The following is the text of the "memo" from Republican Senate candidate Jack E. Robinson III to voters detailing his personal background.

When I decided to announce my candidacy as a Republican for the United States Senate in my home state of Massachusetts, I knew that my personal background would draw serious public scrutiny - as well it should.

RELATED MAIN STORY Senate candidate details background of charges, lawsuits CAMPAIGN WEB SITE www.robinson2000.com NECN REAL VIDEO Robinson enters race for Mass. Senate seat

After all, a candidate for public office, by definition, seeks to hold a position of public confidence and trust. As such, candidates should be able to look their constituents in the eye and say, "Yes, I believe that I deserve your trust." And the only way to do that, in my opinion, is for the candidate to make his/her private background available for perusal by the public and the press so that the citizenry can make up its own mind. This is what I believe and this is what I've done in the last week.

Clearly, however, I could have done a much better job in managing the process by which this information was released.

By making this information public early in the campaign, I hope to have offered my fellow citizens a full and fair description of my personal background in a manner which allows them to decide whether I am capable of representing them in a position of public trust, confidence and honor.

1. Motor Vehicle Incident #1

One night back in the early 1980's, I was driving my car on Route 9 back home to Boston from a movie at one of my favorite theatres, the Chestnut Hill Cinema in Chestnut Hill.

I was driving on Route 9 late at night. The road was virtually empty and driving conditions were good. I did not pay close attention to my speed and apparently was driving about 10 miles per hour faster than the posted speed limit.

My excessive speed caught the attention of a Brookline Police officer on duty that night who pulled me over and gave me a speeding ticket. I accepted the ticket and continued on my way.

I should have paid the ticket immediately. However, I subsequently lost the ticket and then compounded problems by completely forgetting about it.

One afternoon a couple of years later, while I was a graduate student at Harvard, I was dropping off some research materials at a friend's house in Cambridge. Unbeknownst to me, the Cambridge police were staking out my friend's neighborhood due to a rash of midday burglaries. The police ran my license plate number and discovered my delinquent unpaid ticket.

At that time under Massachusetts law, failing to pay a speeding ticket resulted in a default warrant being issued for the person's arrest. [Though I have been advised that the law has since changed.] As a result of the default warrant, I was arrested as the law at the time mandated.

I was taken to the Cambridge Police station and was held for about 45 minutes until the Brookline Police showed up to take me to Brookline, where I was given a court date the next day and released. The next day, I appeared in Brookline District Court, pleaded "responsible," paid my speeding ticket and left.

I never attempted to "seal" the record of this episode (as allowed under Massachusetts law), therefore it is likely an available public record.

2. Motor Vehicle Incident #2

My second brush with the motor vehicle laws of the Commonwealth was more serious than the first. [And it is important to note that, in my opinion, the laws dealing with this issue - drunk driving - should be strengthened.]

One Saturday night in the mid-1980's, again while I was a graduate student at Harvard, I went out to dinner with some friends in downtown Boston. I had a couple of glasses of wine with dinner. I knew I would be driving and I was purposefully cautious about the amount of alcohol I was consuming. I therefore limited my drinking to these couple of glasses of wine.

After dinner, my date and I decided to go to a club on Lansdowne Street, right behind Fenway Park. However, as I pulled up to the front of the club, the area was jammed with people and cars, which I assume is normal on a Saturday night. We decided that since we were tired anyway, we would call it an evening and leave rather than fight the crowds.

As I hurried away from the crowds, I accelerated to leave the club and I inadvertently screeched the tires of my car. Unfortunately for me, a Boston Police cruiser was parked right across the street and observed my rather indelicate departure.

About 500 feet down the road, the cruiser flashed its lights and pulled me over. The officer came up and asked me for my license and registration. He looked at me, asked if I had been drinking [the officer later said that I had glassy eyes and he could smell liquor on my breath], and being truthful I responded that I had "a couple of glasses of wine."

The officer walked back to his cruiser and then returned and asked me to step out of the car. I complied and he said that he was placing me under arrest for operating under the influence of alcohol (drunk driving). [At the time, field sobriety tests were not generally used.] While I can't remember offering any protest, I do remember my poor date being forced to get out of the car and hail a taxi as my car was being towed away. [To her credit, she later followed me to the police station and waited for me until I was released a couple of hours later.]

I was taken to the Boston Police station. I remember telling the officer in charge that I didn't believe I was under the influence. He asked me to take a Breathalyzer test and I consented.

However, as the officer was checking my clothing, he found in my coat pocket what turned out to be some kind of martial arts implement. Neither he nor I knew what it was and hadn't seen it before. We actually got a slight chuckle out of it, at least until he checked around and found out that it is against the law to have such a thing. He was then required to charge me with possession of a dangerous weapon, even though it was clear that I had no idea what it was. [I can only surmise that it must have been placed in my jacket pocket, perhaps not even on purpose, while it was hanging in the restaurant where I was having dinner - probably by its original owner].

Nonetheless, I took the breathalyzer test in order to prove that I was not under the influence. After several minutes of analysis, the machine printed out a reading of .04. This reading meant that I had four-tenths of one- percent blood alcohol level (I believe an indication that supports the fact that I had limited my drinking to the couple of glasses of wine during dinner).

In Massachusetts, there is a sliding scale for blood alcohol levels. While a reading of .10 or more results in a presumption of being under the influence, a reading of .05 or below results in a presumption of not being under the influence. A reading of .05 or below also requires that the person arrested be released immediately. So, that's what happened. I was able to pick up my car, after paying a rather hefty towing fee, and I went home.

Eventually, the entire case was dismissed and, because I passed the Breathalyzer test, the judge sealed the case file (as allowed under Massachusetts law). Although the file is still sealed, I have voluntarily provided this information to the public and news media.

In retrospect, I should have not been able to get my car back so easily after having been arrested for drunk driving. The bottom line is that I was driving while legally sober but that fact alone does not eliminate the possibility that I was impaired - and a potential danger to others and myself. The laws against drunk driving need to be strengthened so that it's made absolutely clear to people that society places zero tolerance on such behavior.

Bar Exam

I graduated from law school in 1985. However, I didn't pass the bar in Massachusetts until 1991. The delay is due to the fact that I took the New York and Texas bar exams twice and flunked both times. But then again, I didn't really study for them either.

Most law graduates study for and take the bar exam during the summer that they graduate from law school. My case was different, since I went into the airline industry as an executive and didn't have a need to take the bar exam at that time. However, I later changed my mind and decided to take the bar.

The first time, I decided that I would take the Texas and New York exams at the same time over a 3-day period. Although I signed up for one of those bar review courses, I did not take full advantage of the instruction. Over a 3-day period I sat for examinations in Houston and Albany, flying all night in between. I missed passing both exams by only a small margin.

The next year, I decided to take only the New York exam. Again I failed to adequately prepare for the exam and again I failed the exam by a narrow margin.

A couple of years went by and I decided that I had better get serious and take the bar exam in my home state and study for it as well. So, in the summer of 1991, I studied hard for the Massachusetts bar exam and I passed it.

But the fact of the matter is that I took three bar exams and flunked them all. However, I prefer to focus on the fact that I realized the importance of the exam to me, studied hard and passed the bar in Massachusetts.

On a related matter, in the late 1990's a federal judge in Boston determined that I had been negligent in handling some legal matters for a corporate client, even though I was not involved in the case at the time the decision was rendered and was not given an opportunity to be heard. The judge referred my alleged negligent conduct to the Board of Bar Overseers (BBO) in Massachusetts, which is the organization that regulates lawyers and the legal profession. However, in December 1998, the BBO found no basis for any discipline and dismissed the referral.

Copyright Case

I was always under the impression that one cannot copyright history. Unfortunately, a federal judge in New York didn't agree with me.

In 1992, I wrote a well-received book about the rise and fall of Eastern Airlines. The book was called Freefall: The Needless Destruction of Eastern Airlines and was published by HarperCollins.

Attempting to build on that success, in 1994 I wrote a similar book recounting the rise and fall of Pan Am. It was called American Icarus: The Majestic Rise and Tragic Fall of Pan Am. Unfortunately, the book was never released because it was found to have violated the copyright of the only other history of Pan Am at the time, which was written in 1980.

The author of the earlier book on Pan Am had the advantage of being able to interview legendary Pan Am founder Juan Trippe, as well as many other people involved in the founding of the aviation pioneer (such as the immortal Charles Lindbergh). However, the earlier book was obviously an incomplete history because it was written in 1980 and Pan Am didn't go out of business until the 1990's. So, my plan was to retell the earlier history and bring the story current through Pan Am's demise in the mid-1990's. Unfortunately, I received no help at all from the author of the earlier book.

I asked the author and his publisher (Random House) for permission to use his phrasing and descriptive material because, by the time I began writing my history of Pan Am, all of the participants had passed away (except for Charles Lindbergh's wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, whom I believe is a youthful 100 this year). Contrary to the conventional manner in which historians cooperate with each other, the author and Random House refused to give me any permission at all. So, I was left on my own.

The problem was that most of the phraseology I was forced to use was necessarily based on statements made by people who were no longer alive. So I had no other source by which to retell the early history of Pan Am other than using the wording and statements found in the earlier book.

Upon submission of the manuscript to my publisher, and after alerting my publisher to the copyright issues regarding the earlier book, the publisher decided not to go forward. Remaining determined still, I believed Pan Am's history, spanning every facet of aviation, was sufficiently important that one author's intransigence shouldn't be allowed to stifle the telling of the story for posterity.

As such, I brought a copyright lawsuit in New York federal court against the author and Random House, seeking a declaratory judgment that my book on Pan Am didn't infringe the copyright of the earlier book. The case cite is Robinson v. Random House, 877 F. Supp. 830 (SDNY 1995).

My argument was twofold. First, the prodigious use of material from the earlier work was necessary because there was no other source for the statements made by people who had already died. Moreover, the earlier work took substantial material from several of Mrs. Lindbergh's books that were written in the late 1930's and early 1940's. In fact, I argued that is how histories are written. One author builds upon the work of the previous author. My second argument was that the copyright law's "fair use" doctrine applied to my work.

There are 4 factors courts use to decide if the copyright law's fair use doctrine applies to a subsequent work, and even though the judge decided I won on only 1 of the 4 factors, I still believe all 4 of the factors were in my favor.

Based on these factors, I believed the decision was wrong and I appealed the case to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. As my costs mounted and before the case was heard, I decided to end the appeal and settled out of court with Random House without admitting any liability. However, as part of the settlement, I agreed to pay their legal fees of about $40,000, and dismissed my appeal.

Although I lost the case, I still believe to this day that I was fighting for a valuable right. Nonetheless, there is a court case that essentially states that I violated the copyright of another author. In that context, I cannot claim that I am proud of such an endeavor.

Eastern Airlines

I went to work at Eastern Airlines in 1990 when it was already in bankruptcy and was on the brink of liquidation. I came in as part of an emergency management "salvage team" headed by the court-appointed trustee Martin R. Shugrue. [Marty tragically died of a stroke last summer]. I had two jobs: Vice President of Corporate Development at Eastern, where I tried to engineer an Eastern-Pan Am merger that would have saved both airlines; and President of Bar Harbor Airways, Eastern's wholly-owned regional airline subsidiary.

When it became clear that Eastern wasn't going to make it, my partners and I attempted to buy Bar Harbor out of the Eastern bankruptcy estate. Since Eastern was in bankruptcy, Bar Harbor's stock had to be auctioned off in bankruptcy court.

In a bankruptcy auction, anyone can bid: shareholders, creditors, bondholders, management, even a person walking in off the street. It was reported at the time by Business Week, a very fine magazine to which I subscribe, that I was forced to resign from Eastern because I had agreed to "throw in" with one of the bidders. The fact of the matter is that I had no need to "throw in" with anybody because I had financing for my own bid, which I did in fact pursue after resigning from Eastern.

The proof in the pudding was that my bid was ultimately accepted by the bankruptcy court. The bad news is that the day after the court approved the deal, Eastern and Bar Harbor suddenly shut down for good, leaving no Bar Harbor to buy.

Restraining Order

In June 1997, I ended (or so I thought) an "on again, off again" long-distance dating relationship with Jane [Not her real name. Even though some newspapers have reported her real name, I shall not disclose it]. During this time, I was living in Manhattan and Jane was living in Massachusetts.

Contrary to some published reports, at no time did Jane and I ever live together. Furthermore, I never visited her home in Massachusetts and, in fact, I do not believe I have ever been to the town where she lives (although I do plan to visit it during the campaign).

At all times, and each and every time we met, Jane would voluntarily come to see me at my apartment in Manhattan or visit me during my business trips to Boston and Providence.

In June 1997, while visiting me in Manhattan, I informed Jane that I did not wish to see her in the future and that I was breaking off our relationship. I was desirous of ending our relationship for some time and felt that a total break would be best for both of us. However, she refused to accept this state of affairs and instead continued to call me for a period of six months thereafter, attempting to rekindle the relationship.

Jane would call me late at night or very early in the morning, weekdays and weekends, most often inquiring as to where I was, whom I was with, and what I was doing. Some of these messages were more distressing to me. I would return her calls every 2-3 weeks (sometimes speaking to her directly, but most times leaving messages) in a desperate attempt to convince her to stop calling me. I was not successful.

Late on the evening of Thursday, January 15, 1998, Jane called me at home again. I told her in no uncertain terms that I didn't want to be contacted by her anymore at all. She quickly became very upset and hung up.

A few minutes later, Jane called me back and launched into a verbal assault on me. She stated that she would take out a restraining order against me (although I have never threatened nor intimidated her). She threatened that she would "ruin" me and my reputation. After this harangue, she hung up.

I later discovered that the next day, Friday, January 16, 1998, Jane took out an ex parte (without notice to me) restraining order against me. I also later discovered that her affidavit filed in support of the order contained numerous, shocking and absolutely false allegations.

For example, Jane claimed that I forced her to engage in sexual relations against her will at one time during our relationship. She also claimed in her affidavit that I used profane, ugly and derogatory language towards her. All of these allegations are absolutely false. (It is rare that I ever swear. I grew up in a household that did not tolerate such language and it remains a good habit that I believe has served me well - and for which I can properly thank my Mother.)

The return date for the restraining order was Friday, January 23, 1998, in Attleboro, MA District Court at 9:00 a.m. After driving four hours from New York City in an early morning winter storm, I arrived in court on time. For some reason, Jane (whose town is the next one over from Attleboro), did not show. The Judge called the case and when he noted that Jane had failed to appear, dismissed the case. I then left the courthouse and returned to New York.

I later discovered that Jane arrived at the courthouse after I had left and took out another restraining order against me, based on the same affidavit. I was later served with this second order by the New York Police Department at my apartment in New York City.

Frustrated with this process, I hired an attorney in Fall River (a well-known attorney named John C. O'Neil). He decided to check my story by subpoenaing Jane's telephone records from the telephone company.

On the day we returned to Attleboro District Court to contest the restraining order, as well as obtain a restraining order protecting me from Jane, the telephone records had arrived at the courthouse. My lawyer and I spent almost 30 minutes going over 6-7 months of telephone records showing Jane's numerous calls to my home number.

When the court convened, my lawyer approached Jane and her representative and showed them the telephone records. Almost immediately, Jane agreed (1) to withdraw the allegations she had made in her affidavit and (2) dismiss the restraining order.

But I wanted more. I also wanted some type of agreement by which she would be prevented from contacting me in the future. My lawyer drew up a simple one-page agreement in court that basically said neither party would contact or attempt to contact the other party "forever."

The agreement was presented to the Judge. The Judge asked if both Jane and I had signed the agreement freely and without any duress of any kind. Both of us answered in the affirmative. However, the Judge had a problem with approving an agreement that lasted "forever," so he asked us to change the time period of no contact to seven years. My lawyer crossed out the word "forever" and in its place wrote "through the year 2005." Jane and I initialed the change. While not forever, I hoped that seven years would be sufficient.

The Judge approved the agreement, all of Jane's allegations were withdrawn, the restraining order issued against me was vacated and dismissed, and the case was closed.

Under Massachusetts law, I had the right to "seal" the file of a case that involved a vacated restraining order. The law also allows me to file a motion to destroy the entire case file. But I didn't do either.

Why? Because I knew that if I ran for public office in the future, more questions would be asked about a sealed or destroyed file than an open file.

So, the file remains a public rerecord in Attleboro District Court, which is located at 88 North Main Street, Attleboro, MA 02703. If Jane wants to seal it, I won't object. But I'm not going to take any action regarding the file.

One final note in this regard. This period of time was, I believe, particularly difficult for Jane. It was an unfortunate experience for me to live through and to this day I occasionally reflect on whether there was anything that I could have done to have better resolved and diffused the tension that resulted. I have not found any answers that give me comfort.

Finally, though I cannot and do not wish to have any contact with Jane in the future, I have no malice towards her and wish her future success in her life. As a candidate for political office, I am prepared to deal with these difficult issues as best as I am able. Jane, on the other hand, is not running for office. So it is my hope that the media and others will respect her right to privacy.

By the way, although I've been falsely accused in this matter, I still believe that the domestic abuse prevention laws are important and, if anything, should be strengthened. Because, in the final analysis, while a man's reputation can ultimately be restored, a woman's life cannot.

$10 Million Lawsuit

A company which I represented and in which I had an ownership interest filed a billion-dollar antitrust lawsuit against a wireless communications company that subsequently filed for bankruptcy in Baltimore, Maryland. The wireless company we sued never commenced operations and is in liquidation, but the company didn't like the fact that I had brought the antitrust lawsuit. They responded by suing me personally for $10 million.

I fought the lawsuit and ultimately got it dismissed, but it cost me a lot in terms of time, money and effort.

FCC Lawsuit

The same wireless company that I represented in the bankruptcy proceedings also participated in an auction for wireless licenses conducted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). My company participated in the auction, won a license, but also withdrew some bids in the final rounds of the auction. Although there were no rules which specifically controlled the situation, the FCC determined that my company was liable for almost $300,000 in bid withdrawal penalties.

We protested, particularly since we didn't believe any penalties were due and, even if they were, that the penalties should be waived. In fact, the FCC has granted waivers in identical circumstances to literally dozens of other bidders, but not to our company.

We have taken the FCC to court and the case is scheduled to be heard in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals this fall.

Drugs

I have never taken any illegal drugs of any kind whatsoever. I have never used marijuana. Therefore, I have never been in a position to have to say that I didn't inhale.

However, I did make the mistake of actually inhaling one puff of a regular cigarette when I was a teenager back in the early 1970's. I was sick for three days and haven't touched a cigarette since. That may have been a blessing.

Liquor

I do drink socially and I prefer scotch, gin and brandy. But, since my arrest for drunk driving 15 years ago, I've been extremely careful about operating a motor vehicle after having consumed liquor.

Summary

The above was intended to divulge everything that I am aware of in my personal background that may offer any insight as to my own personal character and any potential weaknesses. I can assure you that the Massachusetts constituents I intend to serve will be fully informed on all relevant issues and that you will be hearing a lot more about the real issues as the campaign begins in earnest.