Environment: Joe's Bad Tripon the Exxon Valdez

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: