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[William D. Ruckelshaus] 
Well, any recitation of my 
life before EPA will make
it clear there's no straight 
shot between what you do
ahead of time 
and EPA.
I was -- after being 
educated as a lawyer,
I went back and practiced law 
in the city of Indianapolis,
where I was from, with my 
father and my brother.
I was also part of the Indiana 
Attorney General's Office
at the time.
And I became active in the 
Republican Party as was my
father and brother was in the 
State Senate at the time.
I ran for Congress in 1964, 
and then ran for the
Indiana House of Representatives 
in 1966.
I only served there one time 
and was majority leader,
and after that ran for 
the Senate in Indiana.
I was nominated -- you were then 
nominated by a convention.
And after that, came to 
the administration --
after finishing second in that 
effort at the state-wide level,
Birch Bayh was the incumbent 
and was very hard for a
non-incumbent in someone 
like me to beat.
And so I went in to the 
Justice Department and
was assistant attorney general 
in the Civil Division,
and from there was asked by 
the president to be the
first administrator 
of EPA, in 1970.
[Lee M. Thomas] 
Well, I had been in government 
for many years at a state level
in South Carolina, and then came 
to Washington and actually was
the deputy director 
of FEMA.
I had been in public safety 
work for years and that's
how I happened to 
be in Washington,
and was asked to go to EPA on 
a detail for 90 days during
a time when the agency 
really was in crisis.
And a group of four people 
were asked to go over as
a management team to help get 
the agency back on track.
I ended up staying 
there six years.
So, I would say my path was 
one of government service,
certainly not environmental 
service.
And I was asked to go to EPA, 
basically, as a senior
management assistant 
in government.
[Christine Todd Whitman] 
Well, it starts with growing up 
on a farm, which is what I did,
which, in spending a lot of 
time outdoors with my family,
you know, doing any kind 
of sports we could do,
whether it was mountain biking 
or horseback riding or hiking
or fishing, whatever, 
it puts you more in
tune with nature than living 
in a city, perhaps.
And also, in New Jersey, 
which is the most densely
populated state in the nation, 
you saw the results of all
the pressure for development 
on land and what it was doing
to the air, quality of air, 
what it was doing to water,
what it was doing 
to land.
And then as governor I had a lot 
of focus on the environment.
And, in fact, we did a great 
deal to clean up our beaches.
We got them so that EPA actually 
gave us an award for having
the best beach-monitoring 
program in the country.
We got a bond issue through 
to preserve a million acres
of open space and farmland 
in the state, which,
when it's finished, 
will mean that the
state will have preserved, 
voluntarily, 40 percent
of its land mass.
We were able to reduce 
industrial pollution by
over 58 percent during those 
years and still see the
economy grow, so that whole 
mix that says this is not
an either/or issue, this is one 
where you can have a clean
and green environment and a 
healthy and thriving economy,
was something that was 
very important to me.
And how we measured 
environmental success
was very important.
So, I think all those things,
together, when it came time
for the president and 
he's looking around,
he figured he needed somebody 
from the Northeast, I guess.
And I had a good enough record 
there that it made some sense
to him.
[William D. Ruckelshaus] 
It really came from 
the attorney general,
who was then John Mitchell, 
and he was quite close to
the president.
They had been law partners 
before the president ran
for office in 1968, 
and Mitchell was then
appointed attorney general.
And he was the one who asked me 
if I would consider that job.
I had been mentioned earlier 
in a "Newsweek" article.
And I found out how 
that happened.
Jerry Hansler, who was 
afterwards the regional
administrator in New York and 
had been active in Indiana
when I was there as an assignee 
from the National Health
Service, had mentioned 
my name to a reporter,
and it appeared
in Newsweek.
And being then a part of 
the Justice Department,
I went up and talked to the 
attorney general and said,
"Look, this is the --
I didn't plant this.
I'm not trying to 
get another job."
And I told him how
it happened.
And that was really how my 
name got into the mix.
And out of that mist that names 
somehow get chosen for jobs
like this, my name emerged, 
and the attorney general
asked me if I was really 
interested then.
[Christine Todd Whitman] 
Actually, it wasn't so much the 
phone call, because it the
vice president who 
called, actually.
And the couple of times I spoke 
with -- when I came down here
to have the interview with the 
president and we had also just
arranged the transfer 
of Barney.
Barney was the puppy that we 
bred and the president gave
to Laura.
Well, he came up to New Jersey 
for an event right before the
election, and it was Laura's 
birthday and he didn't have
a gift for her, because the gift 
he'd had, for some reason,
the chief of staff said 
she wouldn't like,
so it got sent back.
So he had nothing.
And I said, "Well, we happen to 
have puppies and they'd be
really great."
And they said yes.
And then, of course, once he won 
the election and we had that
long time in Florida, 
a long time before it
was certified, and it was sort 
of back and forth,
could they really take a puppy 
going to the White House?
What was happening?
And, finally, decided 
they could.
So, that day when I went 
down to meet with them,
Barney was delivered.
And he was delivered 
to Laura.
And she brought him in while 
I was sitting there with
the president.
And he came rushing in and did 
a big pee right in the middle
of the rug in 
the hotel.
So that was a good 
way to start.
[William D. Ruckelshaus] 
Well, I should have been 
scared, but I didn't know
what I was doing.
It was a very complex 
management problem,
because we had 15 agencies and 
pieces of agencies that were
put under one umbrella, 
and we had to make them
all work.
And those -- for instance, 
we had a pesticide office
that was located in the 
Agriculture Department
and a pesticide office that was 
in the Department of Health
and Education and Welfare that 
were put under one roof.
Those two groups fought 
each other in the
existing administration.
One was created to promote 
the use of pesticides and
the other was created 
to regulate them.
That's a prescription 
for a pitched battle.
And so we had to put all those 
pieces together and make them
work, and it was a very 
complex management.
I had had experience managing.
I was a deputy attorney general 
in the Attorney General's Office
in Indiana and had managed some 
83 lawyers, but that really had
been the extent of my 
management experience.
And it was quite -- 
from that standpoint,
quite a challenge.
And as I said, if I really knew 
how much of a challenge it was,
I might not have accepted.
[Lee M. Thomas] 
You know, it was a very 
difficult time.
The agency had gone through 
and went through quite a bit
of trauma.
We had to go through a major 
change as far as the senior
leadership is concerned.
Bill Ruckelshaus came back 
in as administrator for the
second time.
He asked me to stay as an 
assistant administrator
in the Office of Solid Waste 
and Emergency Response.
He basically changed the 
assistant administrators,
the staff-level positions.
And I think that putting the 
agency back on track was
very much what 
Bill did.
He put a committed team of 
professionals in place,
committed to the mission of EPA, 
and quickly opened communication
with members of Congress, 
with the various constituent
groups, whether they be 
environmental or a business,
that the agency had 
so much impact on,
opened up communication with 
the state agencies that we
dealt with, and, I think, got 
about the business of EPA.
And probably more than 
anything else,
that's what restored the morale 
of the employees of the agency;
we got about 
our business.
[William D. Ruckelshaus] 
We had, I think, 7,000 or 8,000 
people when we started
and authorization to hire 
2,000 more to fill out the
responsibilities that were 
loaded on the agency,
and fortunately had 
some very good help,
some people who did understand 
the intricacies of government
management and how 
it should work.
And I was at least wise enough 
to rely on their advice to
help move the whole 
thing forward.
[Christine Todd Whitman] 
Well, probably the most 
important thing that
I wanted to get done that 
would have the broadest --
I mean, there were 
a lot of issues.
There was NSR.
There were a whole host 
of issues and things that
I dealt with as a governor 
that were ripe for
decision-making here.
But probably the biggest was 
trying to change the mindset
that people on the extremes 
have about the environment,
which is what we were 
talking about earlier,
that you can't have a healthy 
economy and a clean and green
environment, and, in fact, 
you can and you must.
There's not an economy anywhere 
in the world that's thriving
if your air isn't clean and 
if your water isn't pure.
People can't get good drinking 
water if they don't have
a good quality
of life.
And the environment very much 
needs the healthy economy,
because we need the money to 
invest in new technology
to improve what we're doing 
and improve the way we clean
our atmosphere and the 
way we handle Earth,
and money to be able to buy 
land to set it aside.
And so that was probably the 
big -- changing that mindset
and getting people to think 
in a different way,
and we really did that through 
the creation of the
report card on the status 
of the environment,
which we started almost 
immediately after I came
in to office.
And it took about
two years.
Arlene McGuinness [phonetic sp] 
was spearheading that for me
as chief of staff.
And we finally
got it done.
And it had been, again, 
something that the
national academies had called 
for early on in the history
of the agency.
You know, how can you know 
whether you're making
progress if you don't 
know where you are?
And we had bits and pieces of 
it, but it had never been
brought together
in one place.
And so we worked very 
hard on that.
And I believe that report card 
was one of the best works that
this agency 
has put out.
[Lee M. Thomas] 
Well, as far as the 
agency is concerned,
when I first went over there, 
the thing that needed
attention was the 
Superfund program.
I mean, we needed to get that 
program moving forward
consistent with the overall 
statutory direction that we
had been given.
It was bogged down.
It really hadn't gotten 
off the ground fully.
There was a lot of controversy 
as far as Congress is concerned
as to how we were going 
forward with it.
And so the thing that needed 
attention immediately in the
agency was the Superfund program 
and getting it organized,
getting it moving, 
getting policies,
procedures, action underway.
And interacting with Congress 
on how we were doing that
was the thing I worked 
on for the first year.
[Christine Todd Whitman] 
The thing that probably was 
the biggest challenge was
that there were such great 
expectations among many who
affect our lives on the Hill 
that we would kind of step
back and not be pursuing any 
kind of new initiatives and
not trying to ensure that the 
agency continued to enforce
regulations, that they got 
very upset when we did.
And it made life more 
challenging, perhaps,
than it needed
to be.
[William D. Ruckelshaus] 
Yeah, there was, you know, 
rivers catching on fire.
People in Denver wanted 
to see the mountains.
In Los Angeles they wanted 
to see one another.
I mean, there were all kinds 
of problems that were,
as I say, smell, 
touch and feel.
People going to work 
every morning could
see those problems.
We've forgotten how much 
progress we've made
against that original agenda on 
the environment and how much
better the environment is today 
than it was back in 1970
when all this started.
And I think the reason it's 
important to remember that
is that some of these problems 
-- I mean, new problems crop
up all the time that look 
insoluble today,
really are capable of being 
solved with the right kind
of determination and 
wise policies.
[Lee M. Thomas] 
Well, there were any 
number of things.
I mean, we were involved 
in reauthorizing the
Clean Water Act, and we had a 
whole series of issues there
that we were 
dealing with.
When I was administrator I was 
very involved in air issues.
I signed the regulations to 
phase lead out of gasoline.
We worked on the air toxics 
issue that eventually became
a part of the reauthorized 
Clean Air Act.
There was a small issue that 
turned into probably one of
the biggest issues I worked on, 
which was ozone depletion,
stratospheric ozone depletion.
[Christine Todd Whitman] 
I wanted to be able to say 
when I left the agency
that we -- that the air was 
cleaner, the water purer,
and the land better protected, 
people living healthier lives
than when we came in, 
because that's what
we're all about.
We're not about the number of 
regulations that have been
promulgated, the number of new 
laws that have come into being,
the number of fines, fees and 
penalties we've collected.
We're about, have we improved 
the environment and
public health?
Those others are just tools 
or means to an end.
And they're important tools 
and we need to use them,
but unless we can validate what 
we're doing through those
by measured improvement 
in the environment,
we need to stop, take a step 
back and another look at it
and say, "Okay, how do 
we do this better?"
[William D. Ruckelshaus] 
I never thought of myself 
so much as a crusader,
but somebody who really believes 
that public service is a very
high calling and your 
responsibility as a
public servant is to try to 
divine what's in the public
interest, and then whatever 
responsibility you're assigned,
make sure that it's 
directed accordingly.
And if you keep reminding 
yourself you're a public
servant and you're here to serve 
the public and to make sure that
their interests are represented 
in your decisions,
I don't think you'll 
go that far wrong.
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