Inside Clinton's War

Bill Clinton has the visage of a wartime President. He looks tired, friends say, because the war's first week kept him up virtually around the clock. Days were spent selling the war to aides and Congress, and nights were filled with chats with leaders around the world. As a bid to encourage NATO unity, Clinton told his closest counterparts, Gerhard Schroder of Germany and Tony Blair of Britain, to call him whenever the urge struck. They took him up on the offer. "He doesn't care about time zones," explains a friend. "He tells these guys, 'Call me anytime, day or night.'" Those conversations, which were frequent and interminable, abated last week, but the strain the war has taken on Clinton isn't hard to see. During Thursday night's state dinner for Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, Clinton dueled with drowsiness, rubbing his eyes as cellist Yo-Yo Ma played a spirited Gershwin tune.

Clinton is settling into the fight in other ways. In the first few days of the air war against Serbia, he telephoned the Pentagon every evening to make sure all the American pilots had returned safely from their bombing runs. Two weeks later, Clinton no longer calls; the generals, he knows, will ring him if anyone gets shot down.

And last week Clinton executed the most important order of the war since its beginning on March 24: he granted a request from NATO Commander General Wesley Clark for 24 Apache helicopters and 18 long-range missile launchers. Those weapons might not sound pivotal in a war in which three different kinds of American heavy bombers have already seen action, until you consider the nearly 3,000 fully armed support G.I.s who follow those weapons everywhere they go. Even as Clinton, his aides and his allies insisted that they were not contemplating a ground war, the President was in the process of moving soldiers onto Balkan soil.

Before giving a green light to the chopper mission, the President passed the war's first week by studying Pentagon target plans, testing allied support for such a move and asking top advisers for their opinions. One weekend morning, while Clinton worked the phones with leaders overseas, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Secretary of Defense William Cohen and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Henry Shelton shuttled for an hour between the Oval Office and the patio outside, alternately answering Clinton's questions and enjoying an incandescent spring day. Finally the aides left the President alone to decide whether to deploy the Army's air cavalry. A few minutes later, Clinton summoned Cohen and Shelton back in. "I want to go with the Apaches," he said.