Joe's Bad Trip

By RICHARD BEHAR

A rather unique way to renew old acquaintances -- I can certainly think of more pleasant and certainly less "newsworthy" ways to do it, though.

These days, after much of the media hype and lunacy has abated, ((I am)) left simply with a gut feeling of frustration. Had to learn the hard way the lexicon of the 80's and discover exactly what "spin" means. The truth hasn't been allowed to come to the fore either for any number of legal reasons or it wasn't lurid enough for print or airing.

Oh well, I'll get my day(s) in court soon enough and the cause ((of the oil spill)) will seem pretty mundane and simple after all

-- Joseph Hazelwood (in a letter to a friend, May 2, 1989)

When Captain Joseph Hazelwood heads for the mailbox these days, he no longer waves to his neighbors in Huntington Bay, N.Y. Instead, his head sagging, he hurries back indoors to the lonely anguish that has engulfed his life since the early morning of March 24, when his tanker, the Exxon Valdez, struck a reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound and leaked 11 million gal. of crude oil into the pristine waters.

Since then, Hazelwood has been a man under siege. Not long after the accident, a TV reporter beat him to the mailbox and rifled through his letters until neighbors chased her away. Other journalists have surrounded his home, flashing cameras through windows and banging on doors. Still others have stolen bags of garbage from the curb. Then there are the sneers of strangers, the steady stream of Hazelwood songs and jokes, the death threats to his family from anonymous callers, some of whom promise to blow the pretty yellow house to smithereens. Whatever respite Hazelwood may have enjoyed as the story faded from the front pages probably ended last week, when the crippled Exxon Valdez, on its way for repairs, caused an 18-mile-long oil slick off San Diego. Suddenly the tanker was thrust back into the headlines.

Fired from Exxon in March in the wake of the Alaska disaster, Hazelwood, 42, is discovering how America treats those it deems to be villains. Newspapers and late-night comics had a field day with early press reports depicting a boozy Hazelwood leaving the bridge of the 987-ft. tanker and turning control over to an unqualified mate. SKIPPER WAS DRUNK, screamed the New York Post. "I was just trying to scrape some ice off the reef for my margarita," chortled comedian David Letterman, suggesting one of Hazelwood's "Top Ten Excuses" for the spill.

But doubts have arisen about many of the purported facts surrounding the spill and the role of Hazelwood, who faces up to twelve years in prison if convicted of the criminal charges pending against him in Alaska. A two-month TIME investigation of the accident has unveiled a wider web of accountability in which Exxon and the Coast Guard appear to share some of the blame for the worst oil disaster in U.S. history. As the Valdez's captain, Hazelwood will bear the ultimate responsibility for the spill. But whether he was drunk or sober, his actions were not the only cause of the accident. The fiasco resulted from a confluence of breakdowns, both individual and organizational. The major findings of TIME's investigation:

-- Nearly four months after the spill, there is no proof that Hazelwood was drunk when his ship ran aground. In fact, his crewmates claim he was not. A test given about ten hours after the grounding found that his blood-alcohol level was a little more than half the 0.1% drunk-driving limit set by the state of Alaska and 50% higher than the 0.04% limit set by the Coast Guard for seamen operating a moving ship. Some toxicologists have suggested that Hazelwood may have had a severely high 0.22% blood-alcohol level when the ship struck the reef. A more plausible theory is that he was drinking in the hours after the accident occurred.

-- Aside from the question of Hazelwood's drinking, there is a dispute over the key issue of the Valdez accident: Was Third Mate Gregory Cousins qualified to be in control of the vessel as it headed out of the sound? Though the Coast Guard emphatically stated after the wreck that Cousins was not so qualified, the matter is far murkier. Federal regulations governing "pilotage endorsements" in the sound have been altered so often that Cousins may have met the standard that was in force at the time. Shortly before the accident, Congress was considering legislation that would have eased federal pilotage requirements in the sound.

-- Despite early criticism of Hazelwood's conduct, the Coast Guard maintains that his handling of the ship after it ran aground was exemplary. Not only did he help prevent the oil spill from being even worse, but his actions may have saved lives as well. By adjusting the engine power, the captain was able to keep the vessel stable and pressed firmly against the reef.

-- Sharp cuts in the size of the tanker's crew had left the Valdez shorthanded, contributing to fatigue that may have helped cause the accident.

-- Although Exxon claims that it thoroughly monitored Hazelwood after he voluntarily sought treatment for alcoholism, the company repeatedly missed signs that he had continued drinking heavily. Moreover, Exxon supplied low- alcohol beer to tanker crewmen despite its policy of banning drinking aboard its ships.

Hazelwood is in the fight of his life because he is an alcoholic. "Incidents in Joe's life that involve alleged alcohol abuse only poison the atmosphere," complains one of his lawyers, Thomas Russo. "They make people assume that alcohol played a role in the grounding, when it didn't." Drinking has been an important part of Hazelwood's life since his college days, but it did not impede a rapid rise to the top of Exxon's seafaring ranks. Hazelwood long seemed to believe that nothing bad could befall him. As the ironic motto printed next to his picture in his college yearbook put it, "It can't happen to me."

Known as Jeff until his Exxon days, Hazelwood seemed destined for a career at sea from an early age. One of four children of a veteran Pan Am pilot, he was born in Hawkinsville, Ga., in 1946, then moved with his family to a new | neighborhood in Huntington, Long Island, popular with young airline captains and their families. "If there were any problems, Jeff and I certainly felt isolated from them," says a boyhood chum, Martin Rowley. "Ours were perfect childhoods." Hazelwood's father was a stickler for discipline who permitted no drinking in his home.

Hazelwood's special joy -- and gift -- was sailing. Fellow members of the Sea Scouts, an advanced Boy Scout group for teenagers, remember with awe the time they were sailing a 65-ft. schooner across Long Island Sound, and a violent storm blew out the mainsail. "Some of the boys were crying or vomiting," recalls one sailor, but Hazelwood volunteered to climb the 50-ft. mast to haul in the sail and its hardware. "Jeff related to sailing like a pro golfer who swings a club for the first time," recalls Sea Scout Ralph Naranjo, who today runs a local yacht club. "He had a real feeling for the vessel."

In 1964 Hazelwood entered the New York Maritime College at Fort Schuyler, a state-run school in the Bronx whose academic program and military protocol were so demanding that 60% of its students dropped out before graduating. It was at "the Fort" that he began to drink, on weekend revels with cadets escaping the rigors of noon military drills, the hazing of freshmen, and outright bans on civilian clothes, on-campus drinking, even marriage. No one partied with more fervor than Hazelwood and his buddies on the Trolls, the school's lacrosse team. Says W. Bryce Laraway, a fellow Troll and former roommate of Hazelwood's: "On a scale of 1 to 10, we were probably a 14 in terms of drinking. We made the movie Animal House look like amateur work."

Laraway recalls that he, Hazelwood and several other cadets would each routinely down a case of beer on Saturdays at the Long Island home of cadet Saunders Jones, today a sea captain who remains Hazelwood's closest friend. By early evening the boys would turn up at local Huntington bars. By midnight, having rounded up as many as 50 other merrymakers, they would shift the party back to Jones' house, where the drinking would resume on Sundays.

On one occasion, Hazelwood and Laraway got so drunk that they made believe Laraway's convertible Volkswagen was a skateboard. Driving down a steep road, they switched off the engine, leaped into the back and shifted their weight to try to steer the vehicle. During yet another inebriated escapade, Laraway's speeding car flipped over completely on a Long Island highway but landed on ! its wheels. Only later did they notice that the car's backseat was missing.

Despite such moments of boozy abandon, Hazelwood had a reputation, at least among the Trolls, for knowing when to stop. "Jeff seemed to have more common sense than the rest of us, and he could control his drinking," Laraway recalls. "He was the quiet one who didn't go far enough to get into trouble."

Hazelwood was one of a select group of around 15 classmates chosen to work for Esso, as Exxon was then called. As a third mate, he earned $24,000, extraordinary pay for a young man starting out in 1968. Hazelwood, who by then preferred to be called Joe, reported for duty on the Esso Florence in Wilmington, N.C. His seafaring instincts made an instant impression. "Joe had what we old-timers refer to as a seaman's eye," recalls Steve Brelsford, a retired Exxon captain and Hazelwood's first boss. "He had that sixth sense about seafaring that enables you to smell a storm on the horizon or watch the barometer and figure how to outmaneuver it." Because of such gifts, Hazelwood rose swiftly through the ranks. Only ten years after graduating, he became a captain, in charge of the Exxon Philadelphia, a California-to-Alaska oil tanker. At 32 he was the youngest skipper in Exxon's fleet.

But, though fellow seamen insist it did not seem to impair his performance, Hazelwood began to drink heavily on board, in violation of company rules. Moreover, he was not discreet about his growing problem, and invited fellow crew members to join him. "It was almost like Joe was trying to get caught," says a fellow seaman who remains a close friend. "He'd close his door, but everyone knew what went on. He always said that everything was fine, but then why was he drinking? The guy was begging for help, but he kept it all inside."

Even as Hazelwood's reputation as a boozer grew, so did his image as the best captain in Exxon's fleet. Exxon management, however, was increasingly unhappy with the talented young skipper, less for his drinking than because of his headstrong, independent manner. Like the old-time captains he modeled himself after, Hazelwood shunned paperwork, company politics and extensive contacts with the M.B.A. executives who were increasingly chipping away at the traditional authority of shipmasters. "Joe didn't have Exxon tattooed under his eyelids," says a high-ranking Exxon engineer. "He'd make his own judgments and act accordingly. That's why those at sea respected him and those on land thought he wasn't a company man."

Exxon refuses to discuss Hazelwood, including stories about his ship- handling feats. In 1985, for instance, Hazelwood was captain of the Exxon Chester, an asphalt carrier, as it headed from New York to South Carolina. Offshore of Atlantic City the ship ran into a freak storm. High winds snapped the ship's mast, and it toppled, along with the ship's radar and electronics gear. With 30-ft. waves and 50-knot winds overpowering the vessel, several sailors grabbed life jackets and prepared to abandon ship. But Hazelwood calmed the crew and rigged a makeshift antenna. After radioing shore, he guided the Chester out of the storm. Then, with the safety of his crew and cargo in mind, Hazelwood followed the storm back to New York -- and, to his surprise, ran into a brief storm of criticism from dollar-conscious superiors at Exxon who had wanted Hazelwood to continue the journey southward.

By the mid-1980s, however, Hazelwood's drinking problem had become so obvious that seamen on other Exxon ships knew of it. "Ever since I had known of Joe, I heard he had alcohol problems," says James Shiminski, an Exxon chief mate until 1986. "He had a reputation for partying, ashore and on the ship." In 1984, while off duty, Hazelwood was arrested for drunken driving in Huntington, and later convicted. Police say he was leaving a parking lot of a tavern where he had been attending a bachelor party for his brother Joshua, when his van smashed into a car. Hazelwood left the scene of the accident, only to be arrested by police in his own driveway.

Nine months later, he was confronted by his boss and close friend, Captain Mark Pierce, an Exxon supervisor in Baytown, Texas. He urged Hazelwood to seek treatment before he "got into trouble." In April 1985 he entered a 28-day alcohol rehabilitation program at a Long Island hospital. A doctor at the time found the skipper "depressed and demoralized."

But Hazelwood did not win his battle with the bottle. Not long after he left the hospital, he was reinstated as the skipper of the Yorktown, an oil tanker that ran along the East Coast. Friends say that being closer to home helped him dry out. He regularly attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in Huntington right up through 1988, but the sessions were often jammed with up to 90 alcoholics at a time. "The place was a social club," complains a former participant who remembers Hazelwood. "Only about ten or 15 people ever had a chance to talk." That seems to have suited Hazelwood, who had always been reticent about his feelings. Last year he and his wife Suzanne, whom he married in 1969 (they have one daughter), were on the verge of divorce. In September Hazelwood was again arrested and convicted for drunken driving, and his license was revoked.

The fact was that Hazelwood had resumed drinking heavily, but the return to old habits had somehow escaped Exxon's notice. In a letter to a Senate investigating committee, Exxon chairman L.G. Rawl stated that from the time Hazelwood returned to work after his rehabilitation, he "was the most closely scrutinized individual in the company." According to Exxon, in keeping with company policy designed to encourage employees with substance-abuse problems to volunteer for treatment, he was not penalized but closely monitored. Rawl claims that Exxon supervisors paid an average of two visits a month to Hazelwood for two years after his hospital stay, followed by regular observations after he was transferred to the Valdez in 1987.

Nobody has emerged, however, to claim that Hazelwood ever drank heavily aboard the Valdez; in fact, his management of the ship won the praise of superiors. Both in 1987 and 1988 the Valdez was singled out for a prestigious company award for "safety and performance." Nevertheless, he was increasingly disillusioned with his career, largely for reasons ranging from longer work hours and frozen pay levels to the growing powerlessness of captains to make their own judgments. A week before the oil spill, Hazelwood told a friend that he was thinking about taking a job as a harbor pilot on the Columbia River in Oregon.

Now Hazelwood may never command anything bigger than the 16-ft. catamaran sitting in his backyard. His future hinges entirely on what an Alaskan jury decides took place on the night of March 23. Was Hazelwood drunk? He has admitted drinking just two beers over a five-hour period in the town of Valdez before boarding the ship. At least one barmate, Radio Electronics Officer Joel Roberson, contends that Hazelwood was drinking a "clear" beverage that was probably vodka. Still, his companions agree that Hazelwood did not consume an excessive amount of alcohol while ashore.

Before boarding, Hazelwood wired Easter flowers to his wife and their 13- year-old daughter Alison, a junior high school honor student. Once aboard, he went to his quarters, where he says he drank two bottles of Moussy, a & beerlike beverage containing about 0.5% alcohol that had been stocked aboard the Valdez. After the spill, two empty bottles were found in his room.

The ship was ordered to set sail for California at 9 p.m., an hour before schedule. Squeezed for time, Hazelwood made several trips from the bridge to his cabin, say his attorneys, to labor over the cumbersome paperwork that had increasingly become his duty because of crew cutbacks. He returned to the bridge at roughly 11:15 p.m., shortly before the state's harbor pilot, following routine, departed from the ship at Rocky Point. Soon thereafter Hazelwood radioed the Coast Guard to say he would move the vessel from the outbound shipping lane to the inbound shipping lane to avoid ice. It was the last maneuver of Hazelwood's Exxon career.

At approximately 11:50 Hazelwood turned over control of the vessel to Third Mate Cousins. Second Mate Lloyd LeCain, who was exhausted and asleep, was supposed to relieve Cousins, but the third mate had told him to take his time. In any case, Hazelwood ordered Cousins to make a right turn back into the outbound lanes when the vessel reached a navigational point near Busby Island, three miles north of Bligh Reef. The captain then returned to his cabin, just 15 ft. and one stairway from the bridge, reportedly to complete his paperwork.

What happened after that remains fuzzy. The ship's log shows the vessel passing Busby Island at 11:55 p.m., when Cousins told Hazelwood by phone that he was starting to turn. But the ship's course recorder shows that the Valdez did not start to change direction until seven minutes later. Next, the lookout on duty ran into the ship's pilothouse to report that a flashing red buoy near Bligh Reef, which should have been visible on the port (left) side, had been spotted on the starboard (right) side.

The Valdez was not responding well to Cousins' order to turn. One reason may be that the helmsman, Robert Kagan, feeling that the Valdez was turning too sharply back toward the outbound lanes, used a counter-rudder maneuver to slow the swing. Initially, Kagan acknowledged making such a maneuver, but he has since retracted the statement in Government hearings. A counter-rudder maneuver, however, is registered in the ship's course recorder. Whatever the reason for the ship's unresponsiveness, Cousins repeated the order and then followed it with another command for a hard-right rudder.

It was too late. "We are in trouble," Cousins told Hazelwood over the phone. Moments earlier, the captain had felt the first shock of his ship -- and his career -- hitting the rocks. Hazelwood bolted onto the bridge, slowed the engines and took other steps to keep the ship from sliding off the reef.

Coast Guard investigator Mark Delozier, who climbed aboard the Valdez more than three hours after the accident, says he found a "very intense" smell of alcohol on Hazelwood's breath. But Delozier also says Hazelwood did not appear intoxicated or impaired. "He was very professional," he says. "He didn't appear to be at a loss of any capabilities." No one who was aboard the Valdez has contradicted Delozier.

Beyond the issue of Hazelwood's sobriety, there is the question of whether Cousins was qualified to be in charge of the ship while it was in Prince William Sound. The answer hinges on "pilotage endorsement," a certification from the Coast Guard that entitles a licensed officer to steer ships in certain federal waters. In 1977, when the Alaska pipeline opened, such approval was required all the way down to the entrance of Prince William Sound -- past Rocky Point, Busby Island and Bligh Reef. But since then, the rules have been liberalized several times.

In 1986 the Coast Guard, anticipating that Congress would soon ease the rules, issued a directive stating that, provided visibility exceeded two miles, pilotage endorsements were no longer mandatory after a vessel passed a certain point in the sound. But the point at which the new rule applied is unclear. The Coast Guard argues that only certified officers could command ships down to the Bligh Reef area, where the Valdez ran aground. Hazelwood's attorneys insist that the point of freedom was the established pilot station at Rocky Point, some seven miles north of the reef. Hazelwood's position appears to be bolstered by a 1986 memo from Alaska Maritime Agencies, a Valdez shipping agency that serviced Exxon. That memo states that the Coast Guard had waived pilotage requirements from the pilot station to the sound's entrance.

The Coast Guard's commandant, Admiral Paul Yost Jr., has done little to clarify the pilotage issue. In June he declared in a speech at a federal maritime academy that Cousins was "fully qualified" to pilot the vessel. But in an interview with TIME, Yost hedged his statement by saying Cousins "was competent, but he was not technically qualified."

Another question is why the Coast Guard did not monitor the Valdez after it veered outside normal shipping lanes. Following the last radio transmission by Hazelwood, the Coast Guard did not communicate with the Valdez until after the grounding, nearly an hour later. Nor did it track the tanker by radar. The Coast Guard has cited possible weather conditions, poor equipment and the change-of-shift preoccupations of a watchman to explain why the ship was not picked up on radar. More important, although seamen insist they rely heavily on Coast Guard monitoring in the entire sound, Coast Guard officials maintain they are not technically required to track ships as far as Bligh Reef.

Once the Valdez had run aground, however, the Coast Guard says it had no trouble spotting the stricken tanker on radar because it presented a wider profile and was standing higher in water. Many mariners dismiss the Coast Guard's explanation. "That's a ridiculous contention because any way you turn this vessel, it's as big as a building," says Michael Chalos, a maritime attorney who represents Hazelwood. "She has a beam of 166 ft. and a height from the waterline of about 75 ft. when fully loaded. The Coast Guard is trying to cover up for the fact that they were not properly monitoring her movements."

The fatigue of the Valdez crew also appears to have played a role in the grounding. Personnel cutbacks throughout the merchant-marine fleet have resulted in fewer sailors working longer hours. When Hazelwood began with Exxon in 1968, as many as 40 sailors worked on ships smaller than the Valdez. But on the Valdez's maiden voyage in 1986, it sailed with a crew of 24. On Hazelwood's last journey, the crew had been cut to a bare-bones staff of 20 and was going to be trimmed to 15 in order to reduce costs further. As a consequence, twelve-to-14-hour workdays became routine. Exxon maintains that computerized systems enable its vessels to operate with smaller crews.

If Second Mate LeCain had climbed out of bed before the accident to replace Third Mate Cousins, the Valdez might also have got a more competent helmsman. Thanks in part to the high turnover of Exxon crews, Kagan, the helmsman on duty at the time of the accident, had been promoted to able seaman just one year earlier from his job as room steward and food server in the ship's galley. Kagan "does the best he can, but you have to watch him," a deck officer later told Government investigators. Knowing this, LeCain had planned to replace Kagan with another helmsman once he reported for duty.

/ After the spill, Hazelwood became a marked man. He flew home to Huntington Bay, shaved his beard to change his appearance, and was promptly arrested. In court an assistant district attorney called him "the architect of an American tragedy," and a state supreme court judge compared the damage from the spill to the destruction of Hiroshima. Hazelwood was held overnight in a lockup with more than 50 other prisoners, many of them accused or convicted murderers, armed robbers and drug dealers. When his cellmates learned that his bond had been set at $1 million (and bail at $500,000), they broke into laughter and shook their heads in disbelief. The next day another state supreme court justice ruled that the bail was "unconstitutionally excessive," and reduced it to $25,000.

Hazelwood is a free man today, at least until his trial, now scheduled to begin in October. He spends much of his time lobster fishing in Huntington Bay with a friend in order to earn money. The work is filthy, but it helps keep Hazelwood's mind off his new role as America's Environmental Enemy No. 1. It will probably be 1990 before Exxon and the National Transportation Safety Board release their reports on the Valdez spill. Meanwhile, late-night comics continue to rip into the skipper, and several songs about a drunken Hazelwood play on Alaskan radio stations. Not long ago, a businessman called Hazelwood to ask permission to market a novelty item called Ole Hazelwood -- a liquor bottle filled with oil and water.

Can Hazelwood endure all this attention and ridicule? Some friends fear the worst. "Private people are not prepared to be torn apart like this under the public microscope," warns Colorado physician Eugene O'Neill, an old friend of Hazelwood's. "I've seen patients on the verge of suicide over things like this. How much longer are we going to prey on this human being?"

Hazelwood has had no public comment on the accident except for a terse statement that was released by his lawyers. "I feel terrible about the effects of the spill," it reads, "but I'm just an ordinary fellow caught up in an extraordinary situation -- a situation which I had little control over." In fact, Hazelwood is no ordinary fellow, and one could argue that he should have exercised much more control over many aspects of his life. But those are not reasons to rush to judgment about the events that led to the fiasco in Prince William Sound.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME Diagram by Joe Lertola

CAPTION: CAPTAIN'S LOG

With reporting by Scott Brown/Valdez