DRUG CZAR UP IN ARMS OVER GULF WAR INQUIRY

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the White House drug czar, has mounted an
unusual preemptive strike against investigative reporter Seymour Hersh over
a potentially explosive story for the New Yorker that has not yet been
published.

McCaffrey has written the editor of the magazine and other news
organizations to complain that the veteran author has been conducting
"defamatory" interviews filled with "false allegations" and is doing so out
of "personal malice."

The result has been a flurry of detailed letters, charts and "for the
record" memorandums among McCaffrey, his former military colleagues, Hersh
and New Yorker Editor David Remnick about who is being unfair to whom.

In a letter to the drug office, Hersh dismissed a McCaffrey assistant's
suggestion that his interviews "seem 'purposely designed to falsely impugn'
General McCaffrey's reputation," saying that conclusion appeared based on
one disputed interview.

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

Part of what Hersh is examining, according to McCaffrey and memos and
letters from eight current and former military officers, are allegations
that the 24th Infantry Division, under McCaffrey's leadership, committed
war crimes during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. If such charges are printed,
they will undoubtedly draw global attention, especially since Hersh won a
Pulitzer Prize for exposing the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

In an interview, McCaffrey flatly denied such allegations, especially the
most sensational one: that soldiers under his command had shot Iraqi
prisoners of war. McCaffrey said his wife has been in tears over the inquiry.

"This just isn't going to pan out. . . . I can't imagine it's remotely
possible he can find a person who can substantiate a claim of any
wrongdoing that wouldn't disintegrate with five minutes of questioning,"
McCaffrey said. But he has refused to grant Hersh an interview, insisting
instead on written questions.

David Remnick, the New Yorker's editor, said: "I have complete confidence
in Sy Hersh. Remember, we haven't published a thing yet."

While he takes McCaffrey's complaints seriously, Remnick said, "I have
absolute confidence in Sy and confidence in how we do things here in terms
of fact-checking and legal read and all the things that places like the New
Yorker and The Washington Post expect of themselves." He said Hersh has "a
long track record" and that "I'm very proud to be associated with him."

Hersh said Sunday that he could not discuss an ongoing project. "How can I
talk about something I haven't written yet?" he asked.

This is a clash of two strong-willed individuals. Hersh, 63, a former New
York Times reporter, is known for his tenacity in exposing scandals. In one
New Yorker piece, he interviewed more than 100 past and current government
officials in questioning whether the United States had bombed the wrong
building in a 1998 strike against Sudan, as many critics have come to believe.

But Hersh also drew widespread criticism over his 1997 book "The Dark Side
of Camelot." Hersh was initially suckered by a former paralegal peddling a
bogus batch of John F. Kennedy papers--including the tale of a supposed
payoff to Marilyn Monroe--but cut the material because of doubts about its
authenticity.

McCaffrey, 57, who was wounded three times in Vietnam, has been awarded the
Distinguished Service Cross twice, the Silver Star twice and the Purple
Heart three times. He commanded 26,000 troops during the Persian Gulf War
and, in a final battle, joined the attack in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle
because, he said, "I like to fight." McCaffrey was the nation's youngest
four-star general when he retired in 1996 to accept President Clinton's
appointment to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Under the circumstances, it is impossible to evaluate the quality of
Hersh's evidence, some of which is already being fact-checked by the New
Yorker, or even to be certain of the focus of his inquiry.

In making the correspondence available to The Washington Post, McCaffrey is
adopting the increasingly popular tactic of a news subject trying to make
the journalist the issue before he delivers his findings. Last fall, for
example, Metabolife launched a $2 million campaign against ABC's "20/20"
over a pending story on the company's diet pills - a story that executives
later had to admit was not terribly unfair.

Elements of Hersh's investigation, from McCaffrey's early career to the
drug office's efforts in Colombia, can be pieced together from written
comments by some of the military men he has interviewed, who provided
copies to McCaffrey, who in turn has furnished the material to some news
outlets.

Retired Col. Ken Koetz, for instance, wrote that Hersh had said of
McCaffrey: "I really want to bury this guy." Hersh, in his letter to the
drug office, denied having made such a comment.

Retired Col. Justin Hughes said Hersh told him that when McCaffrey was 11
years old at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., he stole another boy's bicycle and
that McCaffrey's father, a colonel, had intervened with military police to
get his son off the hook. McCaffrey called the story "preposterous," saying
he never lived at Fort Leavenworth.

In his memo, Hughes said Hersh told him that he was examining allegations
ranging from McCaffrey's Gulf War units "misreporting" their positions to
headquarters to the "murder of thousands of retreating enemy soldiers."

Another memo was written by retired Lt. Gen. James Scott, now director of
Harvard University's national security program. Scott said Hersh spoke of
information that Iraqi prisoners of war were shot at Tallil air base by
members of the 24th Division, and that the Army had covered it up. Hersh
also contended that McCaffrey "had destroyed the careers of many officers"
and was "universally disliked," Scott told Remnick in a letter.

Scott also said Hersh told him that yet another officer, Lt. Gen. John Van
Alstyne, had implicated McCaffrey in military wrongdoing. But Van Alstyne
wrote Remnick that "this is very disturbing, since I have never spoken with
Mr. Hersh on any subject."

In similar fashion, Lt. Col. Troy Kunz wrote that Hersh maintained that
Brig. Gen. Richard Quirk III was aware of the alleged shooting of Iraqi
prisoners, but Quirk said in his own memo that he had never heard of such
atrocities.

Summarizing his defense in a memo dated Friday, McCaffrey wrote that a
197th Infantry task force, backed by air attacks, had invaded Tallil air
base, but that no Iraqi prisoners were executed.

Maj. Scott Hays, an Army spokesman, said the service's criminal
investigative division examined the allegations of atrocities at Tallil and
found them to be "unsubstantiated." He said Hersh has requested copies of
the documents involved.

McCaffrey also wrote that he and a 24th Division brigade had engaged the
Iraqis in a post-cease-fire battle at Rumaylah oil field, destroying 187
armored vehicles and about 500 other vehicles. But he said the American
troops, rather than mistreating the thousands of captured Iraqis, gave away
their own food, water and blankets.

As part of his campaign to neutralize Hersh, McCaffrey contacted the Gulf
War commander, retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, who wrote back expressing
his "100 percent support." McCaffrey also drew support from a Marine Corps
general who fired off a letter to Remnick.

Some Hersh critics have gone so far as to suggest that the reporter is not
properly identifying himself. Two of the current and former military
officers wrote that Hersh had described himself as working for the New York
Times - an unlikely claim, since it would be easy to check that Hersh
hasn't been on the newspaper's payroll since 1979. Times Editor Joseph
Lelyveld wrote the drug office that he believes Hersh's assurance that he
presented himself only as a former Times reporter.

As the correspondence has escalated, McCaffrey's hostile fire against Hersh
has grown quite personal. "Hersh is hoping for a knockout blow, to
rediscover My Lai in his dying years," McCaffrey said in the interview.

But should McCaffrey be sending news organizations - using White House
stationery and at taxpayer expense - not just letters in his own defense
but also articles criticizing Hersh over the Kennedy book? "When someone is
attacked," asked Bob Weiner, McCaffrey's spokesman, "don't they have the
right to defend themselves?"