By Jamie Dettmer

The independent counsel has probed the close relationship between Bill Clinton and convicted cocaine distributor Dan Lasater, who witnesses say used drugs and sex to obtain access to top figures.

Evidence is mounting that Bill Clinton had a much closer personal friendship with Little Rock bond daddy and convicted cocaine distributor Dan Lasater while governor of Arkansas than either man has been willing to acknowledge publicly in recent years. Lasater was a regular visitor at the governor's mansion in the l980s and was considered a member of Clinton's "kitchen circle." Clinton often dropped by the wheeler-dealer's downtown Little Rock office, Insight can now reveal.

Recent biographers of Clinton have tended to mention Lasater only briefly, and normally just in the context of his having loaned $8,000 to Clinton's half brother, Roger, to pay a narcotics debt. But Arkansas state troopers who served on the governor's security unit have told Insight that the high-rolling bond and securities broker who was notorious in Arkansas for the wild (and at times semi-public) drug parties he allegedly held, appeared to play a prominent role in Clinton's Little Rock life. The troopers maintain that Lasater and Clinton were close friends - a relationship which Clinton's wife apparently disapproved - and that the bond dealer's access to the mansion was as unhindered as that of Clinton's family and senior aides.

The troopers' claims about the frequency of meetings between the bond broker and the governor throws a new and potentially intriguing light on the lucrative business relationship Lasater was able to forge with the Arkansas state government, the $1.6 million profits he made from state bond issues and the apparent leniency with which his drug activities were treated by the Arkansas State Police. The closeness between Clinton and Lasater as attested by former gubernatorial bodyguards also prompts questions about the pardon Clinton granted Lasater in November 1990.

In the few, brief public comments Clinton has made about Lasater since 1992, the president has maintained that he never really knew the bond dealer. The White House line is that they only met a couple of times. During a March 1994 press conference, the president did agree Lasater had been "an active supporter of mine," but immediately put this in the context of a Lasater habit of contributing to local democratic politics generally by adding that the bond dealer and former restaurateur "gave money and raised money for Senator Dale Bumpers, for Senator David Pryor, for me and for other Democrats."

At the same press conference, the president dismissed in a few sentences his extension of a state pardon to Lasater, who had received a 30-month sentence after pleading guilty in late 1986 to distributing cocaine. "The parole board recommended him, and it would have been highly unusual for me not to do it," said Clinton, though he said he had qualms about issuing the pardon because, "I thought somebody might some day try to make something of this."

Even before Clinton was elected president, Lasater appeared to downplay his relationship with the then governor, despite the fact that he employed Roger Clinton as a sometimes limousine driver. In a deposition Lasater gave to the FBI and Arkansas State Police in October 1986 as part of a plea-bargain made with U.S. Attorney George Proctor, the bond dealer reduced the number of times he had met Clinton to three. Lasater "advised that Bill Clinton had been at his house on one occasion for a Christmas party and was there only 30 minutes. He also attended a Christmas party at the Little Rock Country Club and was there approximately 30 minutes. He was present for the opening of Pulley Bone's, a local restaurant, and was there approximately 30 minutes also," the deposition reads.

Lasater was not pushed hard in the interview about his Clinton links or his befriending of local law-enforcement officers (See "A State of. Corruption," Oct. 30), something that irks Julius "Doc" Delaughter, the state police investigator who conducted the successful drug investigation of the bond broker but who then was blocked on the instructions of his superiors from being one of Lasater's interrogators.

Was the Lasater connection really just a 90-minute collection of bump and runs? No, according to Arkansas state troopers who served in Clinton's gubernatorial security detail. In an interview with Insight, Trooper L.D. Brown, who was a Clinton bodyguard from 1983 to 1985, claims Lasater visited Clinton "at least four times" to his knowledge when he was on guard duty. He also says he went with Clinton "a few times to Lasater's house" in the Heights district of Little Rock, again "about three or four" times. "We went to Lasater's office a bunch of times just stopping by. How often? I couldn't say. At least a dozen times. It's just absurd that Clinton is now trying to distance himself from Lasater. We used to go use his box at the races at Hot Springs." Clinton aides have maintained in the past that Brown is not to be trusted - they allege he is a "pathological liar."

But Brown's memory conforms with what a rather reluctant Trooper Barry Spivey recently told attorneys in a lawsuit involving Buddy Young, the former head of Clinton's Arkansas security unit. Spivey, who was subpoenaed for his information and is no friend of Brown (he accuses his former colleague of being a "publicity hound"), says in an Aug. 9 deposition of which Insight has obtained a copy that Clinton and Lasater often were in each other's company, and he mentions a 1983 jaunt to the Kentucky Derby that Bill, Hillary and Roger Clinton took with Lasater on board the wheeler-dealer's jet. Although Spivey himself never again flew with the governor on Lasater's private aircraft, there were "other times to the best of my recollection that Gov. Clinton took flights with Dan personally." Spivey, who worked on the security unit until 1984, also detailed visits to the mansion by Lasater and even more frequent Clinton drop-bys at Lasater's office in downtown Little Rock.

Lasater had wave-through, "kitchen-door access" at the mansion on a par with trusted aides such as Betsey Wright and family members such as Clinton's mother, Virginia, alleges Spivey. He says that when he was on watch he wouldn't "log Dan in because I knew he and Bill were friends." Did this reflect an intimate Relationship? "There was [sic] very few people who had a free run. You just didn't go through Miss Liza's kitchen unless you were part of the kitchen circle." He added: "I remember a lot of times taking Bill down to Dan's office and he would jump out and I'd circle and wait until he came back and, or I would go inside and stay in the lobby. I never went up behind the closed doors... A lot of times he [Clinton] would just be in the area and he would say 'run by Dan's or run by Lasater's for a minute... I know he went a lot more times than when I was with him... If he went as much when the other guys were driving as he did with me, he went a lot because like I said, we were very seldom in the area when he had any time on his hands that he didn't run in."

Bill Clinton's friendship with Dan Lasater struck some state troopers as dangerous and, according to Brown, made Clinton's wife nervous. "Hillary didn't like him," he says.

Lasater was unavailable for comment.

A Kentucky native who initially made a killing when his chain of Ponderosa restaurants went public in 1971, Lasater allegedly was well known among Little Rock's tight-knit elite for his cocaine-dealing, his partying with teenage girls and his circle's habit of snorting coke in public places. Among them was Little Rock's exclusive Capital Club and at a reception for former first lady Rosalynn Carter that was also attended by Patsy Thomasson, a Lasater friend and now chief of personnel at the White House. Roger Clinton, who himself received a two year sentence for cocaine peddling, attended many of Lasater's parties and got coke from Lasater, according to affidavits sworn by the infamous bond daddy's friends in 1986.

State troopers on the security unit say they were aware of Lasater's reputation, partly from discussions they had with the bond dealer's chauffeur, Chuck Berry, in the guardroom at the governor's mansion. "He'd talk about coke and how he was a coke dealer and how he was Lasater's right-hand man," says Brown. One employee of the bond broker's company, Michael Drake, left his job "because of the availability of cocaine and also the bad reputation the firm had with the abuse of cocaine in the community," according to a police affidavit. The extent of Lasater's alleged partying and coke distribution, and of his preying on teenage girls and young women, is outlined in dozens of affidavits taken by Delaughter. In one affidavit, Patricia Anne Smith alleges: "I was introduced to cocaine by Dan Lasater when I was 16 or 17 years old and a student at North Little Rock Old Main High School.... I was a virgin until two months after I met Dan Lasater. Lasater plied me with cocaine and gifts for sexual favors. She claimed he also arranged for her to see a doctor and be put on birth-control pills.

Other young girls related similar stories. Lisa Ann Scott, who was 19 when she first encountered Lasater and one of his broker partners, George Locke, alleged she received cocaine from both men from the middle of 1984 to the beginning of 1985: "The first time I met Dan Lasater and George Locke was at George Locke's apartment. ... On this particular evening George Locke gave me approximately ten snorts of cocaine. I received approximately eight to ten snorts from Dan Lasater." Scott also detailed a trip to Las Vegas that she took with other girls on Lasater's jet where cocaine was made available.

The men who enjoyed Lasater's largess with cocaine and girls also were forthcoming with allegations to the police. They painted a picture of unrestrained debauchery in apartment buildings frequented by Clintonites. Tommy Travis Tullos, for example, admitted to receiving coke from Lasater and relates a large bachelor party that was thrown for him at the well-known QuaPaw Towers in downtown Little Rock. While at this party, I snorted cocaine twelve to fifteen times at no expense to me. I saw Dan Lasater, George Locke and David Collins [another Lasater partner] in the same bed, having sex with two white females and one black female.

The Lasater partying allegedly went on for years before the bond dealer was prosecuted, prompting questions about why action wasn't taken against Lasater earlier. According to an affidavit from Drake, the employee who left Lasater's firm: "It became obvious to him that Dan Lasater was using cocaine as a tool to manipulate his peers and force them to serve as a buffer between the authorities and his cocaine abuse... Dan Lasater discussed on several occasions with Michael Drake about the decision to surround himself with police officers in order to make himself look like he is a good citizen." As Insight revealed last week, Lasater could rely on some police officers to tip him off when he might be in trouble. According to Locke, even state politicians were allegedly not beyond warning the bond daddy of law-enforcement interest in his activities. "Mr. Locke related that the first incident in which he was notified that Dan Lasater was being looked at by law enforcement came when Sheffield Nelson [a former Republican governor] visited his apartment and told him that he and Dan were under surveillance by law enforcement. He stated law enforcement was not trying to catch them selling drugs, but wanted to catch them in possession," states Locke's 1986 affidavit.

Lasater's firm handled $664 million in Arkansas bond sales and earned $1.6 million in fees as a result. Clinton exercised the right to approve every bond issue and also determined which brokerage firms were employed. According to state lawmakers, Clinton personally lobbied the Arkansas Legislature very hard in 1986 to get Lasater a $30 million bond issue for a new police-radio system, despite knowing that Lasater was the target of a major federal and state drug probe. This has intrigued some members of Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's investigation. The independent counsel's prosecutors have probed the relationship between Clinton and Lasater - state troopers have been questioned about the friendship - but so far the Whitewater inquiry has not "actively" pursued any Lasater deals, according to sources close to the Starr investigation.

In his 1986 interview with the FBI and state police, Locke denied there was anything inappropriate going on between the governor and Lasater with the police radio contract. But he acknowledged Clinton was important in the police-radio deal going to Lasater. His affidavit reads: "There was considerable lobbying done for the contract, but Mr Locke said he felt because Lasater and Company backed the right individual in Governor Clinton, Lasater and Company received the contract. Clinton has insisted he showed no favoritism to Lasater. "He [Lasater] did state business, but so did a lot of other bond firms [that] never did it before I got elected... I just thought there weren't enough people who had a chance to do the business, and so we broadened the opportunities," the president said at the same March 1994 press conference at which he admitted Lasater had been a major campaign contributor.