BUSH FAMILY FOLLIES: BOMBSHELL BOOK RIPS CLAN FOR SEX, DRUGS

Laura Bush was a college co-ed who dealt the dope and smoked it. Her hubby,
George W., hired some meatheads to threaten a former flame hoping to sell
her sordid story. And the elder Bush, when vice president, hired an
uneducated woman he shared the sheets with to be his assistant.

There are more hot allegations revealed in celeb biographer Kitty Kelley's
book about the Bush clan, "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty",
released today.

The controversial best-selling author contends that first lady Laura Bush
may have a sweet, sugary demeanor now, but she did a lot more than study in
college. She was known as the "go-to girl" for dime bags of marijuana,
Kelley writes.

"She not only smoked dope," public relations executive Robert Nash told
Kelley. "But she sold dope."

Kelley writes that it was during the 1994 Texas gubernatorial campaign that
one of George W. Bush's former flames prepared to sell her story.

"She claimed she got a visit from some men who made her realize it was
better to turn tricks in Midland than to stop breathing," Austin political
consultant Peck Young told Kelley.

While vice president, George H.W. Bush chose Jennifer Fitzgerald to be his
executive assistant - despite the fact she had no college education. She
also became his mistress, Kelley writes.

"Jennifer was a fact of life in George's life. Period. End of discussion,"
said Carol Taylor Gray, wife of White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray.

"I'm glad he had her in his life to bring him a little joy. . . . I know
this is heresy to say because Barbara Bush is adored by this country and
looks like such a sweet old grandmother, but the country doesn't know her
like I do," Taylor Gray said. "I don't think she has a good heart . . .
she's not a nice woman. To dogs maybe, but not to people."

The elder president also had a randy side. George H.W. Bush kept a
three-foot-high anatomically correct male fertility statue in the Oval
Office bathroom. The president kept a roll of toilet paper on the extended
male organ.

"He liked to send young women into the bathroom and watch their reaction,"
Kelley wrote.

Kelley, 62, spent the past 3 years getting as close as she could to the
Bush family, talking to those willing to talk and hunting for documents.

"I started out thinking that it was maybe 'The Donna Reed Show' and maybe I
ended up thinking it was 'The Sopranos,' " she told The Associated Press.

Kelley is widely known for her best-selling dirt dishers, notably "Jackie
Oh!" and "Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography." Many don't believe
what she writes, and the Bush camp vehemently denies it.

"Kitty Kelley is a discredited purveyor of trash," Bush-Cheney campaign
spokesman Steve Schmidt said yesterday. "She smeared the Reagan family and
now she is peddling garbage about the current first family."

A key source, Sharon Bush, former wife of the president's brother Neil, has
denied telling Kelley George W. Bush used cocaine at Camp David.

Kelley and Doubleday said they stand by her reporting.