New Tapes Say Bush May Have Smoked Marijuana

By Sue Pleming
Source: Reuters

Washington -- President Bush indicated in secretly taped interviews he once used marijuana but would not admit it for fear of setting a bad example for children. Portions of the tapes, recorded from 1998 to 2000 by author Doug Wead without Bush's knowledge, were aired on ABC News on Sunday and published by The New York Times. Their authenticity was verified by the media outlets but has not been independently checked by Reuters.

"I wouldn't answer the marijuana question. You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried," Bush purportedly says on the tape.

He added: "But you got to understand, I want to be president. I want to lead. I want to set -- Do you want your little kid say, 'Hey, Daddy, President Bush tried marijuana, I think I will?"'

In the tape, Bush mocks former Vice President Al Gore -- who fought him for the presidency in 2000 -- for admitting he smoked marijuana.

White House officials did not dispute the tapes' veracity and indicated the president was disappointed by their release.

"These were casual conversations with someone he (Bush) believed was his friend," White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said.

Wead, a former aide to Bush's father President George H.W. Bush, released portions of the tapes to coincide with the publication of his new book and told ABC he made the tapes because he believed the president was an historic figure.

"If I'd had a chance to tape record Gandhi or had conversations with Churchill, I probably would have recorded them too," he said.

He also insisted his goal was not to hurt the president's credibility and said if this were the case he would have released the tapes during the 2004 election campaign.

Asked about the tapes in an interview with CNN, the president's father said he was not aware of them and declined comment.

Sitting next to Bush was ex-President Bill Clinton, who admitted to smoking marijuana when he campaigned for the White House but said he never inhaled the illegal drug.

The two former presidents are touring areas affected by the Dec. 26 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Source: Reuters (Wire)
Author: Sue Pleming
Published: February 20, 2005
Copyright: 2005 Reuters Limited
Link to article: http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread20266.shtml

 

By Anadolu News Agency (aa)
Published: Monday 21, 2005
zaman.com

Broadcast on a talk show on the American ABC Channel US President George Bush confessed that he had "used marijuana". The confession was recorded by writer Doug Wead between 1998 and 2000 without Bush's knowledge. The New York Times broadcast the taped discussion in which the US President states: "I won't answer the marijuana question. Do you know why? Because I don't want young children to use something I had tried. " White House Spokesman Mr. Ken Lisaius noted that the President was disappointed that the conversation had been broadcast, and stressed that it was a private conversation that Bush had with a man whom he thought was a friend. The appearance of the cassettes coincided with the release of Doug Wead's new book, and stated that he made the recordings because he believed that Bush was historically a very important figure, and added that he did not believe that the recording would harm Bush's credibility. Bush's father, the former US President George Bush in an interview with CNN said he could not answer any questions regarding the recordings because he did not have any knowledge of them.

Link to article: http://www.zaman.com/?bl=national&alt=&hn=16774

 

By Joe Conason
Source: New York Observer

On the audiotapes of George W. Bush recorded secretly by his erstwhile confidant Douglas Wead in 1999, the future President revealed how much he feared candid discussion of his personal use of marijuana and cocaine. As quoted in The New York Times, Mr. Bush vowed that no matter what rumors and facts circulated about what he did or might have done, he would doggedly decline to answer forthrightly.

His natural urge to protect his own privacy evokes sympathy, however quaint his expectations might be at this point in our political history. But in justifying his refusal to talk about his foolish youth, he appealed to a higher purpose. "I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions," he told Mr. Wead. "You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried."

For many American parents of a certain age, that self-serving yet poignant response must strike an empathetic chord. Concern that children will mimic parental misbehavior is universal, and so is the impulse to conceal embarrassing truths. Mr. Bush rightly worries that children imitate adult models in the belief that they too can escape the consequences.

When Mr. Bush uttered those words into the tape recorder, he was in his second term as Governor of Texas and on his way to the White House. After all, if he could drink too much, smoke those forbidden herbs and perhaps even snort illegal powders, and nevertheless become a baseball magnate and successful politician, then "some little kid" might reasonably assume that he or she could sin likewise without undue risk.

Any such assumption would be terribly mistaken, of course, unless the kid happened to belong to a wealthy and well-connected family like the Bush clan. Prisons and jails across the country are crowded with nonviolent drug offenders whose lives have been ruined-and whose families have been damaged or destroyed-by the same punitive legal system that never touched young "Georgie," except to issue him a drunk-driving summons.

The poor and the black are incarcerated for using pot and coke, while the rich and the white lie to their kids (and occasionally to the voters) about those same transgressions.

Certainly that was how the justice system worked when Mr. Bush and Mr. Wead had their candid chats. The Texas politician couldn't reassure his friend that he hadn't used cocaine, let alone marijuana, but as governor he was imprisoning young men and women unlucky enough to be arrested in possession of those narcotics, often for draconian mandatory-minimum sentences. He always cherished his image as a tough, swaggering, law-and-order politician who didn't hesitate to imprison teenagers.

But that isn't what happens to people from good families. His niece Noelle Bush went through a drug-rehabilitation program and was released two years ago. His friend Rush Limbaugh went through rehab and has returned to berating the less fortunate on the radio, without doing one day of time.

The lopsided cruelty has only escalated since Mr. Bush entered the White House. Federal agents have cracked down on medical users of marijuana, depriving them of a substance that eases their sickness and keeps them alive. The human and economic costs of the drug war continue to swell. So burdensome are those costs that many conservatives, including such Bush tutors as former Secretary of State George Shultz, have publicly pleaded for saner policies.

Despite his claims to be a "compassionate conservative," Mr. Bush has ignored those pleas. He seems to feel that if he overcame his substance-abuse problem (as a youthful and healthy millionaire, with a loving wife and supportive friends and family), then nobody else really has an excuse.

No reporter ever asked the Texas governor why all those other people deserved to serve five or 10 or 20 years in prison, when their crimes were no different from what everyone knew he had done, whether he admitted it or not. No reporter will ask the President that question today, either, although it is just as pertinent in light of his revealing conversations with Mr. Wead (who incidentally claims to possess many more tapes that he will "never" release).

Indeed, Mr. Bush not only avoided public responsibility for his own past mistakes but found a clever way to turn those wayward years to political advantage. He brandishes his late return to sobriety as a symbol of his Christian faith.

On those telltale tapes, Mr. Bush can be heard telling Mr. Wead how he'd learned a couple of "really good lines" from James Robison, an evangelical minister and hard-line conservative. "What you need to say time and time again is not talk about the details of your transgressions, but talk about what I have learned," he said. "I've sinned and I've learned."

It is hard to tell what Mr. Bush learned in his recovery from sin, except that other people got caught and he didn't. That would be enough to make anybody smirk.

This column ran on page 5 in the 2/28/2005 edition of The New York Observer.

Source: New York Observer (NY)
Author: Joe Conason
Published: February 28, 2005
Copyright: 2005 The New York Observer, L.P.
Contact: comments@observer.com
Website: http://www.observer.com/
Link to article: http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread20275.shtml

 

By Jefferson Morley,WP Staff Writer
Source: Washington Post

President Bush all but admits to illicit drug use for the first time. Overseas it's the stuff of headlines. At home, the U.S. press has generally downplayed the story. The divergent coverage of Bush's apparent drug use is a textbook study in the difference between the international online media and their American counterparts. On the issue of youthful illicit drug use, most U.S. news editors -- liberal, conservative or other -- defer to Bush in a way that their foreign counterparts do not.

The New York Times broke the Bush marijuana story Friday in a front-page report on Doug Wead, a Christian activist who has published a book based in part on conversations with Bush that Wead secretly recorded in 1998 and 1999. On Wead's tapes, whose authenticity the White House does not dispute, Bush came close to admitting he had smoked marijuana and avoided answering a question about whether he had used cocaine.

"I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions. You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried," Bush said.

On a question about cocaine, Bush said he would reply, "Rather than saying no ... I think it's time for someone to draw the line and look people in the eye and say, you know, 'I'm not going to participate in ugly rumors about me and blame my opponents,' and hold the line. Stand up for a system that will not allow this kind of crap to go on,'" according to a transcript excerpt posted on ABC's "Good Morning America" Web site.

Since Bush has never acknowledged using drugs, the international media played up the marijuana angle.

The BBC emphasized Bush's discretion in addressing the subject, saying "Bush hints he tried marijuana." So did Aljazeera: "Tapes hint Bush smoked marijuana." Swissinfo, a news site in Geneva, asked "Did Bush smoke pot?"

In Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald focused on Bush's reasoning for not talking about the issue publicly. Bush worried young people would copy his cannabis use, the paper said.

From South America to the Middle East to Asia, other news sites concluded that Bush's statements amounted to a confession.

"Bush confessed to having smoked marijuana in his youth," declared Las Ultimas Noticias (in Spanish), a Chilean tabloid. "Bush's Marijuana Confession on Television," said Zaman, a leading Turkish daily. "Bush admits using marijuana," said Rediff, a news portal in India. In Tokyo, Japan Today said, "Secret tapes indicate Bush used drugs as youth."

A few foreign sites offered more light-hearted headlines. "Bush's own 'smoking gun'," said the South Africa broadcast outlet, News24. The Economic Times of India sounded less than shocked: "Oh boy! George may have puffed on marijuana" was their headline.

In contrast, most of the traditional leaders of American journalism -- the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the TV networks -- made no mention of drugs in their headlines, although all reported the substance of what Bush said on the tapes.

The Times' story carried the headline "In Secretly Taped Conversations, Glimpses of the Future President" and mentioned marijuana in the third paragraph. The Post followed up the next day with "Secret Tapes Not Meant to Harm, Writer Says." Bush's drug comments were mentioned in the fifth paragraph of The Post story. Among national U.S. news outlets, only ABCNews.com used the M-word in a headline declaring, "New Tapes Say Bush May Have Smoked Marijuana."

Other national news outlets were more indirect. The Los Angeles Times said "Secret Tapes Show Bush's Concern Over Past." National Public Radio reported, "Phone Tapes Suggest Bush's Unlawful Past." For these sites and many others, the news was not "pot" but the "past," a word choice that signaled that the accompanying news story was not really new.

The one medium where the drug angle was emphasized was local TV news, long regarded as the most sensationalist sector of American journalism. Stations from Los Angeles ("Tape Released of Bush's Wild Party Days") to New Orleans to Johnstown, Penn., highlighted Bush's apparent drug use.

What explains the difference between the elite American media and the rest of the world?

Admission of drug use by a national leader has made front-page news before. When Bill Clinton admitted in the 1992 presidential campaign to smoking marijuana both the Times ("Clinton Admits Experiment With Marijuana in 1960's") and The Post ("Clinton Admits '60s Marijuana Use") ran the story on page one. But that was during the heat of a presidential primary campaign when such revelations can be more consequential. It could be argued that the Wead tapes, coming to light after Bush's reelection, are unlikely to alter the political equation in Washington.

The Bush administration and its supporters have never shied from criticizing news outlets like The Post and the Times for a perceived liberal bias. On tape, Bush complained about a media "campaign" against him. "It's unbelievable... they just float sewer out there," he's quoted as saying.

If the big-name newspapers had played up the drug angle it's reasonable to assume that Republicans and conservatives on talk radio would renew such accusations. They might say liberal editors were dredging up an old story from a disloyal friend to thwart the agenda of a popular conservative president.

Foreign editors (and local TV) have no such worries. They have a simpler view: George Bush using illegal drugs is worth a headline.

Note: U.S. Press Less Interested in Drug Remarks.

Source: Washington Post (DC)
Author: Jefferson Morley,WP Staff Writer
Published: Thursday, February 24, 2005
Copyright: 2005 Washington Post
Contact: letterstoed@washpost.com
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Link to article: http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread20284.shtml

 

By David Borden, DRCNet
Source: AlterNet

If marijuana use in the distant past is not relevant to judging President Bush, his hypocrisy on the drug issue is very relevant. Years after candidate George Bush's non-answers to questions about his possible drug past fueled controversy and a sense that he indeed had such a past, proof for some of it at least has at last emerged. Taped excerpts from a conversation, released by the author of a new book, reveal the future president essentially admitting to past marijuana use and explaining why he would never acknowledge it in public.

On one level, the educated reaction to this news is something along the lines of, "So what?" Tens of millions of Americans have used marijuana during their lives. It wasn't a big deal for most of them. Even the more dangerous drugs aren't a problem for most of their users – that's not the strongest argument for legalization of them, but it's true. All the more so for marijuana. Bill Clinton used marijuana. Al Gore used marijuana. It did not and should not have disqualified them from the nation's top job. Nor does it disqualify George Bush.

On other levels, however, the information is troubling, for two reasons. One is that candidate Bush criticized his opponent, Al Gore, not for having used marijuana but for having admitted to it. "I want to lead," he explained on the tapes, and "I don't want some little kid doing what I tried." He couldn't criticize Gore for having used drugs because he had also used drugs. So instead he criticized him for being open and truthful.

There is a level on which one could legitimately hold that it is counterproductive for kids to be keenly focused on the drug use of famous role models; this is an area on which reasonable people can hold varying points of view. But the way to accomplish that would be through legalization and treating private drug use as not a big deal. And that is not what George Bush has advocated.

Which leads us to the second reason, one of hard policy. As governor, Mr. Bush escalated sentences for some drug offenses, putting other people in prison for longer time periods for things that he himself had done or supported. As president, under his authority the federal government has targeted medical marijuana cooperatives, escalated the war on pain doctors, campaigned against drug policy reform initiatives or legislation, promoted drug testing and vastly overreaching drugged driving laws, gone to court against any reform to drug policy that it could no matter how modest.

So if marijuana use in the distant past is not relevant to judging the president, hypocrisy on the drug issue is very relevant. And if not being open or candid about one's own youth is not exactly the same as lying to children, it verges on that. Not to suggest that his predecessor and failed opponents have stellar records on the issue by any means; they most certainly don't. But they're not president right now.

So if it is unimportant that George Bush used marijuana, it is kind of sad that he opposes honesty about it. And it is very sad that he continues to support cruel and repressive drug policies – policies which could have ruined his life if they had been in place back then, but realistically only in theory.

I am glad, therefore, that now there is proof of George Bush's drug use. If only by providing one more bit of rhetorical ammunition, it will make it slightly harder for the drug warriors to continue to escalate their pogrom against the American people.

David Borden is executive director of DRCnet. -- http://www.drcnet.org/

Source: AlterNet (US)
Author: David Borden, DRCNet
Published: February 25, 2005
Copyright: 2005 Independent Media Institute
Contact: letters@alternet.org
Website: http://www.alternet.org/
DL: http://alternet.org/drugreporter/21360/
Link to article: http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread20291.shtml

 

By Clarence Page
Source: Baltimore Sun

Washington -- I was surprised, but hardly shocked, to hear that President Bush all but admitted to illicit drug use during a conversation that was secretly taped. I am only disappointed by the sleazy way the disclosure was disclosed and by the president's reluctance to set the record straight.

Like many of the rest of us parents, he says in the tape that he doesn't want to talk about any of his alleged past drug indiscretions because he doesn't want youngsters to do the same. Unfortunately, experience shows, silence is a self-defeating way to discourage kids from drug use.

In case you missed it, Mr. Bush suggests on the tapes that were recorded when he was the governor of Texas that he smoked marijuana in the past. He also dodged a question on the tapes, whose authenticity the White House does not dispute, about whether he had used cocaine. The New York Times broke the story on Doug Wead, a Christian activist who has published a book based in part on conversations with Mr. Bush that Mr. Wead secretly recorded in 1998 and 1999. Mr. Wead has since expressed regrets over releasing part of the conversations without Mr. Bush's permission, has announced that he is donating the book's proceeds to charity. Ah, nothing focuses your conscience like having a nation of millions call you a sleazebag.

My disappointment comes with Mr. Bush's refusal, so far, to speak openly and candidly about his past drug and alcohol use and how he recovered. He says he does not want to answer the questions "because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried."

Take it from me, Mr. President, a lot of today's teenagers already think you "smoked and snorted," as one of my son's high school classmates put it. Your silence does nothing to defuse their suspicions. For the record, our president has never acknowledged using drugs. He has acknowledged a drinking problem that he appears to have kicked, to his credit, through the wonder-working powers of his religious conversion.

A national survey released by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America found that the number of parents who report never speaking with their children about drugs doubled from 6 percent in 1998 to 12 percent in 2004. And while many of us parents say we've spoken with our kids about drugs, that's not what a lot of our kids are saying: 85 percent of the 1,205 surveyed parents said they had spoken with their children at least once in the last 12 months about drugs, but only 30 percent of teenagers said they had learned much about drug risks from their parents. We need to share more straight talk, not silence, with our kids.

And more straight talk from the White House on down would help government to avoid doing greater harm, such as the provision that Congress passed in 1998 that bars college students or applicants with drug convictions from receiving federal financial aid. If ever there was a case of throwing obstacles in the way of young people who are trying to improve their lives, regardless of past errors, this is it.

The provision's author, Republican Rep. Mark E. Souder of Indiana, says he intended the bill to apply only to those convicted while they are students or loan applicants, not to earlier convictions. He also has been trying to correct that error with a new amendment.

In the meantime, we have a president who refuses to talk about his drug history and a Congress that continues to discriminate against aspiring college students who are honest about their past drug use. That's nuts. We, the people, need to talk. Then Congress needs to act. Leadership from the White House will help, Mr. President. Your silence will not.

Clarence Page is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, a Tribune Publishing newspaper. His column appears Tuesdays and Fridays in The Sun.

Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Author: Clarence Page
Published: March 1, 2004
Copyright: 2005 The Baltimore Sun
Contact: letters@baltsun.com
Website: http://www.baltimoresun.com/
Link to article: http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread20303.shtml