Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 17, 1994 TAG: 9410170091
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROBERT LITTLE LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Republican challenger Oliver North began his long-anticipated assault on Sen. Charles Robb's character last week, and you can bet he won't let up until Election Day.
At the dark heart of it all is Robb's 1982-86 term as governor, when his splash into the Virginia Beach social scene resulted in what may be the most sordid, scandalous inquisition ever in Virginia politics.
Though Robb has tried to put the matter behind him, questions about his past continue to provide fodder for political enemies:
Did a U.S. senator, while governor of Virginia, use cocaine? Those allegations never have elevated beyond rumor.
Did he look the other way while friends snorted the drug in his presence? That claim is equally obscure.
Was Robb once embroiled in a fast-and-loose private lifestyle that included socializing with drug users and young women? That charge is better supported, but still little more than cloakroom gossip.
A smattering of Robb's former acquaintances still claim they saw him snort cocaine in the mid-1980s. Others say he was at parties where cocaine was openly used, sometimes right in front of him. Robb has denied ever knowingly being in the company of people using drugs.
He visited Virginia Beach about 100 times while governor, often with no official duties there, and often without his wife. His former aides have named four women they claimed had sexual encounters with Robb, and suggested there were several more.
Friends and foes alike say Robb was enamored of the fast-paced, bull-market lifestyle that thrived in parts of Virginia Beach. Middle-aged, handsome and popular, he frequented the governor's vacation house at Camp Pendleton, often wading off the grounds into the Croatan social scene.
He made friends. His friends threw parties. And at some of those parties, most agree, people likely had cocaine.
Robb has little trouble discounting charges that he used or condoned drugs. Most of the people leveling them have criminal records or drug problems, or were paid to talk.
Less manageable, however, are claims that he socialized openly with drug users and privately with women half his age.
Robb has admitted attending parties thrown by known drug dealers, but says he didn't realize it at the time. He has acknowledged some unspecified marital indiscretion, but said his wife has asked him not to discuss it publicly.
Robb's wife says she has forgiven him, and police investigating the 1980s drug scene said publicly that Robb never was a target. He never has been charged or accused of any illegal activity during his weekends in Virginia Beach, and there is no evidence he was ever even a suspect.
Except in the court of public and political opinion.
``Had Robb not had these difficulties, this year's race would be a repeat of 1988, when he ran away with the election,'' said Ken Geroe, a longtime Democratic Party official from Virginia Beach. ``Republicans would be running away from him.''
Instead, Robb's opponents have charged straight at him.
Senate primary candidate Virgil Goode, a state senator from Rocky Mount who tried to steal Robb's Democratic nomination last spring, warned voters that Republicans would ``ask Chuck Robb about his parties with prostitutes and drug criminals.'' Former independent candidate Douglas Wilder often chided Robb publicly for associating with drug users, saying he was ``unfit for office.''
Independent candidate Marshall Coleman ran advertisements claiming Robb is a poor candidate because he attended wild parties - ``the kind where the drinks are stronger than root beer and they take refreshment through their noses.''
North has begun airing commercials naming four men - all of them Robb associates, all of them convicted drug dealers, the ads claim.
Robb calls linking him to drugs ``flat-out wrong.''
``There was simply no wrongdoing on my part in any way, shape or form,'' he said last week.
Charges of womanizing, he said, ``I haven't tried to defend. But, unfortunately ... everyone just fills in the rest of the story.''
Geroe, like many others, thinks Robb is partly to blame.
``When it first came up, he wasn't completely upfront,'' Geroe said. ``So everyone [in the news media] figured, where there's smoke, there must be fire.''
When rumors that he had frequented the Virginia Beach party scene surfaced in 1987, Robb was considering his first bid for the U.S. Senate. When asked questions about his past, he deflected them. It was his ``private time,'' he said, and no one's business.
When reports appeared in 1988 that he had socialized frequently with 10 men who later were convicted, indicted or granted immunity on drug-related charges, Robb kept his distance. His response: He wouldn't know illegal drugs if he saw them.
A 1988 poll showed that 77 percent of Virginians didn't believe that claim.
``The least-believable argument, even for Robb supporters, is that he has never seen illegal drugs in his life,'' a summary of the poll results read. ``Even if this is accurate, we gain nothing by using it.''
Robb passed a drug test in August 1988 and was elected to the Senate three months later.
Rumors already were spreading about his relationships with young women at the beach, particularly former Miss Virginia-USA Tai Collins, a former Roanoker.
When asked about Collins in 1988, Robb said: ``One time, in New York, I did have a drink with her and that was it.'' In an interview with The Washington Post a year later, he acknowledged having received a nude massage.
Meanwhile, private detective Billy Franklin had been investigating Robb, financed by a Richmond doctor who was later proved to be receiving money from Republicans. Robb's aides went to Virginia Beach in hopes of controlling the story before it turned to political poison.
They questioned former associates, paid for information and once traveled to Boston to interview a woman who claimed to have had an affair with Robb - always hoping to find out what the rumors were and how far they had spread.
Months later, Franklin published his book called ``Tough Enough: the cocaine investigation of United States Senator Chuck Robb.''
In the book, Franklin offered three people who claimed to have witnessed Robb using cocaine in 1983 and 1984. Two more were not named. Franklin claims four others signed statements, agreeing to come forward if Robb tried to sue. He never did.
``There's only one reason he didn't sue, and it's because everything in there was 100 percent true,'' said Franklin, who still operates a Norfolk detective agency.
Sources who could be reached said they stand by their stories, but their credibility is questionable. One was in jail on drug charges; another used to work for Franklin. An employee of Franklin's detective agency paid a third source $300 to talk. Another was an admitted cocaine addict.
In a 1991 interview on national television, Virginia Beach businessman Gary Pope described seeing Robb near a woman snorting cocaine at a Croatan Christmas party in 1983. The host, clothing wholesaler John Bennis, was among a handful of Robb acquaintances granted immunity to testify in a federal drug investigation.
But Pope's story is contradicted by scores of people who attended the same party. And even some of Robb's most cynical critics doubt Pope really saw what he thinks he saw.
``What you have is a lot of people who had the opportunity to make themselves feel important by trying to create some type of personal association with Chuck Robb,'' said Bruce Thompson, a friend of the then-governor during the mid-1980s.
``It's been blown out of proportion by people who wouldn't know anything anyway.''
Thompson says Robb's association with drug users has been exaggerated as well. He pointed to North's recent television commercial, which named four Robb acquaintances said to have served drug-related jail terms.
``Chuck Robb has never met any of them, other than in casual passing,'' Thompson said.
But Thompson, who frequently entertained Robb at his Croatan home, often is at the center of many of the Democrat's alleged doings. Thompson was granted immunity for testifying in a federal drug probe, a move he said was made to avoid ``the prevailing political storm,'' not because there was any evidence against him.
While talking with two friends in 1991, Thompson was secretly taped by federal agents investigating possible violations of wiretapping laws by Robb and his staff.
In a transcript of the conversation, contained in federal court papers, Thompson predicted that Robb's campaign chairman would never implicate him, because Thompson knew too much: ``He's got to think ... Bruce knows everything. If I go and tag Bruce, damn, no telling what he's gonna start talking about,''' Thompson said in the transcript.
Efforts by Robb's staff to stall Franklin's book and find out what reporters knew about his Virginia Beach partying ultimately brought more information into the public fray.
A 1990 memo prepared by Robb's then-press secretary, Steve Johnson - intended as a private memo to Robb but later leaked to the media - named 16 people it claimed had knowledge of womanizing or some exposure to drugs by Robb. At least six women - four of them listed by name - claimed to have engaged in sexual activity with Robb, the memo said. None has ever agreed to talk publicly.
``Is it really going to matter what I say?'' asked one of Robb's former Croatan associates. ``I talked about it five years ago and it didn't make one bit of difference. I've got a family and a new life now. I just want to forget about it.''
Political friends warned Robb about the crowd at Virginia Beach. Robb said he ran the names of associates by the state police and other politicians, and never found any reason to be worried.
Many of the drug users who have been linked to him were never friends, Robb said. He remembers meeting one of them only once, at a volleyball tournament.
Robb acknowledges attending a July 4, 1984, party at the north shore home of Ray Parsons, a known drug dealer who hanged himself in jail in 1987. But he said his family and the state police went along.``There were several hundred people that spilled over three or four city blocks,'' he said.
``Would I have known that there were some people at the beach who were heavily into drugs? No, I had no idea,'' Robb said in a recent interview. ``I assume there was a minor amount of drug usage in any city, but it never came close to me. Obviously, it was not the drug scene that attracted me to the beach. And if I had even a whiff of things that related to drugs, I wouldn't have stayed.''
Robb acknowledges the political damage that his private life has caused his public life.
``I hope someday, after I'm out of politics, to write a book,'' he said. ``I think it would be a fascinating book."
Staff writer David M. Poole contributed to this story.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB