Tapes reveal Bush drugs conversations

US President George Bush feared secretly-taped conversations, in which he appears to acknowledge past drug use, could have ruined his presidential bid, it was claimed today.

The candid discussions were recorded over the two-year-period before Bush was named Republican nominee for president in 2000.

During some nine hours of conversation, the then Texas governor addressed sensitive issues including rumours of drug use.

“Do you want your little kid to say: ‘Hey daddy, President Bush tried marijuana, I think I will?'” he said.

“That’s the message we’ve been sending out. I wouldn’t answer the marijuana question.”

In tape aired today on US network ABC News, Bush adds: “I don’t want any kid doing what I tried to do 30 years ago.

“And I mean that. It doesn’t matter if it’s LSD, cocaine, pot, any of those things, because if I answer one, then there will be another one. And I just am not going to answer those questions. And it may cost me the election.”

The tapes were surreptitiously recorded by Doug Wead, a former adviser to George Bush Snr, and reveal a fascinating and unvarnished glimpse of the President.

Wead insists the tapes were made as research for a book because he believed Bush would become a pivotal figure in history.

In an ABC interview, Wead said: “I think it bothered him – the fact that when he was younger he was irresponsible.

“I think early on he felt disqualified, that he couldn’t run for office because of his mistakes as a youth.”

The tapes also reveal President Bush’s concerns in keeping his conservative Christian base happy whilst also appearing tolerant to gays.

In one conversation, Wead says on the tape: “He’s saying you promised you would not appoint any gays to office.”

Bush replies: “No, what I said was I wouldn’t fire gays… I’m not going to discriminate against people.”

He explains that he told one prominent evangelical that he would not “kick gays, because I’m a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?”

Wead, whose book on presidential childhoods was published last month, claims he intended to give the tapes to Bush for his archives.

He said his publisher insisted on listening to the tapes to confirm anonymous sources. The New York Times then got wind of the tapes, Wead said, and it “all became unravelled”.

A White House spokesman confirmed the president did not dispute the content of the tapes.

“These were casual conversations with someone whom the President considered, or believed to be, a friend,” the spokesman said.