The Bush Legacy

As The Washington Post discovered, Bush's picture of Lafayette Square as an open-air drug market -''It could easily have been heroin or PCP'' - was false.

So false, in fact, that to set up the President's big TV moment, the Federal drug agents had had to entice a suspected dealer from another part of town to come there to make the sale. ''We had to manipulate him to get him down there,'' a drug agent told The Post. ''It wasn't easy.''

Told to come to the park at the White House, the dealer replied, ''Where the [ expletive ] is the White House?''

In 1989 White House Aides of President George H.W. Bush came up with the idea of having Bush hold up a bag of crack on national television to dramatize his heroic struggle against drugs. The Attorney General's office then had the DEA set up a drug buy in view of the White House. The DEA sent an informant out to set up this dirty White House crack deal however the first dealer wisely failed to show up. They then lured Keith Jackson an 18-year-old African American High School Senior with no prior arrest record to Lafayette Square across the street from the White House, and used him "as a prop in an anti-drug speech by Bush 41 to dramatize how easy it is to buy drugs in the nation's capital." The problem was Bush knowingly lied when he portrayed the park next to the White House as a crack haven when in reality the drug scene was completely across town. The 18 years old Jackson was arrested and held without bail on the felony charges of unlawfully distributing crack cocaine and using a telephone to arrange the deal. He faced 10 years up to life without parole he eventually wound up serving 12 years.  Following the speech Bush's popularity rose to a new high.

"The Novice and the Kingpin: A Tale of Two Drug Dealers Who Crossed Paths With Bush," Washington Post, 1/17/93.

Contrasting the case of smalltime drug dealer and high-school student Keith Jackson who received 12 years with that of kingpin Leonel Martinez who imported tons of cocaine but cut a deal that made him eligible for release in 1998.

Martinez was arrested after buying 800 pounds of cocaine. An ardent Republican, Martinez had donated the legal maximum of $5,000 to George Bush's campaign in 1986, and had his picture taken with Bush. Over a period of time, Martinez had given thousands of dollars to the Bush campaign through other Republican organizations.