DRUG CZAR FIGHTS NEW YORKER ARTICLE

WASHINGTON (AP) -- White House drug policy director Barry McCaffrey is
striking back at a prize-winning investigative reporter he accuses of
spreading "defamatory" allegations about McCaffrey's conduct as an Army
general in the Persian Gulf War.

In an unusual twist, McCaffrey's efforts are bringing to the public's
attention an assortment of allegations against him even before they are
published.

He is trying to head off an article that is being prepared by Seymour Hersh
for The New Yorker magazine.

McCaffrey said Tuesday that Hersh, who won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing
the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1968, has been spreading a range of false
accusations during interviews with friends and former colleagues.

Among them: assertions that troops led by McCaffrey killed Iraqi prisoners
of war, that McCaffrey committed unspecified crimes in the Vietnam War and
that he has acted inappropriately in pushing a $1.6 billion anti-drug aid
package for Colombia.

McCaffrey wrote New Yorker Editor David Remnick last month to warn against
publishing false and libelous statements.

"I've gotten calls from dozens of friends over the last three months
reporting a series of accusations by Mr. Hersh ranging from bike theft at
age 11 to atrocities in the Gulf War," McCaffrey said. "They are defamatory
and sort of frightening to my friends and family."

In a letter to McCaffrey's office, Hersh denied he was acting maliciously.

"I am simply going about my business, as I have for the past 35 years,
asking questions, listening to answers and trying to verify and assess what
I've been told," wrote Hersh.