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Return to EPA
SESSION 2: The Second Term (May 1983-January 1985)
Q: What was the chain of events which led to your return to EPA in 1983?
MR. RUCKELSHAUS: I was at the Weyerhaeuser Corporation at the time and had watched the Reagan Administration--in particular, Anne Burford--get into increasing trouble at the agency. After she was nominated and was awaiting confirmation, I called her a number of times, but had a lot of trouble getting her to respond. I was prompted by a desire to help. I didn't know who she was, only read about her in the newspaper. But I knew she was stepping into a complicated job, one she probably wasn't fully prepared for, anymore than I, or the other administrators had been.
Finally, after calling her for six weeks or so, I spoke to her. I told her all of the former administrators would certainly be glad to help her. I suggested to her that it would be a complicated assignment which had not gotten any easier over the years. I said she probably could gain a lot from talking to people who had held the job in the past, including her immediate predecessor, Douglas Costle, a Democrat. She thanked me very much for the advice, but was really quite distant, I thought, in her tone. I didn't hear again from her for eight or nine months, and the other former administrators never heard at all. She didn't want their help. By the time she called me in November or December 1981, she had already made many mistakes. It was almost too late to help, but I did spend some time with her over the next couple of months and talked to her occasionally.
In any event, in the spring of 1983 things had really deteriorated badly. I was called by James Baker (then President Reagan's Chief of Staff) and asked if I would consider returning to EPA. Obviously, I had to unhook myself from Weyerhaeuser, which was not simple at the time; the whole family was living in Seattle. We have five children, and while four were then in college, one daughter was still in high school. It was most difficult for her. My wife was also less than enchanted with the idea of returning to Washington. She referred to going back to EPA as a "self-inflicted Heimlich maneuver." My mother even chastised me for making a mistake like that. But after thinking about it for a week, I decided to accept. I flew back to Washington, at which point the president announced my nomination. For the next six weeks, I went through the lengthy confirmation process on a so-called accelerated basis. By contrast, in the 1970s I had been confirmed for jobs in three days!
Nonetheless, it seemed to me that EPA was in a good deal of trouble through no fault of the agency's people; only through the fault of misguided leadership. I thought I knew how to right the situation: by calming down the staff, getting them focused again on their work, and beginning the process of restoring the public's trust in the agency. In this case, you had to start with the press, which was very agitated over what had happened. While it would take some time to restore EPA's good name, I thought it was something that could be done and was certainly worth trying.
I had no preconceptions about the nature of the new administration or how it operated. But I had known Jim Baker in the Nixon Administration and I thought a good deal of him. I had known Richard Darman in the Justice Department, when he was an aide of Attorney General Elliott Richardson and I was the Deputy Attorney General. So I knew some people in the White House quite well. I had gotten a lot of advice about what I should ask President Reagan before I accepted the job; I rejected most of it. When I did meet the president, the one thing I asked for was the authority to appoint people without going through the elaborate White House clearance process. I feared it would take a year to fill the top positions if we had to subject them to political litmus tests, in addition to the usual FBI and Congressional clearances. This was most important because all but one or two of the 13 presidential appointees in the agency had been fired under Burford.
The president was quick to agree and gave his White House personnel office instructions to clear my nominees quickly. On the other hand, I assured Mr. Reagan that I wasn't going to appoint people with points of view antagonistic to his own and would find good, solid candidates who understood government, how it worked, and the mission of EPA. I told him I knew where to find such people, and he said, "Fine, go to it." Thanks to the president's support, within three months all 13 presidential appointees had been confirmed by the Senate--without a single dissenting vote.
For these positions, I sought persons with professional management experience, not caring too much about their political persuasion; just that they be good, solid professionals. With that team in place, I thought it was possible to restore credibility. It was certainly something worth doing. I had a great deal of affection for EPA and felt badly about what had happened to the agency and to its staff. We did lose some very good employees, but I was surprised how many good people stayed on.