The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; 7040; James Watt Controversy

[Tease]

Arizona Congressman MORRIS UDALL: Jim Watt`s an honorable man, but I disagree pretty seriously with what he`s trying to do, the direction he`s trying to take.

Secretary Of the Interior JAMES WATT: He`s going to put his arm around me and say, "Jim Watt, you were the greatest secretary that the nation has ever had."

JIM LEHRER [voice-over]: Those were the quiet words of three months ago on this program. Congressman Udall has since joined a growing public effort to get Secretary Watt fired, which has been met by an also growing effort by Watt supporters to prevent it. Tonight on this program, that scrap.

[Titles]

LEHRER: Good evening. It`s been many years and many administrations since a member of a president`s cabinet has drawn flies of controversy like James Watt has done. It`s been a virtual flap-of-the-week situation for the seven months he has been President Reagan`s secretary of the interior. The two most recent involved charges of collusion with his prior employer over opening up a Montana wilderness to oil and gas exploration, and charges of political blackmail over a problem with Congressman Morris Udall, the Democratic chairman of the House Interior Committee. But charges of various kinds have been flowing about Watt from the beginning. Thus far. President Reagan has stood fast in his support of Watt against calls for his resignation or dismissal. Others are rallying to the secretary`s side as well, calling him a dedicated public servant, trying to correct past extremes of prior administrations. We sample the opinions on both sides tonight. Robert MacNeil is off; Charlayne Hunter-Gault is in New York. Charlayne?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Jim, people on all sides in the Watt debate hold a laundry list of examples that they believe supports their case. Environmentalists and some anti-Watt members of Congress have been up in arms over Watt`s policies of expanding off-shore drilling leases, reducing enforcement staff at the Office of Surface Mining, and halting park land purchases. They`ve been especially unhappy with his general effort to open public lands to mineral and other development. Political cartoonists have joined the fray, poking fun at Watt`s religious convictions, and joking that Watt himself may be an endangered species. But Watt`s defenders have countered with praise for his efforts at cutting red tape, returning the power of the land to the states, and cutting back on government spending. On each side the list goes on. Jim?

LEHRER: We go first to the latest recruit in the public effort to dump secretary Watt. He is Congressman Morris Udall, Democrat of Arizona, chairman of the House Interior Committee, which oversees the work of Mr. Watt and the Interior Department. Congressman, three months ago on this program you said Mr. Watt was an honorable man; you did disagree with his policies, though. Now you say he should go. What happened?

Rep. MORRIS UDALL: Well, a thorough disillusionment on my part. There is an old saying: you fooled me once; it`s your fault. You fool me twice, it`s mine. This man had promised me four times; he promised Senator Goldwater and John Rhodes, congressman from Arizona, that if the delegation could agree on the Tucson Aqueduct -- which I don`t want to get into; it`s a complicated but a very vital water facility in Arizona-- if I could get the delegation, the governor and the mayor to agree, he would follow along on those key decisions. And so at considerable cost and making some old friends unhappy, I got a letter; we presented it to him; the delegation meets with him; and he says, "Ha, ha. We now have you, Udall. You have the letter, but you really ought to be voting with us on the president`s tax bill -- which I propose -- and I`m so tired when I get up in the morning from answering dumb questions from members of your committee in these congressional hearings, so I don`t know I`m going to have the energy to carry out the agreement I made with you." And at that point they lost me. I`m an old Boy Scout and I believe from my-- going back to my father, that you ought to-- the voters elected Ronald Reagan; he appointed Jim Watt. I`ve dealt with a half a dozen interior secretaries. And give him the benefit of the doubt and work with him and give him a decision -- just like we did the president on the tax matter, and give his legislation a fair chance even though I personally don`t agree with it. And here`s a man undercutting me at home, making all sorts of wild charges, backing off on promises to me, and apart from his programs, he`s a political disaster for the country, to be charging around and making these kind of allegations, and trying to undercut the basic environmental things that we`ve done over the last few years.

LEHRER: So basically, the final thing was really the political problem more so than policy differences, right?

Rep. UDALL: No, I have the most extreme kind of policy differences with him. He tried to chop up the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The national park idea was started by the United States. Other countries in the world envy us. We had this Land and Water Conservation Fund, which was, take some of the oil revenues from off-shore that we`ll never have again, and buy lands. And we have bought park lands for states and counties and local people. We doubled the National Park Service acreage in the last seven or eight years, and this program to Watt is out the window. He talks about putting private concessionaires in charge of running our parks. Hooray, let`s have Disneyland at the Grand Canyon, and this sort of thing. I was willing to stand back and not enlist in this great movement to dump him out there, but to give his program a chance. I can no longer do this when it`s very clear that he`s trying to unravel things that we`ve spent decades putting together up on Capitol Hill.

LEHRER: It`s been suggested, Congressman, that you as chairman have allowed the House Interior Committee to treat him unfairly when he has come before your body. Is that-- is that charge true?

Rep. UDALL: No. There`s a question of taste. When you come to Washington on the executive branch -- assistant secretary on up -- you find that you spend an awful lot of your life answering questions that you think are dumb questions, and answering questions from people you don`t respect, unlike Dan Marriott, who you`re going to hear from in a minute. But you know, you got to take it; that`s part of it. If you want to be a Cabinet member or sub-Cabinet member, you go to the Hill and let them ask you some things you don`t like. But that`s the way the system works. He volunteered in my committee this statement on religion that he now complains about. And I would have cut off that questioning in a minute if he hadn`t raised it himself. It was in poor taste, and I called him the next day-- and it`s the kind of person I try to be -- to say that I regretted that we`d gotten into that; I thought it was inappropriate. And he thanked me very much for that, and now he says, well, I didn`t apologize to him publicly, I simply called him on the phone to tell him I thought this was a mistake and so on. And around we go. But the members on my committee are, like Dan Marriott, are tough. They`re individualists. They`re elected by the same number of people I`m elected by. They`ve got every right to ask any question that in common decency has any basis of relationship to the subject under discussion. And I can`t censure them. I don`t run a thought-control factory. I do my best, but I`ve got a lot of strong individual minds on that committee, and he`s going to have to come up and answer their questions like every other Cabinet member.

LEHRER: Thank you. Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Now for a view from the other side. For that we go to a Republican colleague of Congressman Udall on the House Interior Committee. He is, as the congressman said, Dan Marriott, who represents Salt Lake City and southern Utah. He`s with us tonight in the studios of public television station KUED in Salt Lake City. Congressman Marriott, what do you make of the clamor to fire secretary Watt?

Rep. DAN MARRIOTT: Well, I think you`ve got to have the whipping boy of the month in Washington, and certainly James Watt is that for this month. I think it`s 99 percent political. I believe there is no substantive grounds for even discussing such a fact. I believe that James Watt`s done a good job. I think -- as I read in a recent poll, a Gallup poll, of earlier this year, that 75 percent of the American people support the philosophies of James Watt. I certainly do. I believe we ought to have a policy of stewardship, that is, to do a better job of what we`ve got before we grab up more land, develop a balance in this country, and I think we can do all of those, and I think Jim Watt`s a man who can lead us in that direction. So I would urge we put away our political nonsense, and look at the facts, and the facts just don`t show any wrong doings on the secretary`s part as far as I`m concerned.

HUNTER-GAULT: Well, you said political nonsense. Does that-- does that mean to suggest that you feel this is partisan politics, or just what`s behind this move?

Rep. MARRIOTT: Well, I certainly don`t want to get into any differences between Chairman Udall and Mr. Watt. I have great respect for both of these people. But in terms of the environmental issues, the environmentalists, in my opinion, have had great control over the past four years in the White House. They don`t have that control now. I think that makes them irritated. I think they`d like to lock up the land as much as possible to the very elite of our society and keep it out of bounds for oil and other mineral development. So I think it`s a political move. They`ve got the ear of the media at this point, and I think they`re milking it for everything it`s worth.

HUNTER-GAULT: Do you-- what`s your feeling about the kind of treatment Secretary Watt has gotten in the Interior Committee? I mean, do you feel he`s gotten a fair shake there with Congressman Udall and your colleagues?

Rep. MARRIOTT: Well, I`ve never known a fairer individual in terms of hearings than Chairman Udall. I wasn`t there when they had the discussion about religion, so I can`t speak too much for that issue. But I-- other than that one issue, which apparently did get out of hand, I have the utmost respect for the way the Interior Committee is chaired, and I think every witness who has come before that committee has been treated fairly.

HUNTER-GAULT: Is there anything to suggest that Mr. Watt is starting to be viewed as a political liability by the Reagan administration?

Rep. MARRIOTT: We don`t plan at all to allow a few environmentalists who do not represent the mainstream of America to drive this man out of office. I think his programs will work. And I think we ought to give him a chance to make them work, and I don`t think the president will fire him, and certainly the Republicans on the Interior Committee, and most of the people of America, support him in what he`s trying to do.

HUNTER-GAULT: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Now a word from Secretary Watt`s number one opponent -- the environmental movement. The last major environmental organization to call for Watt`s removal is also the largest. It`s the National Wildlife Federation, which has four and a half million members nationally. David Bumell is the Federation`s assistant director for resource conservation. Your group waited six months -- until July, just last month -- to speak up on the Watt question. What happened? What brought you to that decision?

DAVID BUR NELL: Well, Jim, we did wait for six months out of respect for the position. We are not talking about snail darters here; we`re talking about a man who has trust responsibility for 700 million acres of public land in this country. And we felt we should give him a chance. And-- just as we would give anyone else a chance. We held our fire. The first indication that we felt Jim Watt`s philosophy was in the budget process, that came out in March, And it became very apparent to us then that he was personally taking all the resource conservation programs of the department, scrapping them, and putting all the personnel and the money into the resource development programs. We`re in the business of habitat preservation at the National Wildlife Federation. One hundred and ninety- four positions in the habitat preservation program were cut. In the inventory and the resource management programs at the Bureau of Land Management, another 130 positions were cut. However, in the leasing programs -- hard rock leasing, OCS leasing (Outer Continental Shelf) -- increases in the activities were funded. Forty more positions in the leasing program. So it became very clear early on that he was abdicating his trust responsibilities -- his resource conservation programs -- and putting all his resources into resource development programs. We still held our fire. All the other conservation organizations came out against him. Our organization, which has four and a half million members, voted two-to- one for President Reagan over President Carter. And we felt we had a responsibility to give the man a fair chance. However, by June it became clear that what was reflected in the budget process was reflected in the programs. The dismantling of the Office of Surface Mining -- reducing their staff by 30 percent, for example; and the range land policy -- increasing grazing rights at the expense of the resources of range land. This type of thing.

LEHRER: What about Congressman Marriott`s point, that he just made, that you and the other environmentalists had it your own way in the Carter administration, and now what you`re trying to do is continue an effort to lock up the lands of this country for a small elite?

Mr. BURNELL: Well, we`re a user organization. Conservation means wise use of resource. It does not mean "lock up," and these resources are not locked up. Eighty percent of public lands are open for oil and gas development. The claim that President Carter was in our pocket-- when he came out with his energy policy that strongly emphasized synthetic fuel development and almost totally ignored energy conservation, I think it was hard to claim that he was in our pocket. We did not like many things that President Carter did, and we told him so. And we don`t like many of the things that Jim Watt is doing, and we`re telling him so.

LEHRER: Thank you. Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: A final word, now, from the pro-Watt side. That comes from Dr. Harvey Alter, a scientist who heads the Resource and Environmental Quality division of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Dr. Alter, do you see any reason why Secretary Watt should resign?

Dr. HARVEY ALTER: From the point of view of his programs, absolutely not. When you examine his programs as he has articulated them, before Congressman Udall, before others, in testimony and speeches and interviews, you find that the secretary`s programs are quite moderate. What has happened, unfortunately, is that too many people have been reading third- hand reports, and they take the word of some reporter who perhaps himself or herself has not examined the record. On the record these programs are indeed moderate, and they`re trying to reverse the trend of the past few years, and achieve the balance that everybody talks about but very few people seem to work toward.

HUNTER-GAULT: What about the style? You said specifically on his programs that he shouldn`t be fired. Are you suggesting that perhaps his style may give one pause?

Dr. ALTER: Well, I think it gives a lot of people pause. You know, he`s a very personally engaging individual, one on one, when you talk to him. He is also-- I`ll call him a Washington character. Many people enjoy him and many people obviously find him distasteful.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right. What about some of the points that Mr. Bumell made about, you know, the criticisms that the environmentalists-- where they feel he`s gone wrong. For example, scrapping resource conservation. Is he wrong about that?

Dr. ALTER: Well, of course the budget has been reduced, but remember, the budget is a process of our checks and balances. It goes through two thirds of our government. Ultimately, the Congress -- including Secretary Udall`s committee -- has to examine that budget. It`s not a unilateral decision on the part of the secretary. It works through our republican form of government. Now, he proposed that reversal in budget for very good reason, I believe. Whereas it`s easy to quote figures of how we have reduced the resource conservation lately, it`s also easy to quote statistics as to how the other aspects -- the developmental aspects, the wise use of our resources -- had suffered in previous years. For example, not a single lease for oil or gas in the state of Alaska since the `60s. For example, only two percent of our outer continental shelf would have been made available for leasing in five years. One of the richest sources we have of domestic oil and gas. If this isn`t locking up, then I don`t know what that is.

HUNTER-GAULT: Do you have any other specific examples of where his critics have gone wrong?

Dr. ALTER: Yes. another example was mentioned already -- the Office of Surface Mining. Our bill that we have which protects the land from the scars of surface mining -- it`s a very fine bill; Congressman Udall was instrumental in getting it passed. The secretary has said publicly that he will enforce that law. Now as far as dismantling it, I think it`s the privilege of the administration to manage and to administer as called upon by the people. And he said that he was going to reduce the number of positions. But as we look around Washington, as we look around the county, many positions have been cut. But why pick on that one as some sort of example? The Office of Surface Mining has oversight responsibility for the states, and with that oversight responsibility we could ask the question, do they need the 1,000-plus positions which were authorized and not filled? When Secretary Watt cut them he did not cut from the authorized 1,000 to about 700. That`s wrong. There were several hundred vacancies. Now, that is his privilege. What is often ignored, too, is that the man has increased the budget, or asked for increases in budget for wildlife refuges -- new ones -- and that he has asked for more money for national historic preservation. On the point to the concessionaires. The concessionaires have operated in the parks since they were formed in 1916. And if you read his speech to the concessionaires, he tells them that they have a responsibility to invest in the national parks for the public because they are earning their living from the national parks. In fact when you read it it`s a rather tough line. It tells them they`re going to be held with their nose to the line in order to contribute more to where they`re getting their living. That`s hardly worth offhand comments such as we`re going to have Disneyland in the Grand Canyon.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right. I think I get your point, and your drift. Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Congressman, combining what Congressman Marriott has said with what Dr. Alter has just said -- that to look at what Secretary Watt has done in his programs, they`re basically moderate, and that it`s 99 percent political, the whole move to get rid of him.

Rep. UDALL: No. I wish it were true, in a sense. It would make things a lot easier for me. There`s a deep-seated bipartisan consensus in this country on the national parks, on the wilderness areas, on the fishing streams, and on the animals that need protection. I`ve worked with half a dozen interior secretaries, going way back to my brother in the `60s, and we`ve always had somebody in that position who is a defender of the environment, who is out there for the bald eagle, and the coyote, and the bear and all of the other endangered species. And we need somebody in that position. There`s enough people at the Energy Department or at the Commerce Department to see that oil is drilled for and that we get going on a lot of things --many of which I support. But you need somebody who`s really the defender of animals, defender of the wilderness area and so on. Instead of that, he`s assumed the role that we`ve all gone wrong somehow, that we`re going to dam, drill and dig the whole country as quickly as we can. This Alaska bill took six years out of my life, and we gave the oil companies 1,000 acres every morning for the next 100 years. It was in that kind of amount of fresh virgin lands that the geologists say have oil and gas potential. That isn`t enough. They want them all now. They want the remaining federal lands to be drilled now. You`ve got every drill rig that anybody can move drilling out there, and I`m for this. We ought to find out what kind of oil and gas resources. But here`s the Bob Marshall, the oldest special--

LEHRER: That`s the place in Montana.

Rep. UDALL: In Montana. A wilderness area. One of the original ones in the north 48 states. They had the drillers moved up and parked, ready to go on the Bob Marshall Wilderness area for the kind of testing that goes along with oil and gas development. We said hold. Hold on. My committee passed a resolution which said hold it for three years, arid that`s our philosophy, and I think the national philosophy is, some day if we`ve got to go into the parks, the bottom of Grand Canyon, to get the last bucket of mineral or oil and gas or whatever, let`s do it, but for god`s sake, let`s go other places first, and leave the places like the Bob Marshall alone for awhile.

LEHRER: Congressman Marriott, is what Congressman Udall just laid out-- do you think that reflects the national-- the will of the American people, or do you think Secretary Watt and what he`s doing reflects it?

Rep. MARRIOTT: Well, I think the chairman makes a good point. There`s no question about that, and I think there`s some areas that ought to be reserved. We live out here in the West where 70 to 90 percent of the land is owned by the federal government. And we see every day the heavy hand of the feds. And I think our position out here is that we need to have a Secretary Watt, and those type of policies, in order to get back to a better use of the land here, and to keep the Sagebrush Rebellion, as it were, from actually becoming a reality. So I think the chairman`s points of view are not reflective of the overall seriousness of the way the lands are being managed at this point.

LEHRER: Mr. Burwell, what about Dr. Alter`s point? You heard what he went through -- the basic case-- the basic points, your objections. And as he said, if you look at them very carefully, they`re very moderate, really. I mean, Secretary Watt is not advocating anything really that awful.

Mr. BURNELL: They are not. We have looked at them very carefully and they`re not moderate. Before we came out with our position calling for his dismissal, we prepared an analysis 117 pages long of everything he has done, specifically -- and I`d like to correct right away something Dr. Alter`s dead wrong on -- wildlife refuges are required out of Land and Water Conservation Fund. President Carter proposed $35 million for wildlife refuge acquisition. Secretary Watt`s budget proposed zero. So there is not an increase in refuge acquisition under the Watt budget. Also, on the oil and gas--

LEHRER: Well, what about his point that it wasn`t just the Interior Department`s budget that got cut. Everybody`s budget got cut.

Mr. BURNELL: That`s right, but refuge acquisition got cut 92 percent. Now, is that fair? LEHRER: Let me ask Dr. Alter. Is that fair?

Dr. ALTER: If the numbers are correct. My information is that they are not. Then maybe it is fair. Through our process of government, when people are being cut, priorities change year to year, and somebody had to sit up and say wait a minute. Do we have enough for the time being? Can we manage properly what we do have in inventory? Now, somebody made that judgment. It was a judgment call from the man who has to make it. People object.

LEHRER: And that is Secretary Watt`s job, is it not, Congressman Udall, to make those kinds of judgments?

Rep. UDALL: Sure. The Congress has often given the interior secretary wide discretion to make judgments on all of this land and all of these resources. And that`s why his philosophy is so important. You pick a person like Republican Rogers Morton who was from Maryland and one of the first secretaries of interior in the Nixon-Ford years. Outstanding man. He wouldn`t be doing things like this. His wife joined me in promoting the Alaska Lands Bill when that was up front. So here`s a man whose priorities- - he`s honest, and he`s sincere, and he`s conscientious and he`s very bright, but his priorities are to do a lot of things that progressive Republicans and people all over this country have supported. We ought to be proud of our resources. We`ve got the greatest park and wildlife system in the world. We ought not to be ripping it up at this point for the kind of gains that he`s suggesting.

LEHRER: Congressman Marriott, finally to you. Do you think that the division between Congressman Udall and Secretary Watt is going-- how`s that going to affect policy -- interior policy -- in this country over the next few years?

Rep. MARRIOTT: Well, I frankly hope they can get their differences resolved. I think they both want the same thing in this country. I think they`re just-- they just have different means of going about it. I see no real problem with either of their philosophies, and I think we can get it resolved and have a good policy.

LEHRER: We have to leave it there, Congressman Marriott. Thank you very much in Salt Lake City. Gentlemen here, thank you very much. Good night, Charlayne.

HUNTER-GAULT: Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: We`ll see you tomorrow night. I`m Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.