With overwhelming public support, the medical marijuana votes represented a rebuke to the anti-drug mandate of McCaffrey's office. The initiative passed in California by 56 percent and in Arizona by an astounding 65 percent. In 1998, District of Columbia voters approved their initiative by 69 percent, though no one knew of the landslide for a year because Congress delayed counting the vote.

According to two separate versions of meeting minutes obtained by Salon, as well as interviews with several participants, these government officials and senior executives intended to ensure that neither voters nor legislators in the other 48 states would pass similar medical use legislation.

The two sets of contemporaneous notes surfaced as part of the discovery process in the federal lawsuit Conant vs. McCaffrey, currently under adjudication in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit was filed in response to Gen. McCaffrey's formal policy statement -- issued Dec. 30, 1996, at a press conference attended by Attorney General Janet Reno, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala and a DEA official -- in which he threatened to revoke the federal prescription-writing privileges of doctors who recommended or prescribed medical marijuana to their patients, bar them from treating Medicare and Medicaid patients and criminally prosecute them. The plaintiffs were granted a preliminary injunction; the next court date is Aug. 3.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs provided Salon with copies of documents the federal government has made available to them as required by the court in the case's discovery process. Currently a senior trial attorney at the Justice Department, Wayne Raabe was a staff attorney for ONDCP in November 1996. He confirmed his attendance at the meeting, and that he authored one set of the notes, but declined to comment further.

Some participants in the ONDCP meeting believed that the medical marijuana effort veiled a broader movement that sought gradual full-scale legalization of the Schedule 1 controlled substance. According to the notes, James E. Copple, then president and CEO of the Community Anti-Drug Coalition of America, told his colleagues, "Need to frame the issue properly -- expose this as legalizers using terminally ill as props." Maricopa County District Attorney Richard Romley, who led the Arizona delegation, stated that, "Even though California and Arizona are different prop[osition]s, the strategy of proponents is the same. It will expand throughout the nation if we all don't react."

As summarized in the documents' clipped parlance, Copple also told those gathered at the meeting, "We'll work with Arizona and California to undo it and stop the spread of legalization to other 48 states. Twenty-seven states have the potential." He added, "Need to go state by state. $ to do media." And Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates, long a prominent critic of medical marijuana, is quoted as saying, "Legalizers are going national. We need to get organized quickly to counter the Americans for Compassionate Use" -- a pro-medical-use group.

In addition to Copple's statement regarding media funding, comments from two executives of the private Partnership for a Drug-Free America suggest that the meeting was a major catalyst in replacing the nonprofit advertising and media industry umbrella group's then nearly decade-old, donated-media public service campaign with a taxpayer funded effort.(PDFA is an unpaid consultant in ONDCP's media campaign, and its name appears on all of the campaign's advertising.) As PDFA executive vice-president Mike Townsend stated at the meeting, "National Partnership [PDFA] concerned about what they can do about spending $ to influence legislation."

One attendee who asked not to be identified said, "I recall a general discussion of the media campaign, what should and shouldn't be done."

PDFA president Richard Bonnette laid out the challenge to the group. "We lost Round I -- no coordinated communication strategy. Didn't have media," the notes quote Bonnette telling his colleagues. One participant not clearly identified in the notes asked the gathering, "Who will pay for national sound bites? Campaign will require serious media and serious $."

PDFA's Townsend suggested the group should reach out to "California parents" and, according to the notes, said the effort required "$175 million. Try to get fedl $." In fact, that was the amount backers of the anti-drug media campaign first asked Congress for, according to Rep. John L. Mica, R-Fla., chair of the Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee.

In a memo to his House colleagues, Mica wrote: "In 1996 and 1997, the PDFA approached Congress for assistance. The PDFA worked with Congress to fund the President's budget request ($175 million) to replace the decline in donated media air time." Congress later bumped the first year's appropriation up to $195 million.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation prescient Dr. Jellinek worried aloud about the political implications of such a campaign. According to the notes, he told the group: "It is a political problem. You need a Federal response, but [it] can't be viewed as outside interference." Reached last week for comment, Jellinek said, "I don't have anything more to say. If you have the quote, you have the quote. Let it stand. Let it speak for itself." Fueled significantly by money derived from shares it holds in pharmaceutical and healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson, Jellinek's foundation contributed $15 million to the PDFA in 1999 alone.

But PDFA's Townsend told Salon, "I never said anything about that." PDFA president Bonnette did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.

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