I DIDN'T SMOKE POT: HILLARY

Hillary Clinton's first lover has hinted that the first lady smoked
marijuana with him although she has denied ever using illegal drugs.

``Some of us were inhaling,'' David Rupert is quoted as saying about their
university days in a new book, Hillary's Choice.

When pressed by writer Gail Sheehy he replied: ``I don't have to go there,
but you can read between the lines.''

The couple dated when Mrs Clinton was a Yale law student.

Aides to Mrs Clinton, who is running for the Senate in New York, have
denied she used marijuana or any other illegal drugs. ``We stick by that,''
said campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson.

Ms Sheehy, who wrote Hillary's Choice, said she took Rupert's remarks to
mean the couple ``went to parties where people were smoking and they
probably smoked.''

Sheehy also claimed Mrs Clinton stopped speaking to her husband for eight
months over his affair with Monica Lewinsky - and broke her silence only
last March, to tell him to start bombing Kosovo.

Sheehy also said Mrs Clinton almost left her husband in 1990 when the
then-Arkansas governor fell in love with another woman - dubbed Jane Doe
Number One in Paula Jones' sexual-harassment lawsuit.

``The affair almost drove a stake through that marriage,'' said Sheehy, who
claimed Clinton was ``obsessed'' with the woman for 18 months, phoning her
hundreds of times, sometimes 18 times a day.

Mrs Clinton's White House spokeswoman, Marsha Berry, denied Sheehy's claims.

President Clinton has admitted he tried marijuana, but did not inhale.