Observer or Conspirator?

An aspiring novelist defends his drug activities as research

With his bushy hair and brush mustache, Richard Lowell Stratton, 37, looks the part of a writer. He has written several articles for Rolling Stone, and has been befriended by Norman Mailer. But to federal law-enforcement officials, Stratton looks more like a drug pusher than a pencil pusher. Arrested a year ago in Maine with 14 others after a raid netted $1.5 million worth of hashish and marijuana, Stratton is on trial as an active member of a drug conspiracy. A gigantic mistake, he says; he was actually no more than a spectator absorbing material for a novel. A ten-member jury will decide, perhaps this week, which portrait matches Stratton. Either way, though, the outcome should be worth a cautionary mention in any how-to book for writers who want to investigate society's criminal element without stepping over the line.

If Stratton was truly engaged in research, no one can fault his thoroughness. Before his arrest, he says, he spent time in the company of drug dealers from Latin America to Southeast Asia. At the start of the trial he told reporters, "It took me five years to penetrate the upper echelons of the international drug-smuggling business, to gain the confidence of people who could introduce me into the elite circles." He was never involved in "planning or execution," he says, though "I may have done stuff like close hangar doors." Prosecutors claim that it was more like closing full-scale drug deals. Michael Sanborn, a.k.a. Fred Barnswallow, testified for the Government that he arranged several large drug buys through Stratton. Sanborn pleaded guilty in the scheme and is serving five years. Another witness, Policeman John Arnold, who posed as a "crooked cop" during the investigation, reported in court that Stratton once described himself as "Michael Sanborn's boss in drugs."

Stratton may decide not to tell his story directly to the jury. To bolster his side's credibility, his lawyers will call on Mailer and Doris Kearns Goodwin, a historian and Lyndon Johnson confidante. Mailer, who has known Stratton for more than 15 years and jointly owns a house in Maine with him, was in Portland last week and ready to testify. "Dick is a person of much integrity and courage," he says. No matter how many points character witnesses score for Stratton, the defense must counter the evidence that he was a participant. Explains Yale Law Professor Burke Marshall: "The question in the end is whether he did something that helped move the drug conspiracy along." Higher purpose is no excuse, says Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe. "Gathering the news is a fundamental right, but no one should be above the law."

If nothing else, the arrest has given Stratton plenty of time to perfect his craft. Unable to come up with bail of $500,000, he has been in jail in Portland since September busily at work on his first novel, Drug War. The initial 300 pages of the manuscript have been ferried to a New York City literary agent by Mailer, who has been down this road before. Two years ago, Mailer was promoting and urging the parole of a prison author named Jack Henry Abbott (In the Belly of the Beast), who won release but later killed a Manhattan waiter. Stratton is no Abbott. Not only does he lack Abbott's violent streak but, according to some of those who have seen Drug War, he lacks Abbott's writing skill. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.