CLINTON SAYS HE FELT PUSHED INTO GAY POLICY

President Clinton, in an interview to be published today in Rolling Stone,
says the Republicans outmaneuvered him into a flawed policy on gays in the
military, calls some current antidrug policies unfair and confesses a
sneaking empathy for a disgraced predecessor, Richard M. Nixon.

The Republicans "didn't want me to have a honeymoon" in his first days in
office, Mr. Clinton said, and so forced the issue of his campaign promise
to allow gays to serve openly, knowing they had the votes in Congress to
defeat it.

"And it was only then that I worked out with Colin Powell this dumb-ass
`don't ask, don't tell' thing," Mr. Clinton said in the interview, one of
several he has granted recently looking back on his eight years in office.

He said that policy resulted in "several years of problems where it was not
implemented in any way consistent with the speech I gave at the War College
— of which General Powell had agreed with every word."

Still, Mr. Clinton, the master tactician, conceded, "it was a brilliant
political move" on the part of the Republican leader, Senator Bob Dole,
whose "top priority was making this the controversy that would consume the
early days of my presidency."

The interview, conducted by Jann S. Wenner, Rolling Stone's editor and
publisher, included a reference to the main controversy that marked Mr.
Clinton's tenure, his extramarital affair with a White House intern.

In a discussion of the impeachment that ensued, Mr. Clinton was asked if
the outcome was a sort of "referendum on the nature, morality or character"
of America.

"Not really. People strongly disagreed with what I did. I did, too," the
president replied.

On the subject of drugs, Mr. Clinton, who famously claimed not to have
inhaled, said, "Most small amounts of marijuana have been decriminalized
and should be."

Going further, he said mandatory sentences for drug use should be re-
examined along with the distinction in sentencing between crack and
powdered cocaine.

"The disparities are unconscionable between crack and powdered cocaine,"
Mr. Clinton said. "I tried to change that. The Republican Congress was
willing to narrow but not eliminate them, the theory being that people who
used crack were more violent than people who used cocaine.

"What they really meant was: People that used crack were more likely to be
poor — and, coincidentally, black or brown. And therefore not to have
money. Those people that used cocaine were more likely to be rich, pay for
it and therefore be peaceful."

Mr. Clinton said that he had invited Mr. Nixon to come back to the White
House for a visit and that he treasured a "lucid, eloquent" letter the
former president had written him from Russia just a month before Mr.
Nixon's death.

During the visit, Mr. Clinton said, "he told me he identified with me
because he thought the press had been too hard on me in '92 and that I had
refused to die, and he liked that."

"He said a lot of life was just hanging on. We had a good talk about that,"
Mr. Clinton said.

Mr. Nixon, driven from office by the Watergate scandal, could have been,
Mr. Clinton said, "a great president if he had been more trusting of the
American people."

Mr. Clinton attributed the bitter, partisan atmosphere in Washington to
what he said was a Republican belief that "they had found a foolproof
formula to hold on to the White House forever.

"Mostly, it's just because I won," he said, adding: "I think, secondly
because I was the first baby-boomer president. Not a perfect person — never
claimed to be. And I opposed the Vietnam War. I think that made them doubly
angry, because they thought I was a cultural alien and I made it anyway."

Oh, and by the way, Mr. Clinton predicted in the interview, conducted
before the election, that Vice President Al Gore would win Florida and the
presidency.