Czar without a throne?

WASHINGTON is a bureaucratic zoo. Incoming drug czar William Bennett will soon learn that nothing is less welcome to the menagerie's management than a coordinator. In government, a coordinator is defined as someone accountable for the results of bureaucracies over which be/she has no control.

In the decades since Nixon made the war on drugs a federal priority, Congress has allocated billions to end the scourge. This spending spawned an alphabet soup of acronyms: DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse), INM (Bureau for International Narcotics Matters), ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms). Even the FBI and the NSC have a piece of the pie: the counterterrorism/narcotics staff. There is hardly a seat in the Cabinet that does not have its stake in the drug war.

Bennett's peril is that he is a czar without a throne. Various Cabinet chieftains hold the keys to his empire and, consequently, to his success. He is a de facto Cabinet officer without a Cabinet department.

For a recent analogy, one might look at the late Bill Donovan, the Wall Street lawyer who created America's modern intelligence apparatus. John Ranelagh's book, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA, should be immediate reading for Bennett.

In World War 11, Donovan was chosen by FDR to be his intelligence czar among his duties being to coordinate two key activities encroaching on other bureaucratic turn intelligence analysis and operations. Like Bennett, he faced a decentralized bureaucracy, scattered throughout such agencies as the FBI, War Department, and State Department, which were headed by hostile appointees, notably the formidable J. Edgar Hoover. Donovan's immediate solution was to create his own bureaucracy, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which he headed and staffed. Donovan quickly discovered that having the President's blessing was only a start. Rival agencies immediately moved in to curtail his influence and to build their own budgets.

Coordination of the U.S. intelligence effort took thirty years to accomplish. Seen thus, it is probably natural that some twenty years after the explosion of the drug problem, Congress has decided it's time to coordinate matters. This may be a new law of bureaucratic life-cycles: problem, piecemeal programs, no progress, centralization.

Bennett comes on the scene at the "no progress" stage. This is his choice: carve out a bureaucracy by moving to gain control of the budgets and personnel of the myriad agencies already involved in the drug war, or settle for the bully pulpit. Although Bennett is effective ftom the pulpit, he will soon find drug abuse differs from education. There is, after all, no real constituency for educational mediocrity, only differences over means for achieving excellence. Drug abuse is different. Vice has its champions. Like the prohibition of alcohol, the illegal trade in drugs has spawned vast financial empires, corruption, and people willing to pay high prices and risk jail to satisfy their appetite for drugs.

Curbing the appetite and curtailing supply are the two basic approaches. Abuse in this hemisphere is as old as our history, and the prospects of progTess-in any swift sense-are dim. Curtailing supply, on the other hand, holds promise. But it will require more than an armada around our borders. A national effort to uncover the extent of official corruption here at home is vital. Such efforts will require everyone from investment bankers to prison guards bribed by inmates. Consider this: if we can't keep illegal drugs out of prisons, how and where can we?

On foreign shores, the problem is even tougher. In Panama, we are already familiar with the old dilemma of when to ignore the corrupt drugtrafficking leaders because their nations are important in geostrategic terms. When, for example, should we put pressure on a producing country-like Turkey-by withholding arms sales? Or Colombia, in the form of trade sanctions or extensions of loans? Does one make the problem worse or better with such measures? In short, when does foreign cooperation on some of our national interests merit a blind eye on a lack of cooperation in helping us handle our drug problem?

How serious, after all, are we about drugs? At a time when it is suggested that college students should lose federal funds for a single drug infraction, should we not also be re-examining the government's threshold regarding the limits of Realpolilik?

THESE ARE the issues Bennett must face. Heretofore, our drug war has had many colonels but no general. That has made it easy to duck the difficult questions. No one, after all, was finally and irrevocably in charge. Now Bennett is the Supreme Commander. His political future-not unsubstantial-is also at stake. No one expects him to end the drug plague, but people will look for more than speechmaking. Sermonizing will fast wear thin to those on the front lines. Parents, policemen, urban officials, and the media will see whether or not our drug emperor has any clothes on.

Washington's conventional wisdom says he will head for the bully pulpit. The betting from my corner is that Bennett will size up the matter and follow Donovan's example. But if Bennett chooses to build a throneanother government agency with its inevitable bureaucracy, something conservatives inherently dislike-his greatest accomplishment could be forging the weaponry for a war on drugs that is real. This will entail the bureaucratic battle of a lifetime.