Pardongate Flashback: Lasater Party Girl Speaks Out
Nothing to hide
Pardongate Flashback: Lasater Party Girl Speaks Out
In a little-noticed report last month on the 11th-hour pardons Roger Clinton
sought from his brother, the Washington Post revealed what may turn out to
be the most explosive aspect of the clemency-for-cash scandal now swirling
around the former first family.
Buried on page 7 of the Post's little-read Saturday edition, the headline
seemed rather mundane: "Clinton's Brother Promised Pardons." But scattered
throughout the story was a name that should have set off smoke alarms in
newsrooms all across America.
"Dan R. Lasater, a Little Rock bond broker convicted in 1986 of cocaine
distribution, said Roger Clinton told him late last year he would put in a
good word on his behalf with the president," the Post reported.
"A millionaire entrepeneur who backed several Arkansas Democrats, including
Bill Clinton's campaigns, Lasater got a conditional state pardon from
then-Governor Clinton in 1990. Lasater said he lent Roger Clinton $8,000 in
1984 to pay off cocaine debts."
But there's more - much, much more to the Lasater story, information so
radioactive that there's little doubt Bill and Hillary Clinton are more
worried over the Bush Justice Department's decision to make Roger a target
of its Pardongate probe than about any other aspect of the investigation.
The best account of Dan Lasater's world comes from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard,
the former Washignton bureau chief of the London Sunday Telegraph whose 1997
biography, "The Secret Life of Bill Clinton," was largely overlooked by the
press.
"Dan Lasater's Drug Trafficking Organization" reads the key chapter heading.
On the pages inside, the author quotes excerpts from law enforcement
documents covering the accounts of several Lasater party girls who inhabited
a world not exactly unknown to both Bill and Roger Clinton.
Here's the opening paragraph from the police statement of Patti-Anne Smith,
who was only 16 years old when she met Little Rock's most notorious "bond
daddy":
"I was a virgin until two months after I met Dan Lasater. He plied me with
cocaine and gifts for sexual favors and I finally gave in and slept with
him. ... I could get an eight ball [from Lasater] whenever I wanted it. I
carried a vial of it around at school."
After a visit to a Lasater-supplied gynecologist, who put Patti-Anne on
birth control pills, Lasater was making her available for the sexual
entertainment of his business colleagues.
When investigators tracked her down to gain testimony against Lasater two
years later, the terms they used to describe Patti-Anne were "drugged-out
party girl" and "basket case."
And she was not alone. Here's the police statement of Michele Cochran - 19
years old when she met Lasater.
"He used drugs and money eventually to seduce me. As a result of the
relationship I became addicted to cocaine."
Another teen-age Lasater alum told police that after a few months in his
orbit, she "would sometimes get up and snort cocaine in order to start my
day."
Author Evans-Pritchard managed to track Patti-Anne Smith down some 13 years
later. Her account is fascinating for two reasons. First, for the pure shock
value of what she endured during her days as an inhabitant of Lasater's
world.
And second, because the fact that an American president pardoned a thug like
Lasater once on state charges - only to have the president's brother seek a
second, federal pardon - is absolutely beyond belief.
"I was the youngest of all the girls," Patti-Anne told Evans-Pritchard. "We
were like hens in a roost, with the rooster. We got along in a bitchy kind
of way because we didn't want to be expelled from the roost."
"I knew a lot more than I should have known. ... Chuck Berry [Lasater's
enforcer/driver who was later killed himself] told me that I was one of Dan
Lasater's most trusted people and knew a lot about cocaine and his personal
life. If I ever betrayed his personal trust and hurt Lasater in any way I
would not 'see daylight' to tell about it anymore."
Patti-Anne told Evans-Pritchard that Bill as well as Roger Clinton was a
part of the Little Rock drug scene.
"I met Bill Clinton several times, he'd know my name and I thought he was a
wonderful person. But I can tell you that he was never acting like a
governor when I saw him."
The former Lasater good-time girl says she was present for one late-night
meeting between her boss and then-Governor Clinton.
"He was doing a line," Patti-Anne said of the future president. "It was just
there on the table."
Whether the current Pardongate investigation will probe deep enough to
warrant revisiting any of this is anybody's guess.
But if the feds are looking for clues as to why Dan Lasater's name turned up
on Roger Clinton's pardon list, they might start by asking Patti-Anne Smith.
KANSAS
kansas
false header of
"KANSAS" <dem...@home.net> wrote in
news:a9hj1...@enews4.newsguy.com:
He never did address the fact of his lying and posting with false
header. (The following is from a post by fhblack)
>>Perry, let me ask you a very serious question, as you use the word
"liar" so
>>much. Are you a liar because your said you wouldn't do something
but yet
>>you did? Is changing one's mind the same as lying? Just curious?
>>
>>Snake
>>
>Lighten up who ever you are, Kind of hard to be serious with someone
>who doesn't use a valid name. What is said in public like I did when
>I was pissed is not the same.
>
>
I too thought it was a good question, especially since you call people
liars
all of the time. Note that you never answered the guy's question.
Rather, you
turned it into an attack on him.
So, are you a liar when you say one thing and do another?
fhblack
"KANSAS" <dem...@home.net> wrote in
news:a9hjl...@enews4.newsguy.com:
--
Kansas Veterans Home Page
http://www.geocities.com/kansasvet