Bond Denies Ever Using Cocaine, Assails News Media

In his first public comments on allegations by his estranged wife that he uses cocaine, former Georgia state Sen. Julian Bond on Tuesday denied that he has ever used the drug and accused the press of making “life hell for innocent people.”

Bond, who has become the center of a controversy here since the allegations surfaced last weekend in news reports, said that his wife had retracted the charges she had made “in anger” to Atlanta police in mid-March.

“What is at issue here is a family affair, of concern only to those who are intimately involved,” he said, reading a statement at a news conference on the Morehouse College campus here. “As far as we are concerned, the matter is closed.”

Bond, interviewed later on a radio talk show, said: “I’ve never used cocaine, never at all.”

The Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution, in their combined editions Saturday, reported that Bond’s wife, Alice, had voluntarily told narcotics officers on March 19 that her husband was abusing cocaine and that she could no longer put up with it.

But, in an interview with the papers, she retracted the allegations, contending that she had made them when “emotionally distraught.”

Bond, 47, and his wife have been married since 1961 but they have been separated for the last five months. They have five children, ranging in age from 17 to 24.

“It is from our hurt and pain at this separation that this affair rose,” he said in the statement read at Morehouse College. “It remains, however, our business and 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,” he added. “Mrs. Bond has retracted the allegations and charges she issued in anger, and I am satisfied with her withdrawal.”

U.S. Atty. Robert L. Barr Jr. announced Monday that his office is conducting a review of the allegations raised by Bond’s wife for possible violations of federal drug laws.

In his remarks Tuesday, Bond said that he would cooperate with any investigations if necessary, but he said that he would refuse to submit to drug tests because they are “notoriously unreliable” and would constitute a “real invasion of my privacy.”

Bond, a longtime civil rights activist, retired from the Georgia Legislature after 20 years to run for Atlanta’s 5th congressional district seat last year. But he was defeated in the Democratic primary runoff by John Lewis, a former colleague in the civil rights movement.