WASHINGTON INSIGHT

SECOND AFFRONT: The allied air campaign over Bosnia may have helped bring about a cease-fire, but it has spawned a second conflict--a public relations war between the Air Force and the Navy. The dispute began early this month after the Navy, ever-mindful of the benefits of TV footage, invited the TV networks to base camera crews on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. The stroke ensured that coverage of bombing missions would center on carrier-based warplanes. The Air Force would have loved similar exposure, but its planes were based at Aviano, Italy, where the Italian government prohibits camera crews. Miffed, the Air Force fired its own salvo, sending word to reporters that Air Force fighter-bombers had been far more accurate than those of the Navy. The Navy then trumped that, persuading the Pentagon to use Navy Tomahawk missiles against Bosnian Serb targets, which it eventually did. Stay tuned.

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DREAR DIARY 2: The capital continues to chortle over the private ramblings of nearly vamoosed Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.), whose diary, being excerpted daily by the Washington Post, reveals a man whose passions include memorializing the inane. His July 22, 1993, account of a bridge game: “There was a woman. . . . Sexy. 45 to 50. Had a jacket that was sort of two-thirds unbuttoned . . . showing, as best as I could tell, bare breasts. God, was she a good player. I was so fascinated in watching her bid and play that I could hardly concentrate on the breasts.” Or this, from Feb. 10, 1992: “I also talked to [name omitted] today and said, ‘Almost every day now you’re forgetting something.’ He said, ‘What’d I forget?’ I said, ‘You forgot to put the Slim Fast in the refrigerator.’ He goes, ‘Damn,’ he snaps his fingers.” Or this, about the cleaning abilities of his chief of staff, Elaine Franklin. “When Elaine’s here, boy, I take all the little implements off my desk and off my chest and put them on the bed and she uses furniture polish and dusts everything with Endust or whatever that stuff is. Pledge. Pledge furniture polish I guess. And we Pine-Sol the floor.”

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UNDERSTOOD: When Christina Jeffrey was fired as House historian last January after just days on the job, the friend and former colleague of House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said she would have her day of reckoning. That day has come, sort of. Gingrich fired Jeffrey after she came under criticism for comments she wrote in evaluating a course on the Holocaust for the Education Department in 1986. Many interpreted the remarks as anti-Semitic. Several weeks ago, Jeffrey met with Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who has subsequently declared that while her 1986 remarks were “inarticulate . . . and unsophisticated,” the league does not consider her anti-Semitic and would have no objection to her as House historian now. But he stressed that the organization was not wrong to commend Gingrich for his swift action at the time because Jeffrey, an associate professor of political science and public administration at Kennesaw State College in Marietta, Ga., had not yet clarified her position.

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MIGHTY FADE: In Washington, a fall from power often leaves the once-mighty wandering in obscurity through the very halls where they were once dominant figures. Former House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) showed up recently at a Capitol office where his name once was golden. Foley--whose tall frame, white hair and gentlemanly manner are familiar to millions of Americans--was ousted from office less than a year ago. Yet as Foley tells friends, the young man behind the receptionist desk looked him over and asked: “Could I have your name, please?”