Rush Limbaugh investigated for illegal drug purchases, paper reports
Shocking allegation surfaces after commentator resigns from ESPN in racial flap

Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh is being investigated for allegedly buying thousands of prescription painkillers from a black-market drug ring, the New York Daily News reported today.

The newspaper said Limbaugh has been implicated by his former housekeeper, who says she was Limbaugh's pill supplier for four years.

Wilma Cline, 42, was quoted by the newspaper as saying Limbaugh was hooked on the potent prescription drugs OxyContin, Lorcet and hydrocodone, and went through drug rehabilitation twice.

"There were times when I worried," Cline told the National Enquirer, which also carried the story in an edition being published today. "All these pills are enough to kill an elephant -- never mind a man."

Cline could not be reached for further comment, but her lawyer, Ed Shohat of Miami, said his client "stands behind the story."

Cline told the Enquirer she went to prosecutors with information about Limbaugh and others after four years of drug deals that included clandestine handoffs in a Denny's parking lot.

She said she wore a wire during her last two deliveries and gave the tapes to authorities.

She also gave the Enquirer a ledger documenting how many pills she claimed to have bought for him -- 4,350 in one 47-day period -- and e-mails she claimed Limbaugh sent her.

In one e-mail, Limbaugh urged Cline to get more "little blues," the street name for the powerful narcotic OxyContin, she said.

"You know how this stuff works ... the more you get used to, the more it takes," the May 2002 e-mail read. "But I will try and cut down to help out."

The Enquirer reported that Cline became Limbaugh's drug connection in 1998, nine months after taking a housekeeping job at his Palm Beach, Fla., mansion.