WASHINGTON INSIGHT

DON’T PRINT THIS: The War of Vituperative Memos is over, leaving a mid-level bureaucrat victorious over the director of the National Institutes of Health. But keep an eye out for partisan politics--cloaked in competing vows to advance science and to save taxpayers money. . . . It began when NIH Director Dr. Bernadine P. Healy sought the printing of 32,000 copies of an NIH “strategic plan,” laying out a “vision” for new research into tough diseases. She prescribed five-color graphics on pricey paper, plus first-class mailings to 20,000 NIH investigators, at a cost of $166,542. . . . Outraged at the order, Boyd H. Work Jr., publications manager at the parent Department of Health and Human Services, called it “extravagant profligacy” in a memo to his boss. He wondered acidly whether Healy, a George Bush appointee who is leaving June 30, had a plan that “truly reflects the vision of the Clinton Administration.” . . . Healy fired back with a memo suggesting that Work was an “apparatchik of the Brezhnev-era Kremlin, not . . . a fellow American.” She termed the plan vital to “influencing the direction of research” and said she had the backing of HHS Secretary Donna Shalala. . . . Asked about the tiff, HHS spokesman Victor Zonana said that only 2,000 copies will be published because top HHS officials agree with Work that the order was “clearly extravagant, given the Clinton Administration’s austerity plan to reduce the deficit.” Healy, who may use the publication in a contemplated run next year against Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), said she “will be disappointed if the public does not have access to this document.”