WASHINGTON — Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Long Beach)--a prominent conservative who favors drug testing for congressional staffs and supports strong anti-drug legislation--used marijuana, hashish and LSD as a young man, the magazine New Republic will report in its Nov. 5 issue.
The liberal journal states that Rohrabacher asked former friends--only one of whom is named--not to talk about his youthful drug use during his 1988 congressional campaign, and in exchange agreed to avoid "noisy anti-drug crusading."
Gene Berkman of Riverside, the only source identified by the New Republic, told The Times on Thursday that he smoked marijuana with Rohrabacher many times, and had also seen him use hashish and LSD. Berkman, who Rohrabacher called a disaffected friend with a faulty memory, made the same claims to the magazine.
Berkman said he decided to make public his claims because Rohrabacher has assumed a strong anti-drug stance in Congress.
"I'm only aware of him using LSD on one occasion. But as far as use of marijuana, it was numerous occasions," Berkman said. "I only remember him using hash on one or two occasions. We just considered it a form of cannabis, like marijuana."
Berkman said he was present when Rohrabacher and others took LSD at Disneyland in Anaheim in 1970.
In an interview with The Times, Rohrabacher, 43, would not confirm or deny that he used drugs as a young man, but he insisted that he never struck a deal for his friends' silence.
"I made a lot of mistakes when I was a young person," said the first-term lawmaker, who in the last year has emerged as a leading spokesman for congressional critics of the National Endowment for the Arts.
"But I don't think any mistake I made in my personal life as a young person is anybody's business but my own," he said. "Mistakes that I may have made in this area were over 20 years ago. Since that time, I have lived a very responsible life (and) held very responsible positions in government."
Before his election to Congress, Rohrabacher served as a speech writer in the Ronald Reagan White House from 1981 until 1988.
Rohrabacher said Berkman is a disaffected acquaintance, since arrested on drug charges, who is angry because Rohrabacher long ago abandoned the libertarian view that drug use should be legalized.
"He's a fellow that I used to know years ago. . . . He's obviously got me mixed up with some things he himself did and some other people he was with. His memory is very, very cloudy," Rohrabacher said.
