Federal Prison System Inmate 94405-198 (Randall "Duke" Cunningham) March 11th, 2006

This document is part of a series about Randall "Duke" Cunningham's attempted murder / suicide on November 25th, 2005

My family traces its participation in U.S. military efforts back to the Revolutionary War, at Valley Forge. Nearly a century later, my great, great grandfather, John Wesley Hartley, carried a saber and a gun in our nation's bloody Civil War.

My maternal grandfather, Daniel Edgar Tennow, served with the U.S. Army, 306th Infantry, 77th Division, during "a war that was bound to end all wars." The 77th took part in major battles along the Vesle River and in the Argonne Forest. After advancing across trenches full of dying German soldiers, young boys with their bloody entrails hanging out, crying "Mutter!, Mutter!" (Mother!, Mother!), he himself died in his mid 40's, in 1939, before I was born. At that time, he was a tailor and instructor of the trade at a technical high school in New York City.

My uncle, also named Daniel Edgar Tennow, spent twenty years in the U.S. Army. He served in Vietnam with both General Abrams and General Westmoreland as, among other things, Command Sergeant Major, Army Material Command. Before that, he was a tank commander as part of the occupation forces in Germany. He died February 7th, 2001, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. At 17, "Uncle Danny" lied about his age in order to enlist.

My father, Howard Stanley Hoffman, is now 80 years old and in a wheelchair. He also served in occupied Germany, but got there by fighting his way in during World War Two as a mortar crewman and forward observer with the U.S. Army's Third Chemical Battalion. He took part in the Battle of the Bulge, and also fought the Nazis in Italy, France, Holland, and Germany, and went a year straight under combat conditions before meeting the Russians at the Elbe River.

In December of 1944, my father's battalion was attached to Patton's Third Army and quickly advanced to join the fierce, bloody fighting that was taking place along the fluid battle lines created as Patton tried desperately to reach the besieged but still Allied-held city of Bastogne, Belgium, where the 101st Airborne were loosing their grip as they were being pounded by German attacks coming from all directions. Persistent bad weather kept air support grounded.

Losing Bastogne to the Nazis would have given them a vital geographical hub for their troop movements during a critical period of the war. The German commander believed the heavily battered city was ready to collapse, and politely requested unconditional surrender from the American troops holed up there -- to avoid civilian casualties, he claimed, but presumably the real reason was because he wanted to capture the city as quickly as possible, so the Nazis could use it as a center for the ongoing offensive.

As you probably know, Major General A.C. McAuliffe refused the surrender request with one word, suggested by a subordinate: "Nuts!" Fortunately for McAuliffe and his beleaguered forces, thousands of men like my father were coming to their aid. The city held.

I believe it was you who attempted to commit suicide about 8:35 pm on the night of Friday, November 25th, 2005 on Mission Road in San Marcos, California by ramming your Chevy Tracker head-on at high speed directly into my Honda Passport.

If it WAS you, why haven't you told me? Didn't you get my letter, which I sent to your attorney in Los Angeles about two weeks after the accident, saying I won't try to have you prosecuted in this case, but I need to know for sure that it was you (I even offered you back the part of your car I have)? DO you have any remorse over this (I'm SURE you do)? Didn't the police contact you about it at all? Didn't whoever owns the Chevy Tracker that's missing the right front wheel well liner want to know what kind of high-speed accident might create such damage? And what about the white paint I'm sure was slashed across your vehicle? And I wonder: What DID your speedometer read when you clipped me? 60? 70? 80 miles per hour?

Why do I have to go on worrying about the possibility, however slim, of it being someone other than you? If it was you, please say so. I can't rest until I find whoever it was. If you don't know what I'm talking about, please say so. If you thought it was a nightmare, IT WASN'T. My wife and I are very real. Our Honda Passport is all scratched up.

Would you like to get to know us? Or would you JUST like to know how I evaded you, despite your best efforts? It didn't just "happen." Rest assured, it took a lot of training to beat you. You didn't loose your touch, you just LOST, that's all, which in this case meant living another day.

The other drivers in your direction had stayed back (God bless them for doing what the California Driver's Manual tells them to do when trouble appears -- slow down immediately (if it's safe to do so) and try to stay away from trouble entirely, if possible). Going in the same direction as me, behind me, I think there was one car in the lane to my right, and that's it, and he was well away (back) too. But without looking, I couldn't be ABSOLUTELY sure where he was. You might know better than I. I couldn't look away to find out for sure, and I didn't ask my wife to look. Perhaps I was afraid that if her head was turned during the upcoming (expected) impact, it would surely snap her neck. So maybe you would live and I would live, but she would die. That was NOT acceptable.

I probably always planned, during the final period when we went straight at each other, to cut to the left, especially since I had already TRIED going to the right and you wouldn't let me by on that side. With all that "sky" on my left for the final maneuver, when it finally happened (the last half second of your 5 to 7 second assault) I could (finally, having already prevented the head-on collision) play you like a fiddle (alas, a poorly tuned fiddle), which I did, as I'll explain later. I did this in order to try to save the guy in back of me in the next car. You might call him my "wingman." I'd call him your next target. A friend whom I have not met.

I really never made up my mind which way I would turn the wheel until the very end. You might have realized some of my considerations, and guessed what I would do, but I don't think either of us could be sure which way I would cut, until I actually did it.

Another reason I didn't want, or need, to plan which side I would cut to was that, as we headed straight towards each other, after jinking and jiving, you MIGHT have flinched, and shown me a best way to turn for safety. Sooner or later, someone doing more or less what you were doing to my wife and me, but NOT with real intent on suicide, HAD TO FLINCH. I was hoping you would, but you NEVER did. You just kept on coming, faster and faster. Watching you come at us was DEFINITELY an "E" ticket! Scariest ride I've ever been on. I feel very sorry for the other five men who came and fell before you, before it was my turn.

But I wish to stress to you that it wouldn't have mattered which way I cut, even if you had predicted it. I had waited long enough, so that I could have cut either way. You had to "lose" (and thus, live) -- IF everything went right: If my motor didn't stall, my feet didn't fall off the pedals or work them improperly, my hands didn't oversteer or understeer, or refuse to steer, my tires held their grip, and your guns continued to jam. In the end, you had too much speed to collide with me EVEN IF you predicted my cut correctly, but I STILL had to pull it off.

I mountainbike and in-line skate, and used to drive a forklift, and even a tractor-trailer for a little while. I have soled an airplane and I have even piloted a helicopter for a few minutes, under the guidance of a licensed instructor, of course. I have a pretty good sense of what you need to do to make a controlled turn just about as quickly as possible, and still hit the exact line you want. I'm 49 years old, and I have been bicycling (mostly in traffic (i.e., on the street)) all my life, and mountainbiking for more than a decade, and have probably fallen off my mountainbike more than a hundred times -- at least once nearly fatally (I cracked my helmet that time). Maybe one slight concussion, if that, over the years, just in case you're wondering. And maybe one or two in my youth, same as most young males, probably. Nothing serious.

When I mountainbike, I wear just about every piece of protective gear possible: A helmet with a chin protector and a properly tightened chin strap, elbow pads, knee pads, padded shorts and even padded undershorts (adds cushioning AND prevents chaffing), a plastic chest protector, and a "Camelbak" which, at least when it's got some water in it, also functions, at least somewhat, as a spinal cord protector (or at least I hope it will, if I ever need it to).

My wife teaches computer programming online. I write educational software. She loves mountainbiking at least as much as I do. Sharon (my wife) has a titanium mountainbike. We drove out to Tempe, Arizona a couple of years ago to have her bike specially designed and constructed. She wears all the same kind of protective gear I wear, but in much smaller sizes.

As a last measure of safety, to keep my speed down and to keep near her while we ride (so hungry mountain lions won't eat her and bad men won't abduct her), I ride behind her on nearly all steep downhills, just far enough back so I can stop or avoid her if she gets herself in trouble.

I have long said that the drive to and from the mountainbike park is probably far more dangerous than the mountainbiking itself. More than a dozen close encounters with rattlesnakes, hundreds of minor contusions, one broken helmet, and a couple of broken bones notwithstanding.

Alas, we've been out mountainbiking only about twice in the three months since our "accident" with you. My wife, who sat there in silence by the way, but did not think to look at your face as you passed by (I DID), wondered if her being absolutely silent while you came at us was beneficial. I thanked her for her kind consideration, and assured her that it could not have hurt to be quiet, but I also told her that we could have had six kids with us, screaming "OH DADDY PLEASE TURN THE WHEEL DADDY PLEASE GET US OUT OF HERE PLEASE DADDY -- PLEASE TURN THE CAR AWAY" and I would have done exactly the same thing -- jinked and jived, and then just waited, and waited, and waited. Then jumped like a rabbit. Like a fat rabbit. I might have yelled back: "DON'T WORRY, KIDS, WE'LL BE OKAY, EVERYBODY JUST HOLD ON TIGHT! I'M GOING TO TURN NOW! HOLD ON TIGHT!" I bet I could get all that out in three seconds, as you sped straight toward me. And I bet I can shout louder than six kids any day.

SPLAT. Maybe you would have won the "dogfight" that evening, for no good reason -- perhaps just because I wasn't good enough that day, or because one of my tires blew, what with all that extra weight in the vehicle from all those kids in the back, or from a nail in the road I had not seen in all the mayhem.

And I guess, thank God my wife and I have no children. I now have some concept of what even SURVIVING what happened that night would have done to tender young minds. Thank God it was only Sharon and I in the other car, with nearly a hundred years of life, and more than a few scrapes already gone by between us.

Personally, this loss of mountainbiking, this unwillingness to drive (okay, business demands do still get us out of the house (and actually is what put us in harms' way that night, since we were in San Marcos to shop at Fry's, and had just purchased a bunch of "geek toys")), this feeling of being "persona non grata" in San Diego County (as you probably know, there really is no "San Marcos Sheriff's Department;" it's run by the county sheriff's department), this is the greatest loss -- we can't get to our exercise locations! Too many suicidal / homicidal drivers out there for me, Sir (ONE seems to me to be too many, when I know he drives around with impunity and immunity betwixt me and where I'd like to be).

But I think most police forces are at least as good as Carlsbad's, although some aren't. We are planning to move to where we have mountainbiking "out the door" instead of way out in Elfin Forest and Daley Ranch, since emergencies at Elfin Forest might be responded to by the San Marcos Sheriff's Department, whom I consider lame at best (since they can't catch the guy who came at us that night, and since the responding officer has little interest in doing so, whether it was you or anybody else). And to get to Daley Ranch, we have to bisect San Marcos via Route 78. So we stay here in beautiful Carlsbad Village By The Sea. But even here, a pedestrian in his 70s was killed just a couple of weeks ago, where my wife and I go skating. One of the drivers of the two vehicles involved was a former elected official from Vista. Life is soooo fleeting!

During the final two or three seconds of our "duel", when you thought that you (at least you) were going to die in a head-on collision, while your Chevy Tracker and my Honda Passport were heading straight toward each other and neither you nor I was turning to either side anymore, what were you thinking about?

I recall looking down at my tachometer to make sure my RPMs were about 4500 to 4800, which (if I correctly recall what the manual says) is the power range for my motor. My understanding is that I'll get more umph out of the motor if I keep the RPMs around there throughout the maneuver, so that's what I tried to do. I waited and waited and waited, because you had already proven to me that your intent was, unequivocally, to have a head-on collision at as high a closing speed as you could muster from your ponies. So the longer I waited as you accelerated toward me and I kept my speed down, the less maneuverability you had, and the better our chance of escape.

I think you were unsuccessful in part because I have studied fighter pilots since I was about 9 or 10 years old, which would be since about 1965 or '66. That's one reason. I have books and books and books on the subject. Yes, of course some of them quote you. Some quote you many times.

And as a computer programmer, I've written laser targeting and joystick control software specifically designed for semi-autonomous remotely-operated pilotless combat aircraft flight control systems, and similar technological interfaces for human-machine interaction. Just for fun.

About 20 years ago, I took flying lessons from a World War Two C-47 pilot, Jack Eichler. Now, funny thing, isn't it, me driving a lumbering (comparatively) Honda Passport and you driving a descendent of a snappy Suzuki Samurai, famous for both its nimble handling capabilities AND its roll-over "capabilities" (which I believe you tried unsuccessfully to "utilize" just before nailing my headlights in your crosshairs, so I think the car's engineers have worked on the problem over the years)? Funny thing indeed, when you add that a close friend of mine used to drive a "real" Suzuki Samurai, and I've ridden with him many times and he's a safe driver, but no slowpoke. So I have a good idea of your "phantom" (since the police can't find it) car's "flight characteristics" -- and it certainly is a much more nimble car than my (relatively) clumsy Passport! My loveable, delicately-balanced, smooth-as-silk 2000 Honda Passport from Hoehn Motors in Carlsbad, California.

When you recovered from your attempted one-car rollover in front of me, I had ONE chance to see your profile before you squared up at me and engaged me in "battle." Fortunately, I paid attention, so I knew what kind of car you were driving -- it wasn't just two headlights coming at me.

When I finally darted out of the way, my car's acceleration was delightfully smooth. I have a standard, not an automatic, and I was in second gear, with the clutch all the way in at first, as I coasted slowly and waited (after the jinking and jiving had ended). After hard braking right away when I first saw you, and then some more slowing while I flashed my brake lights at any cars coming up from behind, to warn them that there was serious trouble here, I was going perhaps 10 or 12, or at most maybe 15 miles per hour while we were going along that straight-away. I thought about stopping completely, and just letting the impact happen. Later, I wondered if I might have been able to put the car in reverse, and lessen the impact that way -- but with no time to check my six o'clock in the heat of battle, let alone find reverse and utilize it successfully, that wasn't much of an option. Besides, you'd probably still hit me, just later, and your speed would be higher! Realistically, those options were all suicidal.

Therefore, I maintained what felt like a good speed to pull out in second gear from, but as slow as possible, to give you as much time as possible to either stop this silly game and go back to your side of the road, or gain more speed, so my cut would be more likely to succeed.

At the last possible moment, I tore away, with EVERYTHING my car could give me. I had given up on air bags. I had given up on evasive maneuvers. All I had left to rely on was six cylinders and four Michelin tires. No wonder I looked at my tach, when you think about it: Keeping my motor running was the ONLY hope ANY of us had for surviving.

I DO WONDER, and hope you will tell me, if you expected me to cut RIGHT, and I wonder if my eventual cut to the LEFT really surprised you, or if you really thought I had given up trying to evade you and was planning to trust my airbags to protect us? Or did you think we were just sitting there crossing ourselves, which I hear is the thing to do when you can't do anything else? Was the baby in the back seat supposed to be crossing itself, too?

Just kidding about the baby in the back! There was no baby in the back! You only nearly killed TWO of your constituents, because we know now that my wife wasn't pregnant at the time, although she could have been, even at 48, and was pregnant just a few years ago, but we lost it early on. Had it come to term, YES, there would have been a baby in the back, in a child safety seat, which I'm sure wouldn't have made a bit of difference at the speed we would have had your planned head-on collision at.

Of course, if I had a baby in the back, I probably wouldn't have dared to give you the "opportunity" to clip my tail, which I hung out for you to try to TAKE if it made you happy. I wanted you to think of ME as your target for as long as possible. I did this to try to save the NEXT driver from suffering my fate, only worse, if you missed me completely and just went on to the guy in back of me and smashed into him at an even faster rate. How would I explain THAT to the cops? ("I could see he was going to kill someone, so I quickly got out of his way to be sure it was the next guy instead of me.") No thanks. I would have been delighted to have collided enough to disable your vehicle -- I just didn't want your head-on, and I didn't want you passing me up simply because the next guy was an easier target. But a car is just a hunk of steel, and at a time like that, I couldn't care less about the damage to it.

I really, REALLY wanted you to believe that I hadn't, and couldn't, beat you, and that you and I were going to have YOUR desired head-on collision. I wanted you to believe that for as long as humanly possible, and after that, I really, REALLY REALLY wanted you to hit me anyway -- I knew you wanted to -- and you did. All I wanted, of course, was a tap, pretty much just like you did, but in some semiconscious way I most definitely wanted it. Otherwise, you were OBVIOUSLY going to blunderbuss on into the next guy. Okay, so I didn't know for sure if you'd clip my tail, but I really wanted you to be able to do so if it made you happy, as I expected it would. ANYTHING to stop you from killing the next guy. Somewhere in my gut I KNEW I must NOT evade you by too much, or there would be NO HOPE for whoever was behind me -- and somewhere back there, I was sure there was a "next guy," even though we don't know who it was -- he didn't stop after the accident, though he must have plainly seen it. Oh well, it's not unusual not to stop at what was clearly NOT a killer collision. Even if it almost was.

In any event, leaving my tail out for you to clip if you insisted (which you did), even after I had succeeded in making a head-on impossible, seems to have worked, since you managed to drive home -- presumably gleefully, thinking, perhaps for the last time, that God had saved you once again, and was even going to let you get away with that nasty little thing you had just done.

I'm really sorry to disappoint you, Sir, but it was only me who was driving the other car that evening, and I'm flesh-and-blood. Presumably, of course, the Almighty's guidance is with all of us, all our days, if we choose to use it. But in this instance, it was merely a commoner, the very kind of people -- the very kind of "collateral damage" you must have hoped it would be -- but a commoner who, fortunately, deduced your plan quick enough to foil it. As mortals, you and I will probably never know what role God's hand really played in all this. Erich Hartmann probably thought God was on his side, too, especially after so many victories. What did YOU think?

I suspect that my having parents who are (now retired) experimental psychologists probably helped me understand there was a human mind in a fighting psyche behind the machine, not a coldly calculating computer, but a thinking (sort of), living (for the moment) human being. Or, to put it in present-day terms, my own personal suicidal terrorist with his own improvised explosive device.

Maybe (so far), God and the San Marcos Sheriff's Department HAVE let you go without so much as a warning, for attempting to kill two of your constituents, or even a ticket for the "hit and run." That's certainly what they (at least, the SMSD) wanted to do that Friday night when Officer Kelleher finally showed up. It seems that neither heaven nor earth can be moved to find the guy who came at my wife and me that awful night. But heaven left a few traces to help find whoever it was, and I say it was you because I saw you, and I'm not planning on "letting you go" just yet. I need to KNOW it was you, because otherwise, I need to FIND whoever it was. And I have this car part which can help me to do that, but only if I can get the police to investigate the incident, which I can't seem to get them to do.

Sir, I am sure you kept your right foot hammered to the floor, from around the first moment I saw you, all the way until we collided 5 to 7 seconds later. Chances are about 99% that you were driving an automatic. And chances are about 99% that you were, just before gunning for me -- AMAZED that you were unable to roll your vehicle in your previous attempt(s), which could have resulted in a suicide without the "help" from an oncoming car to smash into.

In that case, I probably would have been the first car to stop, since you would have been blocking my lane. My CPR is a little rusty, but I'd have done my best until help arrived, which experience indicates would have taken about 45 minutes in that part of town that evening.

Oh sure, I'll get over it -- probably as soon as I move out of the county. I'm 49 and feel like I was born -- not born again, just born -- about 8:35 pm, Friday, November 25th, 2005 on Mission Road in San Marcos, California, along with two soul mates, Sharon and some guy in a Chevy Tracker. If it was you, well, buddy, I've saved your life TWICE now probably, and once now, for sure.

I was, and so I alerted Judge Burns to my concerns last week, before your sentencing. I told him everything I could think of that might be relevant to help him decide if I was expressing a reasonable fear, if I was a reasonable person, if I had thought this all through to the best of my ability. I'm not saying he even read what I wrote -- I don't know -- and I did not advocate for or against a longer or shorter prison sentence for you in the bribery scandal. And I did not know that one of his options was to send you right to prison, then and there, while other options were not to do that in order to, for example, let you visit your mother first. So maybe I saved your life, and who-knows-who-else's life, again. And I'm sorry you couldn't visit your mother again, perhaps you should have done it more often while you had the chance. We all should probably visit our mothers more often.

I want to try to get you sprung. I want to be able to write a letter to President (at least, I've heard that 49% of the voters believe he was elected) Bush that he will hopefully take into consideration, and which will help you. But I need your help.

Right now, all I can do is wonder if it really was you? If it was, why are you so hard to catch? I've given the cops a description of the accident and of the other driver's car -- and a name (yours). I've shown them an identifying sticker from a part off your car. There were witnesses whom the responding officer refused to interview. They (the SMSD) don't care enough to even make out a report and start a formal investigation, and the responding officer told me he thinks we should all be dead (you, me, and my wife), if it really happened the way I have asserted, with a fighter pilot Ace "losing" to a plain-old-Joe (and thus "winning" a new start on life).

As a former Top Gun flight instructor, surely you would like to know the training that bested you that night -- that survived your deadly Kamikaze-style attack. The other driver (me) was someone who has intensely studied the fighter pilot's mentality, and tried to apply it, just for fun and games of course, to defensive driving techniques -- and also defensive flying (what little I could afford to do), biking (especially in city traffic), in-line skating, even "defensive walking," which would be: Managing to walk swiftly through a crowd without tripping over anyone, attracting attention to oneself, scaring anyone, or knocking down little old ladies (or news cameramen).

My flight instructor, Jack Eichler, and I, we had about 30 hours together up there. I soloed, and did a "cross-country" flight as well. I tried to called Jack this week, to check the details of the enclosed stories about him, but it turned out he had passed away about five years ago -- way too young -- from lung cancer which had spread to his liver -- it was very painful. And to think: Jack never smoked or drank.

Jack had stopped flying some years earlier, from Parkinson's, but would go sit in the plane sometimes, for an hour or so, just for the memories. They stopped charging him to timeshare the airplane, of course, as soon as he stopped flying, but left him a key to use any time he wanted. Many of the plane's users were his former students. Life's not always fair. In fact, it seldom is.

One day, as Jack and I ("21-Hotel") entered the traffic pattern at Sikorsky Air Field in Stratford, Connecticut, many years ago (about 1988), we heard another pilot saying he was entering the pattern and could not see the other traffic, which all three of us (the tower, the other pilot, and us) knew was us. But just as he started to communicate with the tower, we could see HIM, crossing well in front of us and slightly to our right, also entering the pattern, but from a more straight-on approach to the downwind leg (we were entering a right-turning traffic pattern that day). The other plane was a good way off, about the size of a grasshopper on our windshield.

Jack gently grabbed the controls -- it was always "gently" with him -- "small changes, early on" he used to say. Other than to show me maneuvers, Jack tended not to take the controls very often while we were in flight -- I remember only one other time, and that was at my request -- I thought for sure I was going to throw up. He thought that was a lousy reason for him to take the controls. Of course, during the actual landings -- the last 200 feet of altitude -- or the last 20 -- he would take over a bit more often. ("Didn't you feel the controls getting loosey-goosey, Russ?" I remember him saying once, as he suddenly -- but smoothly -- dropped the nose, pushed the throttle in all the way, and told me to call the tower and announce a "go-around." "But there's lots of runway left. Can't we just settle things down and land a little further down the runway?" I forget exactly HOW he said "no," but he said "no" and it was NOT debatable.)

But back to the traffic patten incident. Jack turned us to the right, BEHIND the other plane, and told me to tell the tower RIGHT AWAY that we have the traffic in sight and are behind it in the pattern. I was careful to say the type of aircraft in our view, and its present location, so everyone knew I was talking about the correct airplane: "21-Hotel. We are now in back of the Beachcraft Bonanza which is abaft the tower, on the downwind leg. It's well ahead of us and we have it clearly in sight."

Traffic was light that day. A Beachcraft Bonanza wants to slide through the air much more swiftly than a Cessna 172, so we might as well go behind him. But that's not the real reason we made sure to put ourselves there. No, no, we did it to "win," as I'll explain.

How did THAT save all our lives the day after Thanksgiving last year? It was the conversation that followed. Jack knew that I had wanted to learn flying from a World War II fighter pilot -- preferably an Ace (picky, picky me). (Even now, they are somewhat easier to find than the TWO (including you) from the Vietnam Era Conflict (but I seem to have found ONE of those two, anyway, and got quite a "flying lesson" out of him (you)!).)

Earlier, before I started taking flying lessons from him, Jack had actually apologized for "only" being a "bus driver," pulling trios of gliders and hauling planeloads of paratroopers -- such a gentleman! I assured him, of course, that I loved DC-3s (C-47s) -- what pilot or would-be pilot doesn't? And I also assured him that if men were willing to learn to jump INTO battle by jumping OUT of his airplane (and oh how steady and slow you must fly to give them a good jumping platform!), then surely he was good enough to teach ME.

Anyway, as we finished entering the landing pattern, Jack and I had a short conversation about getting on that Beachcraft Bonanza's tail. He told me: "That's what fighter pilots do. They learn to get on the other guy's tail. People think it's the other way around -- that you try to get in front of the guy, but you don't. You usually try to get on HIS tail."

Somehow, in all my books, reading James "Johnnie" Johnson, Adolph Galland, Douglas Bader, Greg "Pappy" Boyington and hundreds of others, it never really hit me how to apply what they were all saying. But from the instant Jack said it, it made perfect sense to me, and it changed everything about my driving (and my flying). I learned to "read people's minds" (so to speak) regarding their driving intentions, by always thinking of "winning" each little "dance" for position one goes through by getting BEHIND the other driver whenever possible. Getting behind them, to me, is a win.

As you and I pirouetted across the road, you towards me, and me towards safety, I only needed to protect my front end -- I knew there was no baby in the back: We had lost the fetus, perhaps due to the environmental pollution corrupt Congressmen have allowed to be released around the world (especially during war, and military maneuvers, and military training, and building and operating the unaccountable military-industrial complex, all of which is a holocaust to our own people and to everyone else on the planet, and to future generations).

So anyway, as I was saying, ever since then -- for nearly twenty years -- I have been playing a "fighter-pilot game" of "pouncing" on every other driver's tail whenever I can, at every intersection when I have a logical option, during lane change maneuvers on the highway, and so on. I take my right-of-way whenever it's proper, but whenever it's debatable, I always choose to try to "get on the other guy's tail." It's actually especially fun because it appears to be polite but you don't actually have to feel like being polite to do it -- just a little patient. Patience is an important thing to learn in order not to be an aggressive driver, anyway. And no, one doesn't tailgate afterwards, and there are times when it's inappropriate to play the game for some reason, such as with hyper-aggressive BMW or Mercedes-Benz drivers, who just HAVE to be handled a little bit differently.

The bottom line is, I get to NOT be an aggressive driver, yet I cunningly am determining the other driver's intentions and, in effect, corralling them into going first. Often, at least in California, I have to beat them at a very quick but pointed game of who will be the most polite -- a fun game indeed. By the way, NEVER wave people forward. Leave that to traffic cops, construction site flagpersons, and school crossing guards. It can be easily misinterpreted.

A quick flick of the steering wheel or a gentle but unhesitant tap of the brake is often all it takes to establish the "pecking order," because once a person thinks of you as being behind them, they tend to completely ignore you, whether you are on a bike, or in a car, or whatever. Even every time I simply walk through a crowd, I try to play this game.

This is why I was able to understand you so quickly that night. I COULDN'T get "behind you" (to safety) no matter WHAT I tried. You didn't want ANY part of the road -- you wanted ME. Having learned for so many years how to GIVE UP the road, I could see unequivocally that you weren't LETTING me give you the road -- there was just no way out -- unless I waited while you accelerated so much that in the end, you had traded away TOO MUCH of your maneuverability in your quest for increased collision speed.

When you first straightened yourself out, in MY lane, after trying to flip your vehicle (I realized later that must have been what you were doing), I thought you were confused about what lane you belonged in -- and probably drunk. I immediately slowed down from an estimated 42 miles per hour (in a 45 zone) to not more than 22 to 25 miles per hour, even though you were a long way off.

As I turned towards the lane to my right, you followed that turn, and, even at that distance, I could manage to detect that you were definitely accelerating, picking up a lot of speed. So I already knew that you were dead serious. That early.

I was boxing myself in, which the California Driver's Manual warns drivers not to do, which I had re-read only a few months before, in preparation for my license renewal and possible written test. I'm positive that that recent rereading of the California driver's manual was a significant factor which helped save our lives that night, and I have already thanked the California Department of Motor Vehicles, regardless of WHO the other driver was. If it was you, you should be thanking them, too, for publishing such a great book.

When moving towards the lane to my right didn't work, I turned back to my original lane (the left of the two lanes going in my direction). I was moving slowly in the forward direction, so I made sure to show you I was moving back by turning the steering wheel a lot, so the maneuver did not take too long to develop, even though I was going slowly. I might have added some gas (I can't recall) during the lane change maneuvers. You kept me busy, that's for sure! Thinking and learning about you, trying to understand you (I'm still trying).

When you followed my second turn precisely, too, I was doubly sure of a number of things: You were serious. You were determined to collide with me. You were suicidal. You were NOT meandering aimlessly or merely drunk. You were DEFINITELY gunning for ME.

I was sure you were accelerating constantly. And I was sure you were at least as good as I was at flicking the steering wheel -- and your vehicle -- any old way you wanted to. You had a bead on me. I have to give you that -- I couldn't shake you! So I stopped trying. I don't know why. Maybe I figured I'd think of something. I probably was hoping that you would tire of the "game" when I stopped "playing" (stopped trying to evade you) and you would eventually go back to your side of the road.

Back around the time I was taking flying lessons, I also did "auto-cross," so I knew I wasn't always the fastest kid on the block. Sometimes I was, and I knew I might be able to beat "Mario" himself some days, but other days, I spun out for no good reason -- and just when I was doing so good on that run, too!

Right away, I said to my wife, "Look at this guy!" and pointed my finger at you. You must have been more than 600 feet in front of us at that moment -- seemingly not really our problem (yet). But I braked hard anyway, just in case. Thank goodness I did.

As you came towards us, I thought that you MUST be being chased by cops, and I was expecting a flood of them to come at me next (hopefully in THEIR lane!). But now I realize, of course, it was only demons in your mind -- and besides, as far as I can tell, there ARE no cops in San Marcos!

About midway through the skirmish, when you and I had stopped turning, stopped jinking and jiving, and just headed straight for each other, I thought about our airbags (mine and Sharon's, that is. I could not concern myself with any problems you were creating for yourself at that time). I concluded that a head-on collision would almost definitely NOT be survivable. You must have concluded the same thing, but unlike you, I also concluded that it was a BAD thing and must NOT be allowed to happen. Air bags were not likely to work at those closing speeds, even assuming they deployed properly, as they do the vast majority of the time, and I don't like being down to just one "safety net," anyway.

You couldn't keep up with my turn because I was only going at most 15 miles per hour (maybe more like 10 or 12) when I started the final turn to safety, and I used what I believe is the power spectrum of the car's engine, where the best clutch-contact could be made. I burned little or no rubber, as I spun the steering wheel first hard to my left and then hard, but perhaps a little less hard, to my right. You didn't have to hit me at all, really. You just wouldn't back off an inch, though, would you? Don't worry, I didn't expect you to.

In fact, you tried very hard to keep up with my final evasive maneuver -- that's the fighter-pilot instinct in you, I'm sure (or at least the Kamikaze instinct that was in you that night). Really -- by then I expected nothing less from you. But physics was "against" you. Or, to put it bluntly, my training was superior to yours, but cut largely from the same cloth. Jack was a great pilot. And I haven't even mentioned the guy who sold us the Honda SUV, and how I asked him to show us what it can do. "I thought you'd never ask!" he replied. He did donuts, then gave me the keys and let ME do donuts (we weren't doing the tire-screeching, rubber-burning kind of donuts, just the this-is-what-you-can-count-on-from-this-puppy-kind). "Tighter, Russell! Faster! You can do better than that!" he said, or maybe just hinted. Either way, I obliged.

When I was a young boy, my father would tell a story -- he doesn't even know if it's true or not, but I like to think it is, and never could see any reason why it couldn't be -- about a little U.S. Army observation plane -- a Piper Cub -- being hunted down by a much heavier, faster German fighter.

The Messerschmitt 109 was capable of throwing lots of steel at the little unarmed Cubbie. Nevertheless, the Cub pilot didn't try very hard to evade until the last moment, and finally scooted out of the way. The Nazi pilot missed his target, but circled around for another pass. The Piper Cub also circled, a much tighter circle, and was in about the same spot the next time the 109 came around, and the same thing happened. The Cub pilot waited and waited, and finally scooted out of the way.

My wife wanted to take flying lessons, too. We ran out of money long before she soloed, but I insisted, even though it was by then the 1990s, that she try to take lessons from a World War Two fighter pilot, preferably an "Ace" cuz why not? She found one -- an "Ace" plus one, as a matter of fact, teaching out of Palomar Airport. Everyone there knows him, and I believe he's still flying. When she was taking lessons from him, another student pilot landed on the I-5 freeway -- because they ran out of gas! "That would never happen to us" was Lowell's response, because he would have meticulously checked both fuel tanks before each flight.

When you get out of prison, if your health permits it -- as I'm hoping -- you and I should go on speaking tours together. You'll probably need the money, and I know I will -- I always do! I bet we can make a nice living, talking about the wheels of justice, driving, flying, suicidal tendencies, and recovery. I'll be in charge of the finances, but I'll give you a straight 60% to my 40% of whatever we make. Is it a deal?

And if it wasn't you driving that other car, I need to know that, so I can try to find "the real would-be killer" before he challenges the next fellow who might be driving his family around on a desolate street somewhere. PLEASE tell my wife and me if it was you or not.

Also, Sir, my father would like to know who came at his daughter-in-law and his eldest living son that evening in November of last year. He would like to see that person apprehended. He knows I think it's you, and that disappoints him tremendously -- being a combat veteran himself -- but it does not particularly surprise him, since you are of the "My Lai" generation of soldier. I was talking to his wife, my step-mother, this week, as I often do. As I was asking her some editorial advice with the first page of this letter, she told me that when the news came on the radio about My Lai (as you may recall, it happened in 1968, but the news didn't break right away), she and my father were lying in bed -- this combat veteran, who at that time was already a renowned professor in his field of study. And he was lying there crying. Tears were streaming down the sides of his face. He wondered what had happened to the American Soldier.

I am NOT a veteran, certainly not -- until that night last November -- a combat veteran. I'm "just" a civilian, but I can see, all around me, the damage ALL combat does to our boy's psyches, but ESPECIALLY when immoral acts are demanded of them.

How much napalm and Agent Orange did you drop? Is that what's been bothering you all these years, not the missions themselves, but the nagging feeling you were USED by a corrupt U.S. Government in an illegal war, which virtually all responsible scholars of the subject now agree America should have handled very differently? Is that what's been bothering you, or was it bailing out, or what? What difference should any of your personal cares make to me while I'm driving with my honey in San Marcos?

My "combat" experience was exactly ZERO until I faced YOU that night, but it certainly is not "zero" anymore. I fought you and I won. And by my actions, I delivered a Congressional two-bit crook -- apparently broken and resigned to his fate -- to Judge Larry Burns for sentencing. How nice. But when Judge Burns said he was giving you less than the maximum sentence because of his consideration of your military service, I wondered if he considered that it was the SAME training you used to the "best" of your ability to try to KILL my wife and me.

I cannot catch all the misguided former U.S. servicemen, who have been asked to participate in horrors around the world and now walk around THIS country like zombies or "Manchurian Candidates," or just spring-loaded weapons, ready to snap at anyone just because they have, for whatever reason, ruined their own lives. Something needs to change. I don't think all the veteran's clinics in the whole blooming country can help, when the problem was, we sent our boys (and girls) to fight for a lie, with no heart in it as a nation, with half the weapons and a quarter of the troops necessary to win, with shoddy equipment, and with no plan if they should, after all that lack of support, fail, and probably no plan if they somehow managed to succeed, either (we'll never know, since we effectively "lost" Vietnam and we are effectively loosing Iraq even worse now, too).

I've known enough American veterans of recent conflicts to know that most of them survive the experience with a good degree of their brains intact, and many are probably even better people somehow, because of the experience, at least as society sees them. Outwardly. The vast majority of the time, they are, at the very least, harmless, and usually less likely to get in fights over nothing than the average hot-headed Joe might be. That's my opinion. And I believe that, when motivated to action because of an injustice they see, they'll fight harder than anyone for what they believe is right.

But within themselves, I'm sure there is no way the scars of war are beneficial towards helping a person find peace and tranquility for his soul during the rest of his days, after the combat period has ended. But I also believe the biggest difference between someone like my father and someone like you is that my father's war absolutely had to be fought. Its Allied participants had moral authority and they knew it, and they wanted to keep it throughout the war.

If I could see one thing changed in this world from this incident (besides your driving habits), it would be that civilians are given their due by the U.S. Pentagon and all its employees and former employees. We are NOT "collateral damage," we are PEOPLE! Some of us simply weren't called. Some of us had valid medical or student deferments. Some of us were women when being a woman meant not being permitted to serve. Yes, some of us detested the Vietnam War and would patriotically NOT have served in THAT war. And some of us know they faint at the sight of blood and can't imagine being on the ground pounding mortars into the enemy's position, then overrunning them, then attacking the enemy's fallback position, and then overrunning THAT, for a year on end. But my father, the most pacifistic man I know, did that. And now in his ninth decade, he awaits the inevitable, trying to avoid depression, on medications for a million things, and curious as all hell to find out if it really was The Right Honorable Congressman Randall Harold ("Duke") Cunningham (Republican, 50th Congressional District, San Diego County, California) driving that Chevy Tracker, hell-bent for leather.

Howard Hoffman's eldest son, also named Randall -- my older brother -- died of complications from leukemia on November 19th, 1994, at age 39. Perhaps Randy's death was due to pollution released into the environment, ultimately caused by the actions of corrupt and/or ignorant Congressmen.

Compared to such crimes (including the crime of ignorance (which can even be malfeasance all by itself, at your previous level of authority)), clipping my car that night was nothing. Even killing my wife and me would be but a blip on the radar screen compared to your larger crimes. But one old grunt -- my father -- and the people in the other car that night -- my wife and me -- want to know, and have a right to know, who was in the other car.

As a Congressman, you treated EVERY constituent and every citizen, and every American soldier, too, with the exact same callous disregard for their lives as you had for my wife and me that dreadful night in San Marcos, when you took a whole bunch of "wrong turns" in very quick succession.

Thank you for the military-grade combat flying lesson the night of November 25th, 2005 -- I KNOW I "aced" the test. I'm sure Jack would be proud. His widow even told me he would be, when I described what happened to my wife and me, and explained why I felt Jack's flight training made all the difference. I told her that the person I believe was driving the other car is in prison on unrelated charges, and I also told her that I believe he will confess soon, and when/if he does, it will prove that, indeed, I MUST have needed Jack's training to survive. I told her I would let her know what happens.