AFTER BELLAMY

Former Pennsylvania senator Harris Wofford (D), who helped launched the Peace Corps as an aide to President John F. Kennedy and then was its associate director, is rumored to be a strong contender to go back and head the agency.

White House sources say this is not a done deal and they say there is nothing to rumors that President Clinton had offered Wofford the job and that he had accepted. If picked, Wofford would replace former New York city council member and former volunteer Carol Bellamy.

U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, in a move seen as a coup for U.N. Ambassador Madeleine K. Albright, named Bellamy to be head of UNICEF, keeping that position in American hands after the Europeans launched a strong bid for it.

Wofford, 69, elected largely on the strength of his campaign for improved health care, was defeated in November by then-Rep. Rick Santorum in the Republican takeover of the Senate.

Possessive Missing, Shalala Blistered

Forget that old cliche about strange bedfellows. Things are getting downright weird in the political bedroom these days. First, Donna E. Shalala, secretary of health and human services, came under a blistering attack by radio talk show king Rush Limbaugh for allegedly maligning those who served in Vietnam.

Shalala, on the weekend talk show "Capital Gang," said: "We sent not the best and the brightest sons to Vietnam. We sent young men from small towns and rural areas, we sent kids from the neighborhoods I grew up in and we exempted the children of the wealthy and of the privileged and it tore this country apart and we must never do that again."

Panelist Eleanor Clift chimed in: "Actually, the people who went were the best and brightest," to which Shalala responded: "Absolutely."

But the blistering calls and faxes started coming in, the talk show lines were afire. Some groups, like Veterans of Foreign Wars, demanded an apology; the faxers and talk show callers furiously demanded Shalala's head.

But yesterday the liberal Clift joined Josette Shiner, managing editor of the conservative Washington Times, who also was on the television show, to tell conservative talkmeisters G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver L. North that Shalala was misinterpreted and getting a bum rap. The Times editorialized on her behalf.

Liddy gave the matter a fair hearing, Shiner said. North was turned around, Clift said. Shalala, in a letter to the American Legion, said she was talking about the sons of the "best and brightest," a mocking reference to the self-proclaimed elitists in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who got us into the war, not being sent to fight it. The transcript leaves out the possessive "best and brightest's."

"The irony," said Shiner, "is she was trying to say the exact opposite of what her critics" said she was saying.

Nina Solarz Pleads Guilty to Misdemeanors

Nina Solarz, executive director of the Fund for Peace and wife of former New York representative Stephen J. Solarz (D), pleaded guilty yesterday in federal court here to two misdemeanors.

One is a federal charge for writing a $5,200 check on her husband's account at the now-defunct House Bank while knowing that she didn't have the funds to cover it. The second charge is a D.C. Code violation for taking property that she didn't have a right to. In this case, she took $7,500 from a group she was president of, the American Friends of Turkish Women, leaving $7.54 in the account.

She faces a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a $25,000 fine on the federal charge and 90 days and $300 on the D.C. charge. U.S. District Judge Stanley Harris set sentencing for June 1.

Stephen Solarz, who was not in court yesterday, issued a statement saying, "I loved, admired and respected my wife when I married her 28 years ago. I still do and I always will."

To Match His Style, Kostmayer Gets New Boot

Former Pennsylvania representative Peter H. Kostmayer has been given the heave-ho as regional director of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Philadelphia headquarters. The move was made quietly several weeks ago by EPA boss Carol M. Browner, but environmentalists, already disenchanted with the Clintonites, picked up the scent last week and are saying Kostmayer was just too green for the Clinton White House.

Greenpeace lobbyist Rick Hind said yesterday that Kostmayer was getting the boot "for doing his job. Some may see it as annoying, but he {Kostmayer} asked common-sense questions about a dioxin-producing proposed pulp and paper mill in West Virginia," running afoul of Gov. Gaston Caperton (D). Kostmayer was also said to have rankled Virginia officials over the Clean Air Act and Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) over a highway project.

Word at the EPA is that this one had been coming for a long time. Sources said Kostmayer's departure had nothing to do with issues but with his style, which was characterized as a "ready, shoot, aim" approach that constantly offended state, local and congressional types as well as industry folks. It was a style that clashed with Browner's, who likes to consult and touch all bases before acting. Beats "retreat first and negotiate later," Hind said.

Forrister Getting Energized

Clinton has selected Dirk Forrister, special assistant to Energy Secretary Hazel R. O'Leary for energy efficiency and an aide to former representative Jim Cooper (D) of Tennessee, to be assistant secretary for legislation at the Energy Department.

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.