AUDITORS CRITICAL OF DRUG CZAR, STAFF TURNOVER

WASHINGTON - The hard-charging former general who's overseeing
American anti-drug efforts is a relentless taskmaster whose overworked
office has suffered disturbingly high turnover, auditors say in a
sobering new report released Thursday.

Drug czar Barry McCaffrey, whose responsibilities include a new
multimillion-dollar campaign targeting the Central Valley's covert
methamphetamine trade, comes under sustained fire in the highly
detailed audit ordered by Congress. The criticism includes suggestions
that McCaffrey's staff is stretched too thin to properly oversee
programs like the one now underway in nine Central Valley counties.

"Conflicts, high stress levels and demanding conditions have yielded a
difficult work environment," auditors with PriceWaterhouseCoopers
noted. "The workload situation has become problematic, given the
unfilled positions associated with recruitment and retention problems."

While praising the drug office's "effective and results-oriented
manner" in meeting external responsibilities, the auditors lambasted
the office's internal operations. The auditors specifically cited the
68 percent staff turnover during McCaffrey's tenure and the challenges
posed by rapid growth of the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area
program, or HIDTA.

The Central Valley region from Sacramento County south to Kern County
is now one of 31 regions nationwide identified for special funding and
coordination assistance under the HIDTA program. Lawmakers like the
program, and it's grown from five regions costing $25 million in 1990
to the 31 regions now costing about $192 million. However, while the
number of HIDTA regions has doubled during McCaffrey's four years as
director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the program's
budgets are still managed by only two financial officers.

"Thus, the workload has been handled through an increase in the
'operational tempo' of the organization in order to gain more results
from existing resources," auditors stated.

Auditors consider this particularly troublesome both because of the
danger of oversight mistakes and because so many other staffers are
devoted to supporting McCaffrey's intensive public outreach. A West
Point graduate and commanding public speaker who retired as a
four-star general, McCaffrey spends about one-quarter of his time
giving various interviews, speeches and public appearances. Auditors
estimated he makes some 386 public appearances a year - more than one
a day.

This has helped McCaffrey become the fourth-most-mentioned Cabinet
officer in the news media - behind the heads of the departments of
Defense, State and Justice. Auditors contend, though, that this also
has sucked up so much staff time that "there has been an erosion in
(the office's) ability to efficiently conduct its primary objectives."

Bill Ruzzamenti, the Fresno-based director of the Central Valley
HIDTA, acknowledged the drug office staff has seemed overworked and
potentially subject to burnout, but he stressed that they are also
highly capable.

"They are incredibly responsive," Ruzzamenti said. "They get back to
you very quickly. They are overworked, but it has not in any way
jeopardized their ability to do their job."

McCaffrey's allies, moreover, note that intensive travel and public
speaking are an integral part of his job's bully pulpit. Until
McCaffrey assumed the drug czar's job, first established over
President Reagan's objections in 1988, congressional Republicans had
delighted in calling the Clinton administration "AWOL on drugs."

McCaffrey will be making his first swing by the Central Valley HIDTA
on July 15, when he'll meet with region law enforcement officers. The
Valley's anti-meth effort is receiving $1.4 million this year through
the drug office program; it's considered a big boost by Valley police,
though it's only a small part of the federal government's $18 billion
anti-drug program supervised by McCaffrey.

"General McCaffrey is a committed public servant who believes deeply
in the mission and who gives his all, and he expects those around him
to do the same," said former California Democratic Assemblyman Tom
Umberg, who served about 30 months as McCaffrey's deputy.

A highly decorated, thrice-wounded Vietnam veteran who later commanded
the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division's sweep into the Euphrates
Valley during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, McCaffrey most recently has
been championing a newly approved $1.32 billion U.S. investment in
fighting the Colombian cocaine trade. A big chunk of the money will
pay for the Colombian army, which is fighting both drug dealers and
insurgents, to buy U.S. helicopters.

No stranger to conflict, including recent allegations published in the
New Yorker magazine that his Gulf War troops were overly aggressive,
McCaffrey had his staff counter the 55-page audit with their own
12-page response.

"They kind of missed the boat in terms of understanding what happens
here," drug office spokesman Bob Weiner said Thursday.

The occasionally combative written response includes the complaint
that auditors were "degrading the director's unquestioned personal
commitment to his duties" by questioning his public speaking and need
for support staff.

"When he is meeting, for instance, in ... Vallejo, California,
supporting staff are engaged in ... promoting coalitions," wrote
McCaffrey's chief of staff, Janet Crist.

More generally, McCaffrey's staff cited alleged "errors of fact,
serious omissions or contradictions" in the audit report. Congress
ordered the audit last year after lawmakers said they were "dismayed"
that McCaffrey kept asking for more workers despite the high attrition
rate on his staff.

Crist wrote that the drug office's turnover rate is "comparable to
those of other agencies" within the White House, and further asserted
that recruiting has been no problem because the office has filled
"more than 100 new civilian and military positions since 1996."

Still, various deputy director positions were left vacant for 112 out
of 153 months studied by auditors. Moreover, auditors discovered there
had been an overall 68 percent turnover on the civilian staff during
McCaffrey's reign. Last year, for instance, five of the seven people
working in McCaffrey's executive office left, while four of the seven
public affairs staffers departed. Auditors attributed the turnover to
McCaffrey's "leadership style" as well as the heavy workload.

This could pose special problems next year, auditors warn, when a new
president comes in and appoints a new director to head an office with
little institutional memory.

"A military structure has been imposed on a previously civilian
culture," auditors said. "As incompatibilities have developed, people
have made the decision to leave."