So I’m starting up a new blog on WordPress.com.  Which is NOT TO SAY I’m new at blogging, not at all.  In World War II, I led the radar blogging group for U.S. military intelligence, forerunner of today’s Internet.  AARPANET, Minitel, Compuserve, AOL — I was there through the decades, lifting up my lonely voice.  Later on, I was an early paid user of Blogger.com, before Google took it over.  (for this they sent me an original Blogger hooded sweatshirt , which I sold on eBay recently for $900.  Those Japanese collectors!).

The important point here is, it’s not that easy to seamlessly provide you, the people, access to my back archives, because my occasional blogging has gone through so many systems.  But, considering my position in world affairs, and the enjoinders from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and others, I do humbly recognize my responsibility to the historical record, and therefore have preserved everything on CD-ROM, or in online backup at my Cayman Islands-based facility.

Since I know there are many out there wishing to consult the record, understand my past, begin legal proceedings, etc., I am prepared to entertain reasonable requests, and depending on how things go, to sell premium subscriptions.  Researchers, cultural historians, etc., are welcome to submit written requests for back entries.  Litigation, law-enforcement, and other government agencies should, as always, contact my legal counsel directly.  The current round of biography authorization rights, I am sorry to say, are already in final negotiation, for all media, worldwide.

Now, before you get that phonecall, letter, or subpoena in motion, let me clarify a few points about my record.

To my bros and teammates on the Hawaiian Tropics Pro Surf Tour, 1973-76 — c’est la vida loca, hombres!! Round the Wooorld! — I say, the side sponsorship deals were for the good of all of us, man!  How the samples cases got tangled up with that Thai narcotics ring is something I’ll never understand. And who knew about extradition treaties and mandatory sentencing, in those happy days? But I’ll be there for you when you’ve done your time, bros.

Second, okay, perhaps blogging the daily ins and outs while running the indigenous textiles cooperative in highland Guatemala ’77-80 was ill-advised.  But the excitement, the euphoria, you couldn’t contain it!  I and the elders believed we had stumbled into a model that could revolutionize Third World exports, we were fueled up day and night on the local “warrior” chew, we were doing all-night trance sessions before heading out to pack another plane full of our plant-dyed yoga mats destined for L.A. and Miami’s top boutiques.  That it was a CIA cover operation, and that my blog and webcam dispatches eventually led to over 40 successful indictments of U.S. military advisers and contractors during the Iran-Contra scandal came as a total shock to me.

1980-1990, Wall Street, Drexel Lambert and that moon-shot junk-bond deal, semi-retirement in Bermuda, designing racing yachts.  Nothing there.

Then, Russia. I want to state categorically that my so-called leading role in the shock privatization of Russia’s banking and energy sectors, 1990-93 has been thoroughly misrepresented by certain back-stabbing, culpable members of Treasury, State, and the Harvard faculty.  Oh, hindsight is so clear, but at the time, who really knew who had “title” to KrosnySneft or that charming place on the Moika Canal in St. Petersburg ?  And if I was so “in” on it all, wouldn’t I be somewhere today other than owner of that ruinous, drafty palace, and merely a guest on my friends’ private islands?

1993 on, internet startups #1, 2, 3, yadda yadda.  It’s all a blur of venture-capital pitches, parties I can’t remember, products I can’t remember (does anyone remember? did they even launch?  That was the point, it didn’t matter. Oh, happy days!).  It’s all onwebcam, or in the public domain, or covered by the Patriot Act and in lock-up.

So here I am, 2009.  New beginnings.  Brooklyn.  I have a few thousand books in bankers boxes, one high-speed internet line, and am moving on to the Post Book era.