Carla Aragon and Pete V. Domenici; Part 1 of 3

You Good afternoon. I'm Carla Aragon and we are at K-NME Studios in Albuquerque and we are doing the second part of the official oral history for Senator Pete D'Aminici. In the studio with me, of course, is a senator, Pete D'Aminici, his wife, Mrs. D'Aminici, and Lisa Breeden, who is his communications director here in Albuquerque for New Mexico. So we're going to get started with this. We had a wonderful first part of this oral history in Washington.

Now that was back in June and here we are in August. You have a little more than four months left in your term of office. Has it sunk in that you will soon be retiring? I don't think so, but I'm getting a bit worried about it. I don't quite have it figured out. That's always when you're that way and at least when I'm that way, that's not good. But I think it will be that way for a while because it's hard to, the rules of the senator, pretty difficult in terms of who you can contact and how much you can talk to potential employers. See, I want to work at least part time and I'm hoping that I will spend part of my time in New Mexico because my son has an extra office and it's for me. So that'll make being in New Mexico a little easier because I don't have to rent space, I don't have to have a secretary, and see what comes.

Washington will certainly be a part of what I do, but I don't have that figured out, except I would like very much to have Steve Bell part of what I do and do it together in some way. You think you're right hand man, hasn't he? Yes, from almost all of my life. He left me for eight years, went off and got into private business and made a fortune. And then we're starting up his own consulting business and I called him and asked him if he'd like to come back to the hill and right on the spot when I told him what the job was, he accepted it. And so out of the 36 years, that's something like 28, he's been with me, the director of the budget, head of my staff or public information director, the three most important jobs I have. But I wanted to say, we are thinking of staying, spending part time in Washington because we have a very, a lot of our grandchildren are close, they're the little ones, more of the little ones are there. And we have a nice house and Nancy kind of wants to stay for a while, so that, but I'm kind of worried about myself because I'm used to having people help me.

So, you know, I'm a, people do everything for me, they place my calls, they make sure that the name that's important gets put in the right place. I didn't, I don't know what I'll do without that, so that's befuddling, but people say don't worry about that, that'll work out. Nancy. Well, your son, if you're in the same office with him, he's going to have a challenge. Do this, do that. Let me ask you about what you're doing right now. I know as the time neared for me to leave K-O-B, I didn't really want to focus on that day. I wanted to focus about what do I need to get done right now. What is your focus now in the remaining four and a half months? What do you want to do and how do you want to spend your time? Well, first of all, the Senate has a very firm schedule and tight schedule on when you do what as you diminish your presence as a senator.

We're following it and things are getting packaged up. We're deciding which goes where they give us one big delivery and the other deliveries we'll have to pay for. The big delivery will be to New Mexico State, which is going to be the harbinger of our book, of our books and our records. We're following that schedule, but at the same time, the Senate's meeting. There are very important issues. You understand there are 49 Republicans, 51 Democrats at this point in history. That's close. It would look like Republicans would have a big opportunity with that many, but not so. Democrats have a very procedurally strong leader. He knows the rules. It's very hard to get things done when he doesn't want you to. Right now, we're engaged in a very healthy debate about whether or not we should be able to use more of our own American-owned oil and gas.

We own a lot off the shores of our country. I proposed about 10 or 12 weeks ago that we open all of it around America. We have 15% already opened. That we open all of it at the whim of each governor. If the governor of Virginia doesn't want it, we won't do it. But if he does, it'll be 50 miles out, so it won't be an environmental problem. And the state of Virginia would get a very accelerated and enhanced royalty over what it is now. We think that that's a fair way to do it. And the Democrats resisted to the extent that they wouldn't let us vote. So we have never voted on the issue of whether we should produce our own oil and natural gas and use it or not. Now, I want to say that we're talking about a breaking news story here at UNI, but part of my life has been energy, not as much as the budget.

But I've enjoyed it more, and I've done more, feels like I've done more. And this issue is so simple to me that we should not have politicized it at all. We shouldn't have had to. But we couldn't get the right Democrats to join in the bill that we put in. I put the first bill in with 13 senators, and I changed it some and gave it to a Republican leader. He got 44, and we showed it to the public and explained it. And the explanation was a little bit different than I told you, but it was we want to use more of our, excuse me, we want to have more of our energy available, but we want to conserve more. And we proposed going down two paths. The electric car was the conservation one, and we wanted to push very hard to enhance the batteries to 100 miles, which we thought then would say we're going to sell a lot of electric automobiles.

And that's the direct way to get crude oil to stop buying crude oil. The other one was to open the coastal areas, which about 15% of the coastal areas open, and it's the biggest producer of gas and oil for the United States. There's no other single unit in America that produces more, and it's been open for a long time. Nobody's been heard. Katrina didn't destroy any of the platforms, which are big, strong, sturdy things, which we know how to build. We will return having convinced the American people that we are right, that we should drill for our own, and let me make sure that everybody that wants to know why we're doing this understand. This is not a question of adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere if you're worried about global warming.

This is saying nothing more than we will be using crude oil for a long time, as much as one lifetime for sure, maybe two. Because you can't get rid of the cars and the trucks and the aeroplanes, you can't find a switch yet. I don't mean get rid of them. You don't have a new engine type. So we'll be using it. The reality is we try to use our own instead of somebody else's during that period of time that we move to a new and different energy world. One of the things that is going to be an obstacle is to get, as you mentioned, the Democrats on board and the environmentalists. In looking, you've got a stellar career, and I looked you up on Wikipedia, and it talked about all your accomplishments and where you have been the leading expert, and there were only two weak points, and one was, you weren't very popular with environmentalists. How do you win them over in this last go round, and what is your comment about that?

Look, Carla, the environmentalists form various groups like the Sierra Club and others, and then they join together in coalitions and grade you on what you have done. And they have their litany, and if you don't fit, you lose, whatever percentage, if it's ten points, you lose ten percent. And I don't look at it like some people, some people look at it in advance of a vote and ask, where is the environmentalist vote? I don't do that. I think there's less of that being done now than it was when it went. First went to the Senate, believe it or not, that people just openly asked that and voted with them. Now, I say most of the votes, where I am wrong in their opinion, I am for some kind of growth, achievement, or activity, and there for either taking more time, starting it longer or not doing it. I'm very proud to have been part of writing the first clean air act, first clean water act, second clean air act for America, which is the envy of the world.

You hear the Chinese now openly saying, one of these days we have to be like America and clean up our factories. You see that during this Olympiad, which is the Olympiad that covers right now, and there's a great, great environmental problem surrounding open growth with none. So I did my share on wilderness, more wilderness area created under my Senate ship than any history from New Mexico. But I can't agree with the environmentalists when they don't want the ranchers in northern New Mexico to graze on public land. I thought the public lands were for three purposes, one of which was grazing, and they make it very hard to do that, and I don't vote with them. So I lose on that.

It used to be that some environmentalists were not for nuclear power. They're switching a little now, some are coming with us. But I can't go with them with that group of environmentalists who are posed to nuclear power. I believe it's absolutely necessary. It's now 20% with all power plants that we built more than 25 years ago, because we've had 25 to 27 years of nothing, while a world led by France took all of our innovation and moved it in the field of nuclear power. We did nothing. And because we were frightened, and there's no reason to be frightened, there are less people hurt injured or killed creating nuclear power and then using it. And any of the others, with a lot more in coal, you kill more and hurt more from the mining stage all the way through the use, more pollution in it. CO2, which is the compound we're worried about on global warming, that's converting some environmentalists because there is none in a nuclear power plant.

And not only do I not vote with them on things like that, and that does not mean they're not good Americans, and I'm a great American. We have a difference of opinion, and I don't think it means, in fact, I would go through each one with them and prove it for you, but I don't think it means that I voted to harm the health of our people environmentally. I just think they are anti-growth in some respects, and I'm not there. They don't want to take any risks, and I have grown to say, we have to take risks. I think our country has to take more risks than we have been. So that's part of the story. I think one of your hallmarks is that you have stood firm when you really, really believe in something, but you also have been great about bringing people together. We look at the budget with Clinton. That was a huge, huge triumph for you, getting a balanced budget, but you also worked with President Carter on a major energy plan. How are you able to cross party lines to bring people together?

Stanley, it's wonderful that you mentioned Jimmy Carter's era, is not really known as being a great four years presidency. I think you know that. I'm just stating it the way I think it's been analyzed. Mr. Carter and his wife would not like that, but that's true. The work he's most laudable for is the work he did after. He was President, you know. But nonetheless, he tried one thing, that big thing, that I helped him with, because I thought was the right thing, and very few Republicans chose to. And I had to sell it in Mexico and make sure that it didn't hurt me politically, but I joined with a small group of Republicans in helping Democrats under Jimmy Carter form what would have solved our energy problem. We completed it, and it was a formation of under a statute which we promoted. It would permit us to build new power plants that used clean coal, that turned coal to liquid, and then you used the liquid as diesel fuel or to like.

Believe it or not, if we had done that, it would have cost money because crude oil was cheap and manufacturing new things from crude oil that you can use that don't pollute is expensive. So you had to buck that tide. I was excited because the science and technology excited me, a couple of my staffers, and we mentioned once here, Steve Bell, my, currently my chief of staff. He was with me then, and he was one of them that worked on this. Now, why do I bring it up? Because you see, if we would have found out how to do that. We would not be so subject to importing from countries that don't like us because we would have been converting coal and converting shale up in Colorado, Utah area, how to convert that into usable products.

Now, what has made it come back is the high price of crude oil. If the crude oil was expensive back in Jimmy Carter's day, we would have gotten more support for this big giant project that we had in mind of coal and other minerals being converted to usable products. That was defeated ultimately when Ronald Reagan came into office. I stood firm, but I was among the few and it was closed, all closed down. Except one plant that worked is still running, small stream of product. But we have to start over right now and do what we plan to do under Carter's era if we want to use coal. We've got a lot of it. It's not going to be used without a new kind of technique, applying techniques and technology to it. A lot of what you accomplished was chipping away, little by little. Again, we go back to crossing party lines. Tell me about the Dole Domenici amendment and the extremes that you went to to try to get a tie breaking vote.

I was referring to one of your speeches that you gave and it was the time when you went and you got an ambulance for Senator Pete Wilson after you had major surgery. Tell me about that story. We've seen something like it lately, but this was really absolutely something that everybody in the country was shocked at. We were trying to pass a bill that's nicknamed the Dole Domenici. It was part of the budget. By doing that, we would have moved ahead with the budget. We would have moved ahead and got a great budget for America. We were one vote short and we knew it, but we thought maybe somebody would switch. But they didn't. So Dole was in a position to hold the Senate up and the word it got now.

Here comes Pete Wilson, who later become governor of California. He was a senator and he comes in and he was just came out of a hospital bed and they brought him in with all of the things tied on. You know that give you blood and water and sustenance and he walked him in and he put up the hand that would move. They said Senator from California and he said aye and they rolled him out and took him back where he came from. I assume to the hospital bed. But he wasn't very sick. I think it was an appendicitis if I remember something like that. But that was a very interesting day and in the annals of the Senate, it goes down as a very big day. Don't remember right now it had to go look for you. The details of the bill, they leave me in this interview. But if it's important, we'll dig it up. Yeah, I think it was it was a budget, as you mentioned, it was part of the budget. And my understanding from the fact I've got it right here for you so we can.

My understanding is that you were so excited because you finally got consensus in the Senate and then you also had the president's promise that if you were able to get consensus that he would go ahead and vote for it. And all of a sudden after you went and got Pete Wilson, he met with Tip O'Neill and it was dismantled in the house. Okay, this is one where we finally produced a budget that took some money away from entitlements, which we never want to do. Nobody has the courage to do it. This budget said we were going to do that. And it was a very substantial amount of money over the years. It was a so security issue. Nobody wanted to touch it. We said we'd do it. But we had arranged it in advance with the Treasury Secretary for Ronald Reagan. We thought if we do it in our side turned out there were some Republicans in the U.S. House that were against what we did. And they made a lot of political racket. In fact, one of them turned out to come over and be a senator lately, Trent Lot, from the state of Mississippi.

And we called him then because of what the way conducted things. We called him the rock thrower because he would throw rocks across from the house over to us and make too much racket in the Senate. But they were against what we did. And then the president met with Tip O'Neill and incredibly poor Bob Doe. I mean, he was about ready to resign. The president says no. And all our budget work, including this enormous courageous act, bringing Pete Wilson to the floor from the hospital bed, went down for not. Nonetheless, we did eventually, under my chairmanship, working with lots of good people. We did get a balanced budget. In fact, we got two in a row. Now we haven't gotten any sense. We've gotten worse and worse. I've been gone for a while. I'm not saying my absence as chairman caused all the deficits. I mean, the war did. A recession did. Many things happened that caused the big deficit that somebody else had to chair and get through the Senate.

But my work in the Senate in my opinion was I spent too much time being the chairman or ranking member of the budget. But that was my life and that was my assignment. And part of it, I was in passion to do it. But so many years without working without being more on a committee like the energy committee that I got to be chairman just six years ago. I found out that you ought to have a chance at both in the Senate and my chance, my shot at doing energy policy was very, very exciting along with the budget work. For instance, in that committee on energy and natural resources, the authorizing committee sets policy. That's where we gave birth to the first nuclear power plants in 27 years.

We wrote it and passed it as a big omnivorous energy bill. And yes, indeed, it's one of those where you pass it. And three years later, you say, what's happened and something biggest happened? No from no applications for nuclear power plants for 27 years, frightened to death of it. We now have a waiting line. Many, many companies have filed their applications for both design and construction of nuclear power plants somewhere in the United States. We know that sites already existent where you have nuclear power. In one case, there are two new sites that they had to go out and convince the public. And they've convinced them that nuclear power is the right thing. And we're moving in that direction. We will find not while I'm still alive, but while people are looking at my record, one of the things that will obviously stand out, both in reality and at pride for myself, is a story of how I, with some great helpers, three or four, spending lots and lots of time and leading me and giving me great work.

We did change the country and the, in a way that we will have nuclear power, but also we added to the enthusiasm for the world to do it. And nuclear power plants are springing up all over the world, including China, which has the need for energy of any kind. They build more power plants than 30 coal, and they do one power plant a week. Imagine we haven't built a new coal burning power plant. God knows how long. And they've got about 40 nuclear power plants planned over the next years. I don't know whether it's 10 or 15, what. What I think we're going to do is just take a 30 second break so you can get a drink of water. And I'm going to get a drink of water. And also, I mean, one of the things that's interesting is, you know, you have been a leader when it comes to nuclear energy, but also when it comes to nuclear and non proliferation.

And, you know, we need to talk about that because there's a lot of activity that's heating up right now as you see in Korea, as you see now in the Middle East with Iran. And you did a lot to try to rein that in. Are you okay to get a drink? Okay. Okay. You can go ahead and answer and I'll get a drink. And Lisa, if there's anything that you want to add, feel free to jump in because we're very casual here and Mrs. Domenici. Take my voice up. You're right. Well, let's talk a minute about nuclear non proliferation. Ever since we had nuclear energy, there's been and nuclear weapons. There's been a big problem of some of the fissionable materials that is used in the process getting out and becoming available to do adverse things.

Just a rogue state producing a nuclear weapon. Iran finally ending up, let's just say able to get the plutonium, which is the ingredient to scenic way known without which you can't produce nuclear bomb. They're working very diligently to try to get that. So I took on a role with the help of a very, very good staffer who was extremely young when he came to work for me and grew and matured and became one of the paramount leaders in nuclear power in America. And he's not yet 40 years of age, but he worked for me and came to a point where after the fall of the wall and the fall of the Soviet Union, which incidentally on the day we are giving this interview,

Russia is acting like she would like to put the Russian Soviet Union back on the map by taking a whole bunch of those little countries and putting them back on the Russia. I'm not saying they're going to do it, but we have- And I do want to get your- That'd be interesting. But what happened was, believe it or not, the Russians with all these nuclear weapons, they kept those and worried about them, but the rest of the nuclear activities sort of went to hell and they had great big centers like Los Alamos, they had three of them, maybe four, closed cities, so as to speak, and a lot of material that could be used by leaders, rogue countries to make nuclear bombs was easily accessible. Soldiers used to be the way they protected them. They didn't have protection like we do, the safeties at Los Alamos and at Sandean and Livermore, et cetera, the controls and safety guards.

Proliferation was abated by military control over the premise that just be soldiers. Well, you know, for a long time, the soldiers of the Soviet Empire just left. They walked off the job. And we had some leaders here, the best ones coming from numerical laboratories, that were promoting this Congress to get involved in non-proliferation, meaning try to keep this activity of letting these fishnable materials, the worst of which was plutonium, get out into the hands of people that shouldn't have it. And so they excited me to get involved and I did three things that were truly important and let's just take two together. I was led to believe and then found out that Russia had taken large quantities of plutonium and had left them in a place where they.

People might steal plutonium and they had huge quantities of another product called highly enriched uranium. Now, that's also used in building a nuclear bomb. And it's also a residue from taking weapons and when you break them down, which Russia and America did a lot of, you have highly enriched uranium left over and it's dangerous stuff. Well, I found out about it and I got involved and went to Russia and participated in an excellent ending to all this work we did to try to get to corral some of that. Sure enough, one day, in an afternoon, there was a supplemental appropriation bill being considered democratically controlled house.

I went there with my, the young friend I told you about, his name is Alex Flint, and we presented to them then and there a proposal that without a statute, without a presidential request, to appropriate the money to buy 34 tons of plutonium and I can't recall the number of highly enriched uranium but a huge amount. In fact, we are still as of today operating some of our housing lights in our houses with the highly enriched uranium that were bought and purchased in this transaction. When I'm talking about $238 million, we can correct the figure right and we asked the appropriation committee to appropriate the money and so we could take care of that big batch of plutonium by converting it to things that would not be harmful and buying the highly enriched uranium so we could use it and get it out of their hands. That amount of money and excess of 250 million was granted then and there in my request.

It wasn't a big group of senators, just we worked on it, we asked for it, we got it. So I got to reputation from that being somebody that was interested in nonproliferation and would do things and we passed a bill that has my name with Senator Luger, Senator Nunn and Senator Domenici that has to do with this subject and a broader range of subjects on this point. So the actions of Russia and the concern with all of these other countries, we're going to have to be vigilant about this in years to come. Do you believe that we need the cooperation of Russia and Europe to do this and do you think that they will cooperate at this stage? Well, this is a real tough one. As of now, without getting detailed information, I think Russia has perhaps, without wanting it, has set in motion an anti-Russia movement that will not be, will not end very quickly. But things like kicking them out of the European community called E8, it's not European, but it's Japan, America, Europe, Russia and saying to them, that's for democratic countries that have certain kinds of freedoms and just acknowledging that they don't.

Other things where they will be embarrassed, but I, but I, you can't tell, they have a really tough former, their kind of CIA, KGB, that man is really running the country, Putin. And what are they, what is they're going to do in response to these states around them that just don't want to be part of the Soviet Empire? Will they go to war over it? Will they invade them? Would just have to see. Many people are concerned that, oh, with the situation in Georgia, is the United States going to go over there? Are we going to get involved in that? I think it's pretty obvious from the early things that are happening there that this is one where the country is closest to Russia.

You know, all of the European countries, led by France, have to join together. And NATO has to do more than just play the radios in the rooms. They have to decide what they're going to do as a collective group. And I think Russia will find out that unless they have a better explanation for what, why they did what they did and make some pledges about the future that they then follow up on. This will be the beginning of some serious enmity, anger, enmity, hate, which I don't like when you've got two, two big superpowers. And they are, they have the same power and nuclear bomb power and nuclear delivery system as we do. Perhaps not delivery of the bombs as well, but they have, it's incredible that we and they would be at odds after so many years.

And then that falling apart, they're being nuclear pieces between the two giants. As you know, they've got nuclear activity and ownership of nuclear weapons and made the world much more unsafe when more countries than Russia and America had nuclear weapons. And we've got a pretty good relationship recognizing the seriousness and we carry the responsibility quite well between the two giants. Now we've got Iran, you know, on the map right now. Are they going to have a nuclear bomb if they do what kind of stewards will they be of that? It's pretty hard to know. I'm sorry I'm not going to be around it. Next couple of years would be good to participate because for in my case, I went to two giant presentations by our CIA experts on what was happening in Russia. I didn't think very many senators went and got that. I knew for the last two years from what I was told that they were back on their feet militarily, so as to speak.

And they were building a new, their laboratories and other things and all of that could could be nothing. I remember when we were there in June, you were hearing information about that because it was actually during our interview when you got some of that information. But it was just barely, you know, it wasn't like the Georgian thing, which is really a terrific show of power and kind of an abuse that we haven't seen since the days of the Nazis, you know, moving in on a country with just lines of tanks. I mean, it's kind of scary. I hope we didn't cause some of that by getting some of those democratically elected people excited. And who might have done something to make the Russians mad. I don't know that yet, but I'm hearing that there's a little bit of another side to the story. In any event, we ought to be brought together by peace, these two giants. There's no reason for the Russia to be acting like they are, and we ought to be their friends without question.

I've talked to some of your staffers and some people who know you who feel like you are going to be, if there's an area where you're going to be really involved after you leave the Senate, it would probably be nuclear energy. Would it be fair to say that and also mental health? Well, you know, I won't be able to escape participating with groups that address the issue, the lingering issue of mental illness. I will have to be. I don't think I have to take any kind of lead. I don't have to be what I am. I'm not a senator. Then I will be a citizen. My wife has been doing things that I can help with. And now, so that one will be a sure thing. But nuclear power, there is enough going on going on that needs thinking, needs people in the business to do the right things, to talk to Congress in the right way about what's going on.

And also to be a sort of a participant in the giant movement ahead, which may very well be the real surprise of this century in terms of energy sources. That would be the real fulfillment of the dream that started with Eisenhower when he really thought that the peaceful use of nuclear power would save the world because it would take care of poor countries and everybody would have sufficient energy. I would be delighted to be part of that. And maybe if I'm going to work for a living, you know, I've been paid so far by a limited salary. I'm not complaining, but maybe I could be in the private sector and do some good.

And I have to say, I was so excited when I went to your tribute. We're going to change gears a little bit in June. And boy, lo and behold, Governor Janet Napolitano was here and she has given you credit for helping her get started in her political career. Tell me about it and some about that and some of the other people who you have mentored along the way who have just become a huge success. Well, Janet overstated my involvement, but you know, we don't ask interns what party they're in or fellows. She turned out to be a very, very ardent Democrat, right? But nonetheless, she was interested in learning about the budget process. And we had an intern niche for her and I knew Leonard Napolitano fairly well. I know him much better now than I did years ago when she came through.

So I was glad to have her. It turned out she worked under Steve Bell and he acknowledges that she was plenty smart and she caught on and enjoyed even though she wasn't in a big job. She did what you can do and that's getting involved in lots of interesting issues as the budget evolves and has worked its way through in this complicated process. So she's won, but the thing that excites me most is for us to as part of this legacy activity is to go back and because I might forget. To go back and get a list of all of those who were in high places in my office and maybe even show them off in the center that it be created for my memorabilia or whatever you call it. And put them in, you know, but put Alex Flint, a nice portrait of him in the background and what he did. Charles Gentry, a cripple-wounded pilot from the Vietnam War helicopter pilot.

He was wonderfully smart, somewhat crippled, but not to his disadvantage because he had great agility of mind and he came to work for me. He was originally from Roswell. He came by a mistake, he says, because I was told that I was looking for lady and his wife was working for the government in the Environmental Protection Agency or something like that. And I said, man, I got to hire her. She's got this great reputation. I called her up in this case and she said, you've got the wrong one. You want the other part of this marriage. And you want my husband, Charlie, he knows more about politics and he's been following you and I called Gentry and we, after an exchange of words and ideas, he joined my staff. He had a background which was after a degree, he went to law school, first graduating class of lawyers from Texas Tech, number one obviously in his class.

And number one, no matter which law school you're pretty good. And Benny was selected as a congressional, as a presidential fellow. And those are, that's a real great fellowship. For one year you work in government alongside a cabinet member. He chose judicial matters and so he was there with the Attorney General. I got to do a lot of things before he came to work for me. He has told us many of the things that we have forgotten. He told us what we did when he was there. He's written it all up. He wrote a big long litany and it was great to hear, to recap things he and I did. Well, I was looking at the number of interns and I think, and Lisa can correct me if I am wrong. There was something like 3,000 that since you have been a senator and 1,000 of them from New Mexico, so many of these people have such fond memories of you. I don't know, I read that number from somewhere else too. And Carla, I think we should verify it. It sounds too big, but I keep forgetting that it's 36 years.

But I do remember that we started the fellowship in a bigger way, later on we didn't start in the early days. Well, let's get that corrected and say that those internships, they are really two kinds, but the one that is most prominent is the one where a collegiate preference junior senior, but we sometimes take freshmen and sophomores. They apply to come and have a six week fellowship and all they get paid is enough to keep them. They don't make money. They have to pay their own rent and just, but most of them come with such joy and excitement. And we don't have, you know, when we get 10 or 12, wonderful, wonderful people, both men and women, we probably don't keep them as busy as their minds and desire would expect. But I tell you, they only one has ever publicly complained in all these years. And I think that person came with the idea that she comes, so she could complain, I kind of have her picked. But the others, you know, gracious, wonderful.

I don't know whether they ever got in trouble or anything. I don't bother with that. They're mature, so we don't have somebody watching them, but they have agendas and we recommend certain things to them. And they end up going back home and finishing school and they really do love the Domenity Office and perhaps even have a little good thought for Pete Domenity. Oh, well, they have such fond memories of working with you. And in fact, so many of them, this is funny for you to hear, but they were saying, you know, I think there were more marriages that came out of Domenity's internship program than anything else. Are you surprised to hear that? Well, I think I think we could broaden it even to say that that's true and to say that a lot of them come just from my staff, not not intern, but staff that meets there. There's been lots of marriages and lots of a lot of children. And I run into some of them and now, of course, depending upon which class which year they're either still in college or just getting married or some are well up years and have been practicing law or doing something great for 2015, 20 years. That's rather exciting.

It shows that if you do it right, you can use the Senate office without, as I see it, without harming the taxpayers, we don't get any big increased budget for that. We shave a little elsewhere for the few dollars we pay to the interns. They have to come out of our budget. So, but I think it's one of the greatest things we can do because it starts off as something very understaffed from the senator's office because we, you know, we don't think we have to give them a bunch of people, but everybody loves them so much they do. They do end up sticking their noses in lots of business, so they do keep busy. I want to make sure it's two o'clock. We're okay to keep going, right? I think in 15, how much?

Okay. I have just a couple of stories and then I want to bring Nancy on just to talk a little together, but there's some wonderful personal stories that I have learned about you. And there was one about a little girl, and I believe she was from the Clovis, no, Springer area, and she had two strains of cancer. And I guess her family met with you and they asked, you know, can you please write a letter to her? That would mean so much to this little girl. And you did. You wrote a letter. Do you remember that story? And she signed it. You signed it. It was very sweet. Your senator Pete from your senator Pete. Well, listen, there are so many cases like that and so many people. As I retired, I'm not retired, but as people find out I am, they tell more, they open up and talk more about what their relationship with me has been.

Incredible. I have people, well, I'm just walking down the street, walk up to me and insist that they be heard. And all it is to say, thank you, my grandpa told me such and such, and you help my sister do such and such. And they just tell you that right off the street or surprisingly, I go to came arts. I've gone there once, maybe once or twice and you see people there and they don't believe you're there to start with. They tell you stories about their grandpa up in northern New Mexico. A lot of people, among the Hispanic people anyway, they really do cherish the opportunity to be with the senator. And if you do that, the family and family becomes your friends. It's just an amazing phenomenon that might just be ours.

The other thing that I must say because we kind of try cultured even though we don't talk about it. I mean, the Indian people have over the 36 years. I have learned to know them very well and they're a lot more stoic than our other constituents. And so it takes a while to get things eased up and where they feel comfortable and warm. But I've broken that barrier and they are literally my friends who hugged me and love me just like everybody else had a going away party for me. And it was incredible. You know, they had a 90 year old Indian who claims he played baseball with me and he might have. Laguna Indians had a team and they occasionally would tell us here we got a center center field or who's 50. And you know, I was 21, 22. And they're out there playing. That may be the guy who's 90. Come to the event and remember everything about how he played. I don't remember that, but they do.

And you know, we go on a radio show. The other day we were on K-O-B radio and it goes very far. They had a telephone in and all the calls were to call and say, thank you. We hope you get well or don't get any sicker. And then remember such and such. And thank you for such and such. It's rather, it's rather less to be cherished on my part. That's why we're doing what we're doing and why we're going to try to have a center that will permit me to remember, but will permit people to learn what it was like for Pete to be a senator for 36 years. Well, you know, we've talked about all, you know, the issues and everything, but you've touched so many people's lives and so many ways, the ways that you never even taught. And, you know, I asked you this back in June, but I think it's worth bringing up again. There are people who are really grieving that you are no longer going to be in office and they're worried about New Mexico. Do they tell you about that?

Yes, of course. And I tell my wife, you know, we hear this a lot from people and the part about what's going to happen when I'm gone and worrying about it. I think that should be gotten out of everybody's brain because, you know, under our system of democracy, when somebody will get elected. And if they're not good enough, they'll get thrown out and another one will be in and, you know, eventually they will get what they deserve, some good leadership. It's inevitable that it will be harder for a few years for the New Mexico delegation to be able to report. We've got this done for New Mexico or we had this problem and we solved it. There will be less of that than there has been. But Jeff Benjamin will be here and he's pretty vintage and pretty as a good staff. It's really important that you're going to get from the government what your people need or help them in ways they should be helped. You really have to have a good staff.

I can't state that too often. Let me tell you one of these cases of where I have done something that people would say was really nice evidence of streak of decency or they might know that some staffer was really good and imposed on me. I had a director of an office in Los Cruces for many years left me about four years ago or six, Darlene Garcia. She was not a Republican when we hired her. She came from a long string of Republicans and she had a large family when we looked at what her credentials were and she was going back to school to better her skills and she was not 21. And my field guide down there said we have a lot of applicants. He's a very conservative Republican fellow. He's of all of them I recommend her. Do you want to hire a senator?

Do you recommend somebody I take it pretty seriously? Tomorrow I'll tell you. Well I was very impressed. I said talk to her on the phone. She's appeared very sensitive. Turned out that she was for many years if you can have a conscience running around your office trying to grab somebody and say I'm your conscience. That's her. That's what she did. And the one case that was really it's she started bothering me about three or four months before due date. Due date was the date that this little spent Mexican child who was being treated at a UNM medical school for a very serious disease illness. It came time for her to go back to Mexico. And of course we had the bureaucratic battle start and papers flowing as to whether she was well enough to be sent home because she wasn't supposed to be here any longer. We took her to help her. We didn't take her to be a citizen and we helped her got to the point.

Darling my person said I am the one who talked to everybody senator. I have the letter and there's a. One doctor says Mexico has a hospital and school institution to take care of another doctor says she'll go there and die. There's nobody way to take care of her. So I want you to save her. Come on, darling. You know, you're always giving me these kind of things. Let's just let the process do. She started calling me up and she started telling me about the Lord. You know, and the Lord is going to take care of me as he always has. But if you don't save this child, I don't know what the Lord's going to think about you. When I kept putting it off, kept putting it off and believe it or not, she called me the last time when the child was going across the bridge. To go back home to her homeland and said this is it. We either save her or she's gone. If you just say yes, which I beg you to do and all these other things she'd say, you know, just like darling could say.

When she sees this, she'll die because she doesn't think I remember. Well, I said, okay, do it. And it actually went. The people that were in charge had to run out there and catch the little girl who was with some people, some men long to border patrol or whatever they were. And had to bring another one along and say that they change her mind that border patrol because we call them they change their mind. And the little girl goes back and darling calls me that night. She says, you know, you got another sign from the Lord for you. You know, he's built enough. You've been saved, Senator. That's not bad though. I mean, if you have somebody like that, just think how many people she'd help. Although she'd get us in a lot of trouble, we understand. But she'd tell people do things we couldn't do sometimes. Not a lot. I shouldn't use a lot. Sometimes she'd make a mistake in judgment. But added all up. That was a good kind of person to have.

I can't tell the Mexicans and those who want to learn about me. I can't say I always had that sensitive person. And I'm not saying I went out and recruited him. That was just an accident. That true, true bonafide love in a person. And so she at first she couldn't handle the job very well. So she didn't run very ran bunches. She learned. But she learned the job. Then she became when she knew that she became very ran bunches for outside things. Before we run out of tape, and then we'll just take a little break here. I want to ask you the story about less than a minute. And let's change tapes. And I'll just while they're changing tapes, I'll refresh your memory because this is a fun story. Members of the Navajo Nation. Are we all set?

And Lisa, okay, you said stockpile stewardship and what else? Yeah. What? I think it's just in general the stockpile stewardship. Non-proliferation. I know. I have a hard time saying it. It's also very important because it's so vital to what the election is about now. Because it's so about our security. Exactly. Do you want to start with that one? Lisa's stockpile stewardship. Exactly. So, okay, we are tape two. We're rolling and we're back. Tell me about stockpile stewardship. What does that mean? And how does it apply to us today? It's, it came about like this and it's a huge program for the nuclear laboratories. As Sandia, Los Alamos, and Lawrence Livermore. The United States Senate, led by a senator named Mark Hatfield, voted that the United States

would no longer conduct underground testing of nuclear weapons to find out whether or not they were safe, accurate, et cetera. Both America and the Soviet Union did that. We did it as you know in the big desert of Nevada. Underground way, way down there you conduct tests with nuclear devices. And you know exactly what's your nuclear weapons that you have are all about in terms of safety and like. Well, when we finished the vote, they also voted in the house to stop doing nuclear testing unless and until the President of the United States determined it wasn't necessary again. Well, that itself put into the minds of those who wanted to make sure our nuclear stockpile was safe, secure, and sound. A new program called, and let's listen to the words, stockpile, that's the stockpile of weapons.

Stewardship is taking care of, so it's the stockpile stewardship program. And it was implemented, believe it or not, by a small appropriations committee called Energy and Water Appropriations. And guess who found himself on that committee as chairman when stockpile stewardship was initiated? Me. All in your hands. And it was terrific. I got to meet the best brains we have put together and it gave a vitality to these laboratories with this new mission, which was, believe it or not, to use the most modern technology, logarithms, computer activity. That brought a new age for computers, incidentally, because you had to do such enormous, enormous tests which brought forth enormous amounts of information that had to be worked on.

So that dragged in new computers to do the work. It gave birth to a new computer company, gave birth to the giant computers, and even today, gave birth to the largest computer the world's ever seen. And I was there for all these years from maybe 16, 15 or 16, where the objective is to make sure that at the end of a year, the director of each laboratory can certify or not certify. But we hope to what we were doing could certify to the president of the United States that the entire stockpile of the United States of nuclear weapons was safe and would work as it should. And we expected Soviet Union did the same thing. But anyway, they didn't use the same, they didn't advance the same technology that we did. But it was just fantastic to implement that every year and to find that new testing equipment got built to make sure you could x-ray, take pictures of, it's phenomenal, what they could do to make sure that this nuclear weapon,

which was 40 years old, people don't know that we've got nuclear weapons, 40, 45 years old. We don't build them anymore, contrary to what people think. Stockpile stewardship looks at every part and tells you that it's still okay, and that's the best scientists can do. Some of our greatest say it's not enough, we should change the statute and go back to underground testing. But that won't happen for quite some time, obviously. And we got to use stockpile stewardship technology to keep the stockpile healthy. To keep our world, you did your part to keep our world safer in that real world. I think it was a fantastic job. And the people that have been implementing it are very nice to me. They give me a lot of credit. It was fun. It was not necessarily easy. But they wouldn't give us enough money to do the work. That's one thing was okay.

And the last four or five years have been taking away money and joking about, you have too much money in nuclear bombs. But the question is, we've got a package of nuclear weapons, so does Russia. And the two keep the world peaceful right now. You don't want to let one fall apart in their nuclear weapons because it wouldn't be a good world. Right. Experts are calling the war against Islamic extremism. The long war in your experience does America have the persistence as a nation and government to fight a decade's long battle? It's tough for us to do it. We seem to have since 9-11, we seem to have without another attack to keep our expenditures and our fulfilling our commitments to try to keep the homeland safe. I don't know how will it get in decades out there. I think it's going to require constant leadership, constant prodding, and it's more successful.

The more they will say it's not needed. And it's quite the reverse. The more you do, so there is no gain, so nothing happens. It means the more you have to keep it up. If you're a boxer and you get by five rounds, keeping your guard up, and they tell your boy you're really keeping your guard up great, and you say, well, next round I'll just take my guard and put it down to knock you out. The same thing here. We haven't had any terrorism, Islamic or otherwise, since the big bad one. In America it's lucky because we know they'd like to do it. And it's not all luck. We spend lots of money on technology to ascertain what our potential terrorist enemies are about. More than any other dangerous activity. We do more on that if we just keep on doing it. Sometimes people get excited by a constituent information that's not true, and they get all worked up, want us to quit something, but they don't know enough about it.

We have come through, but pretty well on occasion we've left a vacuum for six or eight months on something important. Sometimes Americans have a very short memory. 9-11 just seems like, okay, it happened and we moved on with our life. Do we tend to get too complacent? Well, I think that's an absolute possibility. We could do. It could happen. And our presidents have to ask them when they're running. Nobody's being asked these questions very much. Are you going to keep the resources going and charge the best of our scientists to find the equipment that'll keep them in check or do you think it's not a problem? There are some who say it's overcharged. That your question should be answered very different. Well, Carla, you're asking a question that isn't true. It isn't so dangerous. Well, I don't know. Look at all the things they've done to other countries, Spain, and I don't remember them all, but pretty tough, right? They decided to do what they do at England. They caught them like their good policeman do.

But we've been pretty good at keeping it out of here. It's pretty easy to fathom what they could do here, and we're pretty open. We just need to continue that vigilance and lightning round. Okay. In June, when I was in Washington, the primary had just taken place. Heather Wilson was defeated by Steve Pierce. We are in August, and you're getting ready to go down to support Steve Pierce. Tell me a little bit about that election and the presidential campaign and your involvement. Everybody knows that I run under a Republican banner. I have plenty of friends that are Democrats. I am one who they say gets more Democrats occasionally than my Democratic opponent in elections. But in this one, I tried to get to Heather Wilson nominated, but I actually did not, as some people would think, I didn't spend a lot of time and endorse her long time in advance.

I really only did it after some outside money came in and created an imbalance. And now that that's over, I'm fully aware of the difference between the two candidates now, not the primary now. The Republican, Steve Pierce, and the Democrat, Tom Udall. Their differences are big. I think that it's easy for me to support Steve because Tom Udall is for so many liberal and green issues that he's almost overwhelmingly prejudiced going into this job, and the people have to just be told on each one of them, and if they choose, they choose. I want to be part of helping him try to make that point of the differences in six or eight important areas of difference that I think are important. And what about the presidential campaign? We've got, you know, John McCain.

Well, for instance, John McCain will be in Los Cruces. Whatever day we're on now, he's going to be there today's from now. I'm not going to be there. This is the second or third time that I have not been able to. I hope they don't. And nobody thinks it's because I don't support him. They just work on close deadlines. And when they set him up, I'm here to four. I've always had something I couldn't cancel. But I will send down an introduction to what somebody will give in my behalf. And he knows I'm going to work for him. I am very, I'm almost surprised. But I say pleasantly that John McCain is doing as well as he is in his election. I thought with the terrific headwind, the wind was right in the face of Republicans, but big enough to almost knock him down. And that exists in the presidential. And you got this live wire candidate for the Democrats. I thought that John McCain would already be blown away. But he's there. That's a race. New Mexico with all the big powerful Democrats, including the governor, going all out having more officers than McCain, spending more money.

More visitors come. It's still a close race. And I'll be working very hard for McCain too. He has surprised me. I think he's become more articulate with the passage of time. And I think the question is a very simple one. The public seems to know a lot about John McCain and who he is. And what that person will probably do in serious situations. They don't know the same about Obama and they're having trouble. Seems to me that's why the closeness of election. Or having trouble determining what he is, who he is. And whether he's going to, whether he's electing him is going to satisfy the thirst we have for putting in a leader that understands foreign affairs and the Russian situation. It's going to be with us for a while. So I think that's it. I don't know who will win, but I'm quite, quite shocked that it's going to be a close race.

I thought it would with all the things going against us. Every Republican has starts with a terrific number of losses behind him in terms of polls and everything. Say he's supposed to lose because of what I've told you. But I think it's one-on-one, one that each one had it by itself rather than overall. And that's good for John McCain. Three more quick questions. New Mexico has been very fortunate in not having too many natural disasters. But Sera Grande really got national global attention because it was close to the labs because it was a prescribed burn that got out of control. And because so many homes burned. You were instrumental in that relief. What were you thinking at the time and how did that? Well, you know, as soon as it started getting close and started hitting property. We went right to work and I was right there with my staff to find out what made this different than any other forest fire.

And it was obvious that you just mentioned that the government caused this. They had a burn. That means they started a fire. The fire was intended to stay in a certain place. And that's, you've got to be very careful. You're expected to have a high degree of knowledge and be very expertise. Well, you don't do these things. Well, they didn't apply that here and the fire got out of control. So my first thing was to find out what did that mean in terms of liability. And I was convinced that if we could document one more time that the Secretary of Interior would admit that it was a burn and it went out of control and they made a mistake. If we could get that and get it on the record that we could start writing a bill right then making the United States government liable for all the damage which they usually would not be liable for. And that was one of the best things we ever did in terms of laws. We wrote it to the other delegation and the other Senator help was written mostly in my office with my experts.

I think those that helped us and it turned out to be a model that will use be used for many when the governments to blame. We modeled it after a dam that had fallen down with every bit of evidence saying the government built it wrong. And the government in that case rather than just having a typical disaster had a government caused disaster and they had to pay for all the houses that got ruined. We applied it to this one and it was almost a billion dollars and the houses were paid that homeowners were paid well. It took well over a year to administer it and it came back lots of areas that were burned or back. And there were some dicey moments there when the fire got so close to the lab. We didn't know if that lab burns how much of Los Elmos is going to go up as well. Well, we learned a lesson. It was protected by a pretty big open space but that wasn't enough. That's been greatly enlarged.

That is the forest is cut down for a very large space around all of the buildings that are in the forest. And of course we passed a law that had never been followed. I did it with some help to make all the properties in American forest safer. Just ended up with doing parts of it but not all of it. You still find too many people having too many houses too close to what is bound to be a fire. And so we don't clean up the forest. You either clean it up or you shouldn't be built in there. That's what's got to happen. And we're not cleaning up the forest. We have this idea that it's okay if they burn. Well, we'll see what happens. I want you to tell this story because one of the things that about Peter Minichy, he speaks Spanish. He's been very culturally sensitive. You've been a great leader for the Navajos. Tell me about the story about that one campaign in your early days. I just have to hear that because it is so cute.

I don't speak Navajos but I will say that I even in my 36 years I have, I think I've come to the conclusion that I know Navajos Indians. I know some as friends. I've made some brand new friends that are Navajos. One that we used to work together on almost everything. He's gotten out of politics so I don't see him that much. But he told me this story and this is a funny story about Navajos that we used to use before we give a speech. It went something like this. Something was said. Something was said in English and they answered Navajo. It was quite obvious that the interpretation that Navajo interpretation took a long, long time, maybe twice or three times as much as the English language. Here comes another one and sure enough the translation of a long statement in English by Navajo who was with Peter Minichy.

This Navajo interpreted it and was very short. I said something's a matter. What did he do? So I said to him, what happened? Oh, nothing, don't worry. No, tell me what did you do? And finally I literally said, come on, what the hell did you do? He said, oh, don't worry. But what I did was I told him that the big shot up here told a joke and he expected to laugh so laugh. And they all did it, laughed, and that's how the interpretation and the laugh came about. It's good thing that we were friends and the Navajos were friendly or that would have got us in a little bit of trouble but it turned out to be wonderful. I think we're going to take a break right now and bring Nancy up because I want to make sure that we just get a little bit of time before.