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Secret Tapes Show Bush's
Concern Over Past
SF Gate/AP
Monday, February 21, 2005
President Bush was concerned "his mistakes as a youth" would
disqualify him from running for the nation's highest office, said
an old friend who secretly recorded private conversations in
which Bush appears to acknowledge past drug use.
"I don't want any kid doing what I tried to do 30 years ago,"
Bush said in recordings made when he was governor of Texas and
aired Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America.""And I mean that. It
doesn't matter if it's LSD, cocaine, pot, any of those things,
because if I answer one, then there will be another one. And I
just am not going to answer those questions. And it may cost me
the election."
The recordings were made by Doug Wead, a former aide to George
W. Bush's father, in the two years before the younger Bush became
the Republican nominee for president in 2000.
"I think it bothered him — the fact that when he was
younger he was irresponsible," Wead said in an interview on the
ABC program. "I think early on he felt disqualified, that he
couldn't run for office because of his mistakes as a youth."
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Sunday that
the president does not dispute the content of the tapes.
McClellan would not comment further, other than to say they were
"casual conversations that then-Governor Bush was having with
someone he thought was a friend."
Wead also played some of his recordings for a New York Times
reporter. The newspaper reported Sunday that they show Bush
crafting a strategy for navigating the tricky political waters
between Christian conservative and secular voters. He repeatedly
worried that evangelicals would be angered by a refusal to bash
gays and that secular Americans would be turned off by meetings
with evangelical leaders, the newspaper reported.
Wead said he didn't intend for the tapes to become public in
his lifetime, but he was forced to release them by his publisher.
Wead is the author of "The Raising of a President: The Mothers
and Fathers of Our Nation's Leaders," which was published by
Atria and went on sale last month.
Wead said he made the tapes as a historical record. He denied
that he released them to make money or sell books.
"This book could have been released before the election,
driven by partisan sales," Wead said. "The publisher wanted it. I
wouldn't let it, and my publicist told me at the time, `That cost
you a million dollars.'"
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