Bond Attacks News Media for Publicizing Allegations

Civil rights leader Julian Bond lashed out at the news media today for publicizing his estranged wife’s allegations that he has a cocaine habit and denied ever using the drug.

At the same time, Bond said he will never submit to a drug test.

In a two-minute statement, Bond said the allegations are “not the business of those professional scavengers and gossip mongers who have made life hell for innocent people whose only crime is that their last name is Bond.

“I have not committed or been charged with any crime,” the former Georgia legislator said. “I am guilty, however, of believing that just as many journalists think they have a right to ask any question, however impertinent, I have an equal and stronger right to refuse to answer.”

He would not answer questions at his news conference, even to deny he had been using drugs. He later issued a denial in an interview with an Atlanta radio station.

“I have never in my life used cocaine,” Bond said.

“This involves a domestic dispute,” he said. “That’s good newspaper fare. It involves drugs and particularly the magic drug of today, cocaine. That’s on everybody’s lips and in far too many people’s noses.”

Bond also said no police investigators have talked to him about the allegations.

“No law enforcement official of any kind has talked to me about this situation,” he told the radio station.

Alice Bond, the former state senator’s wife of 25 years, discussed her husband’s alleged cocaine abuse March 19 in a meeting with two Atlanta police narcotics officers and again on March 25 with the same two officers and FBI agents.

But after a call from Mayor Andrew Young three weeks later, she reversed her position and told reporters her accusations were untrue.

Probe begun, Page 16.