Clinton takes a stand on
cocaine, says he never used it
By Andrew Cain
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
resident Clinton entered the cocaine fray yesterday --
albeit by proxy -- saying he has never used the drug.
Gennifer Flowers, who had an affair with the president, told
Fox News Channel on Aug. 18 that Mr. Clinton once told her
he had used cocaine.
"The president has never done cocaine," said Jim Kennedy,
a spokesman for the White House counsel's office. "That
applies to his entire life."
As Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush tries
to fend off questions about past drug use, Mr. Clinton
addressed a rumor that has swirled about him for years.
In Roger Morris' 1996 book "Partners in Power," a dual
biography of the president and first lady Hillary Rodham
Clinton, Mr. Morris quotes the president's younger half-brother
on a 1983-84 surveillance film stating, "Got to get some
[cocaine] for my brother. He's got a nose like a vacuum
cleaner."
Roger Clinton pleaded guilty in 1984 to federal charges of
cocaine distribution and conspiracy. He served half of a
two-year sentence.
Questions about cocaine have taken on a new currency in
politics this campaign season, even as questions
-- Continued from Front Page --
about marital fidelity and marijuana recede.
Lincoln Chafee, a Republican who is seeking a U.S. Senate
seat in Rhode Island, told an interviewer over the weekend that
he tried cocaine in the 1970s.
Mr. Bush, the front-runner for the Republican presidential
nomination, has spent the last week battling drug inquiries that
posed the first threat to his campaign juggernaut.
No one has produced any evidence that the Texas governor
used cocaine, but his initial refusal to answer the question
definitively only brought more queries.
The questions do not appear to have hurt Mr. Bush's
campaign. He led Vice President Al Gore 54 percent to 37
percent in a CNN-Time poll released Friday. Perhaps most
significant, 84 percent of respondents said that if Mr. Bush did
use cocaine when he was in his 20s, it should not disqualify him
for the presidency.
A Boston Herald poll conducted Thursday and Friday
found that the cocaine questions did not hurt Mr. Bush among
likely GOP primary voters in New Hampshire. Mr. Bush led
the GOP primary field with 45 percent of the vote, far
outdistancing his closest challenger, Sen. John McCain,
Arizona Republican, with 11 percent.
"The cocaine issue is just not cutting," pollster R. Kelly
Myers told the Boston Herald.
Mr. Bush is getting ample advice from candidates and
campaign operatives in both parties.
James Carville, Mr. Clinton's former campaign adviser, is
urging Mr. Bush to clam up.
"The next time you get a drug question, the only appropriate
answer is 'What part of no don't you understand,' " Mr.
Carville writes in an article titled "Just Say No" in this week's
Time magazine. "What you did 25 years ago doesn't matter;
what you did during the past 25 days should matter."
But two of Mr. Bush's GOP rivals say he should open up.
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah says Mr. Bush should answer
the cocaine question and put the issue behind him. Gary Bauer,
former head of the Family Research Council, chides Mr. Bush
for his "Clintonian approach" of partial denials and partial
explanations.
Through Wednesday, Mr. Bush offered his familiar
response, that he "made some mistakes" in his past, but had
learned from his mistakes and he would not answer whether he
had ever used illegal drugs.
In Thursday's edition of the Dallas Morning News, Mr.
Bush answered a specific question. He said he could pass an
FBI security clearance, meaning he had not used illegal drugs in
the past seven years. In Roanoke the same day, Mr. Bush
went back 15 more years, indicating he had not used illegal
drugs since 1974.
Mr. Bush said he could have passed such a background
check "when my dad was president of the United States, a
15-year period."
As for Mr. Clinton, Miss Flowers said in an interview on
the Fox program "Hannity & Colmes" that Mr. Clinton had
smoked marijuana in her presence as attorney general and as
governor.
"He made it very clear that if I ever wanted to do cocaine,
that he could provide that," she said.
Miss Flowers said Mr. Clinton "also told me that there were
times he did so much cocaine at parties that his head would
itch."
But in March 1992, Betsey Wright, a Clinton campaign
aide, told the Los Angeles Times that Mr. Clinton, then the
governor of Arkansas, had never used cocaine or knowingly
been in its presence.
"I asked him the following questions" she told the
newspaper.
" 'Bill, have you ever used cocaine?' He replied, 'No.'
"I said, 'Bill, have you ever been in a room where you were
aware there was cocaine?' "
"He replied, 'No.' "
During his 1992 presidential campaign Mr. Clinton denied
that he had a 12-year affair with Miss Flowers. But he later
testified under oath in the Monica Lewinsky affair that he had a
sexual encounter with the former television reporter and
cabaret singer.
In November 1990, Mr. Clinton, then governor of
Arkansas, pardoned Dan Lasater, a Little Rock bond trader
and convicted cocaine distributor who had contributed to his
campaign. Mr. Lasater once loaned $8,000 to Roger Clinton
to pay a drug debt.
Mr. Clinton said in 1994 that he barely knew Mr. Lasater,
and that the bond trader had contributed to the campaigns of
other Arkansas Democrats as well, including Sens. Dale
Bumpers and David Pryor. |
