The Associated Press

NAME - Janet Ann Napolitano

A much greater understanding about Arizona and National Politics on the issue of Border Security, Immigration and Drug Trafficking can be had by the reading of The Arizona Project. This is a story of a murdered Arizona Republic investigative journalist covering organized crime. (Story and Links below)

 

What I consider a ‘sequel’ to “The Arizona Project” is the book, “What’s In It For Me?”. It in this book that we first learn of the type of role Janet Napolitano would play in Arizona Politics.

 

 

 

the United States Congress.

 

 

A much greater understanding about Arizona and National Politics on the issue of Border Security, Immigration and Drug Trafficking can be had by the reading of The Arizona Project. This is a story of a murdered Arizona Republic investigative journalist covering organized crime. Investigative Reporters and Editors was a newly formed organization that did a detailed investigation that still has ramifications in American politics.

 

After 28 years of rusting in a Phoenix Police impound lot, Don Bolles’ car has been moved to Washington, D.C., where it will anchor an exhibit dedicated to Bolles’ memory.

At first, the Newseum, which is constructing a new $400-million museum of news in Washington, D.C., planned to make Bolles’ car the centerpiece of a “Dateline Danger” exhibit examining the risks reporters face covering the news.

But after seeing the bombed-out 1976 white Datsun, museum officials decided to set up a gallery devoted just to Bolles. It will feature the car and a video in which Bolles’ family, friends and co-workers talk about him and his work. The car will be separated from visitors by a rail, which will feature photos and text.

“It is such a powerful exhibit that it deserved its own area,” said Susan Bennett, the Newseum’s director of international exhibits.

Bolles’ wife, Rosalie Bolles Kasse, donated the car after extensive negotiations with the Newseum. Kasse declined to be interviewed, but she wrote that she is glad her husband will be remembered as a man who “wanted to protect our constitutional rights at every level – local, state, federal.”

Bennett said the Newseum took care to reassure Bolles’ family that the car would be treated with respect.

“We talked extensively with the family on why we wanted the car and how we were going to use it,” she said. “It is not going to be used as an object of curiosity; it will be used to tell his personal story and to emphasize his courage. There are a lot of people who do not know who Don Bolles was, and this is a great way to memorialize him.”

So-called “death cars” have proven to be popular tourist draws for other museums. Gangsters Bonnie and Clyde’s car, for example, is on display, as is the car of legendary Tennesse Sheriff Buford Pusser, who inspired the movie, “Walking Tall.” Carrie Christoffersen, who works in the Collections and Registration Department at the Newseum, said in an e-mail interview that moving the car across country was a delicate procedure.

The Newseum had a special structure built to hold the car and hired a company that specializes in cross-country shipping and moving fine arts to move the car the 2,370 miles from Phoenix to Washington, D.C. The drive took about a week, Christoffersen said. According to Bennett, the Newseum gave the car “white glove” treatment. It needed some refurbishing to get rid of bugs and debris that had accumulated over the years, but the museum wanted to keep it in its original condition as much as possible.

“The car has been thoroughly inventoried and catalogued and undergone minimal cleaning,” Christoffersen said.

The car was not as extensively damaged by the explosion as one might think, Bennett said. According to news reports of the time, Bolles’ killer taped six sticks of dynamite underneath the car on the driver’s side. When the bomb was detonated by remote control, it blew the driver’s door open and hurled Bolles halfway out of the car. The explosion carried the force of a million and a half pounds per square inch.

“Other than the door, it did not sustain that much damage” on the exterior, Bennett said. “But when you open the door, there is great emptiness and devastation.”

Jeannette Reed, Phoenix Police Museum historian, said she saw the car when it was still sitting at the Phoenix Police Department impound lot.

“It is an insult to life that someone had to die that way,” Reed said. “The car looked horrible. I do not know how anything could have lived through it.”

Bennett said the wreckage is an important part of the museum’s effort to bring stories of journalistic courage to the public.

“Bolles’ case is one of the most well-known cases of a journalist in this country paying the ultimate sacrifice -- and that is paying with his life to pursue the truth,” she said.

The Newseum has acquired a number of other items for its new building, which is to open in 2007. They include reporter Ernie Pyle’s typed manuscript for one of the famed reporter’s World War II newspaper columns, a walking stick carved by journalist Pius Njawe of Le Messenger while he was in prison in Cameroon, and a chair used by Gen. James M. Lingan, whose name is first on a chronological list of nearly 1,500 inscribed on the Journalists Memorial in Arlington, Va., which honors those who died while reporting the news. Lingan was killed in 1812 by a mob angered by the publisher’s public opposition to the War of 1812.

The Newseum’s new facility will be three times the exhibition space of the original museum in Arlington, Va. It is funded by the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to free press and free speech.