STENCH OF HYPOCRISY
Copyright (c) 1997, DR Partners d/b/a Las Vegas ReviewJournal

n White House welcomed a cocaine wholesaler.

Did cocaine money, funneled through the Democratic
National Committee, help finance Bill Clinton's reelection
campaign? Possibly so.

On Friday, The New York Times reported on the activities
of convicted coke trafficker Jorge Cabrera, who met at a
hotel in communist Cuba with a Democratic fundraiser named
Vivian Mannerud, a businesswoman from Miami who convinced
him to contribute generously to the Democratic cause. In
November of 1995, Mr. Cabrera wrote a $ 20,000 check to the
Democratic National Committee. The cash _ largely derived
from cocaine sales, according to the Times _ won Mr.
Cabrera an invite to the White House, where he met with
Hillary Rodham Clinton and Al Gore. He even had his picture
taken with Mrs. Clinton at a Christmas reception.

Mr. Cabrera is now doing 19 years in prison after
pleading guilty to smuggling three tons of cocaine into the
United States, and the DNC says it has returned Mr.
Cabrera's gift.

The revelations about drug money and the Clinton
campaign ought to produce some bitter laughter south of the
border.

Consider: The Clinton administration continues to bar
the president of Colombia, Ernesto Samper, from entering
the United States because he allegedly accepted campaign
money from the cocaine cartel _ even though the Colombian
congress has cleared him of wrongdoing. Mr. Samper and the
Colombians would probably find the Clintoncocaine matter
amusing _ were it not for the fact that this same Clinton
administration is denying economic aid to Colombia because
it has 'failed to cooperate fully' in the war on drugs.
Mexico also must look askance at this administration which
threatened to decertify it for noncooperation in the drug
war. Only after a harsh, humiliating scolding by Congress
was Mexico granted drugwar certification.

But our neighbors to the south must also have noted with
a sense of incredulity Mr. Clinton's statement of a few
weeks ago that he used marijuana 'a couple of times' in
his youth. (This was a littlenoted revision of his earlier
declaration that he had 'tried' marijuana 'once' while in
college and 'didn't inhale.')

And, one wonders what the leadership of Mexico and
Colombia thought when it came to light last year that two
dozen members of the White House staff were in a special
drugtesting program because of recent drug abuse.

These things add up. Here we have a president who admits
to past illegal drug use; who employs recent drug users as
advisers and who hosts a bigtime drug dealer at the White
House.

President Samper can probably smell the hypocrisy all
the way from Bogota.