Subject: Clinton and Brown Run Into Questions Involving Some of Their Past Actions 
Date: Published: 3/30/92 (110 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Politics & Policy:
    Clinton and Brown Run Into Questions
    Involving Some of Their Past Actions
    ----
    By Thomas Petzinger Jr.
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    WASHINGTON -- Both of the Democratic candidates for
 president became ensnared in new flaps involving some of
 their past actions.
    Former California Gov. Jerry Brown was called upon to
 defend his four-year affiliation with a California biomedical
 concern whose parent company has been accused of making
 excessive claims in promoting an AIDS treatment.  The
 subsidiary has also been accused of failing to properly
 report an explosion in which radioactive gas was released
 into the air.
    Meanwhile, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, the front-running
 contender for the Democratic nomination, defended his
 involvement in the drafting of an ethics-reform law in
 Arkansas.  Also, perhaps inevitably, the issue of drug use
 crept into the campaign, with both candidates proclaiming
 that they had never broken a U. S. drug law -- but with Mr. 
 Clinton acknowledging a momentary experiment with marijuana
 use outside of the U. S. 
    Mr. Brown was confronted yesterday on ABC-TV's "This Week
 with David Brinkley" with charges involving his corporate
 activity.  He said that he had recently severed his ties with
 the firm as part of an effort to remove himself from the
 corporate and political power elite.
    The charges, raised Saturday in the Washington Post,
 center on ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Costa Mesa, Calif.,
 which has run afoul of regulators on a number of occasions
 over its efforts to promote a treatment for conditions
 relating to AIDS.  U. S. regulators have accused the company of
 exaggerating the drug's safety and effectiveness.
    Although he had no direct association with ICN
 Pharmaceuticals, Mr. Brown served from 1987 until late-1991
 as a director of a unit called ICN Biomedicals Inc., which
 makes and markets research chemicals.  Mr. Brown has also had
 a longtime acquaintance with Milan Panic, the chairman of ICN
 Pharmaceuticals, who is also a major Democratic Party donor.
    The Washington Post reported that in addition to serving
 on the board of the ICN unit, Mr. Brown once telephoned Rep. 
 Henry Waxman (D., Calif.)  , on the parent company's behalf
 during a dispute with the Food and Drug Administration.  His
 intervention in the battle over the controversial AIDS
 treatment quickly resonated as a campaign issue because of
 the degree to which Mr. Brown has made expanded AIDS
 treatment an issue.
    Although conceding yesterday on the talk show that he had
 telephoned Rep. Waxman on behalf of ICN Pharmaceuticals, Mr. 
 Brown said, "I was never a part of that firm."  The ICN unit
 on which he served as a director, he explained, was in no way
 connected to the regulatory controversies of the parent
 company.
    However, the unit has had regulatory run-ins of its own
 involving the environment -- an area in which Mr. Brown
 claims strong campaign credentials.  In February 1988, while
 Mr. Brown was a member of the board, an explosion at an ICN
 Biomedicals plant in Irvine, Calif., caused tritium, or
 radioactive hydrogen, to leak into the atmosphere.
    State officials later said that they were conducting a
 criminal investigation of whether the company had made a
 misleadingly understated report of the accident.  Ultimately,
 in August 1989, the unit, without admitting wrongdoing,
 agreed to pay $25,000 to settle charges by Orange County
 prosecutors that it was tardy in reporting the incident.  An
 ICN spokesman said yesterday that "the governor had been an
 active and interested board member" of the unit, which
 provides materials for gene splicing, cancer treatment and
 other fields of research.
    As for Mr. Clinton, the New York Times reported that as
 governor he was part of a drafting group that lowered the
 threshold for defining a possible conflict of interest for
 certain Arkansas officials, including himself, in a pending
 piece of legislation.  This, the New York Times suggested,
 might have saved Gov. Clinton from disclosing that the law
 firm in which his wife was a partner had an interest in legal
 matters that involved his official duties.
    In a statement, the Clinton campaign said that the
 governor was seeking only to simplify the law and that he and
 his wife, in any case, have disclosed more information than
 what ethics laws require.
    Meanwhile, in a debate yesterday on WCBS-TV, Gov. Clinton
 was asked about his response last week to a New York Daily
 News editorial board question about whether he had used
 drugs.  At that time, Mr. Clinton asserted that he hadn't
 broken the law of his country.  When questioned during the
 debate about whether he had broken either state laws or
 international laws, however, Gov. Clinton said, "The answer
 to that question is:  I've never broken a state law.  And that
 when I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time
 or two.  And I didn't like it, and didn't inhale, and never
 tried it again."
    Mr. Brown also was asked whether he has broken state,
 federal or international drug laws, and he replied, "No.  "
 Despite the heightened rancor of the campaign, Mr. Brown came
 to Gov. Clinton's defense, saying he thought the
 marijuana-smoking issue was "not really relevant."
    ---
    Timothy Noah in New York contributed to this article.

[This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the
 personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the
 hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering
 from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]