Dumb, I wonder at those who hear someone say I smoked but did not inhale and don't know that those are the words of ....
Presidential Biographer Details Clinton Cocaine Use and Violence
newsmax.com
Even before ex-President Bill Clinton lost the Arkansas
governorship in 1980, he was a "recreational user" of
cocaine. But the defeat after just two years in office
sent him into a "real tailspin," prompting the future
president to commence a cocaine habit of "significant
proportions."
"Partners" offered the first mention of a violent rape
allegation against the future president. And though Morris
protected the woman's identity, her account sounded
strikingly similar to rape charges that Arkansas
businesswoman Juanita Broaddrick would make against
Clinton years later.
Subsequently, both Broaddrick and Morris personally
assured NewsMax.com that the woman in question was someone
else - making hers the second outstanding on-the-record
rape charge against the ex-president.
But on Saturday Morris discussed a different topic, one
equally verboten in establishment press circles:
allegations that the last president of the United States
was once a heavy cocaine user who had his career protected
and enhanced through a level of mob-style thuggery never
before seen in any previous White House occupant.
Here's the exchange between the noted author and WABC's
Batchelor and Alexander:
ALEXANDER: When did Roger Clinton first develop a drug
problem? Do you know?
MORRIS: I had stories that put the beginning of Roger's
drug problem in high school, although it didn't really
become serious until later years. And it became an
extremely serious habit. He almost killed himself on
various occasions. He overdosed several times. And when he
finally went for help and when he was arrested he was in a
major habit.
ALEXANDER: Can you remind us about Bill Clinton's
involvement with drug use?
MORRIS: It was clear that Bill was a recreational user, at
least of cocaine. It began in the most significant
proportions after his defeat in 1980. He went into a real
tailspin then. But he had been using with his brother
socially before the 1980 defeat and certainly used
considerably after that, in the early 1980s.
And, of course, into the mid-1980s [Clinton used cocaine]
with his friend Dan Lasater, the famous bond dealer in
Little Rock, who was the bond daddy, who was later, of
course, convicted of drug dealing.
ALEXANDER: Remind our audience of what became known as the
Lasater gang.
MORRIS: Lasater was a very interesting character. He had
made his money in the old Ponderosa steak houses - came
out of nowhere in the Midwest in the 1960s. And there were
organized crime connections that went back to Indiana and
Illinois in those years.
He sold out rather early, became a thoroughbred
farm-gentry character in Florida. He had something called
Lasater Farms, which raced very few thoroughbreds, but law
enforcement officials suspected laundered a lot of money
in Florida.
The race track industry, and thoroughbred racing in
general, is one of those shadowy areas of American sports
where organized crime has always been very prominent.
Lasater was quite successful. He decided to open a bond
business in Little Rock in the late 1970s, early 1980s. He
was a friend of powerful politicians: Gov. John Y. Brown
in Kentucky, Bill Clinton in Arkansas and others - and a
big contributor, of course. [He was] a philanthropist who
was fond of contributing to Toys for Tots at Christmastime
as well as to politicians of every party.
ALEXANDER: And what was the Clinton connection to the
Lasater gang - all of them, Bill, Hillary, Roger, all of
them? How were they connected to the Lasater gang?
MORRIS: Well, they were very close socially. The Clintons
were close socially to Lasater and his wife and flew often
on Lasater's private Lear jet. They went to the Kentucky
Derby. And these are flights that we later had testimony
from state troopers and others that cocaine was available
in ashtrays and literally at every seat on the private jet
- as well as in the box at Churchill Downs.
They socialized a great deal. Lasater was one of those who
had direct access to the governor's mansion in Little
Rock. He could come in the side door without any questions
asked and did at all hours of the day and night.
Bill would drop by at random at the Lasaster bond office
at Little Rock. I talked to his state police chauffeurs
and bodyguards who said he would be in with Lasater at
Lasater's private office for hours on end and come out
pretty heavily stoned.
This was a very close, intimate personal relationship and
when Roger Clinton gets in trouble in the mid-1980s with
law enforcement and with debts that he can't pay - I think
money that he owed the mob and drug distributors and so on
- Bill Clinton gets his half-brother, his little brother,
a job with Dan Lasater down at Lasater Farms in Florida.
ALEXANDER: Now, John and I have painted this picture over
the last several weeks here on WABC of what we call the
Roger Clinton gang - which is Clinton, Locke, Dickie
Morton in Arkansas.
BATCHELOR: George Locke was involved with Lasater.
ALEXANDER: Can you explain how we go from the Lasater gang
to the Roger Clinton gang? It's not a big leap - is it?
MORRIS: No, it's not. And it's important to remember that
Roger was always something of an independent operator.
Here's a kid who's trying his best to rival in some way or
to play the big shot next to his very, very successful
older brother, who is, after all, a major politician and
the governor of the state and all the rest.
But Roger had his own connections with the Colombian
cartel. The [1985] drug indictment and conviction turned
up all sorts of evidence of Roger's business connections
all over the United States with the underworld. He
certainly had his own contacts. And he had his own
contacts in Arkansas.
This was a kid who was selling influence with his brother,
who was fond of holding out deals. I mean, this latest
stuff [Pardongate] is absolutely of a kind, completely
consistent with what he did in Arkansas in the 1980s.
ALEXANDER: That's the point I want to make. ... That what
we're seeing on the front page of the New York Times
tomorrow, it grows exactly out of what you're talking
about. And you're one of the writers who best describes
that.
MORRIS: Well, you know, the whole business of buying -
we'll see in this Times piece tomorrow, $30,000 for
diplomatic passports and a pardon and all that. I mean,
this was the kind of influence peddling that Roger had
been doing in Arkansas. And sometimes it was just very
trivial stuff, sometimes it was just favors with the
highway department or access to the governor or money from
one of the governor's contributors.
In other cases it was zoning changes and favors from the
state government that might have meant millions of dollars
for those who were on the receiving end. So it ran the
gamut. This was an extraordinarily corrupt little society
in Little Rock and Roger Clinton was one of those
purveyors of influence.
But you know, none of this would have been possible, Roger
Clinton would never have had the credibility, he would
have been dismissed as just a southern phony, as there are
so many in Arkansas - if Bill Clinton had not been known
to be corrupt himself.
People who were seeking Roger's access and were willing to
pay for it knew that they had a governor in Arkansas - and
later, of course, a president - who could be had.
ALEXANDER: And when someone would pay Roger for whatever
it was, would Bill Clinton deliver?
MORRIS: Well, sometimes yes, sometimes no. And this caused
enormous tensions between the brothers, as you might
imagine. I mean, Roger Clinton occasionally had his life
threatened because his brother didn't produce on some of
this stuff. And Bill was, I think, rather capricious about
that.
ALEXANDER: Can you give us an example of that?
MORRIS: There was one instance in which Roger Clinton
needed some money to pay a drug debt and asked his brother
to get the money from contributors, including Lasater. And
Bill Clinton refused, initially.
And Roger had to come back and say to him, "Look, it isn't
just my life that's being threatened. It may be Mother's
life, it may be Virginia Clinton's life and it may be
yours - because the guys I'm dealing with are capable of
that kind of retribution." And only then did Bill scrounge
up the money. ...
(Commercial break ends with audio of Hillary Clinton
complaining that the Rev. Jerry Falwell had accused her
husband of murder.)
BATCHELOR: Now, listen, these are violent people. That's
why I played the Falwell thing. She jokes about it but she
knows they're violent. She knows this.
MORRIS: Well, she knows this because there was a culture
of violence that underlay their political rise in
Arkansas. There's always the implicit threat, the subtext
here, of violent retribution of some kind. And, as we all
know, I think now, who've dealt with the Clintons over the
last 10 years or more, there's a very long list of suspect
deaths - the famous and the not-so-famous. It will be, I
think, one of the more disgraceful lists in American
history.
BATCHELOR: Can you please help our audience understand
that Roger, the little brother, the half-brother - we've
heard him on the police surveillance tape, I'm sure you
probably heard that tape - that suggests to me, if that
was a movie, I'd say this man is completely out of control
and capable of slaughtering anybody in the next moment.
MORRIS: Roger is the classic weak character who is capable
of violence because he's always, in a certain sense, in a
desperate situation. He's desperate almost from the time
he's a little boy, certainly into his adulthood, because
of the inequities of stature and standing vis a vis his
older brother, the envy and all the sibling rivalry.
I mean, my God, this is a family drama and a personal
emotional drama as well as a political one. It's just
being acted out, and was acted out for eight years at the
highest levels of the U.S. government.
So he is, I think, capable of that violence. And as we
were saying in the earlier segment, he's connected. He's
connected to people in Arkansas who deal in that currency.
ALEXANDER: Is Bill capable of creating a situation where
someone can be harmed?
MORRIS: You know, I think there's no question that people
have been harmed who have crossed the Clintons in one way
or another. Certainly people have been threatened. We're
talking about political opponents. We're talking about
ex-girlfriends who threatened embarrassing revelations.
We're talking about people who had been close and intimate
supporters, financial and otherwise, who bailed out, who
became dissident, who left the camp.
Absolutely, there's no question about it. The threat of
violence is always there and the reason the threat is
credible is because it has happened, it's happened to
people. And people knew that in Arkansas and I think
people know that in Washington.
ALEXANDER: Well, earlier in the show we were talking to
the Lincecum family. Garland Lincecum, who was a prisoner
in Texas at the time - he felt as if his life had been
threatened. And his family has come forward to describe
how they've given this money for a pardon that they didn't
get. And here he is, we're nearing the end of the Clinton
presidency, and Garland Lincecum is threatened. Does that
fit into the pattern of behavior that you've seen through
the years?
MORRIS: Absolutely. It started way back in 1974 when Bill
Clinton first ran for Congress. As an American historian
and a presidential biographer, you try to look at these
things in context. And, as disgraceful as Richard Nixon
was in a lot of ways, as shoddy as many presidents are in
the way they conduct their politics and the way they deal
with people and all the rest - whether they're Democrats
or Republicans - you know, you just can't find this kind
of genealogy, this kind of prominence in modern American
history.
You don't find this kind of pall surrounding Dwight
Eisenhower or even - I mean, Lyndon Johnson, for all the
known corruption in Texas, the stealing of elections and
all the rest - and some of the allegations of strong-arm
tactics - nothing can match in sheer quantity the Clinton
record. And that's true of every other politician. Harry
Truman and his machine origins in Kansas City or Jimmy
Carter and his seedy friends in Georgia - there's just
nothing like this in modern American political history.
ALEXANDER: So when Garland Lincecum was threatened, that
family should have taken that threat seriously?
MORRIS: Oh, absolutely. You know, people in Arkansas I
talked to who were frightened - I talked to them in 1993,
in '94, in '95 - you know, after Clinton was in the White
House, I talked to some very scared people who knew that;
here was a man at the pinnacle of the U.S. government but
he had been willing to use those tactics and those methods
as governor of Arkansas, as attorney general of Arkansas,
as an aspiring young politician, as a congressional
candidate. They knew full well what they were dealing
with.
ALEXANDER: I'm speechless.
.......
tom watson tosiwmee |
