MCCAFFREY DEFENDS THE PRIORITIES IN U.S. BATTLE AGAINST DRUGS

Hired to buttress a flagging counter drug effort, Barry McCaffrey came
to the White House in 1996 with the credentials of a war hero he was
decorated for bravery in Vietnam and lead a fast-moving mechanized
assault in the Persian Gulf war.

As the federal drug czar, he has pushed other agencies to better
coordinate their efforts. That included criticism of the recent
operation Casablanca, in which U.S. Customs agents conducted a major
investigation in Mexico without fully informing officials there, and
publicly confronting the Pentagon in a dispute over spending plans.

But the former four-star general doesn't like to call it a drug war.
Mr. McCaffrey, 57, endorses and executes the Clinton administration's
emphasis on prevention and treatment over law-enforcement.

Mr. McCaffrey, however, sharply rejects arguments for relaxing drug
laws. He recently called the liberal drug policies of the Netherlands
an "unmitigated disaster," which drew intense media attention to his
recent visit as part of a six nation European trip.

Mr. McCaffrey, officially known as the director of the White House
Office of National Drug Control Policy, recently spoke with the Dallas
Morning News Washington correspondent David LaGesse. Following are
excerpts:

Q: You said that you think the Southwest border can be essentially
brought under control again in five years. Do still believe that?

A: I think so. I believe we can change the dynamic of [drug]
interdiction so dramatically that they will look for better ways to
break into the United States. The reason that's worth doing it is not
because I believe 35,000 heroin addicts in Baltimore can be cut off
from gaining access to heroin. But we have too many hundreds of tons
of drugs sloshing around in this country, and that's where new
initiates come from. What we're worried about is 8th graders through
12th graders. So we ought to seize the most [drugs] we can.

Drug smuggling means corruption and violence that affects both sides
of the border. We've got to drive drug smuggling back to sea, push it
back into the air. It's corrosive; it has an impact on both sides of
the border, including in the great state of Texas.

We believe you can use non intrusive customs technology which can
build border Patrol and Customs Service you need. I've been using the
figure of 20,000 people in the border Patrol. We have to build law
enforcement institutions adequate to defend the American people.

Q: At one point, you had backed away from calling for 20,000 border
Patrol agents, almost three times what we have now.

A: I said studies ought to indicate what the right number is. We need
to look at fencing and sensor technology and the border Patrol so we
have an institution that is capable of defending the American people.
We've just got to get organized.

We've done it in Southern California. We finally have the rudiments of
federal law and order defense in place. It works cooperatively with
Mexico. It changed the dynamic of violence, corruption and drug
smuggling in Southern California. It is a miracle. We need to extend
that concept along that border where needed.

Q: Did operation Casablanca permanently damage our relations with
Mexico?

A: Casablanca was a blow to the people we trust and admire in Mexico.
I think there's a lot of brave, patriotic men and women who were
subject to nationalistic, hostile, domestic political pressure.

It looked as if we can't work in cooperation with senior officials in
Mexico who, in fact, we are working with. It was unfortunate. The
Secretary of State was unaware of this operation, the National

Security adviser was unaware of it, and I was unaware of it. I think
we have learned from it.

Now, we are proud and confident of the men and women in the customs
service who carried out this operation.

They're not the problem. We have no sympathy for the criminals who
were apprehended by operation Casablanca. [U.S. Attorney general Janet
Reno and Mexican Attorney General Jorge Madrazo] have now sat down and
hammered out principles by which we can continue to cooperate in law
enforcement.

The bottom line is that we can cooperate unilaterally with law
enforcement activities in someone else's country. But we can operate
in Mexico in a carefully guarded manner to protect the lives of our
law enforcement [officers ], and we're doing that.

It won't be the last time we're going to have a problem. Problems come
up. Friends have to work with friends.

Q: A the administration remain committed to emphasizing treatment and
prevention programs in the budget?

A: Yes and no. Our strategy is a prevention based strategy. Plain and
simple. We've increased prevention bucks by 33 percent in three years.
Gigantic, disproportionately increased investment in prevention
activities. We've got dramatically increased funding for drug
treatment programs, and we're trying to hook it to the
criminal-justice system. Three years ago, there were 12 drug courts.
Today there are 400. Before we leave office, there will be 1000. But
we still have over 50 percent of the dollars in law enforcement and
prisons. You have to pay for the current reflections of drug abuse.

Q: There appears to be growing Republican resistance to the emphasis
on treatment and prevention. They say the program is out of balance
and that you need to spend more, for example, on stopping
international sources of drugs.

A: We have broad based bipartisan support on the Hill for this
strategy. We are respectfully listening to differing points of view
from both parties. The president's counter drug budget has gone up
three years in a row , each year representing the largest drug budget
in history. The new investment was disproportionately for prevention
and treatment.

But we have increased the investment in interdiction and
law-enforcement. If you want more entry into the Coast Guard,
Air Force, intelligence, DEA, Caribbean interdiction . . . We'll
listen. But that shouldn't be at the expense of our enhanced
investment in prevention, treatment and linkages to the
criminal-justice system.

It is clear to me, having spent a good bit of my life in interdiction,
intelligence and military operations, that the biggest leverage point
is reducing the demand for drugs in the United States.

Q: A new advertising campaign is a key to your demand reduction
strategy. Critics say an expensive government campaign wouldn't be
necessary if the president campaigned more against drugs.

A: Were devoting less than 2%[$195 million] of the federal counter
drug budget and putting it into modern tools of communication. Where
getting the advertising [produced] free from 200+ advertising firms.
The actors' Guild has declined to take actors' fees.

We think it'll make a big difference. This is going to have a
significant impact in helping community coalitions, which really are
the heart and soul of the effort. Drug abuse in America will be turned
around by parents, educators, health professionals, religious leaders
and local law enforcement. This media campaign will back them up.

Were also going to get at least 100% private match for our money. I
tell people that this is one of the smartest investments in America's
future that we've ever made. This is a few bucks a head per child in
America. Every addicted adolescent in our country is a $2 million
dollar fee that the taxpayer has to face up to - the lifetime cost of
an infected 16 year-old in health care, criminal-justice, accident
rates.

Q: Did you accomplish what you wanted to on your European
trip?

A: One of our major objectives was to promote the notion of

multilateral cooperation. This is a global phenomenon. It's not
producers versus consumers. And we've been sort of slyly advancing the
notion, which is ethically correct, that our drug problem is going
down and yours is going up.

Q: Many press reports focused on your trip to the Netherlands, which
allows the sale of small amounts of marijuana and distributes heroin
to addicts. What did you learn there?

A: I learned about the ferociously aggressive law enforcement that
both Switzerland and the Netherlands started in about 1996. They've
had it - bam! They went after drug abuse and its public consequences,
particularly the Swiss police, who have incredible authority . . .
Many would argue they're asking law enforcement to sustain flawed drug
policy. . .

The other thing we did during the visit was czar started laying down
other people's comparative data. God, did it annoy them. I said drug
abuse is tied to societal problems . It's hard to determine causality.
But if you have high levels of crack cocaine use, there's high levels
of crime. We told the Dutch the comparative crime rates are higher
than the United States' -almost double in some cases. In some cases
there is much as four times higher than Germany, France, Belgium.
Comparative data, I know, is a flaky. But in everyone of them, their
crime rates are higher than ours.

That's1995 data. I don't know what it is today with their aggressive
policing. In the United States drug use is coming down and crime rates
plummeting.

Checked-by: "Rich O'Grady"