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P   P O    O R   R   T   L      A A  NN  N D   D I  A A  NN  N
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The Portlandian, the Internet's premier source of Tonya News

November 12, 2000 Edition - TONYA FOR PREZ!
(C) 2000 Portland Ice Skating Society
http://www.geocities.com/portice
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Here at the Portlandian, we may not know who the next president 
will be. But we do know one thing that's far more important - 
it's Tonya's birthday. In keeping with tradition we therefore 
bring you our annual birthday issue.

It's also our fourth birthday. To celebrate both occasions, we 
have a special gift for Tonyaphiles: in this issue, we present 
exclusive new evidence, never before published, that backs up 
Tonya's claims of non-involvement in the Kerrigan affair.

For many years, Tonyaphobes have pooh-poohed Tonya's explanations 
for trying to contact Nancy Kerrigan in the lead up to the 
fateful 1994 Nationals, namely, that she wanted a poster signed. 
Indeed, many have scoffed at the mere existence of this poster. 
Tonight, we will present independent eye-witness verification 
that this poster existed, and the story behind why Tonya wanted 
it signed. In addition, we will also present the true story of 
the phone calls to Vera Marano, and the New Years Eve practice at 
which Tonya was alleged to have encouraged the assault. This 
evidence will show that the conversation in which Tonya 
supposedly discussed the planning of the assault DID NOT and 
indeed COULD NOT have taken place!


TONYA CELEBRATES HER 30TH BIRTHDAY

But first up, let's wish many happy returns to Tonya as she turns 
the big three-zero. I'm sure we'll all agree that Tonya is in 
excellent shape for a skater of her age. Despite a controversial 
year (as always!), Tonya looks forward to a new opportunity as 
the host of her own radio show on eyada.com, and continues to 
work on her book which will hopefully find a publisher soon.

The Blades of Gold site has announced that they've sent off 
Tonya's surprise birthday present - we don't know what it is, but 
no doubt we'll find out soon.


NORWEGIAN TONYA SITE PLANS UPGRADE

Several issues ago, we mentioned how a Norwegian community 
service group named Eventyrplassen Vannførerlag had appointed 
Tonya patron of their organization. Well, if you've checked by 
their site lately you'll notice it's been off line. But don't 
worry - they're not gone, nor have they given up on the 
Tonyaphile cause. In fact, we've recently been informed that 
they're planning a major upgrade, which will hopefully include 
more Tonya stuff, and an English translation. We'll keep you 
informed as to progress, but you may want to drop by every so 
often to check how things are going. So point your browser to:

http://home.c2i.net/yoshi/vannf/

We've also done a long overdue upgrade of part of our own site, 
namely the other Tonya web sites section. It now includes links 
to quite a few Tonya sites we've mentioned over the past few 
months, such as the Oregonian's Tonya page and Yahoo!'s full 
coverage of Tonya.


AND YET MORE TONYA PHOTOS

If you've finished looking at Lisa Smith's collection of Tonya 
photos that we mentioned a couple of weeks back and STILL can't 
get enough pictures of our skating superstar, try these:

http://sportsgirls.net/athlete/tharding.html

Sportsgirls.net (which used to have the rather unusual name of 
nonudegirls.net) not only has photos of Tonya from her Huntington 
gig last year, but a search engine that can be used to find more 
elsewhere on the Net. We've tried it and it works. Make no 
mistake, these are classy professional shots of Tonya skating, 
not those other vulgar types of images that are usually churned 
up by most search engines. They've also got a few other ladies 
skaters too - see:

http://sportsgirls.net/figure-skaters.html


THE HARAN CHRONICLES: PART 5 - TRIPLE AXELS & DOUBLE CROSSES

For the past few issues, we've been running a series of articles 
in which Joe Haran, who once edited the official Tonya fanzine 
"The Skater" some years ago, tells of his time as a member of 
Team Tonya. In tonight's issue, Joe tells of Tonya's preparations 
for the 1994 Nationals, and he presents important new information 
that validates Tonya's claims about the real reasons why she 
tried to contact Nancy Kerrigan in the days before the attack.


11 December 1999

Terry Hall, Head
Special Duties Section
Portland Ice Skating Society
New Zealand


Dear Terry,

AND NOW FOR MORE SAGA STUFF, IN WHICH OUR HERO PREPARES FOR 
NATIONALS

And what about the Tonya Saga?  Oh, yeah.  I felt it was part of 
my job, as an officer of the THFC, to treat Tonya with as much 
respect as possible.  Some club members -- and some officers of 
the club -- treated her like a kid or an afterthought, or even 
sometimes a nuisance.  Their idea was, like Stamm's, to change 
Tonya into a more "acceptable" and "respectable" person.  My 
idea, on the other hand, was to treat her with respect and 
persuade others to do so as well.  After all, she's the champion 
-- not those dopes out there trying to ffind fault with her.  And 
she'd received so little genuine respect during her lifetime!  
Stamm's method and mine were, I thought, a damned good one-two 
punch; but Stamm wanted it all her way.  In the end, Tonya would 
have nothing to do with either of us.

All kinds of interesting things happened after the Nippon Hoso 
Kyokai (NHK) tournament at Kobe.  I was present at Tonya's 
Beavercreek home when, on several occasions, she was telephoned 
by Vera Marano.  Most of the time, of course, Gillooly would 
answer the 'phone.  Tonya told me that Vera kept calling her, to 
the point where she was becoming a nuisance.  But, Tonya would 
always be polite to her (she'd often end up taking the call 
herself after Gillooly picked up the receiver).  I was unhappy to 
hear Marano claim, after the Bad News hit in 1994, that Tonya was 
always calling her:  it was just the other way round; but by then 
Marano was trying to save her own butt.  I telephoned Marano 
myself before the Bad News; and we had a long talk: she told me 
she'd wanted to write an article, for one of the skating 
magazines for which she frequently wrote, about Tonya; but the 
editors told her they were "de-emphasizing" Tonya, that she was a 
has-been and they didn't want any articles about her.  But, said 
Marano, they would agree to an article about skaters including 
Tonya.  So she wrote an article about Tonya and another female 
skater who had been on top during the '80s (I just can't recall 
her name, but I remember she was very athletic).  The gist of the 
article was that these were two over-the-hill skaters who were 
nevertheless still hanging on.  It was Marano who, on the 
telephone one day when I was at Tonya's home, said Kerrigan 
stated at a news conference that "Harding was easy to beat."  
When I reported that in "The Skater," Philip Hersh from "The 
Chicago Tribune" (I think it's "The Trib" anyway) telephoned 
Stamm in a rage, stating "That's not how it happened" (?) and 
asserting that the THFC could be sued for saying such a thing.  
Wow!  Talk about sold out to the figure-skating establishment!  
Anyway, Stamm naturally believed Hersh over me -- my being a 
wigged-out low-income guy and all.  So she stated that she would 
approve everything in "The Skater" from that point on.  I said, 
"Do you know what they call the person who approves everything in 
a publication?  The editor."  So I quit rather than submit to 
censorship.  I had nothing more to do with the THFC.

Oh, before all that -- and before the NHK -- the THFC bought 
Tonya a nebulizer.  Tonya, a national champion and world-class 
athlete, never had one before!  It made a world of difference to 
her.  The only reason I can think of for her not having a 
nebulizer before is cost: they are very expensive.  Yet think of 
how much better Tonya might have performed, during those 
tournaments in which she experienced major asthma-attacks, had 
she this medical device all along!  Did her coaches or her 
physicians ever encourage her to obtain one?  Not to my 
knowledge.  This was an example of how Stamm did her best to do 
things for Tonya.  She's not the bad guy, it's just that she'd 
insufficient experience with media of communication and
militant advocacy.  And she didn't know much about working-class 
realities, either.  Stamm had the best of intentions, but I was 
just too foreign for her taste.

Okay, let's see.  I was in the skaters' area one evening (Tonya 
practiced in the evening as well as the morning when in training 
for a tournament) with Tonya, Stamm and others.  Stamm produced a 
large-format photographic print, donated to the THFC by the 
photographer at "The Oregonian" who had taken most of the photos 
of Tonya up to that point, showing Tonya flanked by Kerrigan and 
Yamaguchi.  Tonya was admiring the print when Stamm pointed out 
to her that it would be worth much more money at a fund-raising 
auction if it was signed by all three skaters.  Tonya signed it 
right away, then stated she knew how to get in touch with 
Yamaguchi and was sure she'd sign it too.  But she wasn't sure 
how to get ahold of Kerrigan.  So she said she'd call around to 
find out where Kerrigan was practicing and try to get her 
autograph somehow.  Isn't that interesting?  The Tonya-bashers 
think the photo story is just that:  a story Tonya cooked up to 
cover her butt.  Yet I heard the whole thing go down; and it was 
all strictly on the up-and-up.  Sadly, I had forgotten this 
scenario when a private investigator working for Tonya's 
attorneys telephoned me right after the Bad News came down.  He 
asked me if I remembered such a thing happening; but, at the 
time, I honestly couldn't recall it.  In my own defense, I was by 
that time in a state of major depression and was living in the 
attic of a friend's house at the Portland suburb of Aloha.  I was 
still beside myself with grief over the obviously-inevitable 
outcome of the whole sordid "Tonya" affair.  I don't know if my 
recalling that rinkside discussion would have helped Tonya's 
legal defense in any way, but it might have; and I regret to this 
day that I wasn't able to recall the event at that time.

Here's another myth debunked.  Eckardt claimed that, one night at 
the skating rink, Tonya approached him at the wall and asked why 
the assault hadn't taken place yet.  Well, both Eckardt and 
Gillooly claimed to police that conversation took place during 
Tonya's late-night practice right before New Year's Eve.  They 
both said in statements to law-enforcement officers that I was 
there with my female friend M_____.  (I decline to use her name, 
because she has been sensitive about being publicly linked to 
Tonya however indirectly.)  Well, M_____ and I were there, all 
right.  It was the night that one of Tonya's lacing hooks on one 
of her boots tore loose from the leather, with her leaving in a 
matter of a few days for the United States Figure Skating 
Championships.  (Tonya always had to use triple-thickness boots, 
due to the tremendous stresses placed upon them via her athletic 
jumps.)  In fact, both M_____ and I talked with Eckardt at length 
that night.  And, we both know that at no time did Tonya ever 
come to the wall and speak with him.  He stayed well back from 
rinkside the entire time he was there.  Both of us know that he 
and Tonya didn't speak at all while they were at the rink, since 
both M_____ and me arrived before they did and we left with them.  
Shortly after I told this to an agent of the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation (FBI), Eckardt and Gillooly changed their story and 
said the non-existent "talk" must have happened on some other 
night!  Funny, but the media didn't seem to pick up on that.  
Gee, I wonder why.

Another strange item:  While I was living in the above-mentioned 
attic (a non-insulated attic that winter), Gillooly telephoned me 
(my friend called me to the telephone and said it sounded like 
him).  Well, it was him all right.  He seemed in a state of 
inebriation:  slurred speech, excitable, et cetera.  Anyway, 
apparently Tonya had just told law-enforcement officers about the 
cover-up plus everything she'd learned regarding the assault.  
Gillooly found out about it somehow right away; and he was mad:  
"Tonya went and opened her big mouth to the cops.  I'm going to 
show her!  I'm going to tell them she knew all about everything 
all along!  I'm going to fix her but good!"  Or words to that 
effect (I didn't get it on tape).  And such loving words, too!  
Now, this can be interpreted two ways:  either Tonya did know all 
about it all along, or else Gillooly was just going to tell the 
police a lie in order to hurt her.  Given all that I had come to 
know about the parties involved, I believe the latter scenario to 
be the correct one.  I wrote a note to Tonya (who by this time 
was not speaking to me) describing this one-sided conversation; 
and the next morning when I dutifully arrived at the rink, as I 
did every morning until the end, I gave the note to the rink 
manager to pass along to Tonya as soon as possible.  I also went 
in person (as I'd been stiffed by his assistants on the 
telephone) to the offices of Robert C. Weaver, Jr. -- the 
criminal-defense attorney retained by Tonya -- and told one of 
his assistants about the telephone call.  (I wasn't important 
enough to be seen by Weaver himself.)  The assistant sort of ho-
hummed the whole thing, but at least I did my part.

My point in relating all this is to show that Tonya, not Eckardt 
nor Gillooly, was the first of that group to tell all (that was 
known to her).  Yet the justice system, the media of 
communication and the sports-governing bodies (not to mention the 
public) kept insisting that she hadn't told all soon enough!  
Well, how soon is "soon"?  How long should a person be allowed to 
think about it before telling police that their spouse is a 
criminal?  Two minutes?  A week (Tonya's waiting period)?  Four 
hours and 32 minutes?  A month?  For reasons understood by her 
only, Tonya still loved Gillooly.  Yet she was the first one to 
come forward with true information.  Gee, didn't the 
establishment miss that fact?  "Well," an acquaintance of mine 
said, "I guess they'd better start rounding up all those bank-
robbers' spouses, if they're going to punish Tonya for not having 
told on her husband soon enough."

The name of the entire game was "Get Tonya."  There were 51 FBI 
agents assigned to the case, more than worked on John Dillinger's 
case back in J. Edgar Hoover's special-agent days.  In all, more 
than 100 law-enforcement officers beat the bushes to find 
evidence of Tonya's being aware of the assault prior to its 
execution.  What did they all find?  Nothing.  Absolutely 
nothing.  I laugh every time somebody brings up that bar-garbage 
"Tunee Can" thing.  What does that establish, apart from an 
unproved hypothesis that Tonya wrote on that piece of paper?  And 
did anyone see Tonya at or near the bar?  Did she park her 
conspicuous and noisy truck a mile away and tip-toe in the dark 
up to the garbage bin?  It's all so flimsy as to be laughable; 
yet the establishment wants us to take it all so very, very 
seriously.

By the way, all those FBI leaks to "The Oregonian" came from FBI 
headquarters in the District of Columbia and not from the 
Portland FBI office.  And, there was no internal FBI 
investigation of the leaks.  Gee, could it be that "big noises" 
in Washington wanted to help destroy Tonya?  I'm thinking that 
maybe the special agent in charge of the Portland FBI office 
wasn't as convinced as he "should" have been of Tonya's assumed 
"guilt."  Right after the dust settled that spring, he was gone.  
He was a military veteran of the Viet Nam War, which to me means 
someone who's seen enough injustice and doesn't want a hand in 
creating more.  It's just my opinion.

That's all for tonight.  Thanks and take care.  Let me know what 
I can do for the Portland Ice Skating Society.  Keep in touch; 
and best wishes.

Sincerely,


//SIGNED//

JOSEPH A. HARAN, JR.

JAH/jh

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VISIT THESE GREAT TONYA WEB SITES:

PortIce - http://www.geocities.com/portice
David House - http://www.tonyaharding.org
Charlie Main - http://www.charliesweb.com/tonya/tonya.html
Puppetboy - http://www.puppetland.com/mirrortony2.html
Valerie Smith - http://www.olywa.net/radu/valerie/LilHam.html
Swan Lake - http://members.tripod.com/~TonyaHarding/index.html
Blades of Gold - http://members.tripod.com/tmhfan/index.html
Pegasus Times - http://www.pegasustimes.com/harding/
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