Friday, January 05, 2007
Top judge, Nixon appointed, was a dope addict
From the Guardian
William Rehnquist, the late head of the US supreme court, was so addicted to sedatives that when he stopped taking the drugs he had hallucinations that the CIA was plotting against him, newly released FBI records reveal.The papers, running to 1,561 pages, are the product of an FBI investigation into Rehnquist's drug dependency which is revealed to be much more serious than previously known. They show that he went into detox having been prescribed sedatives shortly before he was appointed by President Richard Nixon onto the supreme court 10 years previously....
The chief justice was controversial, having supported the segregation of southern schools in a legal memo written in 1952 and having been accused of attempting to prevent black and Hispanic people registering to vote while acting as a Republican election volunteer in Arizona in the 1960s....
The papers also show that Republican administrations asked the FBI to investigate witnesses they feared would be hostile to Rehnquist during his confirmation battles. In the run-up to his confirmation as chief justice in 1986 John Bolton, who recently stood down as US ambassador to the UN, delivered witnesses' names to the FBI, telling the agency he "would accept responsibility should concerns be raised about the role of the FBI".
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