Milken to Help With Anti-Drug Program at L.A. Middle School : Courts: The convicted junk bond dealer will work for DARE as part of his three years of community service.

Michael Milken, late of Wall Street and federal prison, will perform his court-mandated community service by working for the DARE America anti-drug group developing an after-school program at a Los Angeles inner-city middle school, it was announced Thursday.

As part of his three years of full-time community service, the former junk bond promoter will expand an existing after-school program run by DARE, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program best known for its “just say no” to drugs campaign, according to DARE and U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood.

Wood is the judge who originally sentenced Milken to 10 years in prison with the possibility of parole in 36 months after his conviction for securities fraud and other violations. Last year, she reduced the sentence to two years, most of which Milken spent at a minimum-security federal prison camp in Pleasanton, Calif.

Wood picked the DARE program from among several proposed by independent foundations and Milken himself. In making her selection, Wood did not relax Milken’s community service requirement of 1,800 hours a year--40 hours a week with two weeks of vacation--in light of his recently diagnosed prostate cancer. A DARE spokeswoman said Milken will put in his hours but that his schedule will be adjusted for medical treatment.

Meanwhile, in an interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters that will be broadcast tonight, Milken said he “never made a penny dishonestly.” The six felonies to which he pleaded guilty in 1990 were “regulatory reporting requirements” that “were not treated criminally before my case and have not been treated criminally since my case,” according to a transcript of the interview. The charges on which he was convicted included conspiracy, mail fraud and assisting in the filing of a false tax return.

Milken, whose financing expertise built his employer, Drexel Burnham Lambert, into a Wall Street powerhouse, described a prison life of cleaning toilets and stripping floors as well as tutoring fellow inmates.

He insisted that, for the most part, Drexel’s high-yield securities known as junk bonds were used to increase the flow of money to small- and medium-size businesses, creating growth and jobs. Milken said he made a mistake by not being more vigorous in opposing the hostile takeovers that his firm was financing.

“In 1986, I asked my firm and a number of our clients to stop making offers for other companies. I think if I would have left my firm over this issue, to make a statement, that things might have been different,” he said.

Milken was not available for comment Thursday.

DARE, which brings an anti-drug and anti-violence message to the curriculum at thousands of schools worldwide, already runs after-school programs at two Los Angeles middle schools to enhance students’ personal and social skills.

This new pilot project, called DARE-Plus (Play and Learn Under Supervision), will provide vocational, educational and recreational opportunities for students who have no after-school supervision. Milken will teach students math and other academic subjects, help train volunteers, develop similar programs for other schools and meet with teachers, parents, community members and business people to get them to participate.

DARE will give the Los Angeles Unified School District $50,000 a year for five years to pay for the school staff and police officers who will supervise the program. The school has not been identified, and the program is still in development for introduction this fall, a DARE spokeswoman said.