SHELTER OF PRISON LETS WHITNEY BREAK FROM LIFE OF DRUG ABUSE

ASHLAND, Ky. - That's where he turned 42. Back there, behind the heavy door
that buzzes a warning before it opens, down the long hallway where footsteps
echo and die, behind the bars. . . . Charles Vincent "Hawkeye" Whitney
turned 42 two months ago.

He had no birthday party, no cake. He had no visitors. Of course, he never
has visitors. So Whitney began June 22, 1999, as he begins every day in
prison -- awake at 5:30 a.m., no alarm clock needed, thank you, then 30
glorious minutes alone with the Bible before breakfast.

Whitney doesn't read the Bible because he has questions. He knows why he is
here, locked up in a small town just west of West Virginia, serving 69
months for the armed kidnapping of a White House lawyer almost four years
ago in Washington.

He is here because of the drugs.

He lost everything to crack. His basketball career. His wife. His second
wife. His home. Whitney has two sons, but he hasn't seen the older one in
almost 20 years, and he's pretty sure the boy doesn't know his old man is in
prison.

Whitney, who finished his career at N.C. State in 1980 as the No. 3 scorer
in school history with 1,964 points, was the 16th overall pick in the 1980
NBA draft by the Kansas City Kings. He was a burly 6-foot-5 forward, and his
first NBA contract was for two years and $220,000. Before the second year
was finished, he was smoking crack in condemned buildings, sleeping in
abandoned cars.

No, Hawkeye Whitney doesn't read the Bible for answers. He reads the Bible
because it fills a hole in his heart, a hole gouged out by 15 years of
cocaine abuse.

"The book of Job, that's something," Whitney says, his voice quiet, his eyes
looking around the almost empty visiting room of the Federal Correctional
Institution in Ashland. "Job had it all, but he lost everything he had. Me
and Job, we have some things in common."

From hero to zero

Hawkeye Whitney began drinking beer and smoking marijuana as an N.C. State
freshman in 1977, when he won ACC Rookie of the Year. As a junior, Whitney
was first team All-ACC and was taking methamphetamines before games. He
remembers popping a capsule of speed a few hours before the 1979 ACC
tournament semifinals, then outscoring Duke All-American Gene Banks, 18
points to three. N.C. State lost that game, but Whitney made second-team
all-tournament.

As a senior, he discovered cocaine. He says it happened at a party
off-campus, in a back room. Come in here, Hawkeye. Try some.

"In high school, I never did drugs, I never drank. That was my edge,"
Whitney says. "I saw how other players partied, and while they were doing
their thing, I was in the gym. I got to college, and I thought I was an
adult, but I was just a teen-ager, a kid. It was like a kid being set loose
in a candy store. `Here I am!' "

Whitney says he never did drugs in front of teammates, and as far as he
knows, nobody at N.C. State knew. (Teammate Chuck Nevitt confirms this,
saying he never heard a word that Whitney was using drugs.) If the drugs
affected his play on the court, it was merely a fingerprint on a new
Corvette; Hawkeye was still a beautiful site to behold.

"He kicked our behind," says N.C. State athletics director Les Robinson, who
coached The Citadel in 1980 during a 57-35 loss to Whitney and the Wolfpack.
"Hawkeye was like (former Duke star) Grant Hill -- give me five Grant Hills,
or five Hawkeye Whitneys, and you can win the national championship. He can
dribble, play inside, do anything you need. A team of five Hawkeyes wouldn't
have a point guard or a center, but it would be a team I wouldn't want to
coach against."

Whitney was Kansas City's sixth man as a rookie, averaging 7.4 points
through 47 games, when he went in for a dunk against Milwaukee and clipped
Sidney Moncrief's shoulder on the way down. Whitney landed badly, tearing up
his right knee, essentially ending his career. He would play only 23 games
the following season, and average 2.3 points.

By the time he fell while dunking on Moncrief, Whitney says, he was inhaling
cocaine daily. A short time later, Whitney says, he was visiting a friend
and met a man who pulled out a bowl, a butane lighter and a rock of cocaine.
Whitney had just discovered crack.

Without the boundaries provided by basketball, Whitney began to spiral
downward, out of control. Smoking crack throughout the day, every day, he
lost his apartment, his first wife, his dignity. He trafficked drugs to get
his crack, standing on street corners and serving as a go-between for people
who wanted a drug but didn't know where to get it. Whitney knew where.

He went years without touching a ball, and his weight, about 220 pounds in
college, ballooned to 350.

"I drank a lot of beer," Whitney says. "I ate, but it wasn't good."

He was homeless in the early 1980s, first in Kansas City, then in Durham in
the early 1990s after a short second attempt at marriage and an even shorter
attempt at returning to N.C. State to finish his degree.

In 1993, he moved home to Washington, D.C., where he had been a high school
All-American at DeMatha. He landed on the streets again, harder than ever.

"I thought I was at my lowest in Kansas City," Whitney says, a sad smile on
his face. "Then I went home and God ripped the rug right out from under me."

A bizarre case

Were the facts of the case not so unusual, Hawkeye Whitney might have
suffered his greatest indignation in private. A homeless addict committing
robbery in Washington? Sad, but not news. The robber was some fellow named
Charles Whitney? All right, but who's that?

Because of the bizarre facts, though, Charles Whitney, drug abuser, was
unmasked as Hawkeye Whitney, former basketball star.

"I've been doing this for 21, 22 years, and I've never seen anything like
it," says Detective Joe Morrash, the lead investigator on the case for the
Alexandria, Va., police department. "And I'll probably never see it again.
When we first got the case, the story was so unbelievable, we didn't think
it was true."

True story: Hawkeye Whitney had the misfortune of robbing not just a White
House lawyer, but Mark Fabiani, a player in the front-page Whitewater
serial, the point man for media inquiries of Hillary Rodham Clinton during
the hearings. Fabiani knew almost every connected reporter in town.

It wasn't just the victim. It was the crime itself, a mugging done with a
heartbreaking level of humanity. According to court documents, Whitney and a
juvenile accomplice confronted Fabiani at gunpoint at an ATM, drove him to
two other ATMs and forced him to withdraw about $1,600.

Whitney then talked his gun-wielding accomplice into driving Fabiani to a
nearby hospital. There, Whitney returned Fabiani's cellular phone, briefcase
and Rolex. He also gave Fabiani $10 for cab fare.

"It's just amazing, the story," Morrash says. "In that part of town, to have
two thugs mug you for drug money, then give you back $10 for cab fare, it's
unheard of."

At Whitney's pretrial hearing, Fabiani expressed sympathy for Whitney's
addiction.

"(Fabiani) wasn't vindictive at all," says Neil Jaffee, Whitney's public
defender. "Just the opposite. He told me he hoped Hawkeye would be able to
get the help he obviously needed."

Contacted last week by The Observer at his home in La Jolla, Calif., Fabiani
declined to answer questions about the case. He did, though, chuckle with
what sounded something like friendly recognition when he learned the topic
was Hawkeye Whitney.

"Oh, yes," Fabiani said. "I remember Hawkeye. How is he, anyway?"

Morrash understands why Fabiani might feel something other than malice for
the man who robbed him.

"If not for Whitney, (Fabiani) might have been killed by the juvenile,"
Morrash says. "Whitney was just along for the ride with this kid, who was a
suspect in a number of similar crimes in that area. The kid wasn't being led
by the adult. It was the other way around.

"At some point, the kid said, `Let's do him.' But Whitney talked him out of
it, gave the guy cab fare, and even took him to a safe place to call the
cab. If they had just left (Fabiani) there, in that neighborhood, he
probably would have been mugged again. It's only my opinion, but I think if
it weren't for Whitney, Mr. Fabiani would have been seriously hurt, or
killed, that night."

If Morrash is right, wouldn't that be something? Hawkeye Whitney went along
with a robbery, and saved the victim's life.

There's more, you know. And it truly is something. Hawkeye Whitney robbed
someone -- and it saved his soul.

Life in prison

Ashland, Ky., is a two-exit town off Interstate 64, hard by the West
Virginia line. The first exit, two miles across the state line, overlooks a
monstrous oil refinery -- acres of smokestacks blowing black haze. Just off
the second exit is the federal prison, which comes after a wave of hotels.
The hotel marquees closest to the interstate boast of fitness rooms and free
HBO. The hotel marquee closest to the prison advertises "dependable safes."

The prison is huge and separated from the Ashland citizenry by miles of
12-foot chain-link fence. From a distance, the coils of wire atop the fence
look harmless, like rows of shiny new hubcaps. Closer, they look deadly.
They look like what they are -- circle after circle of steel razor blades.

Inside the fences are rows of red-brick buildings that in another setting
could have been college dormitories, except for the black steel barring the
windows. That, and the 30-foot guard towers outside the fences, one at every
corner of the facility. As the sun sets one evening in late July, the
outside of the prison is quiet, nothing moving except for a white pickup
truck making slow rectangles around the prison, its lights off, a guard
behind the wheel.

Hawkeye Whitney lives here. It beats the streets, where death waited.

"I'd be dead right now," says Whitney, who had no criminal record before the
robbery of Fabiani. "No question about it. I'd be just another dead addict
if I hadn't gotten arrested. God works in amazing ways. While I am truly
sorry for (Fabiani) and what I put his family through, I am grateful it
happened because it saved my life."

For three weeks after the robbery, Whitney was a fugitive. An ATM video
captured his image, and local television stations broadcast it. Whitney saw
it while visiting a friend. A tipster saw it, too.

"We were told, `That's Hawk,' " Morrash says. "We have a sergeant who
followed Whitney's career back from his high school days, and he was going,
`Oh, man, that's one of the best players this city ever saw.' "

That sergeant cruised southeast D.C. and spotted Whitney. When the police
car stopped, Morrash says, Whitney surrendered and climbed in back, then
confessed. He later pleaded guilty to armed kidnapping and was sentenced to
69 months in prison.

Whitney says it saved his life, and his afterlife, when he robbed Fabiani.

"I wasn't no robber. I wasn't no thief," Whitney says. "I was an addict,
that's what I was, and I got myself in some trouble because of it. But I was
happy to get into that police car, because I knew it was over. That was the
exact moment I gave my life to the Lord. I live every day for him and
there's a peace that's better than any high in the world.

"I've been clean ever since. You can get stuff in here. That's no problem.
But I'm not going to play with it any more, because I know if I ever use
again, I surely will die."

A roof over his head

A man can die in prison, with or without the junk. Whitney knows. After his
arrest he was held briefly at a maximum-security facility in Lawton, Va.,
where he says inmates robbed, stabbed and raped other inmates. Whitney made
friends with one guy who could make him laugh. A few years later, Whitney
heard, that funny fellow strung up a sheet in his cell and hung himself.

This place, Ashland, is a little different, though precautions still are
taken. One rule: no bleach allowed.

"Bleach is pretty versatile," Whitney explains. "You can throw it in
someone's eyes, or you can poison someone with it.

"This place isn't like some prisons you've heard about, but don't think it's
not dangerous in here. You relax for one minute here, and you can get hurt.
Me, I fear no man. I get in arguments every now and then, but I have one
rule, and (other inmates) understand: Say what you want, but don't ever put
your hands on me."

Despite the razor wire and guard shacks, Ashland is at the lower end of
medium-security federal institutions. Whitney walks around in khaki pants
and an anonymous gray sweatshirt. His socks and shoes are bright white,
perhaps brand new, for this late-July interview -- his first visitor at Ashland.

Whitney comes and goes without handcuffs, a giant of a man at 6-5 and 300
pounds. He was up to 360 pounds last year, a few months after tearing up his
good (left) knee in what may have been the last pickup game of his life.

"Can't move any more," he says. "But I never lose in H-O-R-S-E. I can still
shoot. If I take 10 free throws, I'm going to hit 10 free throws."

Whitney is in charge of the prison gym, keeping it clean and running the
four-on-four Blacktop Basketball League. For all this, the prison pays him
$17 a month, which doesn't cover the toothpaste, deodorant and shaving
supplies he buys in the prison commissary.

"It may sound crazy," Whitney says, "but I like it here. People talk about
the food, but it's better than what I was eating on the streets. Sure it's
not the roof I want over my head, but it is a roof. They treat me like a
person. I'm not complaining about being here."

A model prisoner, from all indications.

"He's always smiling and happy," says prison guard Beverly Sharpe, who
oversees Unit D, the community within the community where Whitney lives.
"This isn't fake, what you're seeing here. He's always in a good mood."

Life on the outside

One day, he will be returned to society. Whitney doesn't know what awaits
him on the outside, most of all when it comes to crack. Turning it down in
prison is one thing. Turning it down on the streets, where no one is
watching too closely, is another matter.

"It will be the biggest challenge of my life," Whitney says, looking ahead
to his release. "I'll never have it licked. I'm a recovering addict, and I
will be for the rest of my life. I'm just grateful I have this chance to get
it right. A lot of people die on the streets."

Possible career opportunities? Whitney isn't sure, but he'd like to do
anti-drug motivational speaking, particularly geared toward college athletes
and younger kids. He'd like to have his own basketball camp for at-risk kids
and preach the evils of drugs against the virtues of God. Maybe coach a
little? Whitney isn't sure. He has time to figure it out.

Meantime, he has rebuilt some battered relationships. Legendary DeMatha
coach Morgan Wootten, who coached Whitney 25 years ago, gave him work at his
summer camp in the early 1990s, but Whitney was undependable, still on
crack, and eventually disappeared.

Today, Whitney and Wootten write two or three times a month. When Whitney
gets out, he says he will move to Maryland to be close to Wootten.

"I look at Hawkeye as my son, and any way I can help him I would," Wootten
says. "He knows I'm here if he needs me. I believe Hawkeye will beat this in
every way."

Whitney also talks regularly with former Kansas City Kings teammate Phil
Ford, an assistant coach at North Carolina; UNC assistant athletics director
John Lotz, who recruited Whitney in 1976 as the coach at Florida; and Mike
Brey, the former Duke assistant and current Delaware coach who was point
guard on Whitney's teams at DeMatha.

Somewhere, Whitney hopes, a job will materialize when he gets out. Just when
that is, he won't say.

"I want to surprise some people," he says.

According to prison officials, Whitney's release is set for March 2001.
Whitney has other ideas.

"I turn 43 in June (2000)," he says. "I want to be out of here by then."

Charles "Hawkeye" Whitney helped keep N.C. State basketball on the map for
four seasons. After being named ACC freshman of the year in 1977, he was
named second-team All-ACC in 1978. He earned first-team honors in 1979 and
1980. The 6-foot-5 forward averaged 16.8 points per game in his career and
still ranks among the Wolfpack's top-five in scoring, field goals and steals.