The Electronic Telegraph Sunday 17 July 1994 World News
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I was smoking a cigar and every time I tried to find an ashtray the damn thing was full of cocaine. I was afraid to breathe
Bill Clinton both inhaled and snorted, according to new witnesses. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard puts together the evidence When Bill Clinton was asked during the Presidential election campaign whether he had ever used drugs, he gave one of his carefully crafted, lawyerly answers. Yes, he had smoked two or three "joints" of marijuana at Oxford, but had never inhaled. And he insisted that he had never violated a drug law within the borders of the US.
Now new evidence is emerging that Mr. Clinton may have been more than a casual user of marijuana. A variety of witnesses interviewed by The Sunday Telegraph at the President's former Arkansas haunts claim his drug habit stretched well into his political career.
The pattern alleged by these witnesses goes far beyond questions of inappropriate personal conduct. At the time Mr Clinton was either Attorney-General or Governor of Arkansas. He was part of the law-enforcement machinery that gave stiff prison sentences to drug felons.
And if the President once had a major drug habit, when did it end? 1986? 1990? 1994?
Perhaps the most compelling allegations revolve around Roger Clinton - rock musician, perennial ne'er-do-well, and the President's younger brother.
In summer 1984 Roger spent two months as a non-paying guest at Vantage Point, an upmarket apartment complex in Little Rock. At the time big-brother Bill was in his second term as Governor.
Roger's rooms were in the corporate suite, number B107, which was separated from the administrative offices by a thin partition. On the other side of the wall was Jane Parks, manager of the complex.
Until now Mrs Parks, 41, had remained stubbornly silent about what she saw and heard while Roger was at Vantage Point.
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."
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