DRUG POLICY

By Elaine Shannon/Washington

House Speaker Newt Gingrich, anxious to right himself after a bruising year, is turning his guns on a retired four-star general: BARRY MCCAFFREY, President Clinton's drug czar. "Dismal. Baloney," GINGRICH scoffed at McCaffrey's antidrug strategy. "I met with General McCaffrey two months ago and said, 'I want a World War II-style victory plan--a decisive, all-out, cataclysmic effort to break the back of the drug culture."

McCaffrey, who saw combat in Vietnam and Operation Desert Storm, responded to the Speaker's salvo with bemusement. He noted that the Administration is already doing nearly everything Gingrich demands, starting with a $178 million antidrug media campaign to be honchoed by none other than G.O.P. virtuecrat William Bennett.

--By Elaine Shannon/Washington