Fred Thompson adviser and fundraiser dealt COKE!

Tough to capture the family values vote when you've been caught red-handed working as a pro-choice lobbyist--and, oh my GOD, one of your top men has been busted for DEALING!

Thompson Adviser Has Criminal Past
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/03/AR2007110301153.html
By Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 4, 2007; A01

Republican presidential candidate Fred D. Thompson has been crisscrossing the country since early this summer on a private jet lent to him by a businessman and close adviser who has a criminal record for drug dealing.

Thompson selected the businessman, Philip Martin, to raise seed money for his White House bid. Martin is one of four campaign co-chairmen and the head of a group called the "first day founders." Campaign aides jokingly began to refer to Martin, who has been friends with Thompson since the early 1990s, as the head of "Thompson's Airforce."

Martin entered a plea of guilty to the sale of 11 pounds of marijuana in 1979; the court withheld judgment pending completion of his probation. He was charged in 1983 with violating his probation and with multiple counts of felony bookmaking, cocaine trafficking and conspiracy. He pleaded no contest to the cocaine-trafficking and conspiracy charges, which stemmed from a plan to sell $30,000 worth of the drug, and was continued on probation...

...Karen Hanretty, Thompson's deputy communications director, said yesterday that "Senator Thompson was unaware of the information until this afternoon. Phil Martin has been a friend of the senator since the mid-1990s and remains so today." Thompson communications director Todd Harris added that Martin was not subjected to the campaign's standard vetting process because "he's a longtime friend."

"Okay, Freddy, just two more stops and we can turn this baby around for refueling."
"I been meaning to ask you about that, buddy. Why the heck do you have to go all the way to Peru to refuel the plane?"
"Cheap gas, Freddy-boy. Trust me, I don't lose any money on this deal. You leave the flight plan to me, all you got to worry about is remembering your stump speech." The pilot snorted, sniffing as if something was caught up his nose.
Thompson suspected the man had a cold, and he felt a little guilty about how much time and effort his longtime friend had put into this aerial campaign tour. "Hell, I don't want you to think I don't appreciate this, buddy. One of the boys on my campaign figured it out the other day, he reckons you've saved me more than $100,000 in transportation costs."
"Well, you're my homey, my main man--and I can't have my main man flyin' coach, now can we?"
Thompson chuckled appreciatively, loudly enough to be heard over the roar of the Cessna's twin engines. He twisted in the co-pilot's seat to look at the view. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky; far below the plane mountaintops drifted by majestically. Where were they now? Thompson had lost track; it didn't look like Iowa, that was for sure--
The pilot turned up the radio, shouting "Oh, man, this is my song!"
"Yeah, that's a catchy tune, alright, what is that?"
"Superfly!" his companion shouted back, and began singing along. "Oooo, ooo, Super-fly! You gonna make your fortune by-and-by...but if you lose, don't ask no questions why--" The pilot began to dance in his seat, shaking his head, and slapping the instrument panel in time to the funky beat.
"Hey, take it easy there, little buddy, you're liable to lose control of this thing--"
"Calm your ass, down, Freddy my man! The name of the tune is "Superfly," not "Freddy's Dead," HA HA! Now hang on, we're comin' in for a landing real sharp, we got another meet-and-greet for you down there--"
The plane nosed down steeply and the engine screamed as it went into a dive. Thompson prayed between clenched teeth and gripped the arms of his chair, white-knuckled, as the plane landed on an impossibly short dirt runway.

"Whew! I wish you'd take it a little slower on those landings, pardner. I ain't exactly no spring chicken no more, you know." Thompson wiped the sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his jacket as he stumbled out of the door of the plane. "Where the heck are we? What is this place, I don't see any state fair or anything, who am I supposed to shake hands with way up here in the mountains?"
"Don't you worry, Mr. Future President, they'll be here soon enough." The pilot was already busy pulling a suitcase out of the back of the cabin. Thompson watched uneasily as he struggled with another burden--
"What the hell is that for?"
"What, this? This is nothin' Don't worry about it. This is just to create an impression."
"What is it, some kind of big machine gun or--"
"Yeah, but don't sweat it, I said! The voters here, they're big into gun rights. They'll love it."
"Oh...okay, then. I guess it's okay if there's no media around--"
"There better not be," said the pilot and trained the gun on the hills. As if by magic, dozens of surly looking Latin types had appeared from nowhere, cautiously approaching the plane. Thompson realized his friend was right, the locals were "into" guns--some held pistols, others had AK-47s and Uzis. Better give this bunch the same spiel I give the NRA boys, he thought.
But his friend waved him back. The crowd stopped in their tracks when he began to address them in his halting, poor Spanish. One of them gestured angrily at Thompson with his machine pistol and asked a question--he sounded scared and furious.
"Goddammit, don't these people speak English?" said Thompson. He'd regularly turned down opportunities to talk to Hispanic voters; there was no percentage in it for a conservative Republican candidate--
"Take it easy, Freddy," said his friend. His bright, pin-prick eyes never left the Latinos. "They think you're the heat. Keep your hands out where they can see them." Without lowering the heavy machine gun he jerked his head, indicating Thompson, and yelled at the armed men: "No es verdad policia! Es Fred Thompson, del television's "Law and Order!" No es verdad policia! Es un protagonista, un actor! Es el proximo Presidente del Estados Unidos!"
"They don't seem to be buying it, whatever you're telling them--"
"Something's gone wrong here. These aren't the usual peeps, these guys are Columbians; fuckin' animals--"
"Columbians? You said we were going to a shopping mall in Southern California--"
"I said a lot of things!" hissed the pilot. "If you want to fly out of here without an extra hole in your ass, just go straight into your stump speech and act like nothing's wrong! I'll cover you, but I gotta close this deal while I'm doing it--" He kicked the suitcase toward the nearest armed man. "Tengo el dinero! Tienes el yay-yo?" he shouted. Then he hissed at Thompson:
"The speech, Freddy, the speech! And make it sound sincere--"
Thompson was sweating again, but he was afraid that wiping his brow would alarm his audience. So he drew himself up to his full height and began:
"My friends--amigos--(he ad libbed that)--I am here today to tell you that America is at a crossroads." He droned on at the uncomprehending faces before him, whose attentions seemed to be divided between watching for sudden moves by Thompson and keeping an eye on the pilot, who was dipping his pinkie into a flap in a brown paper parcel held out by the man with the machine pistol.
"I think it's sad that I am still the only one of the Republican candidates who has been talking about the debt crisis, and what it means for the American economy--"
Thompson thought he might be winning some of them over; the one with rocket launcher seemed to be nodding sympathetically when he mentioned a possible cut in the capital gains tax. Then again it might have been some trick of the sun--
A voice behind him roared, in English: "THE SHIT'S NO GOOD! IT'S A SETUP, WE'RE FUCKED!"
Thompson had never served in the military--but some deep, previously unsuspected instinct inside him impelled him to hit the dirt when the pilot's machine gun began to explode behind him. The Columbians scattered for cover as Thompson's longtime friend sprayed death all about them.
"SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND!" screamed Thompson's close adviser, as a burst from his weapon nearly cut a man in half. But the element of surprise had been lost--fire from automatics was now peppering the ground behind Thompson; he heard it strike the airplane behind him. He felt himself being dragged up by the collar, and then everything went black...

"Sorry about that, Freddy, old compadre." Thompson was recovering consciousness. They were in the plane, once again soaring above the mountains. "Little business deal of mine that went bad." The pilot was flying with one arm, bleeding profusely from the other, soiling the adjoining chair and Thompson's jacket. His longtime friend had managed to improvise a kind of tourniquet from a bunch of "Thompson 2008" bumper stickers, but Fred could see that he was fighting to stay conscious. "You might have to land this baby, Freddie old boy. Just listen to what they tell you over the radio--thing practically lands itself--" He stopped to cough up some blood, and then his voice drifted off into a sing-song--"the game he plays, he plays for keeps--hustlin' times on ghetto streets--" Here he broke into a falsetto "Tryin' to get over---tryin' to get oooo-ver"--he passed out suddenly, collapsing on the joystick.

As he tried to pull the plane out of its dive, Thompson thought that maybe he had been wrong to fight Jeri on this one--maybe background checks on all his friends--and a bus--was the way to go, after all--