Tomorrow marks the 23rd anniversary of Marion Barry’s arrest for crack cocaine possession after a sting operation by FBI agents in a downtown D.C. hotel room.

U.S. News talked to the mayor-for-life and current D.C. Council member for Ward 8 about the incident in which he was videotaped smoking crack with his ex-girlfriend Rasheeda Moore, who was cooperating with the FBI. And the way Barry recalls it, the fact that the agents brought along paramedics during the operation was a signal that he was being targeted for much more than a drug bust:

“The FBI had a mind to entrap me, also the FBI tried to kill me by having some substance that wasn’t proven to be crack,” Barry told U.S. News in a phone interview.

“They had an EMT on the spot, which is not only unusual but rare in history of the FBI,” Barry noted as he offered evidence to support his claim that the FBI attempted to kill him. “Why would they have an EMT on the scene if they weren’t trying?”

Barry, 76, says further down in the interview that he believes the FBI was trying to get him to smoke a substance as high as 90-percent pure cocaine. (An chemist at Barry’s subsequent trial testified that the drug used in the sting operation was in fact 93 percent pure cocaine.)

But U.S. News also talked to the FBI official who ran the operation that took down Barry, who was then in his third term as D.C.’s mayor. “The purpose of the medical standby was to provide potential medical attention to Marion Barry should his criminal activities require it,” Bill Baker told the news website. “We had to let him inhale because that was one of the charges.”