Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company The New
York Times
April 21, 2002, Sunday, Late Edition -
Final
SECTION: Section 1; Page
22; Column 3; National Desk
LENGTH: 707 words
HEADLINE: Many
Made the Move From the Industry to the Administration
BYLINE: By DON VAN NATTA Jr. with NEELA
BANERJEE
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, April
20
BODY: Crucial White House
positions and the upper ranks of several agencies, including the Interior
Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, are held by appointees who,
for years, worked in the energy industry, lobbied for it or defended its
interests in the nation's courts.
The better known are
the most visible: Secretary of Commerce Donald L. Evans, for example, who for 25
years worked for Tom Brown Inc., a Denver oil and gas company, and Andrew H.
Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, who as president of the American
Automobile Manufacturers Association lobbied against improving fuel efficiency and emission standards. Interior Secretary
Gale A. Norton received $285,630 from the energy and natural resources
industries when she ran for the Senate in Colorado in 1996.
Energy industry alumni and supporters also hold less visible jobs in
the administration and agencies that allow them to make far-reaching policy and
regulatory changes.
Philip Cooney is the chief of staff
for the Council on Environmental Quality, a White House advisory group that
develops policies on environmental and economic issues. The council has played a
crucial role in forming a White House policy that played down the effect of
carbon dioxide emissions on global warming. Earlier, Mr. Cooney was a lawyer for
the American Petroleum Institute, the main lobbying arm of the oil industry, and
was a prominent critic of global warming theories.
James E. Cason holds a new high-level position in the Interior
Department, associate deputy secretary. He was an assistant interior secretary
under James A. Watt in the Reagan era and, critics say, tried to stop limits on
drilling for oil and gas in national forests. The Interior Department denied
that, underscoring instead Mr. Cason's recent tenure at a company that
specializes in manufacturing energy-saving insulation.
As deputy secretary of the interior, the second in command at the
department, J. Steven Griles oversees more than 500 million acres of federally
protected land. Mr. Griles was the assistant secretary at the department from
1984 to 1989. He left the government to work for the mining industry, most
recently with National Environmental Strategies, a Washington firm that
represents the National Mining Association and utilities that use a lot of
coal.
In March 2001, the spokesman for the National
Mining Association at the time, John Grasser, called Mr. Griles "an ally to the
industry."
Mark Pfeifle, an Interior Department
spokesman, noted that Mr. Griles worked with Democrats in the 1980's to close
loopholes that allowed the coal industry to pollute heavily. He also said Mr.
Griles's firm represented Caithness Energy, which specializes in renewable
energy.
The number of people in the Interior Department
who once worked in the energy industry is only a small slice of a much larger
picture, said Mr. Pfeifle, who added that other officials had experience on the
state level working "with local citizens to find compromise and consensus."
He added, "The real hands on deck are ready to implement
what the secretary calls the four C's: communication, cooperation, consultation
-- all in the service of conservation."
John. D. Graham
is the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the
Office of Management and Budget, a powerful department that advises the
president on regulatory change, particularly on environmental and public health
issues. Mr. Graham is the founding director of the Harvard Center for Risk
Analysis, a nonprofit organization financed by some of the country's largest
energy and chemical companies, including ExxonMobil and Dow Chemical. The
center's benefactors include the nation's biggest producers of dioxins, a
substance widely thought to be carcinogenic, environmental groups said.
Senior White House officials argued that the backgrounds
of some of the top staff members matter much less than the policies they
develop.
"Look at the agenda, and look at the result of
the policy," said Scott McClellan, deputy White House press secretary. "Any
independent look at the president's agenda underscores his commitment to
achieving results for the American people."
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