Mr. Hudson related to Mr. Valentine an event that took place in November of 1971 while Al Gore was a reporter for the Tennessean in Nashville. He was conducting an interview for a piece he was preparing on the Death Angels motorcycle gang.

VALENTINE: Now, tell me what happened when he came to do the interview with you guys.

HUDSON: Well, he hung around a couple of days and we wanted some good press so we treated him well. He spent one night with us, or a big part of the night, partying with us. And during that party he smoked dope with us, he drank a lot. We had a door there that had some weird trim up over the door and we took a couple of pot shots at it and...

VALENTINE: With a gun.

HUDSON: With a pistol.

VALENTINE: Al Gore was shooting a gun inside of a home?

HUDSON: Yes. It was an illegal firearm, even back then.

VALENTINE: OK.

HUDSON: And he missed. He's not a straight shooter.

(VALENTINE CHUCKLES)

HUDSON: The reason that I had, you know, contacted you to begin with was that, you know, he portrayed himself, as I seen it on the national convention, back about that time they showed pictures of him and his family, he's been this great family guy, great husband and all of that. That night, other than the things I already mentioned, he was given one of the club girls there and took her into another room.

VALENTINE: Now this was in November of 1971. It needs to be noted that Al Gore and Tipper Gore got married May 19th of 1970.

HUDSON: Yeah.

VALENTINE: So, he'd been married about a year and a half.

HUDSON: Yeah.

VALENTINE: He gets one of the biker girls and goes to the back room and has his way with her.

HUDSON: Yeah.

VALENTINE: So, this is the Al Gore that is now, his campaign is throwing this mud at George W. Bush for getting a DUI in 1976? This guy's smokin' dope with a motorcycle gang and going back in the back with a biker chick in one of the back rooms?

HUDSON: Yes, well, you know, everybody deserves a blast from the past sometimes and this is his. I didn't want to, 'til this DUI came out I had thought about it but I said 'naw, I'm just not gonna say anything.' Then when this came out about a DUI and making such a big deal out of it on the news, I said 'well, I'm gonna, you know, let somebody know about it, anyway.'

VALENTINE: By the way, I read the piece he wrote on the Death Angels. It is a puff piece.

HUDSON: Oh, yeah. It was great. We loved it. We bought a good article there.

VALENTINE: No kidding! All you had to do was supply him with a girl and some dope and let him shoot your gun a couple of times and guy writes a puff piece for you in the Tennessean.

HUDSON: You know, I'm sure we all have some things we have we wish we hadn't done. I don't know how he is now. I don't know him now other than what I see on TV and some of the stories he tells. But I do know this is one incident I know about first hand.

VALENTINE: And this goes hand-in-hand with what John Warnecke, who was a friend at the Tennessean, a fellow reporter, has told us on several occasions that has not been reported by the national press.

HUDSON: Well, you know, I think that it's a shame that people try to make a big deal out of something that isn't but then ignore some more serious things in the news and it just seems, well, one-sided to me. I think both sides need to be heard.

VALENTINE: Well, I would say that smoking dope, shooting an illegal firearm in a house and bedding down with a biker chick when you're married trumps a DUI any day.