RETIRED COLONEL TO LEAD DRUG FIGHT?

MIAMI - In September 1998, retired Army Col. James McDonough, then the
director of strategy for the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy, fired a brazen blast at his boss, President Clinton.

Upset over an account that the commander-in-chief was engaging in Oval
Office sex while on the telephone drumming up support for sending U.S.
troops to Bosnia-Herzegovina, the former Army colonel bristled in a crisp
column to the Wall Street Journal:

"All human beings, if they are to remain in balance, must go through
alternating cycles of work and relaxation," declared McDonough. "In this
case, however, the act of casual sex at a moment of great importance smacks
of callous indifference, sophomoric arrogance, and reckless disregard of
the sanctity of U.S. soldiers' lives."

The sharp-tongued candor surprised few friends and admirers of the retired
colonel, who soon moved to Tallahassee, Fla., as the first director of the
Florida Office of Drug Control.

Now 54, the short, balding former West Point boxing champion may be poised
to return to Washington as successor to his old boss, retired Gen. Barry
McCaffrey, as the new national drug-policy control chief.

Given his background - including 27 years in the Army - and the Bushes'
practice of rewarding those whom they see as loyal, McDonough may be
uniquely suited to the post.

Since arriving in Florida in February 1999, he has worked closely with Jeb
Bush, the president-elect's kid brother. He's just down the hall from the
governor's suite.

He has crisscrossed the state, advocating a get-tough, anti-legalization
policy to Kiwanis Club members and newspaper editorial boards, in schools
and on radio programs.

"I didn't know him Day 1. I've just grown to be very impressed with him,"
said John Daigle, executive director of the Florida Alcohol and Drug Abuse
Association. He called McDonough an "intriguing" combination of
"action-oriented and thoughtful."

"He is crisp and to the point and has military experience, no doubt about
that," Daigle said. "At the same time, I've heard him be very respectful of
people on the other side" - notably those who advocate decriminalization -
"not to say he doesn't have his own strong feelings."

His celebrated candor aside, the Vietnam veteran, who was awarded a Purple
Heart, comes off as a renaissance man well-suited to a post that is part
strategist, part politician and part public-relations man.

A West Point and Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate with a
political-science degree, he has written three books, including "Platoon
Leader," an acclaimed Vietnam memoir that became a B-grade movie, and is
credited as the principal writer of the Army's central war-fighting
doctrine, "Field Manual 100-5 Operations."

He said in a recent interview that he had not been formally approached by
the Bush transition team but then rattled off four priorities he would
adopt if appointed: increased emphasis on treatment, prevention campaigns,
international leadership by the United States, and consistent, but tough,
law enforcement.

"You have to break the people that traffic in drugs," he said. "You have to
break them. They are murderers. They are vicious. They are dangerous."

He added that the new president should support Plan Colombia, the Clinton
administration's civilian-military formula for curbing cocaine trafficking.

He ended his military career in command of the Southern European Task Force
Infantry Brigade, which deployed to Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina - a point
of pride that may have piqued the Wall Street Journal protest.

But he has said that, like McCaffrey, he dislikes the expression "war on
drugs."

"It sounds like you've got machine guns and dropping bombs and are trying
to take terrain and destroy enemy forces," he said. "Such an overstated
simplicity leaves you no place. First of all, it's not a drug war. Second
of all, it's not been lost, whatever it is."