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Love Canal
Q: Looking back on it, would you have pulled the plug and let the media, without any sort of spin doctoring, do their thing on Love Canal?
MR. COSTLE: Would I try to spin it? I don't think so. I think this was an issue that the public needed to learn about from third-party sources. Remember, we were discovering the issue at the same time the public was. We knew that it would be a crisis. But it would also remind the American people that the Agency's mission wasn't just about flowers and ferns, that it was about public health.
I could feel the steel caucus and the utility people, their allies on the Hill, and everybody else gnawing at our heels. I said, "It's time to remind everybody what this is really all about." So I didn't try to spin doctor it.
The one thing that really bothered me was the leak of that chromosomal study, because I knew that it had not been peer reviewed, and it had to be. The study was leaked from the White House, not from us.
Although we never were in control of the way the story developed, I was all for getting it out. I think it was either Chris or I who said "ticking time bomb," and the phrase got picked up. Time published that wonderful cover that looked like a split photograph, with the upper part appearing normal and the bottom part a skull, the message being that what is lurking beneath the surface here, that we don't know about, would be very harmful.