UNDESIGNATED DIRECTOR

By DOUGLAS WALLER WASHINGTON

ARE WHITE HOUSE NOMINATIONS cursed? Retired General Michael P.C. Carns was the surest bet Bill Clinton had for an easy confirmation as CIA director--Harvard Business School graduate, Vietnam veteran and former vice chief of staff of the Air Force. "You couldn't find someone with a more exemplary career than Mike Carns'," said a White House aide. "But now you can't get a nominee through unless he's one of the apostles."

Or at least an apostle who doesn't face a problem with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Last week Carns withdrew his nomination after FBI agents informed him that he may have violated immigration and labor laws by bringing a Filipino to the U.S. in 1987 to live in his home. Hoping to make the Carns debacle a one-day story, the White House quickly chose as his replacement Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch, who had turned down the spymaster job once but now reluctantly agreed to accept it.

Within two weeks of the President's February announcement that Carns would replace embattled CIA Director R. James Woolsey, anonymous tips began trickling into the FBI and Senate Intelligence Committee that the retired general had a domestic-help problem. When he left Clark Air Base in the Philippines in 1987, Carns agreed to bring back the family cook's nephew, Elbino Runas. The INS allows U.S. soldiers stationed abroad to bring back a domestic for up to four years if they certify that the worker was a servant and will be employed as household help in the U.S. But Carns admitted in interviews last week that Runas never performed work in either the family's Philippine or American homes.

Carns says that he and Runas had a falling out in 1992 after he refused to seek an extension on the Filipino's visa. In interviews with FBI agents this month, White House officials say, Runas claimed that the general welched on an agreement to employ him and leveled what were described as personal accusations against members of Carns' family. Those "venomous and abusive accusations," says Carns, are "all without merit." But he did "accept responsibility" for filling out false information on immigration forms and admitted he had "failed to properly compensate" Runas as part of their agreement. When National Security Adviser Tony Lake told Carns that his confirmation "would be a tawdry and nasty process," as one senior Clinton aide put it, the general called it quits.

Late Friday afternoon Clinton summoned Deutch, 56, to the Oval Office and practically ordered him to take the job. The former M.I.T. provost has a reputation as a blustery and tough manager at the Pentagon. The cia, says a congressional intelligence staffer, needs "a permanent leader who they know has the ear of the President." The White House insists that will be the case. As a sweetener to get Deutch to accept, his CIA job will be elevated to a Cabinet-level post, a position it has not enjoyed since William Casey ran the spy agency for Ronald Reagan. Casey's successors were not put in the Cabinet in order to keep them out of the White House policymaking process. Clinton aides, including the optimists, expect Deutch to be easily confirmed, even with his higher status.

--With reporting by James Carney/Washington

With reporting by JAMES CARNEY/WASHINGTON