CLINTON INHALES, THEN LETS FLY ON DRUGS, GAYS, NIXON AND MONICA

President Clinton, who famously claimed not to have inhaled when he
tried marijuana, has told the rock magazine Rolling Stone that people
should not be jailed for using or selling small amounts of the drug.

In a wide-ranging interview, published today, he also berates himself
over the Lewinsky affair, says he was outmanoeuvred into a failed
policy on homosexuals in the military, and confesses to a sneaking
admiration for his disgraced predecessor Richard Nixon.

Rolling Stone's editor and publisher, Jann Wenner, asked the
President if he thought that "people should go to jail for using or
even selling small amounts of marijuana".

Mr Clinton replied: "I think that most small amounts of marijuana
have been decriminalised in some places, and should be."

Going further, he said that mandatory sentences for drug use should
be re-examined, along with the distinction in sentencing between
crack and powdered cocaine, which he said discriminated against black
Americans.

President Clinton said that early in his administration the
Republicans had forced the issue on his campaign promise to allow
homosexuals to serve openly in the military, knowing they had the
votes to defeat it.

"And it was only then that I worked out with [General] Colin Powell
this dumb-ass 'don't ask, don't tell' thing," he said.

That policy had resulted in "several years of problems where it was
not implemented in any way consistent with the speech I gave at the
War College - of which General Powell had agreed with every word".

Mr Clinton was candid about his affair with Ms Monica Lewinsky when
asked if his resulting impeachment was a "referendum on the nature,
morality or character" of the United States.

"Not really," he said. "People strongly disagreed with what I did. I did, too."

Mr Clinton attributed the bitter, partisan atmosphere in Washington
to a Republican belief that "they had found a foolproof formula to
hold on to the White House forever".

"Mostly, it's just because I won ... I think, secondly, because I was
the first baby-boomer president. Not a perfect person - never claimed
to be. And I opposed the Vietnam War. I think that made them doubly
angry, because they thought I was a cultural alien and I made it
anyway."

Mr Clinton said he had invited Richard Nixon to return to the White
House for a visit and that he treasured a "lucid, eloquent" letter
the former president wrote to him from Russia just a month before his
death.

He said Nixon, driven from office by the Watergate scandal, could
have been "a great president if he had been more trusting of the
American people".

Asked who would be his successor, Mr Clinton forecasts in the
interview, conducted before the election, that Vice-President Al Gore
would win Florida, and the presidency.