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Russell Train and Robert Fri
Q: You mentioned Russell Train and William Reilly. When you became administrator, who were your environmental counselors?
MR. RUCKELSHAUS: The CEQ was formed about a year before EPA. Russell Train had been a candidate for administrator of EPA at the time I was nominated, and then succeeded me. We became quite close friends. There was a potential, obviously, for becoming rivals after EPA was formed. I thought, and I think he concurred, that it would be a waste of time for us to engage in that sort of activity. This wasn't exactly an administration brimming over with environmentalists, so to the extent that we needed some strength in the counsels of the White House or the cabinet, we decided to stick together.
After EPA was formed, Train concentrated primarily on international affairs, which he liked and was quite good at, and gradually turned the domestic agenda over to EPA. It was inevitable that would happen. CEQ was then a much stronger and a better agency than it's become since, but still had only 35 to 40 people, compared to EPA's 15,000. There was no way they could compete. So Train was an important ally. Naturally, we also recruited people to help: the assistant administrators and my Deputy Administrator, Bob Fri, who was later acting administrator. These people--as well as their staffs and the others who worked for me at the agency--were the ones I really relied on.
Q: You mentioned Mr. Fri. What was the nature of his advice? Was it technical, was it broad policy?
MR. RUCKELSHAUS: Oh, he was a big help. I recruited the five assistant administrators before recruiting the deputy. Originally, Ehrlichman had recommended that Jim Schlesinger be the deputy. I talked to Schlesinger about it and he was quite interested. He was at OMB at the time. But then the president and Henry Kissinger asked him to do a study on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Schlesinger said it would take three or four months, and at the end of that time he could move over to EPA. I said I didn't have that kind of time. So he became CIA director and then took on other jobs in the administration.
By that time I had already recruited the five assistant administrators and Bob Fri. He was recommended by Fred Malek in the White House Personnel Office. Malek joined the administration about the same time I did. He was very helpful to me in screening people I wanted to hire, and in recommending candidates for me to choose from. He had known Fri at McKenzie, the management consulting firm, and recommended Fri to me very strongly. Fri's background was in organizational design and general management consulting. He was very helpful in putting the agency together and establishing a management structure. Most of my time was devoted to managing the external affairs of the agency. In EPA, the administrator has about five constituents to deal with: Congress, the White House, the environmentalists, the general public, and industry. The agricultural community was also a constituent in the early days. I had to spend a lot of time with all of them, as well as the press. You have to cultivate all of these groups or you get in trouble, and that alone is more than a full-time job. Keeping the agency moving and keeping the troops happy was also part of the job; but paying attention to the day-to-day management was really Fri's work, and he was very good at it.