Shortly before the 1988 presidential election, Brett Kimberlin, who was serving a 51-year term in a federal prison for drug smuggling and bombing convictions, made national news with charges that he had sold marijuana to Dan Quayle when Quayle was in law school. This charge attracted so much attention that Kimberlin scheduled a news conference four days before the election, but prison officials blocked it.
In October 1991, the charge was revived and amplified by Gary Trudeau in his nationally syndicated comic strip, Doonesbury. He claimed that the DEA had a file on Quayle which contained allegations that he had purchased cocaine and Quaaludes in 1982. By then, Quayle was a Senator. He denied the charges, but the comic strip generated big stories in big newspapers.
There was a DEA file on Quayle based on a 1982 investigation of a drug dealer named Charles Parker. He told DEA agents that a customer of his named Carson had told him that he had sold cocaine to Dan Quayle and to Sen. Strom Thurmond. The DEA said it had investigated the charges and found them false. Ten days after the story broke, the Washington Post reported that Carson had admitted making it up to impress his friends, but Doonesbury kept on the story for two more weeks, and the Post kept publishing the strip.
Now George W. Bush has been subjected to a similar charge. His admission that he had been a heavy drinker and his refusal to discuss whether or not he ever used marijuana or cocaine generated many stories and comments in the media. His silence was interpreted as a virtual admission that he had used cocaine in his youth, but that soon blew over. On October 19, the story broke that a new book by James H. Hatfield, published by St. Martin's Press, claimed that three unidentified sources had said that George W. Bush had been arrested for cocaine possession in 1972. It claimed that his father, who was then the U.N. Ambassador, had persuaded an elected Republican judge in Harris County to expunge this from the record after making a deal for his son to perform community service.
Unlike the stories about Quayle, there was not a single named source to support the charges. Both George W. and his father emphatically denied the story. Bush's campaign manager pointed out that there were no elected Republican judges in Harris County until 1979. George W. acknowledged having performed community service with an organization called P.U.L.L. His father said he had arranged this after George W. drove drunk with his brother Marvin.
The Internet magazine "Salon" pushed the story aggressively, but coverage by domestic newspapers was minimal. The AP put out a five-paragraph story on Oct. 19 that was entirely devoted to denials by President Bush except for the last paragraph. It briefly described the allegations but said they were based on unnamed sources and were "at odds with other accounts of Bush's life and the Texas court system." The Washington Post ran a six-paragraph story the next day that was also heavy on the denials and light on describing the charges.
On October 20, The Dallas Morning News reported that author J.H. Hatfield had been convicted of solicitation of capital murder, had served five years of a 15-year sentence and is now out on parole. The author denied that he was the same Hatfield, but the News said the records of the paroled felon show him to be the author of an earlier book that Hatfield acknowledges writing. The parole officer in Arkansas of the convicted Hatfield said they are one in the same person. St. Martin's Press announced that it was withdrawing the latest book.
Dan Quayle was liberally smeared by the media based on charges by convicted felons, including one who confessed that he had made up the story. George W. Bush has been peppered with questions about whether or not he ever used cocaine, but nearly all our media have shown unusual restraint in handling Hatfield's allegations. They may drop from sight because of Hatfield's criminal record.
You could call it a double standard, but there is actually a triple standard. A police surveillance videotape of Roger Clinton saying that he had to get some cocaine for his brother, who, he said, "has a nose like a Hoover," has never been discussed or shown by big media. While they were hammering Bush to say whether or not he had used cocaine, they let Clinton off the hook completely, being satisfied with a denial delivered by his lawyer.
Reed Irvine is founder and chairman of Accuracy in Media
