Hello,
I am a former employee of Dr. John McAfee here, and would like to see if I can clear up some of the misperceptions about him that have arisen in this thread.
John took a leave of absence from McAfee Associates in 1993 for health reasons, which became permanent in 1994, and he divested himself of interest in the company as quickly as he could (i.e., subject to stock lockouts and the like). At the time he left, McAfee Associates had DOS, Novell, OS/2 and Windows 3.1 products. He certainly had nothing to do with the design or development of McAfee Associates' products after that. As a matter of fact, if it
just says "McAfee" on it (
sans "Associates"), it's pretty much a given that he was not involved with it.
I first met John when I was in high school, and started working for him after I graduated. One of the first things he did after employing me was read me the riot act regarding drugs and alcohol. At the time, he had been sober for just under a decade (eight or nine years, I think), but prior to that told me about how he had abused all sorts of substances, and as a result he had never done a single thing in his life that was worthwhile before quitting. I took John's advice to heart and have avoided these all my life.
While John was running McAfee Associates, we had a
strict no alcohol/no drugs policy, and there was no drinking allowed at the company, at company events or even just going out for a meal. Showing up drunk, stoned or otherwise impaired would be a great way to get yourself fired.
In Belize, John started up several business ventures, one of which was looking at bacterial quorum sensing as an antibiotic. That fell through, and he changed focus to topical antiseptic compounds. He had reporters coming through all the time, as well as people, I believe, from the national hospital and university, so it should have been readily apparent to those who were knowledgeable in such matters that he was doing bio-pharmaceutical prospecting and not running a meth lab.
That said, it is particularly understandable how law enforcement would feel about a rich expat coming to their company and setting up a research lab. It probably looked like a cleaner, better-equipped version of the drug labs they were used to raiding. If the police had talked to the health officials, they could probably have arranged for regular inspections.
John has had continuous run-in's with politicians in Belize over the years, which you can read about over in his
blog or elsewhere in the news. Without getting into the details of how Belize operates, it is apparent he believes that country's politicians are corrupt and is fearful for his life as a consequence. Just looking at the responses from the police and politicians there, it seems they are doing little to allay his fears. Calling him names is not going to help, nor is not addressing his claims of corruption or claims that they are holding his former employees hostage.
A lot of the conversations I have seen revolve around calling John McAfee crazy, paranoid, bonkers and so forth. But consider this: Each time he says something outlandish about where he his hiding, how he is monitoring things, et cetera, he causes law enforcement to expend efforts to find him. In a sense, it is kind of a war of attrition against them. In that context, this is not crazy at all, but rather very sensible and practical behavior in light of current circumstances.
Anyhow, I hope that puts things into context about the man behind the name.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
