Boulder, Colo.; March 17, 2004
Introduction
Charles Wilkinson: December 1988 was
surely a memorable month for you. Tell us a bit about maybe
what went on behind the scenes during that stretch of time
when President Bush decided to appoint you as Secretary of
Interior.
Manuel Lujan: December of 1988. My last month in the
Congress and I had gotten several calls from the headhunters
for President-elect Bush. The guys that were trying to recruit
people to come to different positions. I got about three calls
during that month. Understand that I had retired from the
Congress then. That was my last month. We were going home.
My wife was already in Albuquerque and I was anxious to go.
So when the staff of the president-elect called and said,
"On a what-if basis, if the president asks you to serve
in the Cabinet, would you accept it?" I said, "Well,
tell him not to ask me." Because I knew if he asked me,
it's like your dad asking you to do something. With the President
of the United States, you can't say no.
One day, President-elect Bush ran into my brother Edward in
Washington at some reception or meeting and said, "What's
the matter with Manuel? Is he sick?" because I had had
a heart bypass, stents and all kinds of heart problems. And
Edward said, "No, he's fine." "Well, why doesn't
he want to serve in the Cabinet?"
I decided to just leave
them alone
Edward said, "Well, after 20 years in
Washington he'd like to go. Bush said, "But I'd like
for him to be Secretary of the Interior." Edward said,
"Well, why don't you ask him? He's not going to turn
you down."
So sure enough, the phone rang. I was literally cleaning out
my desk in the congressional office and the phone rang. It
was president-elect Bush, who said very casually, "Want
to come by the house this evening?" I said, "Yes,
sir." What do you say? My wife was already in Albuquerque
so I called her and I said President Bush wants me to come
down and you know what that means. And she said, yes, for
you to be in the Cabinet. And I said, "Well, what do
you think?" And she said, "Well, I'm not going to
tell you 'no.' If you want to do that, that's perfectly OK."
CW: And she didn't add, "but I'll be out in Albuquerque?"
ML: No, she came back with me, thank God. It was around
Christmas time because Barbara Bush opened the door, just
like in any household, and she had on this Santa Claus hat
and he's sitting over there in a little office. And he goes
like that, because he was on the phone. He said, "You
know what you're here for?" And I said, "yes, sir.
But before you tell me that, you know I have Los Alamos and
Sandia Laboratories that are all Department of Energy laboratories
and there are thousands of people employed. Would you consider
Secretary of Energy instead of Secretary of Interior?"
He thought about it and he said, "no, no." And I
said, "that's fine." And so I became Secretary of
Interior.
But the story is that about three months later, I ran into
Jim Watkins. Jim Watkins was an admiral who had been appointed
Secretary of Energy by Bush. He was in his work clothes. We
had gone to Mass on Saturday night and normally you dress
up to go to Mass. But he was in his work clothes, and he and
his wife were there. He said, "You know, we just got
back from Barnwell and that's why I'm dressed like this."
Well, coincidentally, my wife and I had just got back from
Acadia National Park. A beautiful park up in Maine. We're
on my home and my wife said, "What's Barnwell?"
I said, "Well, that's a nuclear storage place and they
have liquid radioactive material and they have eight great
big tanks and they're corroding and they're leaking and he
went over there to see what he can do about it.
My wife said, "And you wanted to be Secretary of Energy
instead of Secretary of Interior" with all the beautiful
national parks and everything that we had to visit —
so that's what went on in December.
Confirmation:
CW: The next step for you would have been the confirmation
hearing in front of the Senate committee. It's interesting
because your nomination was well-received and you had been
around the Hill for 20 years. How did you look at that period
of time? Did you spend a lot of time on your statement to
the committee? Did you look at it as an important statement?
Was it one that that the White House reviewed or OMB reviewed?
And then, in the room, in the hearing room, what was it like
that day?
ML: Well, there were two hearings. One in the House
of Representatives that I can cover just like that. Because
Mo Udall – Congressman Udall, was the chairman of the
Interior Committee and, of course, I was the senior Republican
– had been there – so we were next to each other,
and I walk into Interior to that hearing, on the House side,
and Mo said, "Welcome to the Committee." He said,
"Anybody got any questions? No. Meeting adjourned."
CW: He didn't even tell a single joke?
ML: Nothing. Which is pretty nice. And I thought, well,
I don't think it will go that way in the Senate. I think Johnson
– Bennett Johnson was the chairman, and of course we'd
served together on the Joint Committee for Atomic Energy so
we knew each other. We'd served on several joint meetings
between the House and the Senate and these guys were all my
friends. People that I knew. Tim Wirth and I had been together
in the House of Representatives, and so had a whole bunch
of others. So I was not nervous at all. I knew that they would
try to gig me a little bit but kind of in a friendly fashion.
We went in there – we were talking about that a little
earlier today – some of them were making statements.
Like Malcolm Wallop, who was a good friend, was saying that
the Department of the Interior had not been a good friend.
That quote there because of the fire in Yellowstone. But I
knew he was not directing it at me, because I've been in politics
long enough that you speak to your constituency really. But
that was their chance, all of them, all the statements that
they made to point out what their point of view was. It wasn't
that they were directing any harsh criticism against me. I
had no problems with the hearing.
CW: One thing that is very refreshing is that you're
so open about how much you enjoyed the job. If you had to
pick out a single thing that was most satisfying to you over
that four-year period, what do you think it would be?
ML: Ski-mobiling in Yellowstone. As Secretary of Interior,
you had all this staff and everything to bring your lunch
and all of that. Seriously, that's my best memory of everything.
Visiting the national parks, that is the big perk of being
Secretary of Interior. Instead of all of these policies and
things that you have to do. The National Park Service is the
most popular of all the government agencies, on the national
scale they're way up here and the IRS is way down here. So
that was the most enjoyable part – I was going to say
I was kidding about ski-mobiling in Yellowstone but no, I'm
not kidding.
PL: You know, I think we should skip the order a bit
and you should do that bird.
Endangered species:
CW: You came in as the secretary of a department that
has U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in it. Which is given a
government-wide authority over the Endangered Species Act,
so that most notably your department had jurisdiction over
spotted owl issues in the very economically productive and
magnificent old-growth forests in the Northwest — in
California and up through Washington and that issue was a
major one during your time.
ML: Yes, it was.
CW: When did it first come to you in the sense of really
appreciating the magnitude of the problem and how did you
react to it?
ML: Well, first of all I have to tell you that we're
lucky we're in front of a big audience because I vowed when
I left that I was going to kill anybody who ever mentioned
the spotted owl after I left.
CW: Part of the program was to have you check your
revolver at the door.
ML: Because that really probably the most difficult
of all issues. There was really no way to come out of it unscathed,
I guess would be the word. The Fish & Wildlife came to
me with a recommendation that we put it in a threatened category,
not that it was in danger of extinction. We started looking
at that issue and then finally the Fish & Wildlife came
to me and said we need to protect this area, so many hundreds
of thousands of acres because the spotted owl, each pair needs
3,200 acres to survive.
There are so many owls times 3,200 acres and that's the amount.
Others from the Department came to me and said that science
is flawed. The reason for this is that the old-growth forests
and that people were wanting to save the old-growth trees
and that they had manipulated the mathematics of it in order
to accomplish that. I was very disturbed by that.
CW: Let me ask you this. Did you have office meetings
also with the Forest Service over in the Department of Agriculture
and environmentalists over this?
ML: Absolutely. We met with a diverse group of people.
We even went over there. I went over there with my staff over
to Oregon and Washington and California because there was
a big concern over shutting down all those mills also, and
what the unemployment was going to be. It went into the thousands.
And people were coming to me—one lady came to me, for
example, and said to me, look if they shut this mill down
my husband is going to lose his job, I've got cancer and I
lose my health insurance. You don't want stuff like that on
your conscience.
But what bothered me more, was that the science, it was brought
to my attention, that it had been manipulated and that the
reasons were different than just the spotted owl. Well, before
I had to make a final decision the court ruled that so much
land had to be set aside and all of that so it was really
taken out of my hands.
There was a lot of concern about that decision and there was
only one thing you could to in order to override a court decision
and that was called the "God Squad." The God Squad
was, and is to this day, the Secretary of Interior—
CW: Now, you actually chaired it at that time –
ML: Yes, I was the chairman of it. The Secretary of
Interior, the Secretary of Agriculture, and I imagine, EPA
and Commerce. That was convened to take a look –
CW: Now, the BLM petitioned for that and we're talking
now about the old-growth forests on BLM lands in Oregon and
were you involved in the decision to convene the God Squad?
ML: Yes, I was. As a matter of fact, I sent my representatives,
Tom Sansonetti and Marianne Bach, a gal from here that had
graduated from the University of Colorado here in Boulder,
a Ph.D., those were the two principal ones that went over
there. But we did not invoke the God Squad.
ML: Incidentally, years later, in New Mexico the silvery
minnow is a little fish on the Rio Grande near Albuquerque,
big controversy. The court ruled, Judge Jim Parker ruled that
the priority was the silvery minnow. That they should have
water that belonged to Albuquerque and that the citizens of
Albuquerque – he didn't say that but by implication,
the silvery minnow had priority over individuals. That was
overcome – they talked about putting together the God
Squad to override it – but Sen. Domenici and Sen. Bingaman,
two senators from New Mexico, offered amendments and passed
to exempt the silvery minnow from the Endangered Species Act
and thereby overturning the court decision.
I have to tell you a funny story about that. Jim Parker is
a friend of mine. The judge who made that ruling. We meet
once a month, him, another judge Leroy Hanson, old has-been
Republicans, all us old guys there, so we meet once a month.
After his ruling, and it had nothing to do with the ruling,
but he said, "We built a new house so let's have our
Christmas, our December luncheon at my house and we bring
the spouses."
We all did. My wife went with me, and she's not political.
But she understands what's going on. She happened to be sitting
next to Judge Parker and she says, "Judge, you're the
one that ruled that the minnow had priority rights to the
water." He said, "Yes." And I'm kicking her
under the table all this time.
He said, "Yes, yes I did." She said, "Why did
you rule that way?"
He said, "Well, I was interpreting the Endangered Species
Act and that's what the Endangered Species Act says is the
priority."
She said, "In your heart, you really believe that?"
And I thought, "Oh, my god, we're all going to jail here."
He never did answer the question, but that's my story about
the God Squad and the Endangered Species Act.
PL: Could you tell us the story about your effort early
in your time in office to bring all those contentious people
together for a meeting?
Conciliation attempt:
ML: You're probably thinking with all these stories
that I was really having a good time, I was. But there were
very serious and light moments. I decided early, maybe I'd
been in office two or three months, something like that. All
these environmental concerns and the business concerns and
environmental organizations and the drillers and the timbering
people and the mining people and they were all at each other's
throats. At least they were against each other in almost every
instance.
I thought I could bring them all together. Make each other
see each other's point of view. So I called all the leaders
of the various environmental organizations and the leaders
of the organizations like the Cattlemen's Association, the
Timbermen's Association, all of those. And I thought I'd bring
them all into my office and I did. I thought, you know, if
I can just get them talking to each other then they'll understand
each other's point of view and we'll solve a lot of these
problems.
I did that and my office, the Secretary of Interior's office
is a big office. Probably bigger than this whole stage. It's
got a nice fireplace. I brought in some donuts and made coffee.
Got everybody comfortable, sit down, and we'll talk about
these issues.
I decided to just leave them alone and let them talk it over
amongst themselves and once they understood each other's problems,
they could solve the problem by giving in a little bit here
and there. Well, all of a sudden the noise level is getting
higher and higher. I yelled at them, "Hey, let's lower
our voices so we can hear each other talk." Out of the
corner, comes somebody yelling "Well you tell that SOB"
– and he used the big word – "to lower his
voice so he can hear what I'm saying." I knew right then
and there that it wasn't working. I never called them back
together.
I did learn something from that. There are professionals in
different things that that's their life's mission. And I had
done that. I had brought those professionals in that that's
their life's mission and they couldn't afford to compromise
because then they would lose face with all their members and
many of them would lose their jobs if we were able to solve
the problem.
That's one lesson that I learned. In getting people together
later on, I would not call the heads of organizations and
stuff like that. I would call people who either lived near
where the problem was or somebody that had knowledge of the
problem, somebody who maybe had looked at it in a different
place and had come to a solution. I worked that way a lot
because I felt that was the way to solve problems.
PL: I think people need a little demonstration of the
skills you had acquired or probably took to service in Congress,
especially around constituent service. Your story about constituent
service involving the Pentagon.
Constituent
service:
ML: That was a fun one. When I was in Congress, I had
office hours. I would go from one little town to another.
Albuquerque was the big one so it would be at the school.
First of all, I would send cards telling people that I would
be at a certain place at a certain hour and if you have a
problem that you wished to discuss with me, come on in. A
lot of people would come. We'd go to a courthouse in one of
the counties, people would come and there would be 30 or 40
or 50 people, sit in the courtroom, and I'd use the judge's
chamber over to one side, to visit individually because they
didn't want everyone to know what their problem was. Social
Security problems, somebody wanted to get into the Veterans
Hospital and they were having trouble. But anyway, they were
seeking the office of the congressman to help them straighten
out the problem. One day I was in Albuquerque at one of the
high schools, and this one guy came in and he said, "What
do you know about outer space creatures?"
I said, "What do you mean? What are you talking about?"
He said, "They won't leave me alone. They have me delivering
messages for them all the time. Today it took the cake. Today
they had me go all the way down to Rio Bravo – which
was 10 or 15 miles from where I was – and I walked down
there and I get within a half a block from where I'm supposed
to deliver the message, and they changed their mind. That's
it. No more."
I said, "What do you think I could do about it?"
He said, "It's the Pentagon. They're the ones that are
responsible for that."
I said, "Really? What do you want me to do about that?"
He said, "I want you to go to the Pentagon and tell them
I don't want anything to do with that stuff any more and to
leave me alone."
So I just wrote it down in my casebook of things to do. About
three months later, we're running for re-election and having
a rally in another high school and the guy comes up and says,
"Mr. Lujan, I came by because I wanted to thank you.
Since you've talked to the Pentagon they haven't bothered
me at all."
I said, "That's fine, that's what we're here for. To
help the constituents in whatever way we can."
But that's one of the big jobs of the congressman. It's not
just going to vote. It's answering constituents' letters,
it's answering the phone, returning telephone calls. It's
the casework, you know, that's what it's called. It could
be, "bring my son home because grandma died because he's
in Iraq or Germany" so that's one of the big parts of
being a congressman.
PL: First, everybody in Boulder had to hear that story.
That was my first reason for asking about it. But also, there's
a possibility that holding elected office for a fairly long
spell is really good training for being Secretary of Interior.
For what you do, not necessarily in that particular story,
but the experiences you had had as a member of Congress. To
be Secretary without that experience of dealing with people.
ML: No. It's valuable experience. First of all, you
understand I had been on Interior Committee dealing with Interior
issues for 20 years. So I knew what the problems were as far
as the BLM or the Bureau of Reclamation and Bureau of Indian
Affairs and all of that.
As an illustration, I'll tell you what really did serve me
having been a former member of Congress. When I was in Congress,
one year I had a really tough election. The next year I decided,
you know, we're not going to take chances. We're going to
raise a lot of money now. In those days, a congressional race,
$500,000, a half a million dollars, was a lot for a congressional
race. Today, they cost a $1 million or a million and a half.
So we got serious and we raised a half a million for that
particular election. And I thought, you know, you raise that
much money and then you blow it. Just on an election. For
a good cause, I might say, for getting re-elected. But I really
kind of felt bad and you know if an organization can do that
in an election year we could probably raise a half a million
dollars for a good cause. So we did. For scholarships. That
foundation is still going on today and it's grown. We give
$500 a semester to each student who graduates from what is
the first congressional district and they get a scholarship
for four years so it's pretty good.
National park concessionaires:
When I got to be Secretary of Interior – well, what
we did was have concerts and wrestling matches and stuff like
that, and I got to know the concessionaires at the university
gym, at the state fair, and they paid about 50 percent of
their gross as a fee to the university or the state fair for
being able to have the concessions there.
Well, when I get to Washington find the concessionaires at
the national parks are only paying 2.5 percent. I thought
this isn't right. So I did study and came up with the recommendation
of 22.5 percent because they are in rural areas and it's more
expensive to do business in rural areas and all of that.
So I decided what we're going to do is we're going to raise
these fees and we're going to raise them to 22.5. There was
a reason for it. Instead of it going to a general fund, it
was kept there in the park to do the repairs to roads and
buildings. There's a big backlog anyway in the national park.
But anyway, I knew what was going to happen because when I
was a congressman I used to do it myself. When anybody threatened
to raise the fees, in would come the concessionaire from your
district and say we'll I'm going to go broke. So I would go
on over to the guys in Congress that ran those committees
and I would say don't raise them because my constituent and
so forth and they would put in the appropriations bill. And
the way to stop something from the administration doing something
is to say no money can be spent in order to accomplish whatever
it is. In this case, no money can be spent in order to study
the fee structure of the National Park Service concessionaires.
Having been in Congress and having just left there, I knew
all the guys that did that. So I went to them and said look,
I'm going to do this and it's needed and I explained to them
and sold them on the idea. I said I know what's going to happen.
The other members of Congress are going to come to you about
their constituents and all of that and I would ask you, you
know, your reply to them can be "Lujan was never worth
a damn when he was here and he's not any better than he ever
was and he's stubborn and he's not going to listen. Blame
it all on me. But don't put it in the law that I can't do
it." It served me well. Being friends with Sid Yates
and Ralph Regula who ran that committee so I was able to accomplish
what other Secretaries of Interior hadn't but only because
I had been one of them. I was one of the guys in Congress
so it did serve me well.
PL: How big a difference did that make in funding?
ML: The Park Service gets $100 million more from the
concessionaires and no one got hurt. In my research, I found
that one of the concessionaires had the previous year, their
bonus was $1 million and the son had gotten $1 million and
the daughter-in-law another million. So I figured I wasn't
taking the food out somebody's mouth, but it did amount to
$100 million annually that's still going on that's used –
and we changed the law, instead of it going to the general
fund – the general fund, you know, $100 million is nothing.
But it stays in the park and it's for renovations and upgrading
and all of that. I thought that was pretty good. That worked
out to my advantage.
PL: A theme in the series has been the variability
and the ups and downs in bipartisan collaboration on bipartisan
issues. So I'm interested in your reflections on that. Your
friendship with Morris Udall might be an interesting place
to start. And then if you choose to reflect on our crabby
times, you can reflect on the world we live in in 2004.
Polarized politics:
ML: I think it's changed a lot and I think everybody
has noticed that. There's more animosity among the parties
today than there was before. For example, in campaigning,
one of the things used to be that you don't mention your opposing
candidate's name. Why give him the free publicity? That was
the rule in those days. Now, it is mention your opponent's
name but put an SOB in front of it or whatever; what a lousy
guy he is. That's gotten more and more polarized.
Frankly, it's more difficult. You see more party line votes
today. Not that we didn't have them in those days but they
weren't as pronounced as it is today. I'll tell you very honestly
I'm glad that I'm not in politics any more. I can take criticism,
that doesn't bother me but the kind of criticism today is
just terrible. It applies all the way down the line. Environmental
issues or whatever.
In those days, there was the Republican club and the Democratic
club. There still there. The watering holes. The Republicans
would go over to the Democratic club just as often as we would
the Republican club and we were all friends. But I don't see
that happening any more. There's such a polarization. You
see it every day and almost on every issue. Like I say, I'm
glad I'm not running for office any more.
PL: Is it possible that you and Morris Udall were nicer
people than the people we have today?
ML: It's the times, I guess. Maybe even the general
atmosphere throughout the country. We don't get excited anymore
about the things that happen. There's more confrontation.
There's a lot more in-your-face stuff. I don't want to get
into the particular issues now but things that organizations
and people demand. They demand it and it's very much in-your-face.
PL: But they were suing quite a bit in your time if
you want to reminisce a little bit about your –
ML: The Department of Interior?
PL: The Department of Interior.
ML: What I meant when you said this quote up here,
when the president asked me to be Secretary of Interior and
I said that's like putting me in a sackful of cats and I'm
going to get scratched no matter what. You have the environmental
organizations here and you have the drillers here and you
have the timber people and you have the mining people, all
of those different things. The Department of Interior has
always been very contentious.
When I left office, and one of the bad things about it is
that when you're the Secretary of Interior, they put your
name on it. They don't just say they're suing the Secretary
of Interior, they're suing Manuel Lujan instead of the Secretary
of Interior. I had 1,600 suits pending against me when I left.
Keep in mind I was only in office 1,400 days if you take 365
days times four. Luckily, when you leave the next guy gets
his name on the lawsuit. Can you imagine filling out an application
of some kind? Have you ever been sued?
But that's the nature of the Department of Interior. Everybody
files a suit to get their way or they felt they were maligned
in some way or another.
PL: Talk about the spectrum of agencies that are within
Interior and what it's like to try to orchestrate that.
ML: Well, probably the best way to explain the whole
Department of Interior and why it's so contentious. The Bureau
of Reclamation is a water department. There's 10 different
departments under the Secretary of Interior. The story is
– it's not a true story – that the Bureau of Reclamation
wants to build a dam on this particular piece of property.
Along comes the Bureau of Land Management and says you can't
build a dam, you can't flood that out, that's good grazing
land and you shouldn't do that. The Bureau of Mines comes
along and says, no, no. There's gold down there so we ought
to mine that. What other departments are there?
PL: Park Service --
ML: Then the Park Service says we want to make it into
a national park, you can't do all of that. Then the Fish &
Wildlife says, well you can't because this is a wetland, it's
got to be preserved. Then the Bureau of Indian Affairs comes
in and says, no, no, no. That's aboriginal land. You can't
do anything with it because it's ours. So that's the contention
within the Department of Interior. Just within the agencies,
let alone somebody from the outside having some issue with
each one of those departments. Also, the Department of Interior
has the territories, Guam and the Mariana Islands, Palau,
the Virgin Islands and those. That's where all those cats
are, that are going to scratch you when you get in that sack.
PL: Is that productive? To have that kind of range?
Or is there something smart to do in reorganizing?
ML: Over the years, different functions have been taken
out of the Department of Interior. Let me say this, because
this makes a difference in how you view the department. It
is the Department of the Interior, of the interior operations
of the federal government. The Post Office used to be part
of that, the Veterans Administration, the Environmental Protection
Agency was carved out of Interior. Over the years, things
have been taken out. But unless you make them a separate department
what are you doing to do? You have to keep them there to be
administered.
I liked it because most of them are Western issues. The water,
the land, the mining, Indian affairs, all of those are Western
issues so I suppose it's well-placed.
Western secretary:
PL: The Western-ness thing. Like I said, the senators
were really going on about that at your confirmation hearing
and it seems important to you. Could you talk about why the
Secretary of Interior should be a westerner and how you think
your Western-ness was part of that? And my last question will
be the three letters.
ML: The fact is that every Secretary of Interior, and
I was beginning to feel my age when we were going through
all the Secretaries who have participated and were invited,
all the way to Rogers Morton, and I knew all of them. I guess
that tells you how old I am or how long I've been around this
thing.
But all of us are Westerners and it's traditional and probably
a very desirable thing that we be Westerners because those
are the issues at Interior that affect the West.
When I was in Congress, we always said Easterners who don't
have the big presence of the federal government in those states
really don't understand what it is to have the federal government.
Like in the case of Nevada, 70 percent, in New Mexico it's
almost 50 percent. I don't know what the percent is in Colorado.
The governor of Nevada told me one time, you're the landlord
of more land here than I am, so you have more jurisdiction
over more land than I do. I think that's why that's important.
Westerners are different and it shows. We're more independent.
At least that's my thinking in what I noticed. You know, if
you're going to drive from here to Colorado Springs, you'd
better know how to change a tire. At least that. You'd better
be that independent because you don't have a filling station
a mile down the road. If you're going to call AAA, it's going
to cost you an arm or a leg and it's going to be an hour or
two or three before they get there. There's a different thinking
on the issues. I think that's why it's important the Secretary
of Interior be from the West because those are western issues.
PL: Sen. McClure, at your confirmation hearing, said
that Cecil Andrus said to him that the reason he was happy
to become Secretary of Interior was that since "Idaho
was two-thirds federal land when he went to being Secretary
from being governor, he had more control over Idaho."
ML: Yes, that's correct.
PL: Your three letters.
ML: Somebody asked me if I left any advice for my successor.
I told this story and it's a joke. When you leave office,
I'm going to leave three letters on your desk, you tell your
successor. And every time a crisis comes up, you take a letter
and open it and just follow the instructions. So there's the
three letters on the desk of your successor, and the first
crisis comes up and he opens up the first letter and it says,
"Blame the opposition party." And sure enough, that
worked out real good and the crisis is over and on we go.
The second crisis comes up, opens the letter and it says,
"Blame the Congress for it. They're the ones responsible
for it." And sure enough, that worked out pretty good.
The crisis is over.
The third crisis comes up. The guy opens the letter and it
says, "Write three letters. Your advice to your successor."
You get two shots at it.
PL: I forgot all about the Exxon-Valdez which is not
easy to forget about, but I forgot to ask about that so we
can have that as a question.
Exxon Valdez:
ML: Maybe someone has a question and we'll incorporate
it. But while we're waiting, I will tell you that had not
happened before, at least in my watch and something that I
was responsible for and understand that I had just become
Secretary of Interior. It seemed like every Friday afternoon
something would happen. I hated to see Fridays come, except
that the next day was Saturday. We had the Exxon-Valdez on
a Friday afternoon; the next Friday, the Delaware River right
outside of Welling, Penn., there was a tanker spill there.
Another one right out of Providence, R.I., we had a ship capsize
and there was this spill.
I decided I had better go on up to Alaska and find out what's
going on and I did. I could see people that Exxon had hired
with paper towels cleaning the rocks there on the beaches
where the oil was coming out. The decision was to suck up
all the oil that was floating in the water, put guards all
around it, a tube, to contain it. You do all of that. But
that the cleaning up really wasn't very effective. The people
in Alaska who had been there for many years, said don't worry
about it. The winter storms are going to come in and wash
it off. I didn't tell Exxon that. They kept cleaning but they
were producing more waste with all these oil-soaked paper
towels than all of the oil on the rocks.
So sure enough, winter came and the storms and churning of
the water on the beach did clean most of it. But there was
still a lot of damage to the land and the trees and the vegetation
and all of that. Interior had some lands in there; the Department
of Agriculture had some lands in there. NOAA – National
Oceanographic something or another, and the State of Alaska.
I was the chairman of that committee, trying to determine
what to do about the cleanup. We determined that Exxon, in
the final analysis, was the one who had to pay for it so we
had to figure what it would cost to do it.
If some of you were here when former Secretary and Governor
of Alaska Hickel, Wally Hickel. He's a grand programs money.
The Alaska Pipeline. He wanted to bring an iceberg down to
Los Angeles and let it melt there and that would be the water
supply. Big things. He always thought very big. We were all
sitting there trying to make something out of this whole thing,
and he said, well, let's have Exxon pay for it. They have
plenty of money.
I naively said, "Well, how much do you think we ought
to ask them for?"
He said, we're going to ask them for a billion dollars. A
billion dollars. That sounds almost like government. I didn't
quite understand how much a billion dollars is. And sure enough,
we got a billion dollars off of Exxon to do all of that restoration
and that was sufficient.
I wanted to put the billion dollars in trust. And that we
would just work off the interest but I got voted down and
the billion is gone now. I knew that if you put a billion
dollars into any one of the federal agencies they'd use it
up real quick. Sure enough, we don't have any of the billion
dollars. It's all gone. But it's restored.
Now there are lawsuits by the native corporations and by the
— because we were only doing it as far as the government
land was concerned. Now the individuals and the corporations
and stuff like that, the Alaska native corporations, they're
now still negotiating over it. We solved that – Hickel
said charge them a billion dollars and off we go.
CW: On Indian issues. You grew up in the tri-racial
society that is New Mexico and your public life really coincided
with the tribal sovereignty movement in Indian Country and
at the heart of that is really to take back the reservations
from the Bureau of Indian Affairs who had been running the
reservations.
The tribes wanted to be the real governments. Over the course
of those years, finishing up when you were Secretary, how
would you rate the degree of real progress in Indian Country
towards self-determination and what do you feel you contributed
that were the most important acts you took in that movement?
Tribal sovereignty:
ML: I felt very strongly that they should be in charge
of their own destiny. That those tribes that had the expertise
to run certain things. We had a vision already of who could.
There's a thing called the 638 program. In a 638, if a tribe
wants to run their own police department, let's say, and the
government had been giving them so much money to run the police
department. The government is obliged to give them the same
amount of money and say, here it is, you run it. We knew which
ones were being successful in running those.
I decided that if some of them are able to run parts of their
department and some of them maybe had two or three. The more
capable tribes, the bigger tribes. Why don't we just enter
into a contract with them and say, OK, the government is spending
$600,000 or whatever the figure may be, to your reservation
to run these programs, you just run the whole thing. We entered
into contracts with, I'm going to say 12, but I'm not positive
of the number, that we entered into, that they would run their
own reservations and that the government would only pay what
was their responsibility, what they had been paying in the
past.
That was a step into the self-determination of how their programs
ought to be run.
CW: And it's really taken off since then.
ML: I haven't kept up with it. I know more tribes have
taken the department up on it. How many I don't know. That
was a good beginning. Now, it's a different situation on Indian
reservations because of the gaming. Part of the law for gaming
on Indian reservations says that you cannot take that money
and distribute it amongst the tribal members that you have
to use it for improvements within the reservation. I know,
for example, right out of Albuquerque, the Sandias, they put
in a wellness center, which is a clinic, it's even exercise
equipment and stuff like that. They rebuilt their old church,
which is from 400 years ago. Their road system has been improved,
their police system is a modern system now, and that all comes
from gaming. It's a different world out there now on the Indian
reservations than it was 20 years ago.
Questions from the audience:
Q. What should be done to resolve the question of the
Indian Trust fund.
ML: The Cobell lawsuit against it, the accounting for
it has been horrendous. And is for a matter of fact. The Cobell
lawsuit says it's out of kilter by billions of dollars and
that the government owes all these people billions of dollars
because they haven't kept the proper records and they've squandered
it and this and that.
That's not quite correct. It's correct to a certain extent
that those records have been mismanaged and all that. I personally
don't believe that it's in the billions of dollars but I do
think that it's in the millions of dollars. The only way to
straighten that out is, and they're attempting to do that
now, is to go back over those old records and some of them
don't exist any more because they're many, many decades ago.
Get as close as you can, and say you get to – I'm going
to use a figure of $50 million or whatever it may be, and
it will take an appropriation by Congress to square it out.
I really do think that that's a solution. Maybe that's not
the bookkeeping way of doing things.
I remember when we were in the insurance business and my sister
kept all the books and we'd be there late at night and she'd
be trying to balance and she'd be 37 cents off and she couldn't
find it. I'd say here's the 37 cents and she'd say, no, we
can't do that. We've got to balance the books.
I think this thing is so messed up, the accounting of it,
that that's the only way that you're going to be able to figure
it out.
Q. Mr. Secretary. What's your biggest disappointment,
i.e., decision or policy change that you made as Secretary
that didn't last or was reversed, and looking back what do
you think you could have done better?
ML: I don't know. I really don't know that I had any
disappointments. I can think of things that I was happy about.
But maybe that's my nature. But I don't know. I can't think
of any disappointments that I had. Let me think of it through
the program and I'll come back to it.
PL: I think you were quoted as saying you would have
liked to do something with the 1872 mining law, not that you
confessed bitter disappointment but that you'd ...
ML: There were a number of things that I would have
liked to do. For example, the 1872 mining law, there are some
minerals that you don't pay royalties on and I think if you're
going to get them off of federal lands, you ought to pay royalties
just like you do to anybody else. On the BLM, the grazing
fees I thought needed to be bumped up a little bit. Not in
terms of dollars or anything like that, but in terms of 10,
25 or 30 cents, something like that. There were some programs
that I didn't get done but, well, maybe they were a disappointment.
There, that answers your question.
Q. Mr. Secretary, what do you think is the most pressing
environmental issue facing the Interior today? And perhaps
you might expand upon that regarding the U.S. and the larger
view.
ML: The most pressing environmental issue. Probably
the Endangered Species Act. It is the most controversial.
It's under fire. Some people want to completely do away with
it. I think it needs some adjustment. I think you have to
take into consideration some economic values, how it affects
the human population. Probably the Endangered Species Act
is the most critical within the Department of Interior.
Q. Mr. Secretary, do you think the Secretary of Interior
position is inherently controversial and please comment.
ML: It is inherently controversial because of those
things – that little story I told you about the Bureau
of Reclamation wanting to build a dam and then in comes the
BLM and all of those — that's one part of it, within
the department itself, very controversial. But then on the
outside also, there's 1,600 lawsuits filed. There's mining
interests, there's the timbering interests, the oil interests,
whether you drill in the outer continental shelf or not. You
have the environmental organizations that would oppose most
of these things and that's what brings the lawsuits on. It
is inherently that sack of cats that I was talking about and
it is the most controversial of all the departments just by
what it's like.
PL: Have any of your views changed since you left office
– on Interior?
ML: No, I don't think so. I'm still the same person
that I was when I was in office. One of the things that I
struggled very hard with, let me tell you, is not to change
when I got into public office from what I had thought before
about different things. And I don't think I did because what
I found — someone asked me what advice I would give
when I was talking with students to those that are beginning
now. That is, that you keep your values, whatever they may
be. I remember both when I was in Congress and when I was
Secretary of Interior, particularly when I was in Congress
because you can see that more. I think my first reaction,
my gut reaction, when an issue would come up, it generally
turned out to be the right one for me. Then I'd go study the
issue a little more and I'd get both sides, but generally
I would come down on what that first impression was. Because
you are who you are.
I'm a Westerner, I'm a Republican, I'm a Catholic, I'm this,
I'm that, I'm the other. Those are the things that formed
my way of looking at things. Those things aren't easy to change.
My advice was that before you vote for someone, look at what
he's been like most of his or her life, because that's what
they're going to be like when they're in office. If I meet
someone who is going into public office for the first time,
say they're going into Congress, and I know their background,
I can tell you 90 percent of the time what their vote is going
to be on a particular issue and so can you. Because that's
who that person is.
I don't think you change your views. Maybe if you become enamored
of your job, that you quake every time you cast your vote
because some constituent isn't going to like it, then maybe
you will change, but for political reasons.
Another thing, and we've never talked about that, before somebody
goes into politics, what my feeling is that you be pretty
secure. Either you have a business or you have your education
that you know if you get defeated, you have someplace to go.
I always had the insurance business and thank god, I never
sold it. My brother ran that and I always thought that if
I got defeated I would go back to selling insurance. I think
that that's very important. Just like in business; that you
have an exit strategy. Then nobody can threaten you.
Q. Mr. Secretary. How were you able to achieve such
success with Indian water rights settlements and why has this
gotten more difficult.
ML: Because we concentrated on it. One of the things
that I knew going in as Secretary of Interior was that these
things had been hanging on, in some cases for a 100 years.
I put a team together. I remember two guys particularly. Joe
Miller, who had been with the Bureau of Reclamation, and knew
the people in the dam business. Then Tim Glidden, who was
my attorney, not in the Solicitor's office, but in my own
office. I sent them out and said we need to get some of these
settled. I think we settled 12 of them, which was pretty good
because none had been settled in 100 years. I don't know how
successful it's been now. How many they have now. But they
still have the program going. The present Secretary of Interior
has that program going. I'm assuming that they are closing
some but I can't tell you that they have. But I would be very,
very surprised if they haven't closed a bunch of them. I think
it's probably still a successful program.
PL: Would you like to give us any reflections on closing
here?
ML: I think this is wonderful. This program. I was
thinking about that. I guess we all think about — I
wish when my dad was alive I had taken the time or my grandfather
to take some tape about what it was like then. I think this
is kind of like that. Getting all of us that has been there
– now that's been a period of let's see probably 40,
45 years? Almost half a century. To have people participate
in it. I hope out of this thing comes a good book that will
be a good history of the West. Because all of these people
have been involved in one way or another in shaping the West
so I think it's a good study.
I've enjoyed it. I've had an opportunity to visit with students,
some faculty, with others. The questions. I had not thought
of water rights settlements for — well, since I left
11 years ago. So it brings back some memories of those years.
It's been very enjoyable and I thank you for inviting me to
participate.
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