ROLLING STONE PROBES SMUGGLING DEATH

THE SAM BROWN CASE: RS reporter has covered illicit drug trade for
Village Voice, Details

One of the world's most iconic chroniclers of popular culture and
longtime, outspoken critic of the US war on drugs is digging deep into
the wild and tragic tale of Nelson's Sam Lindsey-Brown.

Rolling Stone magazine is preparing a 7,000-word expose on
Lindsey-Brown, the 24-year old West Kootenay man who reportedly killed
himself in a Spokane jail cell this February after he was nabbed by U.S.
Drug Enforcement Agency officers in a sting operation seemingly torn
from the script of a Hollywood action flick.

"It's a helluva yarn," Rolling Stone senior editor Sean Woods told the
NDN. "It's got that sweet spot for storytelling. You've got a
fascinating location and you've also got incredible characters with
amazing back-story."

Lindsay- Brown's case also has significant mystery, calling into
question US authorities' actions after the arrest.

Five days after the bust, the young man was found hanging from a noose
made out of his bed sheet at the Spokane County Jail.

This past March, when the Nelson Daily News spoke with Brown's father
Lou from his home west of Revelstoke, he said he didn't believe his son
committed suicide, suspecting the young man, or one of his loved ones,
had been threatened in retaliation for the lost drugs and cash, or
roughed up for more details by authorities. There were questions
surrounding Lindsay-Brown's autopsy and the sudden re-assignment of the
DEA agents involved in the bust, added the father, who called
authorities' story 'dirty.'

"I honestly believe it was a hit from the inside, but we don't know,"
Brown said.

Rolling Stone's Woods, an editor for the magazine for the past ten
years, wouldn't say whether investigative reporter Jesse Hyde had dug up
any hard evidence of wrongful conduct by police, jail guards or anyone else.

"We don't know yet," says Woods, from Rolling Stone's offices in
Manhattan. "Jesse is doing some really good reporting. Every time he
calls me he's got something new."

Hyde is well-versed in big-picture journalism, particularly the drug
trade, having freelanced major pieces for titles including New York's
Village Voice, The LA Times and Details magazine. For The Voice,
likely the most widely-read alternative newspaper in the US he wrote
about wrongfully alleged Canadian Al Qaeda member Omar Khadr and the
Guantanamo Bay terrorist prison. He's just completed a piece for
Details on the drug cartels of Mexico, and for the Dallas Observer an
investigative report on a notorious Mexican execution chamber, with ties
to the nation's drug-dealing under world.

"In Mexico, the drug crime is horrific, disturbing and grizzly. Up
there (in Canada)," he says, "it's really non-existent."

The 32-year-old writer was in Nelson and the Slocan Valley for five days
in April researching the Sam Brown piece. He says some people were
willing to talk. Others wouldn't say a word. People were fine offering
information about Lindsay-Brown's bio, but when it came to questions
about smuggling, people were " pretty wary."

"Basically people said it's not something you talk about there. It's
all around, " says Hyde. "but you don't talk about it."

RCMP and US officials aren't saying much either beyond providing details
on the death and the circumstances surrounding the sting.

Lindsay-Brown was nabbed after flying a chopper allegedly loaded with
about 200 kilograms of marijuana from Sicamous south through mountainous
terrain then across the border in darkness, fog and pelting sleet and
snow on a night this past February.

Even the DEA agents waiting for the doomed drop admitted they were
amazed the young pilot - not officially licensed to fly - even managed
to make it to Colville National Forest without crashing.

Hyde's pending story, slated for an issue this summer, isn't the first
Rolling Stone tale that's keyed on Nelson and the US/Canada dope trade.
The magazine ran another tale, entitled "Kid Cannabis" in 2006. Like
that one, Woods says the Brown case is an undeniably compelling yarn.

The deeper telling of the story, says Woods, will continue to Rolling
Stone's long history of covering the embattled war on drugs, a history
made famous by the likes of RS writers Hunter S. Thompson and William
Greider, the magazine's White House watchdog through the 1980s and '90s.

There have been a lot of casualties because of the war on drugs, says
Woods. " And Sam was one of them. Ultimately it's a sad story."