abbie hoffman was famous and infamous for three of the five decades we shared our lives. As his kid brother, my life was intertwined with his from beginning to end. The friendship and love we shared was, in many ways, quite typical; like many older brothers, Abbie made his mark on me, molded me and bullied me; and like many younger brothers, I could not refuse him anything.
Abbie’s notoriety put an intense strain on his family: our parents, our sister Phyllis and her family, my wife Joan and our children. We were harassed by the FBI; saw some of our dearest friends turn their backs on us; and many longtime business relationships were destroyed. Because of Abbie, we were led to make sacrifices that were part of his life but not of ours. For his part, Abbie once said that he could never have survived without his family—a family that loved, cried, laughed, protected, and stood by one another through good times and bad.
When Abbie took his life, a part of me died. For many weeks following his suicide, I was besieged by all the publicity and media attention surrounding his death. Just as I was beginning to experience my own sense of personal grief, I received a call from publisher and writer Dan Simon, who asked if I could lend a hand to complete an anthology of Abbie’s most popular writings and speeches. I knew that I owed it to Abbie’s memory to cooperate in any way I could and felt that it would contribute to a book I had planned to write on my own. During our discussions, Dan and I began to see that we had formed a collaborative team that might keep Abbie’s legacy alive, so we started working together on Run Run Run. I envisioned a different approach from that of a historical biography, in which I intended to offer information about Abbie’s personal life that was previously unknown to the public, the media, and academicians—information that only a brother could share.
In order to collect all the facts and connect with the subject matter, I realized that I would have to delve into my own life and that of my family. That meant opening some painful memories but reliving the joyous times as well. Ultimately, the book became a focal point for me, marking the beginning of my own catharsis toward resolving my relationship with both Abbie’s life and his untimely death. In the writing I found a way to put some of my life back together again.
The book began as a 1,000-piece puzzle. I first began by interviewing and conversing with many friends new and old, relatives, former lovers, ex-wives, lawyers, doctors, bookies, agents, government employees, former police, and FBI Special Agents. I heard the same Abbie stories so many times that I began to realize only my recollections could finally tie all the years together, but even after I finished, I felt that some pieces of the story were still missing.
For most of the factual information, I retrieved court documents and government archives; and I collected thousands of articles from libraries and existing data banks. Ironically, the best source on time reference was approximately 15,000 pages of FBI files. My research told me that they destroyed another 30,000 to 40,000 pages. Included in all of this was a thousand pages of New York City Police files gathered by their Bureau of Special Service Intelligence. Who knows what I might have found had I continued researching the other seven federal intelligence agencies and many local police units in America. When we could, we used Abbie’s own words from personal letters, videos, books, and articles he had written and interviews given.
Abbie taught me that survival depends a lot on the family. It is from our family, he always said, that we learn so many of our most important values. Like my family, this book has unique strengths as well as weaknesses. I have no regrets and make no apologies.