JACKPOT

As February ended I once again visited Columbia, S.C.: the birthplace of so many of the South’s gentlemen marijuana smugglers. There I spoke at the Richland County Public Library as part of the Southern Writer Series organized by the Institute of Southern Studies at the University of South Carolina. The audience was lucky enough to also hear from a unique, Operation Jackpot-themed panel assembled by the library, featuring Bart Daniel and Bob Jendron, two federal prosecutors from Operation Jackpot; Jack Swerling, a prominent South Carolina defense attorney who represented a number of accused smugglers; and Robert Stewart, one of the chief investigators on the case and the former chief of the S.C. state police force, otherwise known as SLED.

Despite 30 or so years having passed, the men had sharp memories of their work during Jackpot, which I think is a testament to how unique and thrilling some of those experiences were in each of their lives and careers. Here’s some video footage of the night:

Jason Ryan – Book discussion Pt. 1 from SC Center for the Book on Vimeo.

Also, reporter Craig Brandhorst of Columbia’s Free Times newspaper interviewed me about Jackpot at length a week or two before the event, and you can see a transcript of our conversation here.

For my

Jackpot earned a mention in the Charlotte Observer’s Lake Norman News last week in an article detailing the literary ambitions of a retired U.S. Customs agent who worked undercover during the War on Drugs. He’s a Charleston boy, and apparently plenty familiar with all the pot smuggling that occurred in the Lowcountry in the ’70s and ’80s.

Moultrie News columnist Tom Horton deems Jackpot “one hot read for cool October nights.” We didn’t have too many cool nights this October in the Lowcountry, but at least November arrived with a (very slight) chill in the air.

See the Moultrie News’ review here!

After a few months of technical issues, Jackpot is now available on the Kindle!

And for those of you who like the Nook, you can buy Jackpot for it, too.

Lana in downtown Charleston

A few weeks ago I sat down to eat with a total stranger. Not an unusual circumstance for a reporter, of course, except that this time I was the one getting grilled. Washington, D.C.-based journalist Anthony Lacey was visiting Charleston and asked me to dinner to participate in his journalism experiment and blog Dining with Strangers. As you can likely guess, Anthony dines with strangers and writes about his experiences.

Considering he has previously dined with a magician, a Cuban singer, a porn site editor, a tattoo artist, and more, I was a tad worried that boring old me might not live up to his expectations.

Nevertheless, I was pleased to see Anthony’s recap of our dinner as we discussed the challenges of tracking down marijuana kingpins, journalistic inspiration, and impending fatherhood. He even managed to sneak in some Charleston restaurant reviews, too.

C-SPAN’s Book TV rolled into Charleston a few weeks ago to film interviews with journalists and historians in the Holy City. Despite the hellish Mid-July temperatures, they produced some impressive segments with scholars about Charleston’s earthquake of 1886, the Jenkins orphanage, the Hunley submarine and more. They began airing this weekend as part of C-SPAN2′s Southern cities tour.

I was interviewed by journalist Tiffany Rocque for three segments about South Carolina’s gentlemen marijuana smugglers and federal drug investigation Operation Jackpot, visiting the U.S. Custom House at East Bay and Market streets in downtown Charleston and the marshes outside McClellanville.

Here I am on a dock at a public landing between Awendaw and McClellanville. Tons of marijuana was unloaded in these marshes in the ’70s and ’80s.

This segment was behind the Custom House, close to the Cooper River. The chief federal investigators in Operation Jackpot had their offices here in the early ’80s.

And this last segment features me back in the marshes. It was very hazy out there, giving the water an eerie look. Thunderstorms were rolling in, too, so we had to wrap it up or risk getting wet.

I spoke with associate editor Scott Bryan of the Greenwood (S.C.) Index-Journal last week, and a piece on Jackpot appeared the next day. Mr. Bryan and I share membership in the Two First Names Club together, and I’m grateful for his column and review, which you can read here. Here’s an excerpt:

It’s one thing to type an email. It’s another to write a letter. But amassing thousands and thousands of words can be an exhausting and exhilarating experience. And a book project can become a life-consuming affair. For Jason Ryan, who recently authored “Jackpot: High Times, High Seas, and the Sting That Launched the War on Drugs,” it was no different.
“It was certainly challenging in some regards,” said Ryan, who lives in Charleston. “The challenges were it was a very delicate story and many of the people involved have very sensitive memories.
“It was very stop and go. Sometimes, I’d get a call right back. … It just wasn’t fluid. The progress came in fits and starts.”

http://www.indexjournal.com/main.asp?SectionID=8&SubSectionID=44&ArticleID=5864

Jackpot made the front page of the Charleston Mercury today. Printed on its distinctive pink paper, the Mercury is Charleston’s society newspaper, and it reviewed Jackpot very nicely!

I thought Jackpot was a pretty good title, but I recently came across a better one: Drugs.

Published in 1970, the cover of Drugs asks, ” Mind-expanding experience or ticket to death? Here is a searching look at the turned-on world.”

I haven’t had a chance to read the essays inside yet, but I did take a glance at many of the photos, and their are some great ones.

In this first photo, you can see a group of men unfazed by their jailing for growing marijuana. Their spirit reminds me of the gentlemen smugglers and kingpin Lee Harvey in particular, who, boasted he could do two years in federal prison “standing on my head.”

This one below sums up the gentlemen smugglers, too. Before becoming a marijuana kingpin, Les Riley would skip college classes at the University of South Carolina and take a VW down to the Florida Keys for a long weekend, bringing along friends and future smuggling cohorts.

Then there’s this one of Allen Ginsberg:

Visions of Warlocks? What an odd caption!

It’s not all fun and games, says the book.