PHOENIX -- Texas Gov. George W. Bush, campaigning in Arizona Monday, flatly denied a published report that he was arrested for cocaine possession in Texas in 1972 and had his record expunged by a friendly Republican judge.
The allegations are made by Texas journalist J.H. Hatfield in a book due out Wednesday from St. Martin's Press titled "Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President.""It's totally ridiculous what he suggested and it's not true," Bush said during a press conference at the Phoenician resort. "I would hope that reputable journalists . . . would not respond to science fiction."
The allegations from the book by Hatfield first surfaced Oct. 18 in an article in the online magazine Salon.
The magazine said Hatfield confirmed the cocaine incident with three anonymous sources "close to the Bush family."
Bush acknowledged that he worked at a Houston public-service organization in 1972, Project P.U.L.L., the magazine said. Hatfield asserted that his sources told him Bush's stint there was community service work that resulted from his cocaine conviction.
Salon said that among other sources, Hatfield quotes "a high-ranking adviser to Bush" who alleged that Bush's record was removed from the legal books by a judge who was "a fellow Republican and elected official." The judge helped Bush get off "with a little community service at a minority youth center instead of having to pick cotton on a Texas prison farm," Salon said.
But the magazine also quotes a spokesman for Bush as saying there were no Republican judges in Harris County, where Houston is located, until 1979.
Dist. by New York Times News Service