Doctor Blames White House for Arrest on Drug Charges

MOUNT VERNON, Ga. — Luther McRae is a country doctor who has been known to take squash or tomatoes as payment. When patients come to him after office hours, he sees them at his three-room farmhouse.

In the 35 years since he opened an office is this town of about 1,900, Dr. McRae built more than a practice. He built trust.

So when he was accused of peddling prescriptions for narcotic painkillers to drug dealers, everyone from the mayor to the probate judge stepped forward to insist that the 67-year-old McRae is innocent.

And when McRae said his arrest in a drug sting resulted from a conspiracy involving the White House, well, folks were willing to believe that too.

McRae made headlines in 1995 when he asserted that Dr. Henry Foster Jr., President Clinton’s nominee for surgeon general, lied about his knowledge of the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment. McRae insists his arrest was payback.

“I firmly believe that it came from the White House,” McRae said. “I can’t say for sure Bill Clinton had a direct hand in it, but some of his staff members certainly had a direct hand in it.”

That’s good enough for Montgomery County Probate Judge Gary Braddy, who gets his weekly allergy shot at McRae’s clinic.

“If he said it, I’m sure he didn’t make it up,” Braddy said. “He’s the type of man that you don’t believe he’d tell you a baldfaced lie for any reason.”

David Crowson, administrator of Wheeler County Hospital, which owns McRae’s clinic, said: “Dr. McRae’s mind is very sharp. If that’s what the man says, I do not doubt his contention.”

McRae has been Montgomery County’s only doctor for more than 20 of the 35 years he has practiced medicine.

In July, a grand jury indicted McRae on charges that he illegally prescribed painkillers every week for four weeks in October to an undercover Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent and a former patient when they showed up at his home in Glenwood, a few miles down the road from Mount Vernon.

McRae could get up to 30 years in prison.

McRae said the women barged into his bedroom asking for drugs. He admitted that he twice wrote prescriptions for them without examining them, saying he feared that one of them--the undercover agent--was strung out on drugs and bordering on withdrawal.

“I wanted to get her out of the house as quick as I could,” McRae said. “I just got suckered in.” He said he accepted $20 from the women on the first visit, $40 on the second.

He came under investigation after several suspected dealers were caught selling prescription drugs and said McRae wrote their prescriptions.

Dist. Atty. Tim Vaughn described McRae as a major source for drug dealers. “He was very freely giving out prescriptions for no medical reason whatsoever,” Vaughn said.

The indictment charges McRae with illegally prescribing more than eight drugs on four visits the women made to his home. McRae admits he wrote them prescriptions only twice.

Investigators refused to reveal the quantity of drugs McRae was prescribing except to say that he gave the women more painkillers than a person would normally need.

McRae’s patients say investigators took advantage of the doctor’s trust and his concern for easing other people’s pain.

“If you went to him and told him you were hurting, he would try to give you something to ease you off,” said Mount Vernon Mayor J.M. Fountain, whom McRae has treated for high blood pressure.

McRae had a minor role in Foster’s failed nomination as surgeon general. Foster had said he knew nothing of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, which left poor blacks untreated, until it was made public in 1972. But McRae insisted that he and Foster, as members of an Alabama medical society, learned of the study in 1969.

The White House said McRae’s remarks were “all inconsistent with the facts.”

Foster ultimately failed to win the post because of questions over the number of abortions that he had performed. But his opponents used the Tuskegee study to further undermine his credibility.

“I think it was entrapment. I’ve never seen any indication of anything like that at all,” James Thompson, a 70-year-old patient of McRae, said of the drug case. “I know there has to be some politics behind it someplace.”

Asked about McRae’s conspiracy theory, the district attorney said: “To say the doctor’s allegations are absolutely groundless would be an understatement.”

McRae’s license to prescribe narcotics has been suspended, and the state could revoke his medical license after a hearing on Sept. 2. Other doctors are filling in at McRae’s clinic to treat patients who need prescriptions.