"I knew for sure he was lying.." A first person account.
But following the mysterious murder of her husband Jerry last
year, and the failure of the Little Rock Police Department to solve
the crime, she has decided to speak out. She is in the advanced
stages of multiple sclerosis and she feels she no longer has
anything to lose.
During the time she worked next to Roger's apartment, she could
hear the conversations in B107 very clearly.
Governor Clinton was a frequent visitor. There was drug use at
these gatherings, she claims, and she could clearly distinguish
Bill's voice as he chatted with his brother about the quality of
the marijuana they were smoking.
She said she could also hear them talking about the cocaine as
they passed it back and forth.
When Roger finally moved out, Mrs Parks found drug paraphernalia
left in the kitchen drawer, and cocaine spilt on the furniture.
It was not uncommon during the brothers' alleged drug-taking
sessions in the apartment for them to be joined by young women.
Apart from sharing the drugs, the women on occasion had sex with
both the Clinton men, she alleges.
"What really concerned me were the young girls going in and out
of there," Mrs Parks said. Other tenants in the complex frequently
complained to the management about the rowdy scenes in B107.
Mrs Parks's testimony is backed up by another resident of Vantage
Point, who wishes to remain anonymous. She told me that she saw the
Governor enter the apartment on at least three occasions.
She also heard some of the activity going on inside while visiting
Mrs Parks's office, and backed up claims of drug parties.
"Bill had his girlfriends in there," she said. "You could hear
them through the walls. Some of them looked like very young girls
to me."
Mrs Parks relayed her concerns to her husband, Jerry, a former
police officer who was then branch manager of a private security
firm in Little Rock. He also occasionally worked as a private
detective.
Fearing difficulties for his wife in her capacity as the building
manager, he decided to conduct his own discreet surveillance of
Roger's apartment, writing down names, dates, and detailed accounts
of who was coming and going.
He kept his handwritten notes in a file, which was stored in a
dresser in their bedroom. After Roger Clinton moved out of the
complex, Mr Parks gave up his inquiries.
By a quirk of fate, in 1992 Mr Parks, who by then had set up his
own firm, was awarded the security contract for the Clinton-Gore
Presidential campaign headquarters in Little Rock.
According to records at Mr Parks's firm, American Contract
Services, he was not paid immediately. In early 1993 he made
repeated calls to the White House demanding payment.
The money finally came in July. Just a few days later the secret
file was stolen from the Parks's dresser in a sophisticated
burglary. The telephone wires were cut to disable the house's
high-tech alarm system, and the file was the only item taken.
Shortly after the burglary, Mr Parks received two telephone calls
which, Mrs Parks said, left him in a state of paranoia. "He was
popping my valium. He took a pistol with him everywhere, even to
collect the post from the end of the driveway," she said.
Two months later he was shot several times at short range at a
suburban intersection outside Little Rock.
A police source in Arkansas said that Mr Parks had made
duplicates of the secret file and entrusted them to people in
Little Rock.
One set has been passed on to a federal law enforcement agency.
The contents, he said, supported Mrs Parks's account.
Her allegations would be outlandish if it were not for her
reputation for straightforwardness and Christian devoutness. Even
diehard enemies of her husband say they have never known her
fabricate stories.
Her description of Roger Clinton's lifestyle is also consistent
with a police drug investigation in the mid-1980s in which Roger
and his former boss, Dan Lasater, for whom he worked as a chauffeur
and in his racehorse business, were both convicted on federal
charges of distributing cocaine.
Several women testified in secret to a federal grand jury that
they were offered free cocaine by Mr Lasater as a way of seducing
them. The youngest was only sixteen, a student at North Little Rock
High School. She told me that she also met Governor Clinton several
times at Mr Lasater's parties.
Before his conviction in 1986, Mr Lasater, who had a variety of
business interests, was a close associate of Bill Clinton and a
major contributor to his campaign funds.
A military subcontractor, another witness interviewed by The
Sunday Telegraph who wished to remain anonymous, alleges that he
watched Bill Clinton smoking a marijuana joint at a party given by
Mr Lasater in 1984. The subcontractor says cocaine use was rampant
at the party, although he did not see Bill Clinton partake. "I was
smoking a cigar and every time I tried to find an ashtray the damn
thing was full of cocaine," he said. "I was afraid to breathe."
A former friend of Bill Clinton's has also told The Sunday
Telegraph that on one occasion he produced a bag of cocaine in her
living room and prepared a "line" on the table.
This accusation is made by Sally Perdue, a former radio talk-show
hostess in Little Rock, who told The Sunday Telegraph exclusively
earlier this year that she had had an affair with Bill Clinton when
he was Governor. Referring to the cocaine incident, she said: "He
had all the equipment laid out, like a real pro."
Ms. Perdue alleges that he came to her house about a dozen times
in late 1983, a claim that is broadly confirmed by Arkansas State
Trooper L. D. Brown.
He smoked marijuana regularly, she claimed, pulling joints
ready-made out of a cigarette case. Typically, he would smoke two
or three in the course of a three-hour stay, she said, and he
always inhaled. There was no indication that it greatly affected
his judgment or behaviour.
These claims suggest marijuana use may have been a feature of his
life throughout his twenties and thirties.
A one-time reporter for student newspaper The Daily Texan - he is
now a prominent national journalist - says that he saw Mr Clinton
smoking a joint in Austin in 1972 at the headquarters of George
McGovern's Texas campaign.
"Nobody thought anything of it at the time. We were all doing
it," he said.
Drug use within Clinton's political circle in Arkansas was
blatant during his first Governorship from 1978 to 1980. "I can
remember going into the Governor's conference room once and it
reeked of marijuana," said Democratic State Representative Jack
McCoy, a Clinton supporter.
As late as 1986 Clinton was still smoking marijuana, according to
Terry Reed, a former intelligence operative based in Arkansas who
recently published a book about Mr Clinton's involvement in efforts
to resupply the Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s.
Finally there is Sharlene Wilson. The 39-year-old Ms Wilson was
interviewed by The Sunday Telegraph at the women's prison in
Tucker, Arkansas. Her testimony must be treated with caution as she
is serving a 31-year sentence for minor drug dealing.
Despite it being her first drug conviction, Ms Wilson received a
long sentence for selling half an ounce of marijuana and $60-worth
of methamphetamine.
She now claims she was set up to discredit testimony that might
prove damaging to Bill Clinton and senior Arkansas officials. The
FBI is investigating the possibility that she is the victim of an
abuse of judicial power.
Ms. Wilson says she came to know the Governor when she was a
friend of his brother in the late 1970s. For a time she was a
bartender at Le Bistro nightclub in Little Rock, where Roger used
to play with his band Dealers' Choice, and was known as the "lady
with the white snow".
The Governor would come by frequently to listen to the band and
would often snort cocaine, she alleges. On one occasion in 1979,
she says, she sold two grammes of cocaine to Roger, who immediately
gave some to his elder brother.
Ms. Wilson also claimed to have attended toga parties at the
Coachman's Inn outside Little Rock where she saw Governor Clinton
using cocaine. Guests at these parties would wear sheets and share
sexual partners.
Ms. Wilson tried to break away from drugs in the late 1980s and
began helping federal and state agencies. Gary Martin, an officer
with the Drug Enforcement Agency in Little Rock, said she proved
very reliable: "I have no reason to doubt her word."
In December 1990 she testified as a star witness to a federal
grand jury, held in secret, about her knowledge of cocaine use by
Bill Clinton and others. This testimony, for a task force
investigating drug involvement by Arkansas public officials, will
remain secret forever.
According to Jean Duffey, who headed the drug task force, within
days the investigation was in effect closed down. Ms Wilson was
subsequently entrapped.
"Sharlene was my best informant," says Jean Duffey, who says she
herself was hounded out of her job for being too diligent. She now
lives at a secret location in Texas. "They couldn't silence her so
they locked her up in jail and threw away the key. That's Arkansas
for you."
angelfire.com
tom watson tosiwmee |
