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Telling only a couple of my closest friends, I flew to Minneapolis, where I had lived before moving to Oregon in 1967, to get false identification. One of the people who had known of the drug manufacturing scheme, had promised me that he could and would obtain said fake ID. This was in return for my tacit acknowledgement that I would keep quiet about his involvement in the plan. I should have known better, since earlier he had tried to obtain the lab equipment to make the LSD, but had failed completely, getting none of it together. Anyway, when I got there, he had nothing for me,not even a connection. Panicked that I was "out in the cold" with no one to help, I contacted an old friend who was then a member of the nascent Black Panther party in Minneapolis and asked him and his buddies for help. Not only did they comply, but they also talked me out of my main idea, which was to masquerade as a black man. I felt I could really disappear if I became African American. I intended to use the same chemical that the man who wrote the book "Black Like Me" had done several years before to enhance his skin's tanning ability and to masquerade as Black in order to "authentically" record the Black experience from the standpoint of a White man. It was a good thing I did not. That chemical, as well as tanning itself, turned out to be very carcinogenic. Besides, as Ernie Swinson, my friend, advised me, I would have a very hard time with that disguise, not because I couldn't "fit in" with Black people, but that I just lacked to many seminal experiences to pass. I could probably fool the police, but I would be instantly suspect among the people among whom I would be hiding.

Instead, they came up with a full set of identification of a man named Bruce Madison who had recently died of a heroin overdose. Although he was a junkie, he was also an honorably discharged marine who had served in Viet Nam, he was only three years younger than I, about an inch shorter and almost the same weight. I guess he had picked up his heroin habit in Viet Nam, but I neither wished to nor tried to probe too deeply into his background, since I intended to form a completely different identity starting with his name and identification. I had his driver's license, his marine ID, his birth certificate (they were much easier to get in those days, since it was before the age of computers and birth and death records were not cross referenced) and a few other sundry pieces of ID.

With this in hand, I flew to Ottawa, the capital of Canada, where I joined up with another old friend, R. D. Miller, who was then the head of the Canadian drug commission. He gave me a job with the commission as an "expert" in the negative effects of marijuana. This was not hard to do for a couple of reasons. First of all, there were really precious few drug "experts" of any stripe in those days, as it was before the War on Drugs and other government insanity. Secondly, there was very little negative literature on marijuana to review. Then as now, the drug was seen to have few if any adverse properties, at least as a pharmacological substance. Of course, the infamous Harry Anslinger had invented all sorts of bogus social consequences for marijuana in the '30's when he was trying to find a suitable replacement for alcohol...about to be relegalized...as a bete noire to keep his agency, and thus his own personal power and influence, alive. The baloney spread by this man and his allies persists in coloring government "thought" (now there's an oxymoron!) on the subject, but that is another story. It was to the credit of the Canadian government that they had formed their drug commission with few preconceived notions about the inherent social dangers of drug use. To this day, our neighbors to the north are incredibly more sane in their approach to the drug "problem" than we are in the United States.

Anyway, with the cover of a job, I was able to slowly convert my U.S. Bruce Madison identification into a Canadian version, first obtaining a driver's license, then a social insurance card (their version of social security), a library card form the central government library and a voter card. Also, instead of being an ex-marine junkie, I made Bruce Madison into an international drug expert. While, for obvious reasons, I had to keep a fairly low profile, I nevertheless made quite a few contacts and connections that were to serve me well in the years ahead.

I also began a practice which I continued through my entire days as a fugitive, that of informing everyone who sheltered or helped me in any way that I was a fugitive. To my surprise and relief, in those days of draft dodgers and general societal turmoil, few questioned me as to the reasons for my fugitive status. In fact, it was truly astonishing how many people were ready, both in canada and in the United States, to harbor me as a fugitive. In the two and a half years I was "on the road" NOT ONE PERSON turned me away because I was wanted by the FBI. Eventually, when Patty Hearst joined me on the fugitive scene, I was to profoundly question this tendency, deciding that most people were as crazy as, or perhaps even crazier than I!

In any case, using my newly formed identity, I eventually "emigrated" to the U.S. and Washington, D.C. where, as an eminent Canadian drug scientist, I obtained employment for...guess who...the BNDD! Actually, I was working for SAODAP (president Nixon's Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention) and the U.S. State Department as a consultant. My plan was to use this job to find out the real reason why I had been set up in the first place. Eventually I did, but that too is another story.

There were some problems with the Bruce Madison identity. For example, foreigners, even Canadians, are not always well treated in this country by some agencies, especially law enforcement or the INS. So, I also obtained and built stories around two other identities, both made up out of whole cloth, but American. I used these identities when I was outside of Washington. There was Lenny White, an author and there was my favorite, Otis Henry Williams (or "Oat" Willy, a Zap comic book character), an unemployed drifter.

Still, as Bruce Madison, I made many friends and acquaintances in Washington and the international drug expert community, including Karl Hess, a famous libertarian theorist. So, when I decided many years later, to write a column for the World Wide Web, I readopted that identity so that I could, as Bruce, correspond with Mr. Hess and perhaps other former acquaintances.

See you tomorrow...

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