Source: Arizona Daily Star

Contact: letters@azstarnet.com
Webpage: http://www.azstarnet.com/public/dnews/la0639.html

Trusted doc says drug bust is White House conspiracy

MOUNT VERNON, Ga. (AP) Luther McRae is a country doctor who has been
known to take squash or tomatoes as payment. When patients come to him
after office hours, he sees them at his threeroom farmhouse.

In the 35 years since he opened an office is this town of about 1,900,
McRae has built more than a practice. He has built trust.

So when he was accused of peddling prescriptions for narcotic
painkillers to drug dealers, everyone from the mayor to the probate
judge stepped forward to insist the 67yearold McRae is innocent.

And when McRae said his arrest in a drug sting resulted from a
conspiracy involving the White House, well, folks were willing to
believe that, too.

McRae made headlines in 1995 when he asserted that Dr. Henry Foster
Jr., President Clinton's nominee for surgeon general, lied about his
knowledge of the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment. McRae insists
his arrest was payback.

``I firmly believe that it came from the White House,'' McRae said. ``I
can't say for sure Bill Clinton had a direct hand in it, but some of
his staff members certainly had a direct hand in it.''

That's good enough for Montgomery County Probate Judge Gary Braddy, who
gets his weekly allergy shot at McRae's clinic.

``If he said it, I'm sure he didn't make it up,'' Braddy said. ``He's
the type of man that you don't believe he'd tell you a baldfaced lie
for any reason.''

David Crowson, administrator of Wheeler County Hospital, which owns
McRae's clinic, said: ``Dr. McRae's mind is very sharp. If that's what
the man says, I do not doubt his contention.''

McRae has been Montgomery County's only doctor for more than 20 of the
35 years he has practiced medicine.

Last month, a grand jury indicted McRae on charges he illegally
prescribed painkillers every week for four weeks in October to an
undercover Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent and a former patient
when they showed up at his home in Glenwood, a few miles down the road
from Mount Vernon.

McRae could get up to 30 years in prison.

McRae said the women barged into his bedroom asking for drugs. He
admitted that he twice wrote prescriptions for them without examining
them, saying he feared one of them the undercover agent was strung
out on drugs and bordering on withdrawal.

``I wanted to get her out of the house as quick as I could,'' McRae
said. ``I just got suckered in.'' He said he accepted $20 from the
women on the first visit, $40 on the second.

He came under investigation after several suspected dealers were caught
selling prescription drugs and said McRae wrote their prescriptions.

District Attorney Tim Vaughn described McRae as a major source for drug
dealers. ``He was very freely giving out prescriptions for no medical
reason whatsoever,'' Vaughn said.

The indictment charges McRae with illegally prescribing more than eight
drugs on four visits the women made to his home. McRae admits he wrote
them prescriptions only twice.

McRae's patients say investigators took advantage of the doctor's trust
and his concern for easing other people's pain.

``If you went to him and told him you were hurting, he would try to
give you something to ease you off,'' said Mount Vernon Mayor J.M.
Fountain, whom McRae has treated for high blood pressure.

McRae had a minor role in Foster's failed nomination as surgeon
general. Foster had said he knew nothing of the Tuskegee syphilis
experiment, which left poor blacks untreated, until it was made public
in 1972. But McRae insisted he and Foster, as members of an Alabama
medical society, learned of the study in 1969.

The White House said McRae's remarks were ``all inconsistent with the
facts.''

Foster ultimately failed to win the post because of questions over the
number of abortions he had performed. But his opponents used the
Tuskegee study to further undermine his credibility.