John Skipper Details His ESPN Exit and a Cocaine Extortion Plot
An excerpt
An excerpt
JAM: How are you?
Skipper: I'm doing well.
JAM: In your resignation statement, you wrote, “I have struggled for many years with a substance addiction. I have decided that the most important thing I can do right now is to take care of my problem.” Do you feel like you’ve done that, or at least begun the process?
Skipper: I did get some therapy. I did go through treatment. I thought the best thing to do was to take the time to check myself into a facility, and I was able to understand a bit more about substance use and to think about how it intersected with my life. Therapy isn’t easy, particularly for a Southerner tightly wound with traditional values. I have not necessarily been comfortable reflecting and being self-reflective.
I’ve grown to learn that taking care of yourself is a continuous, lifelong process. What I’ve done is taken some time for reflection. I’ve had an opportunity to not use for a long period of time, and I have resources to help me now, which are ongoing.
JAM: Let’s talk about the nature of the substance abuse, please.
Skipper: The statement I released was accurate. I had a substance abuse problem. I grew up wanting to be countercultural. I worked at Rolling Stone for the first 10 years of my professional life. I had a point of view that recreational drugs were recreational, that they weren’t dangerous. That they could be used without repercussions.
JAM: So, we aren’t talking about alcohol.
Skipper: No, I’ve been a social drinker my whole life. I enjoy a martini, I enjoy a bottle of wine with friends for dinner. I’ve never had an issue with alcohol. You know, I’m an old hippie, and then an old New Yorker from the '80s.
JAM: Am I safe to assume then that your substance addiction was cocaine?
Skipper: It’d be safe to assume that.
JAM: Any heroin?
Skipper: Never.
JAM: Opioids?
Skipper: I don’t use opioids. I have never put a needle in my arm. I’m not interested in fentanyl.
JAM: Did your cocaine use ever get in the way of your work?
Skipper: Never. At ESPN I did not use at work, nor with anyone at work, or with anyone I did business with. I never allowed it to interfere with my work, other than a missed plane and a few canceled morning appointments. I’ve never been a daily user. My use over the past two decades has, in fact, been quite infrequent. I judge that I did a very good job and that it did not get in the way of my work. I worked hard, I worked smart. I worked all the time.
JAM: You were, however, dealing with an illegal substance. Throughout your years of use, were you worried about getting caught?
Skipper: It turns out I was more than unusually clever in devising ways to separate my professional life from my personal life.
JAM: Clever as in one wouldn’t have seen the president of ESPN walking around Central Park at night in search of coke?
Skipper: Not at all. Let’s just say I was careful.
JAM: Did you resign as president of ESPN?
Skipper: Yes.
JAM: Were you asked to resign by Disney CEO Bob Iger?
Skipper: It was clear to me that I put Bob in an untenable position.
JAM: Your resignation statement was released on a Monday. The previous Wednesday you addressed a large community of ESPN employees and gave a rather impassioned speech about the company’s future. On that day, when you gave that speech, did you have any thought about resigning?
Skipper: No, I did not.
JAM: Well, we spoke the next day, Thursday, and made plans to get together the following week for a long-promised interview about ESPN. When did the conversation with Bob take place?
Skipper: That discussion occurred on Friday afternoon, before I resigned on Monday.
JAM: Then that leaves us with Friday, Dec. 15, evidently being one of the most critical days of your professional life.
Skipper: Yes, it does, but I want to stress that until that Friday conversation occurred, I worked with complete conviction with colleagues I loved and for a company I loved. But I hurt my family, particularly my wife, and I forfeited a great job.
JAM: Since Friday was so significant, can you unpack it for us, please?
Skipper: I understand why you need to ask that question, but I’m not sure how much I want to get into that, Jim.
JAM: Well, John, with all due respect, I’m a bit confused. There seems to be a big piece missing to this story. I’m looking at my notes: First, you’ve shared that you were an infrequent user of cocaine — something that could be true of others in the entertainment and media business. I’m not an expert in this area, but I’m not sure some would even call that an addiction. Second, you’ve stated categorically that your use never got in the way of your work. And third, you’ve admitted that on the days leading up to your decision to resign, you had no thoughts of resigning. None of that seems to explain why you reached the decision you had to resign.
I know this is difficult, John. I hope you understand why I’m pushing a bit here.
Skipper: In December, someone from whom I bought cocaine attempted to extort me.
JAM: Someone you had had dealings with in the past?
Skipper: No.
JAM: Again, respectfully, didn’t you just say you were careful about your dealings in this area?
Skipper: Not this time. It turned out I wasn’t careful this time.
JAM: What did they say?
Skipper: They threatened me, and I understood immediately that threat put me and my family at risk, and this exposure would put my professional life at risk as well. I foreclosed that possibility by disclosing the details to my family, and then when I discussed it with Bob, he and I agreed that I had placed the company in an untenable position and as a result, I should resign.
JAM: Did you agree to resign because you understood that Bob couldn’t allow the company, by extension, to be threatened by whoever was extorting you?
Skipper: I did understand that.
JAM: Were you also concerned that the company might wind up being in a position of having to defend your actions, or any behavior that accompanied or resulted from your drug use?
Skipper: That did occur to me. Look, it was inappropriate for the president of ESPN and an officer of The Walt Disney Co. to be associated in any way with any of this. I do want to make it clear, however, that anything I did in this regard, and anything else resulting from this, was a personal problem. My drug use never had any professional repercussions, but I still have profound regret. I accept that the consequences of my actions are my responsibility and have been appropriate. I also have to accept that I used very poor judgment.
JAM: Poor judgment, meaning that it sounds like on a particular night, you couldn’t rely on the secret world you had created and threw caution out the window by buying from a strange source.
Skipper: That, and of course the usage itself.
JAM: Was this the moment then that made you realize you had a substance abuse problem, because you were willing to act so dangerously in order to obtain some coke that night?
Skipper: Yes, I believe that’s true. I knew then I had a problem I needed to address.
JAM: I guess this also explains why you had never before thought about resigning.
Skipper: I acted very foolishly. It made me want to seek help and get this out of my life.
JAM: Forgive me, John, but I can’t help thinking now about when someone was attempting to extort David Letterman with information that he had had an affair with a staff member. Dave took the step of going on the air and disclosing that it was indeed true, adding that in doing so he was hoping to protect his job. When you found out you were being threatened, was there a part of you that wanted to go to Bob and say, “Look, I’m being threatened concerning a purchase of cocaine. I’m going to tell you right now, I did buy cocaine. I do not use it at work, I’ve never been affected by it at work, and this has forced me to admit I have a problem. I love my job, this company, and its employees, and I respectfully ask for a leave to seek treatment and I will return as soon as possible.”
Skipper: I wish that had been the outcome. I didn’t ask for that outcome, though. I was overwhelmed by the circumstance. I simply just disclosed the facts, and it became clear in my conversation with Bob what I needed to do. Everything happened very quickly.
JAM: John, perhaps unavoidably in a post-Weinstein world, there has been speculation about work-related issues involving female colleagues contributing to your exit. Is there truth to any of this?
Skipper: Those rumors and speculations are categorically and definitively untrue. There were no such incidents at work during my entire tenure, including no allegations. I did not traffic in that kind of activity. The company is not engaged in any actions on my behalf and never has been. There were no affairs or inappropriate relationships at work nor indiscretions other than what I have disclosed. My behavior relative to women at ESPN was always respectful. I did not touch anybody inappropriately. I did not tell off-color jokes. I treated everybody with respect. The principle reason I chose to write the statement I wrote — to disclose substance abuse — was to make it clear that this didn’t have anything to do with harassment, settled lawsuits or any internal indiscretions. I never had any relationships, even consensual adult relationships, with anybody at work. And as far as I know, there was never a single claim of one.
every time he answered a question.
the more people the more it gets out. If anything, it just goes to show he wasn't dealing with a vetted dealer. That man was probably getting off work driving to Hartford or New Britain and getting broken off with that puro. 
