law doesn't exist, it's interpreted by, you know, ruling elites, in this case clerical elites who use the law to advance their own political interests.

MF: So what is your expert opinion on why Homa Hoodfar has been arrested and now indicted?

NADER HASHEMI: I think fundamentally, this has to do with the deep crisis of legitimacy that the Islamic Republic of Iran is facing today within Iran. There is a general I think realization among the higher echelons of power that vast segments of society that comprise young people, the urban, educated intellectuals, have rejected the values and of the vision that the Islamic Republic has for its society. And--

MF: But how does that translate into taking a 65-year-old woman who normally lives in Montreal, a retired professor, into a prison?

NADER HASHEMI: Well, on a number of levels. Number one, by arresting someone who's a dual citizen, dual national. And in this case, Canada protests, we've seen other dual nationals, American citizens, British citizens, protesting. The Iranian regime and the hardline elements that control the intelligence and security apparatus sends a message to Iranian civil society that we can arrest a dual national and foreign governments can protest, but they can't do anything about the arrest of these individuals. If we can do that to a dual citizen, we can easily arrest any Iranian citizen that doesn't have a foreign government that's going to come to their rescue or protest on their behalf. So the message really is, the goal here is to send a message to Iranian civil society activists that look, be careful. We can do this to dual citizens, we can easily do it to you. So just sort of scale back your protests, your activism, because we are in full control now. The other, deeper context here is that Iranian hardliners are reeling from a series of three defeats that they've suffered internally in Iran. Three years ago, they lost the presidency to the one candidate who was the most reform-minded; they lost the nuclear deal, hardliners campaigned very hard to subvert the nuclear deal; and they lost the more recent parliamentary elections. And so they fear that control is slipping away, and there's been a massive crackdown. Not just on dual nationals but across Iranian civil society that I think shapes the context that we can understand the Hoodfar case.

MF: She was arrested by the Revolutionary Guard. Is that the same as the clerics who are ultimately in charge, and the more reformist elements in the government? I mean, how do all those things interrelate?

NADER HASHEMI: Right, there's factional rivalry in Iran, but fundamentally, the key institutions of the state, the judiciary and the intelligence services and security apparatus, are in the hands of hardline clerics and the Revolutionary Guard. It's a broad apparatus. There's another faction of the regime that is effectively in government, they control the presidency, now they control part of the parliament.

MF: And they have no suasion over the Revolutionary Guard?

NADER HASHEMI: They don't because those are fundamentally autonomous sort of institutions that are not answerable to elected government officials. They're answerable only to the senior clerical leadership, and fundamentally, the supreme leader. So what you have really here is the Iranian regime speaking with many different voices, and it's difficult to figure out really sort of which voice has sway. Fundamentally, it's the hardliners that control the prison system, the judiciary, and they are the ones responsible for the Hoodfar arrest.

MF: Terry Milewski has written a piece this morning on our website, cbcnews.ca, where he essentially refers to Homa Hoodfar as a hostage. Would you agree with that?

NADER HASHEMI: Absolutely. I think she has been arrested deliberately as a way of advancing, or using her as leverage, in terms of Iranian foreign policy. The Justice Minister of Iran a few days after the Hoodfar arrest openly stated that there is an Iranian-Canadian banker that has fled Iran and is a person of interest, sort of floating a trial balloon that if the Canadian government is willing to discuss an exchange of citizens, that they would be open to this. And there's a background story here. Maybe your listeners recall that about six months ago, The Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian was let go from Iran, along with three other dual American-Iranian citizens, in exchange for-- basically a prisoner swap between the United States and Iran. There was a number of Iranian-American prisoners in the United States who had violated sanctions law. And I think the Iranian government is, you know, suggesting something similar. That they're open to a similar trade.

MF: So this banker is considered, what, a fugitive, is in Canada, and they would like him back.

NADER HASHEMI: Right.

MF: Now, how straightforward is it, then, to deal with Iran? I mean, you talked about how factionalized it was. I mean. how easy it is, not least because we don't have an embassy, to work out some sort of a deal?

NADER HASHEMI: Well, it's extremely difficult. Number one, because you don't have an embassy, and I think we can blame the Harper government for that policy, we're now seeing the consequences of that decision in 2012. But also, there's not one, as I said, Iranian government here that we're dealing, there are different factional rivalries. The Foreign Ministry here in Canada is dealing with their counterparts in Iran, which are the more pragmatic and I would say reform-minded elements, so they're very much interested in establishing diplomatic relations, and I suspect they're sympathetic to Hoodfar's plight. But of course, they don't control the political system, and they are not the ones in Iran who arrested Homa Hoodfar, so it's a deeply complicated and confusing situation. How this will all work itself out within the context of Iranian domestic politics is completely unknown. But I think there is an opportunity here for Canada actually to show and to exercise some leverage, because there is a faction of the Iranian government that wants something from Canada. It wants to break out of its diplomatic and economic isolation, it wants to establish diplomatic relations. But of course, there are other factions, more powerful ones that completely reject that position and policy.

MF: But is the Trudeau government, in a sense, vulnerable to this sort of thing happening? A hostage, as you put it, being taken, because it wants to re-establish relations, and not just diplomatic relations? Because we now have strong business interests with Iran, and we'd like to, for instance, get a deal for a whole bunch of Bombardier jets?

NADER HASHEMI: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the factors here that I suspect very strongly is influencing the Trudeau government is there are domestic constituencies here in Canada that stand to benefit from the reestablishment of diplomatic relations--

MF: And are pushing very hard for it right now.

NADER HASHEMI: And the Hoodfar case and human rights cases complicate that picture. And this is an old story here, where governments in the West are torn between their values: democracy, human rights, gender equality; and their political interests, which is often a reflection of the domestic interest groups in this country that have influence over policy.

MF: So I mean, there's a lead editorial in the Toronto Star, for instance, that argues that because of this situation, Ottawa should hit the pause button on trying to restore any kind of relations. What's your view, should it deal?

NADER HASHEMI: Well, as long as it doesn't compromise the fundamental human rights of Homa Hoodfar and other Iranian-Canadians. There are several other permanent residents who are also in trouble. There's another Iranian-Canadian sculptor who's been denied the right to leave Iran. So I think this is something that has to be explored. I'm not in favor of sort of severing diplomatic relations and not moving forward, because that, in many ways, would be actually a victory to the Iranian hardliners. I would argue that the reason why Hoodfar was arrested at this moment in time was because hardline factions within Iran want to stop the Rouhani government from reaching out to the international community. So I don't think it's in anyone's interest to give them a victory, but at the same time, if there's going to be a deal, it has to be a deal that does not compromise the fundamental human rights of Iranian-Canadians that are being held in Iran.

MF: Professor Hashemi, can I ask you about another case that's in the news right now and involves, obviously, Iran. It's the case of Alison Azer, who is a mother of four from British Columbia who says her ex-husband abducted her children took them first to Iraq, but turned up in Iran. He had been detained for alleged ties with Kurdish militias. She says that Ottawa should be doing more to rescue her children, and that is being complicated, as well, by the nonexistent diplomatic relations that we have with Iran. What can you tell us about that case?

NADER HASHEMI: Well it's a tragic case, you know, I read about it a few days ago. And of course, it's incredibly difficult for the government of Canada, and I guess the Trudeau government, to represent the interest of Canadians in Iran, when there is no Canadian embassy in Iran to represent those interests. Had there been diplomatic relations, there would be Canadian staff people in the embassy in Tehran who could look into the plight of Alison's children and represent her interests. So now we're seeing I think here the heavy cost that innocent Canadians are paying because of a very misguided decision three, four years ago by the Harper government to break diplomatic relations. It is innocent people who have no say over policy who can't have their interests represented, and now they're suffering as a result of what happened three years ago.

MF: And yet, now that we want to have relations, you have Canadian citizens, dual citizens, dual nationals, being held as bargaining chips. How do you stop that?

NADER HASHEMI: I don't think there's any way you can stop it. This is a very nasty government, it has used hostage-taking to advance its foreign policy from the inception of the revolution, from the time the American embassy was taken in 1979. So it requires, I think, very sophisticated and very careful diplomacy on the part of Canada to explore the options here where the human rights of Canadians, Canada's interests with respect to Iran can be advanced. I don't know if anything can actually be negotiated, but it's worth exploring. I don't believe that at this moment we should put the pause button on negotiating with Iran. Iran has a lot of policies, both domestically and regionally-- particularly with respect to the conflict in Syria, where they're deeply implicated in more crimes-- that I think need to be dealt with.

MF: Thanks for coming in.

NADER HASHEMI: Thanks.

MF: Nader Hashemi, who is a Canadian expert on Iran. Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver. The Current requested an interview with Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion for this segment, he was not available. His office sent us a statement saying that the Government of Canada is working closely with our like-minded allies in order to best assist Professor Hoodfar, and that her case is "a priority." I'm Mike Finnerty, you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

ENCORE: Life with 'gonzo' journalist Hunter S. Thompson

Guest: Juan F. Thompson

MF: Hello. I’m Mike Finnerty and you’re listening to the Summer edition of The Current.

[Music: theme]

MF: Coming right up, we’ll hear from the son of the larger-than-life writer Hunter S. Thompson about the everyday experience of having him as a dad.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID LETTERMAN: Uh, Dr. Hunter Thompson. Can I ask you what that—

HUNTER THOMPSON: We really don’t have to discuss these—

DAVID LETTERMAN: You don’t want to discuss the doctor?

HUNTER THOMPSON: --discuss your childhood and, you know, your teeth, and stuff like that, but really, we’re not into an academic credential thing.

DAVID LETTERMAN: No, I just assumed that—

HUNTER THOMPSON: I insist on the use of the term doctor at certain times. In fact, I’m a doctor of chemotherapy, of journalism, and of... if it comes to me… uh, divinity. Yeah. Divinity.

DAVID LETTERMAN: Divinity? Sure. Well, I would have guessed that.

MF: That was Hunter S. Thompson, Dr. Thompson, on The David Letterman Show in the late 1980s. By then, he was a self-proclaimed gonzo journalist who had chronicled the politics and culture of the 1960s and seventies in prose that went well beyond colourful. It was downright psychedelic. Hunter S. Thompson took his own life in 2005. Since his death, he has remained an inspiration to writers today. To Juan F. Thompson, Hunter wasn’t first and foremost a famous scribe who lived life to the fullest, he was dad. Juan F. Thompson has written a memoir called Stories I Tell Myself: Growing up with Hunter S. Thompson. And he spoke to Anna Maria in January from Denver.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello.

JUAN F. THOMPSON: Good morning.

AMT: Your book is pretty candid about the life of Hunter S. Thompson, what do you think will surprise his fans most about him?

JUAN F. THOMPSON: I think for those who will really focus on Hunter the party animal, I think will be most surprising is, well first of all just how serious he was about writing, from when he was a kid. I also think they'll be surprised, disappointed, maybe frightened by the toll that the drugs and the drinking took on him over a 55 year period. Even Hunter Thompson is not invulnerable to those to those drugs. I think some fans will also be surprised at the thoughtful, generous, and tender side of Hunter, and the way he can be very traditional in some respects because that's not at all it comes through in his persona.

AMT: You write about your father's violent temper, when would that come out?

JUAN F. THOMPSON: You never knew just when it would come out and that's part of what made it so scary. It could be something completely trivial, you know, he couldn't find the salt and he might go into a rage and start yelling and maybe throw something. At the same time, something that I would expect to make him furious, I write in the book about the incident with a shotgun and I went out to shoot some birds and I expected him to be in a complete rage and he was quite calm and fair. What made it especially unnerving was its unpredictability.

AMT: Because sometimes he would just shut down on you because of anger and other times he would yell.

JUAN F. THOMPSON: Mostly yell. He was not one to withhold his feelings. [laughing]

AMT: He would threaten to give you a beating and you make the point that he was such a wordsmith that he chose the word, beating, on purpose. What effect did that word?

JUAN F. THOMPSON: Well it's a scary word. Has this connotation of great power, and force, and pain. I am sure that he chose that very deliberately. As I say, he never actually hit me; I think his goal was to make sure I was scared so that I wouldn't do whatever it was he didn't want me to do. And I worked. He was also just a big man; he was like 6’3”, 6’4”, very physical presence. To a small boy, a man like that yelling, it was scary.

AMT: In fact you call him a bastard a number of times.

JUAN F. THOMPSON: [laughing] Yes.

AMT: Do you think he knew or cared how you felt about him at that time?

JUAN F. THOMPSON: I think he was aware that what he was doing was harmful, and a question I've never really been able to resolve for myself is how much control did he have? I think when he you know last temper and said hurtful things, he probably felt ashamed of it later. But he was either unable or unwilling to stop himself and he wasn't very good at apologizing.

AMT: Your dad and mom were both heavy drinkers, you call them out on it at one point. Tell us how they responded.

JUAN F. THOMPSON: I'm sure he knew he was an alcoholic but he really didn't like being called out on it. And my mom, she reacted much differently. She ended up stopping drinking for a long time and now drinks very infrequently. But Hunter, he never acknowledged to me he was an alcoholic. At some point I just accepted that this was who he was, and if I wanted to relationship with him I just had to start from that point of, all right he drinks a lot, he will always drink a lot, he does these drugs, he gets angry, and that's who he is and there's nothing I can do to change it; so now how can I accept that and try to connect with them.

AMT: Of course that was when you were in your late teens, early twenties by then.

JUAN F. THOMPSON: Yes.

AMT: Yeah. So when you were a kit, Juan, your parents were both drinking or both doing drugs, just give us an idea of what kind of stuff was going on in the house when you were a kid.

JUAN F. THOMPSON: So first, just to put in context, this was the seventies. It was Aspen, and there was just a lot of partying by everyone, it wasn't just my parents. A typical evening would include lots of booze, of course. Cocaine was flowing freely. Hunter was a fan of mescaline, Quaaludes were pretty popular the time, maybe some acid, LSD. At a party, all of those substances were being consumed by, you know, some group of everybody there. But to me, I was a kid, I didn't really know any better. I just saw, these are adults, they're acting kind of strange. I tended to just avoid them, go to my room and read.

AMT: Well and at one point your parents are separated and your mom introduces you to acid. You’re 14 years old, what happened?

JUAN F. THOMPSON: It just wouldn't even occur to me to introduce my son to LSD at age 14 or at all for that matter. But part of it was definitely the time, on one hand I think, well did it do any harm? No. But was it a lapse in parental judgment? Yeah, I think so. An odd side effect of it is that by that time I was like 16 or 17, I was through my experimentation phase, don't care for that stuff, don't care for that… Not big into going to drinking so by the time I started college it was like, I’m done with all that stuff. [laughing] I’m here to study, I’m not here to party.

AMT: You became the rebel the other way.

JUAN F. THOMPSON: Exactly.

AMT: But that first experience, your mom was with a boyfriend and it was almost a ceremonial thing, the taking of LSD. Your mom was your trip master.

JUAN F. THOMPSON: Yes. It sounds so bizarre to hear you say that. [laughing]

AMT: I'm just quoting you! [laughing]

JET: To hear someone else say it, it's like, well that is just crazy. But in retrospect, especially to hear someone else say it, yeah your mom was your trip master, it's like wow that is just not right. [laughing]

AMT: And it was the seventies but this is 2016. Tell us what a trip master is.

JUAN F. THOMPSON: Basically, the responsible adult who was not on drugs. In an odd way she was being a responsible parent.

AMT: And in the midst of this you're missing your dad, you're with your mom, your dad's got this place called Owl Farm that your dad bought after his first big success. And you're missing your dad; you’re still a kid who wants his dad's approval.

JUAN F. THOMPSON: In writing this book I just really came to the conclusion that fathers are just so important in a child’s, or son's life. And whoever they are, however they act, there is no way for a child to say, well you know what? My dad's a pain the butt and I just don't want to deal with him. I’m just going to pretend I don't have a father. That's just not an option. I think is the way we’re wired that we have to work out some kind of relationship and some kind of acceptance. And that's very much where I was, those competing forces, those tensions on one hand I despise him, on the other hand I desperately wanted a connection with him.

AMT: You write, “Once we were separated, I longed to be with him. Though once there, neither he nor I knew what to do.”

JUAN F. THOMPSON: We’re such different people. And I grew up in such a different way than he did, a different time, a different kind of man. We just didn't know what to talk about or what to do. That lasted a long time, really into my thirties when my wife and Deb Fuller helped me to understand, he is communicating with you, it’s just not in a way that you're expecting. Once I began to see that, it just changed everything. Say I was up there for the weekend and it's time to go and he says, here, take this. And it's like of a leather duck decoy. It’s like, well, okay thanks. I'm thinking, why? [laughing] Why is he giving me this leather duck? When I began to see that it was an offering, it was his way of saying, I care about you and I love you. But he can't say it that way; he has to say it in this indirect way.

AMT: It's so extraordinary that the guy who is credited with changing communication with his journalism and how we write and how we tell stories in the modern day, we learn that like there was a real effort to communicate with his boy.

JUAN F. THOMPSON: Yes, I really think he just did not know how to communicate with me and nor I with him. It's one thing to be a writer and you're writing for an audience and you have something very specific that you want to say. But it's a completely different world when you're actually talking about, how do I connect with someone who's very important to me and yet we don't seem to share any common language?

AMT: I mean you write your father was a man's man, macho, hard drinking, fast driving, womanizing. And you were shy, spiritual, in your own words a geek. Do you think your relationship would have been closer early on had you been more like him?

JUAN F. THOMPSON: That’s a great question. I guess the answer is, yes and no. Had I been more like him, in that I was risk taker, drinking a lot, driving way too fast, I think he would have been appalled really. I think it would've been like, why would you want to imitate me? I can't help it, but for God's sakes don't try to live the way I do. It's dangerous. [laughing] I think on one hand he was relieved that I wasn't the same kind of boy or young man that he was. But certainly it also would have been, you know, if I had really enjoyed sports the way he did or even talk about women, we would have been able to connect but I think he would have been really, really worried about where I might end up.

AMT: He became more vulnerable, very vulnerable with age after so much cocaine and booze?

JUAN F. THOMPSON: Yes, he certainly did. It took two forms, one was the cocaine use and he really used cocaine kind of like a maintenance drug. Balance the sedative effects of alcohol. I really think that that really took its toll over time on his ability to concentrate. It made it very difficult for him to write. Even a thousand word column, much less a long article or book. Then the other part was the alcohol. And what was so interesting about it is that, not that he became a sloppy drunk, it was that the alcohol, he probably started drinking when he was like 14 or something, and by the time he's in his early sixties, the alcohol is like a corrosive and it just starts to dissolve the nerves, the organs, and the brain so that it became very difficult for him to walk. One of the things that was difficult to write about was the incontinence. And these are just the long term effects of alcohol. I am convinced, not that he told me what he was planning to do or why, but I'm convinced that two of those major factors we’re his physical decline and his recognition that this was not reversible. There was no getting a new hip or back surgery was not going to fix this. Combined with his realization that he was not able to write, and for a man who was first and foremost a writer, I think that was just unbearable to him.

AMT: And you say that’s what you believe the reason for his suicide was?

JUAN F. THOMPSON: Yeah.

AMT: It was shocking when news came out that he had shot himself. You were there that day.

JUAN F. THOMPSON: Yes. On one hand he certainly gave me the warning signals the night before by saying, hey you should take these family heirlooms and take them now, don’t wait, take them now. But I just think it was impossible for me to actually process that and realize, oh okay, he's telling me he's going to kill himself imminently.

AMT: He asked you to claim that gun too, didn’t he? Yes, yes. I think I was just unable or unwilling to put it all together and see what was coming. And yet I knew that he would commit suicide, he had been clear about that for years and years that at some point when it was time, that's how he was going to go out. He was not going to die in a hospital or go to a nursing home. It was so important to him, his independence and freedom, was so important, there’s no way that he can relinquish that and fade away into alcoholic Alzheimer’s. So I knew that was coming, but at the same time it was such a shock to realize, oh my God it's actually happened. Knowing that this would happen sometime in the future did not prepare me at all for dealing with reality when all of a sudden there it is, he's done it, he's dead.

AMT: Well you ran into the room and found his body.

JUAN F. THOMPSON: Yeah. And what was so odd about it is that, the way he chose to do it, there was very little blood. So when I heard this just long, loud bang I thought he'd thrown something or dropped something. I come out into the kitchen I look him he's slumped forward, looks like he’s fallen asleep in his chair. I call his name, there’s no response and I start to get a little worried. I think, has he had a seizure? What's happened here? And then as I go over to him, I start to realize, uh oh, I think he's dead. Then I see some blood, I see the gun, I feel his body and then just kind of lost it. I'd say I was panicked, I was trying to think, oh my God what do I do now?

AMT: In fact, you go out in you load a 12-gauge shotgun and shoot it into the air as a salute.

JUAN F. THOMPSON: Yeah and this is one of those spontaneous, irrational things that once I realized what had happened, and I think we called the sheriff by that point, I just felt this urge to somehow mark this moment. It wasn’t something I had planned or that he had asked for, it just seemed necessary.

AMT: I have to tell you, reading that, that's the moment that I thought you really were the son of Hunter S. Thompson.

JUAN F. THOMPSON: [laughing]

AMT: Who does that? That was a Hunter S. Thompson reaction don't you think?

JUAN F. THOMPSON: It really was. And that's interesting, I'd not thought of it that way, but it felt right. I think it was appropriate. Using his 12 gauge, the one that shows up in countless pictures as the nickel plated 12 gauge shotgun, you're right it was fitting. I didn’t even think about it, I didn’t think, well should I do this? I should do something to mark this? No, I got to grab the gun and shoot it in the air, like a cannon.

AMT: Juan Thompson. Thank you for sharing your story.

JUAN F. THOMPSON: It was my pleasure. Thank you very much for having me on your show.

MIKE FINNERTY: Juan F. Thompson speaking to Anna Maria in January about his memoir, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing up with Hunter S. Thompson. And he was in Denver. Let me tell you about a story coming up later this week on the summer edition of The Current. It's the story behind the story of the Panama Papers. Of course, that massive leak of documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. It rocked the rich and powerful around the globe. It laid bare a complex web of more than 200,000 shell companies and bank accounts parked in offshore tax havens around the world. The revelations led to soccer star, Lionel Messi’s conviction last week, the resignation of Iceland’s Prime Minister, and they've entangled world leaders such as Russia's Vladimir Putin and Syria's Bashar al Assad. Frederik Obermaier is one of the investigative journalists who connected the dots and broke the story. Here he is speaking on CNN.

SOUNDCLIP

There are several, there are dozens of examples where we do see that they realize what the end customers are doing with these companies. So, they are clearly aware of it because we see the e-mail conversations between the compliance department and the partners speaking about end customers and their business. For example, there's one case when we see that they speak about the cousin of Bashar al Assad was sanctioned in 2008 by the US and they realized that he is using some of the companies they set up, but they kept him for a customer. We saw documents, but they called him, oh, he is the cousin of Bashar al Assad. There are documents where they realize that he is claimed or alleged to be one of the financiers of the Syrian regime, but it seems that they didn't really care at the beginning. For years, for them it was like, yeah, we do have Rami Makhlouf as an end customer using our companies but they kept him. So, this really shows me that when they speak about due diligence they should speak about flawed due diligence, because there was the warning, the red flags of their compliance departments, but they overruled it.

MF: So, we'll have a chance to speak to Frederik Obermaier and his colleague Bastian Obermayer, who've just released the new book The Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the Rich and Powerful Hide Their Money. Tune in for that. That's on Friday on the Summer edition of The Current. That's our program for today. Finally today, we’ve just been listening to Anna Maria’s conversation with Juan Thompson about his famous dad, Hunter S. Thompson. Well, let's leave off today with some music from the era and a cut that was used to great effect in the movie adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It’s from 1967. This is Buffalo Springfield and Expecting to Fly. I'm Mike Finnerty. Thanks for listening to the Summer edition of The Current, and we'll see you tomorrow.

[Music: Expecting to Fly by Buffalo Springfield]

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July 12, 2016 full episode transcript

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