A SOLDIER STORMS D.C.

General Barry McCaffrey is one of the country's bravest military heroes.
Now, as he fights the war on drugs, he's taking on an entirely different
enemy-the way Washington does business.

By Claire Shipman

General Barry McCaffrey is used to winning battles. He is a legend in
military annals for his daring "left-hook" infantry maneuver in the Persian
Gulf War, which cut off and decimated Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard.
These days, McCaffrey, the nation's drug czar, is equally unstoppable. Last
August, he was touring border towns in Mexico when he learned that a drug
cartel was planning an assassination attempt on him. In his military
vernacular, McCaffrey responded simply, "We'll continue to march," and the
attack never materialized.

Three years ago, McCaffrey seemed an ideal antidote to Bill Clinton's drug
problem. With elections coming, Republicans had stumbled upon a critical
weakness in the president's campaign strategy: Though the economy was
booming, inflation was low, and welfare rolls were shrinking, there was one
trend that wasn't going in Bill Clinton's direction-the number of American
teenagers using drugs. After a steady decline through the late '80s and
early '90s, drug use began to spike upward, but no one in the
administration was paying much attention. In his first term, in fact,
Clinton had slashed the budget of the Office of National Drug Control
Policy, and its head, former New York City police commissioner Lee Brown,
couldn't master its bully pulpit. Republicans sensed a vulnerability.

So did White House trouble shooter Rahm Emanuel, who sought the perfect
replacement for Brown-someone who could define the office much as C.
Everett Koop had personified the surgeon general's office. Emanuel found a
four-star solution: McCaffrey had an impeccable record of national service
and an air of moral certitude that reassured Democrats and stymied
Republicans. "He's a general who could have done anything in life, and he's
chosen to fight drugs with us," Emanuel declares.

Ironically, McCaffrey was the very general who had been rebuffed when
visiting the White House in 1993 by a young Clintonite who reportedly told
him, "I don't speak to people in uniform." This time around, at his White
House debut in March 1996, McCaffrey was royally feted. The White House
press corps was introduced to a West Point graduate who, at his retirement
just days earlier, was the army's youngest four-star general-and its most
highly decorated. Among other achievements, he served as commander in chief
of the U.S. Southern Command, was a staff assistant to General Colin
Powell, and was a military liaison to NATO. He earned his medals leading
U.S. troops in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and Iraq. After a spirited
45-minute session, members of the crotchety White House press corps gushed
that McCaffrey was a cut above the usual Clinton appointee.

As I followed McCaffrey out of the briefing room that day, far enough
behind the general that he didn't notice me, I got a tip-off that this
warrior had a political side: The reporters, I heard McCaffrey growl to an
aide, had been every bit as thickheaded and self-important as he had
expected. Minutes later, when I sat across from the general for a
one-on-one interview, the diplomat, complimentary and gracious, was back.

McCaffrey's ardor for his job, he says now, was formed in the 1970s, when
he watched drug use devastate the military. While stationed in Germany, he
explains, "I saw [drug-related] gang rapes in the barracks, knife brawls in
the mess hall-and we really went after the drug problem." In his two years
on the job, McCaffrey, 55, has indeed become the drug war-waging leader
whom the White House sought, traveling the country to preach the saving
grace of drug treatment and restoring the high profile of the drug czar
office. But he has also been remarkably willing to challenge Washington's
status quo.

Take, for instance, the fight McCaffrey had with Donna Shalala, the Health
and Human Services secretary, last spring. Shalala, one of the most
politically savvy cabinet members, was hours away from announcing the
controversial decision that the administration, as part of its campaign
against AIDS, would help fund needle-exchange programs for I.V. drug
addicts. But on the verge of the announcement, Shalala learned that
President Clinton had had a change of heart: The government would support
the programs in principle but not with money. Clinton's reversal was, at
least in part, the result of vigorous-some say underhanded-lobbying by
McCaffrey.

What exactly McCaffrey did in the fight over needle-exchange programs is a
matter of some debate. "It was sort of a bull-in-a-china-shop routine,"
says one White House insider. Some contend that he even rallied Republicans
to kick up a fuss. Staffers for Illinois congressman Dennis Hastert,
chairman of Newt Gingrich's Task Force for a Drug-Free America, admit that
they were advised by McCaffrey aides to pump up their rhetoric. "We were
told to do anything we could to affect the decision or delay it," explains
Pete Jeffries, a Hastert aide. "The more ruckus, the better."

"McCaffrey's office was out of control," complains one senior
administration official. But others appreciate McCaffrey's intensity.
"Look, HHS lost the needle-exchange issue, and they hate losing," says one
Clinton aide. "I hope everywhere he goes, he causes problems-that's what
his position is all about, to break through the clutter."

From McCaffrey's point of view, he did nothing out of line. Sitting in his
spacious quarters a block from the White House, the general exudes a sort
of suave candor. "From the start, I said I had no monopoly on wisdom," he
professes. "I told Donna Shalala that at the end of the day, I would
support her decision and the president's decision. But until then.ellipse"

Meanwhile, as that campaign was under way last spring, McCaffrey found that
he was suddenly alienating a good portion of the Congressional Black
Caucus. His stand on needle exchange so enraged caucus members that they
demanded his ouster. And California representative Maxine Waters protested
that McCaffrey hadn't directed any of his $195 million advertising budget
to African-American-owned media. The two had one awkward conversation in
which a pained McCaffrey brought up that he was a member of the NAACP,
while Waters asked "what that had to do with the price of tea in China."
The call ended, says Waters, with McCaffrey hanging up on her.

Politics aside, after five years of rising teenage drug use, McCaffrey's
office is buoyed by last year's numbers, which show signs of a plateau.
(Critics respond that the changes in the latest numbers on drug use are too
small to be significant.) And while McCaffrey wants to leave his office
having made a significant dent in the drug problem, he's a realist. "This
is not a problem we can put behind us," he says. "We have to educate each
new generation of kids."

For now, McCaffrey appears to be polishing up his diplomacy. He stopped by
the White House recently to offer an apology to press secretary Mike
McCurry for having issued errant press releases on the dangers of needle
exchanges. And Shalala and McCaffrey insist that they still have a warm
working relationship. At her suggestion, the two officials had a
peacemaking lunch. In her characteristically blunt fashion, Shalala told
McCaffrey that she found his behavior irresponsible and unprofessional. He
simply smiled, and the conversation moved on.

Checked-by: Richard Lake