I knew Jerry Pournelle and his wife, Roberta, back in the late Fifties, early Sixties. Drinking buddies at the Blue Moon tavern in Seattle's University District. At the time, Jerry was working at Boeing (something to do with the space program--very "hush hush") and I was not aware that he had much interest in writing. The Pournelles were casual folk music fans and hosted a couple of "hoots" (informal songfests) in their home in the U. District.   

As I recall, Jerry said he was born in Louisiana and I think he said that he was a West Point graduate (along with a couple of other degrees, including Physics, I believe). He was, indeed, politically conservative, but I was not aware that he was any kind of white supremacist. As a Liberal/Progressive myself, I would have been a bit sensitive to that.

He and Roberta left for Southern California sometime in the mid-Sixties and it wasn't until the late Sixties that I discovered that he was writing spy novels under the pseudonym, Wade Curtis. Then, science fiction stories under his own name began appearing in Analog.

When he and Larry Niven passed through Seattle on a book signing tour (Lucifer's Hammer, as I recall), my wife, Barbara, and I wound up having dinner at Ivar's Salmon House with Jerry, Larry, Frank Herbert, and Mildred Downey Broxon. We occupied the table for about four or five hours, sipping wine and talking.

Memorable evening!

As I said, Jerry was definitely quite conservative, but I didn't detect any traces of white supremacist in him. At least, nothing blatant.

Don Firth