Brown Denies TV Report of Drug Parties : Politics: State police officers tell of finding cocaine, marijuana in Los Angeles home owned by then-governor. Accusers are not identified.

Former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. on Thursday denied a report by a TV network that he had hosted parties in his home while governor where cocaine and marijuana were used “in large quantities.”

According to the report by ABC News, four members of the California State Police detail guarding Brown during that period alleged that cocaine and marijuana were used at several parties Brown hosted at a home he then owned in Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles. None of the former officers agreed to be identified, but two appeared on camera with their identities obscured.

ABC News said it “could not determine whether Gov. Brown used drugs himself.”

Brown, campaigning in Pittsburgh, Pa., in preparation for that state’s Democratic presidential primary on April 28, called the report “absolutely false” and denied that he had ever witnessed the use of drugs in his home. “I never saw it,” Brown said.

Brown also called the ABC charge “very vague” and denounced the network for failing to provide details of the reported drug use so that he could respond.

“I find it very curious that 10 years later, they now discover this in the middle of a presidential campaign,” Brown told reporters after the report aired on ABC’s World News Tonight. “It certainly seems like a phony to me.”

In New York on March 29, Brown told an interviewer that he had never broken any drug laws and added: “Why don’t you lay off this stuff. What we (he and his Democratic rival, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton) did 10 or 20 years ago is not relevant.”

One of the former officers quoted on camera, but lighted so that he could not be recognized, said that he would clean up the house after the parties.

“Throughout the house were ashtrays with seeds or leftovers of marijuana. In one form or another, there was evidence of it in every room.”

Another former officer, whose face was also hidden on camera,, said: “After the parties, if you will, were over and we cleared the residence, we could smell the odor of marijuana and we found traces of a white, powdery substance which we later identified as cocaine” by using police test kits. The former officer said the test positively identified cocaine “five or six times.”

Under California law, knowing that these drugs are in your house and having the ability to control whether they are there constitutes possession of drugs. Such possession is a felony in the case of cocaine and a misdemeanor or an infraction in the case of marijuana, depending on the quantity involved.

One of the officers quoted said he did not arrest Brown at the time because “he was the governor of the state of California. . . . Our primary concern was the protection of the governor, not to arrest him.”

ABC said the officers “raised the issue with their superiors, and nothing was ever done about it.”

But ABC also reported that William Skelton, commander of the State Police security division for three of the eight years Brown was governor, said that no drug use at the house was ever reported to him.

Two close associates of Brown when he was governor said Thursday night that they had never seen or heard of any evidence of drug use by or near Brown.

“I never saw any evidence of drug use during the Brown Administration whatsoever,” said State Controller Gray Davis, Brown’s chief of staff during much of his governorship. “I can categorically say that I’ve never even heard anyone discuss it.”

Lew Werner, Brown’s traveling secretary, said he had been in close proximity to Brown at many parties and other events at the Laurel Canyon home and never saw or heard of any drugs being used there.

Werner added that State Police security officers did not enter the Brown home and that he was usually the last outsider in the home at night.

“The police were always stationed across the street in a vacant lot,” Werner said. “I was the person who often left him (Brown) at night and closed the house myself. The police used to drive me home.”

At State Police headquarters in Sacramento, a spokesman, Capt. Robert Donnalley, said officials must look into the matter before making any comprehensive statement.

“We do appreciate the seriousness of this,” Donnalley said. “It would be totally unethical and unprofessional and illegal if officers observed drug use and did not report it.”

ABC spokesman Arnot Walker said the network had not been looking into this matter. “Correspondent John McWethy was working a totally unrelated story and came across information which led him to this story, which we allowed him to pursue.”

Earlier in the day, Brown took his call for a political insurgency to within two miles of the nation’s capital, but he acknowledged that his cause may have greater prospects for success than his presidential candidacy.

With Clinton far ahead in the delegate count for the Democratic nomination, Brown told an audience in Virginia: “We know what the odds are. I read the polls--I see where Mr. Clinton is. But I also see that this process is not serving our ideals.”

Brown also told reporters that only “various external events” could hand him the nomination, given the odds against him. But continuing doubts about Clinton’s honesty, as well as Brown’s crusade to “shake up” the political Establishment and draw lapsed voters back to the polls, make his campaign worth continuing, he said on the way to a campaign stop in Virginia, which holds presidential caucuses Saturday.

Brown said he believes that he is doing the Democratic Party “a very big favor” by “generating enthusiasm and participation” on the part of citizens who otherwise might stay out of the electoral process.

“How do you beat George Bush if half the people stay home--and if the half who stay home are the people that need the kind of change that a Democratic Party would represent?” Brown asked an audience in Alexandria, Va.

But it remains unclear whether Brown would be willing or able to transfer his support to another Democratic nominee, especially if it is Clinton.