CLINTON TAKES A STAND ON COCAINE, SAYS HE NEVER USED IT

President Clinton entered the cocaine fray yesterday -- albeit by proxy --
saying he has never used the drug.

Gennifer Flowers, who had an affair with the president, told Fox News
Channel on Aug. 18 that Mr. Clinton once told her he had used cocaine. "The
president has never done cocaine," said Jim Kennedy, a spokesman for the
White House counsel's office. "That applies to his entire life."

As Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush tries to fend off
questions about past drug use, Mr. Clinton addressed a rumor that has
swirled about him for years.

In Roger Morris' 1996 book "Partners in Power," a dual biography of the
president and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Morris quotes the
president's younger half-brother on a 1983-84 surveillance film stating,
"Got to get some [cocaine] for my brother. He's got a nose like a vacuum
cleaner."

Roger Clinton pleaded guilty in 1984 to federal charges of cocaine
distribution and conspiracy. He served half of a two-year sentence.

Questions about cocaine have taken on a new currency in politics this
campaign season, even as questions

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about marital fidelity and marijuana recede.

Lincoln Chafee, a Republican who is seeking a U.S. Senate seat in Rhode
Island, told an interviewer over the weekend that he tried cocaine in the
1970s.

Mr. Bush, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, has
spent the last week battling drug inquiries that posed the first threat to
his campaign juggernaut.

No one has produced any evidence that the Texas governor used cocaine, but
his initial refusal to answer the question definitively only brought more
queries.

The questions do not appear to have hurt Mr. Bush's campaign. He led Vice
President Al Gore 54 percent to 37 percent in a CNN-Time poll released
Friday. Perhaps most significant, 84 percent of respondents said that if
Mr. Bush did use cocaine when he was in his 20s, it should not disqualify
him for the presidency.

A Boston Herald poll conducted Thursday and Friday found that the cocaine
questions did not hurt Mr. Bush among likely GOP primary voters in New
Hampshire. Mr. Bush led the GOP primary field with 45 percent of the vote,
far outdistancing his closest challenger, Sen. John McCain, Arizona
Republican, with 11 percent.

"The cocaine issue is just not cutting," pollster R. Kelly Myers told the
Boston Herald.

Mr. Bush is getting ample advice from candidates and campaign operatives in
both parties.

James Carville, Mr. Clinton's former campaign adviser, is urging Mr. Bush
to clam up.

"The next time you get a drug question, the only appropriate answer is
'What part of no don't you understand,' " Mr. Carville writes in an article
titled "Just Say No" in this week's Time magazine. "What you did 25 years
ago doesn't matter; what you did during the past 25 days should matter."

But two of Mr. Bush's GOP rivals say he should open up. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch
of Utah says Mr. Bush should answer the cocaine question and put the issue
behind him.

Gary Bauer, former head of the Family Research Council, chides Mr. Bush for
his "Clintonian approach" of partial denials and partial explanations.

Through Wednesday, Mr. Bush offered his familiar response, that he "made
some mistakes" in his past, but had learned from his mistakes and he would
not answer whether he had ever used illegal drugs. In Thursday's edition of
the Dallas Morning News, Mr. Bush answered a specific question. He said he
could pass an FBI security clearance, meaning he had not used illegal drugs
in the past seven years. In Roanoke the same day, Mr. Bush went back 15
more years, indicating he had not used illegal drugs since 1974.

Mr. Bush said he could have passed such a background check "when my dad was
president of the United States, a 15-year period."

As for Mr. Clinton, Miss Flowers said in an interview on the Fox program
"Hannity & Colmes" that Mr. Clinton had smoked marijuana in her presence as
attorney general and as governor.

"He made it very clear that if I ever wanted to do cocaine, that he could
provide that," she said.

Miss Flowers said Mr. Clinton "also told me that there were times he did so
much cocaine at parties that his head would itch."

But in March 1992, Betsey Wright, a Clinton campaign aide, told the Los
Angeles Times that Mr. Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, had never
used cocaine or knowingly been in its presence.

"I asked him the following questions" she told the newspaper.

" 'Bill, have you ever used cocaine?' He replied, 'No.' "I said, 'Bill,
have you ever been in a room where you were aware there was cocaine?' "

"He replied, 'No.' "

During his 1992 presidential campaign Mr. Clinton denied that he had a
12-year affair with Miss Flowers. But he later testified under oath in the
Monica Lewinsky affair that he had a sexual encounter with the former
television reporter and cabaret singer.

In November 1990, Mr. Clinton, then governor of Arkansas, pardoned Dan
Lasater, a Little Rock bond trader and convicted cocaine distributor who
had contributed to his campaign. Mr. Lasater once loaned $8,000 to Roger
Clinton to pay a drug debt.

Mr. Clinton said in 1994 that he barely knew Mr. Lasater, and that the bond
trader had contributed to the campaigns of other Arkansas Democrats as
well, including Sens. Dale Bumpers and David Pryor.