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But then Columnist Jack Anderson disclosed that Bourne had used cocaine at a party given last year by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, a lobbying group that advocates repeal of the penalties for smoking pot. Although Bourne denied Anderson's account of the incident, TIME has confirmed it. The party was held in a renovated town house in central Washington. At one point, according to some of the guests, Bourne went into a bedroom, sniffed some coke through a rolled-up dollar bill and smoked some marijuana.
Next, White House Press Secretary Jody Powell, under pressure from reporters, disclosed that Bourne had prescribed drugs on ten occasions for ailing White House aides. He also wrote a prescription once for diet pills for Hamilton Jordan, Carter's pudgy chief adviser. According to Jordan, Carter's assistants started going to Bourne for prescriptions from time to time during the campaign. Said Jordan: "Maybe it wasn't smart, but a few of us did just that."
Meanwhile, Bourne added to his problems by telling New York Times Reporter James Wooten that there was "a high incidence" of marijuana and occasional cocaine use among members of the White House staff. Said Powell: "I don't have any knowledge of it." A handful of junior White House aides were later quoted as saying that they did smoke marijuana in "recreational" hours outside the White House, and that they knew of a few colleagues who occasionally used cocaine.
The use of both drugs has become fairly common, even fashionable, among young, upper-middle-class professionals, including some journalists, in Washington and the nation's larger cities. According to White House aides, Carter sternly disapproves of such drug use. Jody Powell told reporters: "You can be assured that the President would very strongly disapprove of illegal acts by persons in the White House or other citizens."
As the controversy grew, Bourne again consulted with Jordan and Powell, and this time decided to resign. He did not talk with Carter and was not forced to quit, aides said, but no one tried to talk him out of leaving either. In his letter of resignation, Bourne told Carter that he regarded himself as having become "an instrument through which others attempt to bring disfavor to you."
At week's end the hapless Toby Long was free on $3,000 bail, and Prince William County Prosecutor Paul Ebert had threatened to bring charges against Bourne, even though most medical and legal authorities regarded his action as only a technical offense. Said the Drug Enforcement Administration's Donald Miller: "I just don't believe that Congress ever contemplated or intended that a single incidence of using a pseudonym to protect the identity of the patient for a relatively small amount of a drug should be a prosecutable offense."
Bourne was not waiting around to find out. After announcing his resignation, he boarded a plane with his wife and took off for an undisclosed location, leaving the White House to deal with the drug usage questions he had raised.