White House Defends Drug Deal Ploy

President Bush’s spokesman today defended the luring of a drug dealer to the park across from the White House so the President could show crack cocaine on television and say it was bought there.

“That was the whole point” of the sting operation by the Drug Enforcement Administration, said Presidential Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater.

“We told the DEA we wanted to show that crack could be easily obtained in any neighborhood in Washington, not just in the ghetto,” Fitzwater said.

He said there was nothing wrong in luring the dealer into the park so undercover agents could make the “buy” of crack cocaine there, and that it did not constitute entrapment. The area, Lafayette Park, is not known for drug activity.

William McMullan, assistant agent in charge of the DEA’s Washington field office, was quoted in today’s editions of the Washington Post as saying, “We were going to make that undercover buy anyway. What difference does it make where it happened--whether it was in front of the White House. . . or in front of the Supreme Court?”

The sale of three ounces of crack to an undercover agent was made at 11:30 a.m. on Sept. 1, four days before Bush held up a plastic bag of the substance and told television viewers, “This is crack cocaine. It was seized a few days ago in a park across the street from the White House.”

According to the newspaper, the White House asked the Justice Department if it could provide some cocaine for the President’s speech; Justice asked DEA and McMullan was asked if he could move a planned purchase “four or five blocks away” closer to the White House.

“It wasn’t easy” to change the location, McMullan said. At first the suspect seemed not to know what or where the White House was. Told it was the President’s house, he said, “Oh, you mean where Reagan lives.”