Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 14, 1990 TAG: 9003142791
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
After six weeks of treatment for alcoholism and dependence on tranquilizers, Barry, back in Washington, said that he had no intention of resigning and he left the door open to the possibility that he would run for a fourth term as mayor.
"I'm back and I feel good," Barry, looking fit, told a no-questions-allowed session that had been billed as a news conference.
But he said nothing about charges that he had used cocaine. And he said that from now on he would answer no questions and make no comments on his "legal situation."
The mayor is under an eight-count grand jury indictment charging him with cocaine use and perjury. The perjury charge alleges that he lied when he told the grand jury that he had not used cocaine. He has pleaded innocent and is scheduled to go on trial June 4.
Barry, who was greeted with chants of "Four More Years!" and "Barry! Barry!" from city government workers, read a prepared statement in which he said: "I don't intend to resign as mayor.
"There was never any question in my mind about that."
As to his political future, Barry said only that he would announce "some plans in the very near future."
But he reported that his political organization "is still intact, notwithstanding some defections." Some of the defectors went to Washington, D.C., congressional delegate Walter Fauntroy, who announced, while Barry was out of town, that he would run for mayor - a decision that was said to have displeased Barry.
Fauntroy was in the Middle East Tuesday.
Barry said it was his "treatment team - nothing else" - that had determined "it was time for me to return to Washington to continue my recovery."
The mayor said that during treatment in two rehabilitation centers - one in Florida, where he stayed about four weeks before he transferred to the second, in South Carolina - he was found to be addicted to alcohol and to have a "chemical dependency" on the tranquilizers Valium and Xanax.
"Additionally, I discovered that I had been suffering from repressed anger, as well as prolonged and overwhelming stress," Barry said. "Mayors hurt, too.
"The difference you will notice in me will be that my life will be more balanced now. I will still be committed to the citizens of this great city and to the operations of government, but I will set much more time aside for self and family, on positive, constructive leisure activities."
Barry was arrested in an FBI sting operation at a midtown Washington hotel on the night of Jan. 18 on a charge of cocaine use while he was in the company of former model Rasheeda Hazel Moore.
by CNB