THE DRUG CZAR AND HIS SECRET TAPES

September 4 issue -- Legendary newspaperman A. M. Rosenthal was speaking
freely. "I'm just saying this to you," he confided to White House drug czar
Barry McCaffrey during a November 1996 telephone chat. Not quite.

Unknown to Rosenthal, his conversation with McCaffrey--in which they
discussed how to attack financier George Soros for his efforts to liberalize
drug laws --was being taped.

McCaffrey, NEWSWEEK has learned, has made a practice of recording talks with
journalists--without necessarily telling them. The existence of the tapes
was a closely held secret until this summer, when the drug office belatedly
turned over two dozen audiocassettes in response to a 1997 demand for
evidence in a lawsuit. (A McCaffrey aide says they were only recently found
in a storage closet.) The drug czar insisted in a deposition that the tapes
were made "with the permission of both parties." But that was apparently not
always the case. "I don't recall anybody telling me they were going to
record this," Rosenthal said. Anita Manning, a USA Today reporter also taped
by McCaffrey, said: "This is just creepy."

It is legal in the District of Columbia for one party to tape a conversation
without the consent of the other. But did McCaffrey also tape government
officials or foreign leaders? "Absolutely not," said his spokesman, Bob
Weiner. The taping, he insisted, was limited to press interviews and was
done solely to ensure that the drug czar wasn't misquoted. But by failing to
notify some reporters, he conceded, the office "may have screwed up."