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Top EPA personnel
[JULY 29, 1993]
Q: Mr. Reilly, the last time we spoke, you described your one-hour meeting with President Bush, as you were deliberating whether or not to take the job at EPA. Can you describe now your top personnel?
MR. REILLY: I can recall that Bill Ruckelshaus had indicated to me early on that there were two problems endemic to the White House-EPA relationship. One was the OMB regulatory review relationship and the other was personnel. I found that the promise that President Bush had made to me that there would be no one I didn't want at the Agency, which obviously meant that we both had a veto, was kept. It was hard slogging, there was a lot of negotiation. My first nominee was Terry Davies as Assistant Administrator for Policy. He was, I think, the lone Democrat in the crowd and he was the last one agreed to by the White House. White House personnel simply held hostage Terry Davies until they made sure the rest of the complement was to their liking.
I think that was a big mistake and they came to regret it. It meant that the Office of Policy, Planning and Evaluation had no champion and was not effectively represented in the formulation of the Clean Air Act. It might have been a somewhat different Act had they been included. The staff there was somewhat critical of parts of it. But, as Counsel to the President, Boyden Gray used to complain about not having OPPE involved in it, he was quick and generous in acknowledging that it was his and the White House's fault. They hadn't given me Terry Davies until the Clean Air Act had been forwarded to Congress.
Bill Rosenberg, a Michigan developer and former energy official in the Ford Administration, came to me with the very strong endorsement of Bob Teeter, who'd been central in the President's election. Rosenberg wanted to be Deputy, as I recall. Clearly his energy and aggressiveness and imagination would be valuable to the new organization. But, his lack of EPA and environmental experience did not, in my view, fit him so obviously for Deputy as for Assistant Administrator for Air, which is where we put him. I thought his relationship with Teeter would bode very well for our working with the White House and his obvious energy would be a wonderful asset in seeing through the first major legislative program that we wanted. That proved correct, even though there later was considerable anxiety and hand-wringing about him in the White House. He did the job the President and I asked him to do and the President's domestic policy would have been much poorer without Bill Rosenberg. But he drew the lightning of resentment about our very strong Clean Air bill.
We chose LaJuana Wilcher for Assistant Administrator for Water. I can remember she came to me with the highest endorsement of Senator Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, who called to say that probably the Senator from New York or California or Illinois, frequently had candidates of great quality and distinction to press upon a government agency head, but he had never had one, as Senator from Kentucky, of the likes of LaJuana Wilcher. That got my attention, so I agreed to see her, even though I had all but decided on a different candidate, a Congressional aide.
I remember I asked her what she thought of my having begun the process to review for possible veto the Two Forks Dam, a huge project in Colorado. She looked very serious and paused and said, "I think it was a mistake." Well, you can imagine that was one of the most controversial decisions I had made. There was a very heated debate at that time within the Administration and in Congress about what I had done and a great concern about it in some quarters in Denver and other parts of the West. For the prospective Assistant Administrator for Water to tell me to my face that she didn't agree with it, I thought was very brave and interesting. I respected her independence and obvious integrity. Clearing her was no problem because Senator McConnell had been one of the two Senators who had endorsed President Bush before the convention.
Tim Atkeson, the Assistant Administrator for International Activities, was a name whom the White House had already cleared on a list for the job. He was an old friend and colleague, much admired, of mine. I'd worked for him on the Council on Environmental Quality in the early '70s. So that was an easy choice.
For General Counsel, I can recall, it came down to two candidates. One was a lawyer with a New York City firm who, no doubt, would've done fine but to me lacked drive, didn't look particularly imaginative or energetic. The other was Don Elliott who was a very creative, positive can-do, law professor from Yale, an expert on administrative law and very much interested in economic incentives and pollution prevention and innovative new directions in environmental law. He was someone that colleagues found sometimes abrasive and professorial. He gave good service to me and I never regretted that choice. I thought he did an outstanding job.
Don Clay was a career figure. He was about my fourth choice, frankly, for Assistant Administrator for Waste. I was never confident that I could get him through the White House. In the end, White House Chief of Staff Sununu agreed to his appointment reluctantly late one evening. Sununu called me the next morning to say that he had changed his mind. I was able to say I had already offered the job to Clay. I remember Sununu said, "Well, he's part and parcel of that gang over there and I'm going to be watching him very closely. He's on probation as far as I'm concerned. If he steps out of line over the next six months, we're going to yank him."
In fact, Clay had built that marvelous air staff that Rosenberg wielded so effectively. He deserved a great deal of credit for that. He had the respect of people inside the Agency and I thought would immediately be perceived in the Congress as a non-political figure, a professional, which the Waste Office badly needed, given the history of scandals in the early '80s. I thought he also understood the need for reform of some of those laws. He hadn't grown up with them, he wasn't wedded to them, and he could rethink them. He also was a very good manager and that's one of the most difficult offices in the place to manage.
Linda Fisher was Chief of Staff to my predecessor, Lee Thomas. She also had been Assistant Administrator for Policy, Planning, and Evaluation. She had been very heavily involved in the reauthorization of the Superfund Law and had made some enemies in that, as anybody who is effective will. She was interested in international activities at the time, but I frankly thought that I wanted a new face there. Someone not identified with the previous Administration speaking for me internationally. But, I concluded that she would be very good at Pesticides and Toxic Substances. I think she is outstanding and is qualified to be a future Administrator. She knew the Agency well and was very effective. She won the trust of everybody who dealt with her. She gave me some of the most objective, and rational, and clear briefings of anyone. She was a key negotiator on the environmental provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement. She is a star.
The Deputy is a slot that the White House paid a good deal of attention to and we actually had some arguments over it. There were a couple of candidates that the White House pressed on me whom I did not find suitable. One I'll tell you a story about. I didn't know the candidate personally and so I called Al Alm, former Deputy Administrator of EPA, to ask if he knew this person. He was in Boston at the time, in his office. He paused upon hearing the name and said, "I have in front of me the Boston Telephone Directory. If I open it at random and select a name, I will do a better job for you at finding a Deputy than the one you've mentioned." So, that took care of that.
I had interviewed Hank Habicht and thought that I wanted to find a place for him at the Agency. I had known him somewhat previously - had come in contact with him when he was Assistant Attorney General and then when Clean Sites Inc. was looking for a new President. He very much wanted to be Deputy and I thought we had a very consistent understanding of the needs facing the Agency and the role of the Deputy that I envisioned. I told the White House I didn't want their candidate, considered him weak and unqualified. The individual had some political support, but I wanted a real Deputy. They said, "Look, just take this person and keep him out on the road and have your Chief of Staff run the Agency."
I said, "I don't want to do that. I want a genuine Deputy who knows the place, who does the job, who is Mr. Inside, who is effective and respected, and who will work with me as a colleague." That's what I got in Hank Habicht. Beyond even my high expectations, Habicht proved outstanding. I think the Agency came to see him, having had some reservations at first because of his history as Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan years, as a thorough-going professional - insightful, sensitive, a very good manager, and a very bright prodder toward total quality management and toward reform of some of our laws. He also proved to be extremely good at negotiating with the White House. He has a very attractive, even temperament and an obvious knowledge of the issues. He does his homework and speaks with quiet authority that is compelling. There have been a number of good Administrator-Deputy relationships going all the way back to Bill Ruckelshaus and Bob Fri; and then Ruckelshaus and Al Alm; this is in that league and I like to think is even better than that terrific record. Hank, obviously, is a future Administrator or equivalent, also.
The unsung hero of my Administration at EPA was Gordon Binder, my Chief of Staff. Gordon missed nothing, spotted problems and quietly fixed them, shaped up personnel, alerted me to various Agency weaknesses or threats, and faithfully communicated my views. He was always objective, could tell me unpleasant news, and had a masterly control of the paper flow. He had been with me for 19 years and knew I liked a taut, congenial team, with no backbiting, no friction costs owing to petty competitive games. No one was more helpful to me or to the Agency in the Bush Administration than Gordon Binder.