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Not standing Pat
Buchanan revamps his presidential campaign and image by joining the Reform Party and making "racial reconciliation" a pet issue. But just how warm and fuzzy can the new Pat be?
By Jake Tapper
[10/25/99]

Viva Iowa
Though the state's Latino population makes up less than 2 percent of its voters, the Bush campaign is wooing Iowa Hispanics.
By Anthony York
[10/25/99]

The odd couple
Strange things went down this weekend when Christian firebrand Jerry Falwell and gay religious leader Mel White brought their followers together for a love fest.
By Deb Schwartz
[10/25/99]

Pete Rose steals the show
As baseball honors the team of the century at the World Series, the all-time hits leader banned for gambling proves he can't be exiled forever.
By Steve Kettmann
[10/25/99]

The Jasper myth
As the trial of the last defendant in the dragging death of James Byrd gets under way, these Texas residents are kidding themselves if they think they've conquered racism.
By Ashley Craddock
[10/25/99]

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Last week, Hatfield burst on the New York publishing scene with his explosive, if unsubstantiated, charges that the leading GOP presidential contender had once been arrested for cocaine use.

But then, just as suddenly, Hatfield disappeared again, when it turned out that he is the one with the record -- as a convicted embezzler who had once tried to car bomb a colleague who was a witness against him in a federal investigation.

Though Hatfield has denied that he is the man who was convicted of these crimes, a spokesman for St. Martin's has told Salon News that a private investigator hired by the publishing company has confirmed that the Social Security numbers and mug shots for Hatfield match up with those for the convicted felon.

As he escaped from the media glare in New York, Hatfield made his way back here to Bentonville. Like many towns up here in the Ozark Mountains, this is a strange, secretive place, where people know how to protect their own and stay out of each other's business. It's a good place to settle if you've got a past you don't feel like talking about. Nobody around here is likely to start asking questions you don't want to answer.

Although it's a typical rural hill town of 9,000, Bentonville's also headquarters for one of the country's largest corporations, Wal-Mart, which helped make a local family, the Waltons, one of the richest in the country.

This is where J. H. Hatfield grew up and later where he returned to write "Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President" first published, then withdrawn, by St. Martin's Press.

On Friday, while St. Martin's announced that it was taking the highly unusual step of recalling the book from bookstores, Bentonville locals say they noticed shadows passing back and forth across the shuttered front windows in Hatfield's house in an upper middle class subdivision outside of town. Hatfield himself soon emerged to order a reporter off his property.

By Saturday, the house appeared empty of all inhabitants. Hatfield, his wife, their baby and the family dog reportedly had left town for parts unknown. An eerie stillness hovered over O Street; autumn leaves swirled across empty lawns. None of Hatfield's neighbors would open their front doors to a stranger's knock.

"I have met the man exactly one time," Yvonne Fulkerson, Hatfield's next door neighbor, said by phone on Monday. "We were out riding horses and we introduced ourselves. That's the only conversation I have ever had with the man."

Fulkerson said that Hatfield's wife worked until recently, when she had a baby. She did not know where Mrs. Hatfield worked and had never talked to her.

"We would wave at each other," said Fulkerson. "It's not that they keep to themselves or anything. It's just a lot of people in the neighborhood work and we don't really see a lot of our neighbors."

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