The Electronic Telegraph   Sunday 17 July 1994   World News

Clinton 'took cocaine while in office'
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

PRESIDENT Clinton faces potentially devastating allegations that he engaged in regular use of cocaine and marijuana during his rise to political prominence in Arkansas.

The allegations, made in a series of exclusive interviews with The Sunday Telegraph, describe a drug habit that continued until the mid-1980s.

Mr Clinton's drug use, if true, involved the systematic violation of the law when he was either a law professor, or in high office as Attorney General and later Governor of Arkansas.

The Clinton administration has been criticised for cutting funding for the Coast Guard's air and boat patrols and restricting sharing intelligence on drugs with other countries.

The alleged use occurred in a variety of settings from 1972 to 1986. Some of it involves stories of wild behaviour at nightclubs and private parties.

If the accounts are true they raise questions about how Mr Clinton funded the alleged habit on his modest $35,000 income as Governor of Arkansas.

Republican Senator Lauch Faircloth, a member of the Banking Committee that later this month will hold hearings into the Whitewater property deals involving Mr and Mrs Clinton, wants to expand the narrow scope of the investigation to cover growing allegations about narcotics trafficking and money-laundering in Arkansas in the 1980s.

He said: "If any credible evidence surfaces concerning drug use by President Clinton while he was Governor of Arkansas, it would be a national scandal."

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