INSIDE TALK /WASHINGTON

GLOBAL REACH? The Drug Enforcement Administration is about to begin a major personnel shake-up designed to mollify critics who see its top brass as too short on practical experience and too prone to John Wayne-style tactics. The shuffle is timed to come just before the DEA steps up its overseas activities as part of the Bush Administration’s rapidly widening war on drugs.

The changes, to take effect early next month, will bring a number of DEA veterans with extensive field experience into top management positions at headquarters.

Among the major changes, Stephen H. Greene, former head of DEA’s international programs, will become chief of operations, the No. 3 slot in the agency, overseeing the aggressive intelligence-gathering missions that the Administration has ordered. Another key change will bring Ronald J. Caffrey, special agent-in-charge in Atlanta, to headquarters as deputy operations chief.

The shifts were engineered by Terrence M. Burke, a charismatic former CIA agent whose fast-track to power at DEA vaulted him from the No. 6 spot a year ago to his current post as acting administrator--pending the arrival of U.S. Judge Robert C. Bonner of Los Angeles, who will be the agency’s new chief. Burke is expected to wield power behind-the-scenes in drug-war planning sessions.

TOO SCARCE? Barbara Bush earned bouquets of roses earlier this month for her stellar diplomatic performance at the inauguration of Costa Rican President Rafael Calderon, but if White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu’s performance there receives anything, it’s likely to be the thorns.

An American serving on the U.S. delegation says Sununu passed up a dinner attended by several visiting Latin presidents the night before the ceremony, spending the time instead to look up Costa Rican relatives. The next day, while the First Lady drew enthusiastic cheers for marching to the inaugural with other foreign delegations and taking time to speak to excited onlookers, Sununu reportedly left early and failed to show up at a reception given later that evening.

“Shame on him!” Bush was said to have remarked later when told of Sununu’s behavior.

Said the U.S. delegation member: “About all the work the taxpayers got out of the chief of staff was a 15-minute private conversation he had with President (Alfredo) Cristiani of El Salvador on the night he arrived.”

REPORTS BUZZ again that former Texas businessman--and close friend of President Bush--Robert A. Mosbacher is about to resign his post as commerce secretary, possibly to return to private life.

Although spokesmen for the agency deny it officially, some aides say Mosbacher is disillusioned because the Cabinet post has not proved as important as he thought it would be. Others trace the secretary’s purported inclination to quit to his wife’s dissatisfaction with the Washington social scene.

President of her own cosmetics business, the striking Georgette Mosbacher took the capital by storm early in her husband’s tenure, but stumbled after her untimely arrival at a Washington luncheon took the limelight away from Marilyn Quayle--making for cool relations between the two ever since. Georgette Mosbacher also has run into criticism over charges that she has overstepped the bounds of propriety in representing her business in dealings with agencies. In recent weeks, she has visited Washington only rarely.