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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, March 14, 1968
Double agents anyone?
The word "bust," which used to have all sorts of pleasant connotations, now takes on a cloak and dagger image as we learn more about drug investigations at KU.
Like the plot for the late, late show of a B movie, Topeka and Kansas City policemen use a special reserve fund for bribing informants on campus to lead them to arrests for possession of marijuana or LSD.
Detectives also reimburse informants for drug purchases, and then have the drug authenticated by chemical analysis. The plot thickens.
One almost expects this intrigue to be suddenly interrupted by one of those sparkling gems of the advertising medium, the Kansas City Retail Used Car Commercial, featuring car hoods that wave up and down like they're talking or Aunt BeeGee or some such thing, before the secret agent show continues.
One detective said he has three male informants in Naismith Hall, and probably other living groups, who supply him with information on drug use. No arrests have been made however. Dum-de-dum-dum.
One detective explained that one informant, a "bought-off hippie," is used only on special occasions, so as not to use the hippie too often.
Actually, all this causes somewhat mixed reactions in most students. Nobody likes a fink, and the cloak-and-stagger tone of policemen 1984-ing their way through our campus is equally disturbing, yet most of us have trouble being completely enthusiastic about drug traffic at KU.
The only thing that really comes through clearly at this point is the amusing position of someone who enjoys the melodramatic self-image of being a "double-agent."
That's where the action is. Imagine being one of these special agents who is bribed for leads that never quite pan out, and getting a grin out of telling the tale to an unattentive group at a pot party.
Become a double agent, as it were, for fun and profit; you could be reimbursed for returning only part of a package of marijuana, keeping what you wanted for your own purposes.
The beauty of it is that even if you get busted before you can get it back to your friendly neighborhood detective, you can easily beat the charges since your buddy can verify your role as one of their informants.
Somewhere, someone is having trouble keeping the grin off his face when reading about drug traffic bribes, while being paid by police to obtain drugs and then working it so he won't get busted himself.
Maybe the new connotations for "bust" have some hope after all, but nothing like others we can think of.
John Hill Assistant Editorial Editor
The Hill With It by john hill
The leprechaun was yelling something about it not being close enough to St. Patrick's Day yet as we wrestled up and down the slopes of Potter Lake, but I held on tightly.
"Gimme a pot of gold!" I cried, as we thrashed around in the trash. "You're a leprechaun and I caught you and I want a pot of gold."
After one last violent thrust, when he almost romneyed out of my half-Nelson, he gave in and we quit fighting, exhausted.
"All right, all right," said the little old man, who was about eight inches and looked like Everett Dirkson after a tornado, "now what is it you want?"
"You heard me," I said, seriously considering pinning his shoulders down, causing a mandatory floor meeting, "I want that pot of gold."
"You kids," he mumbled to himself, as he straightened a button on his green vest that said "St. Patrick is alive and drives a taxi in Argentina," "you're always thinking about pot."
He tiredly reached into his little uniform and brought out a pad of blue tickets and began to make notes.
"Now then," he said, not unlike Barney Fife, "is this your first pot of gold?"
"Nahh, I only wanted another one to make an even dozen."
"Don't be sarcastic, young man. I presume this is your first pot of gold. The reason I ask, of course, is that due to the present graduated gold system, you get one pot of gold the first time, two the second, then four, eight, sixteen—"
"Never mind," I said, disillusioned, and headed for the nearest bar, only to happily discover that the first beer was 3.2%, the next one 6.4%, the next one 12.8%, and the nesht one was delishess . . .
"Not So Fast There, Buster"
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Book review
'Delta Factor' hammers away
By Scott Nunley
Mickey Spillane is at it again, spinning out a new hero to champion the hardboiled American thriller for the third time since his postwar career began.
The original Spillane toughguy was, of course, Mike Hammer, with his .45 and his "deck" of Luckies. George Grella, in his 1967 KU Ph.D. dissertation, found Hammer to be one of the sickest of the detective heroes, with emphasis on sadistic sex and just brutality. Recently resurrected by Spillane in "The Girl Hunters," violent Hammer is still a popular sales item.
But there were even sicker things in store for Spillane addicts; Tiger Mann. A product of the last two years, Mann was Spillane's reaction to the Cold War pessimism of the post-Castro age. When the machinegun-mutilation of common thugs began to seem too naive, Tiger Mann provided a vehicle for hate and vengeance on a global scope.
Mann's men were strictly right of H. L. Hunt—a secret coterie of anti-communist killers dedicated to saving America in spite of herself. This tendency to oppose the Establishment had always motivated Mike Hammer to twit the incompetent bulls (now specifically the FBI) of his world. But then this had been almost a convention of the detective thriller. It was not until Tiger Mann began his wholesale assault on the State Department and the CIA that the Better-Dead-than-Fluoridation boys got a fictional champion they could love.
I was unprepared, therefore, for Spillane's latest hero, a literate super-criminal called Morgan the Raider. "The Delta Factor," making its Spring appearance in paperback, superficially continues Spillane's hate campaign against the fuzz—"Hell, they couldn't have reached me. The police, the great agencies subsidized in the government budget . . ." But although Morgan lightly dismisses his Federal captors (and makes fools of them by Chapter Two), there is a new grudging respect for the Establishment pros. Morgan even becomes their agent.
The real change, however, is in Spillane's attitude toward the Red Menace. With a grasp of complex situations unusual for him, Spillane presents an anti-communist dictatorship in Latin America:
“It's the same old pattern. The people get a look at prosperity and have hopes of sharing in it, but it's all eyewash. Ortega controls the Army and they control the population. It all happened in a subtle takeover instead of a revolution, but it was just as effective . . . if it weren't for the hard course the Army takes there might be open rebellion . . . they (the people) seem to like this figurehead president. Although he can't do anything, he's one of them and on their side. He's bucked Ortega twice . . .”
Morgan gives the Right Wing reply: "That fits the Commie trend;" but he is straightened out immediately:
"I don't know. We backed them down in Cuba and they may not want to jeopardize their present status by going that far out for an inconsequential place like this . . . No, I think the Reds are playing it cute and waiting it out."
"Damn. we should have moved in with troops to start with."
"And risk a global war? . . . They'd have the propaganda advantage for one thing."
What kind of pinko talk is this from Mickey Spillane!
But "The Delta Factor" is not the usual Mickey Spillane. Graced with suspense and mystery, and graciously free of sadism, this introduction to Morgan the Raider is a fastpaced thriller that preaches only, if anything, the virtues of moderation. Morgan is an economic man who uses minimum effort for maximum effect. For a change, it is the Spillane villain who is a victim of violent neuroses and the Spillane hero who laments the needless bloodshed.
If you have never been a fan of Mike Hammer, and if the new Tiger Mann hasn't gotten to your tank, risk 60 cents on Signet's paperback "The Delta Factor." Morgan the Raider may not be headed for distinction as Spillane's only healthy contribution to popular fiction, but he's made a fine start.