Drug Czar Attacked on Media Campaign

The nation’s top drug official came under fire Wednesday for allegedly ignoring possible fraud and overbilling in a $1-billion anti-drug media campaign and for accepting an unreported “personal favor” from a public-relations contractor.

Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who heads the White House drug policy office, denied any wrongdoing. But House Republicans said they have serious questions about whether his office’s massive media campaign has fallen into “disarray” due to mismanagement and failed oversight.

At a morning-long hearing that often grew contentious, members of a subcommittee of the House Government Reform panel heard evidence suggesting that advertising giant Ogilvy & Mather--which has billed McCaffrey’s office $187 million in the last two years for work on the nationwide anti-drug media campaign--has charged rates dramatically above industry norms and submitted “irregular” or falsified billing records for its work.

McCaffrey’s office, known as the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, already has withheld $13.5 million billed by Ogilvy & Mather for anti-drug messages the company helped get on the air. But congressional critics said the office has been slow to answer concerns about the firm, failing to even initiate an outside audit some seven months after the idea was first raised.

“Is the public being gouged?” asked Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.), who chaired the hearing.

McCaffrey’s aides and his supporters in Congress said no fraud has been established. They charged that the latest imbroglio is a nonissue being stirred up by Republicans as a way of hurting the Clinton administration.

Ogilvy & Mather said in a statement that it has billed the White House drug office for its work “within the industry standard, and if we learn of any accounting problems, we will address them and make necessary adjustments.”

The media campaign, begun in 1998, has become a cornerstone in McCaffrey’s efforts to dissuade young people from experimenting with drugs.

But the media program has gotten the so-called drug czar into hot water before--most notably early this year when it was disclosed that the drug policy office had quietly been giving major television networks millions of dollars in financial credit for incorporating anti-drug messages in shows such as “E.R.” and “Beverly Hills 90210.” Civil libertarians and the arts community decried the tactic as an unwarranted intrusion by government into what the public watches.

But unlike most past attacks, McCaffrey found his own personal veracity challenged in a report prepared for the subcommittee by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

In the report, investigators detailed a favor that McCaffrey accepted from another public-relations firm active in the media campaign, posing a potential conflict of interest.

The issue grew out of a critical article that the New Yorker magazine published in May. It charged that during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, troops led by McCaffrey--then an Army general--used unnecessary force in a battle with Iraqi soldiers following a cease-fire.

McCaffrey branded the article “nonsense” at the time it appeared.

GAO investigators found that McCaffrey received professional advice on how to handle the fallout from the article from Paul Johnson, a regional president for Fleishman-Hilliard Inc. The public-relations powerhouse receives about $10 million a year from McCaffrey’s office for its media campaign work.

“Director McCaffrey denied to us that anyone had assisted him in his response to the article,” GAO investigators said in their report. But investigators said Johnson acknowledged that McCaffrey had called him because he was very concerned about the effect the article might have on the war on drugs, and Johnson said he spent three to four hours helping to shape a response to the New Yorker and also referred McCaffrey to a libel attorney.

Johnson said he did not bill McCaffrey or the drug policy office for his time because “he did this as a personal favor to Director McCaffrey,” according to the report.

Through his spokesman, McCaffrey said that there was nothing inappropriate.

Johnson could not be reached for comment, and officials at Fleishman-Hilliard said they would not be able to discuss the issue.