". . .[Vance] Wilkins has an interesting history on issues of moral character. He gave $300 to a Norfolk private investigator, Billy Franklin, to track down rumors of sexual impropriety on the part of Charles S. Robb when Robb was governor and attending parties in Virginia Beach at which cocaine was used.

He attacked the character of the former President William Jefferson Clinton when that Democrat was lying about having sex with an intern.

In the Robb case, Wilkins was questioned about the nature of his payments to Franklin by the general counsel to the Federal Elections Committee. The FFEC letters and documents were made available to The Daily Progress.

Wilkins wrote the FEC in late 1991 explaining why his $300 cash contribution to Franklin was both legal and proper:

"I feel that the people of Virginia and the legal authorities are entitled to know:

--if an undercover drug operation was canceled because of the presence of Governor Robb who, under Virginia law, could not be investigated without the approval of the attorney general;

--if the attorney general [Gerald L. Baliles] compromised the undercover investigation by warning Governor Robb not to attend the drug parties where the undercover investigations were being held;

--if the state police were compromised by covering up the governor's drug use and use by his friends and fellow partygoers when the officers' sworn duty is to enforce the law."

"Making these determinations are worthy goals and the civic duty of any citizen," Wilkins wrote in his 1991 letter to Lawrence M. Noble, FEC general counsel.

"The tens of thousands of dollars spent on the Watergate investigation by the Washington Post affected literally hundreds of federal elections, yet I do not believe they were questioned in their motives or their expenditures. They performed a valuable public service in exposing corruption in high places," Wilkins wrote the FEC counsel.

Wilkins insisted that he and any private citizen had the right and the civic duty to investigate "what we believe to be public corruption."

His words from the last day of 1991 could be used at some time in the near future as people seek to examine whether, as the state's highest legislative official, he harassed a young woman who worked around his office and paid her $100,000.

The same words could apply in the federal and state probe of eavesdropping and the use of a cell phone in or around his office to eavesdrop on the Democratic conference call.

Condemning the actions of Robb and Clinton in strong terms, touting family values and then silencing a young woman and not discussing her sexual harassment claims could strike a few folks as somewhat hypocritical." (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, June 9, 2002).