RFK Jr.: White House rewards industry reps with enviro posts

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. sheds light on how the Bush administration appoints industry types to environmental jobs in the forthcoming issue of Vanity Fair.

"Spinning the revolving door between government and business as never before, the White House has handed more than 100 top environmental posts to representatives of polluting industries," writes Kennedy, who outlines "a devastating rollback of three decades of progress."

Kennedy, a lawyer and talk show host, rips President George Bush's ecological record by saying, "No president has mounted a more sustained and deliberate assault on the nation's environment. No president has acted with more solicitude toward polluting industries."

He keeps up the criticism of Bush, asserting that the president "has promoted and implemented more than 400 measures that eviscerate 30 years of environmental policy."

Kennedy says, "Most insidiously, the president has put representatives of polluting industries or environmental skeptics in charge of virtually all the agencies responsible for protecting America from pollution."

He acknowledges that some of the particularly troubling officials have departed the administration, but notes that they often return "to the private sector whose interests they served." Yet many continue to hold key positions, maintains Kennedy, at the very federal agencies that regulate the environment.

"The revolving door between business and government —- turning the regulated into the regulators —- has never before spun so fast," he writes. "And as a consequence environmental protection has been advancing backward on a broad front."

He continues, "It can be a fine thing to have businesspeople in government, when the objective is to recruit competence and expertise. But high-ranking officials such as the ones cited here, and scores of others, have entered government service not to serve the public interest but rather to subvert the very laws they are charged with enforcing."

Kennedy lists particular cases of Bush officials past and present that he feels were a serious liability to the environment and illustrative of his argument against industry cronyism, among them:

Camden Toohey. Onetime special assistant to former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Toohey was previously the executive director of a top lobbying group seeking to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Toohey, says Kennedy, "oversaw Interior's Alaska operations until resigning, in January of 2006, to take a job at Shell, where Norton now serves as senior legal adviser."

Steven Griles. Formery deputy secretary at Interior where the former coal, oil and gas lobbyist "negotiated payments of over $1 million from National Environmental Strategies, a lobbying firm in which he had had a principal interest," Kennedy writes. "Griles's tenure was described by an inspector general as an 'ethical quagmire.'"

Lynn Scarlett. Presently a deputy secretary at Interior, Scarlett is former president of a libertarian think tank. Kennedy reports that in a 1997 article, Scarlett wrote, "Environmentalism is a coherent ideology that rivals Marxism in its challenge to the classical liberal view of government as protector of individual rights."

Excerpts from the Vanity Fair article, available in full at this link, follow...

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Reports in The New York Times and on 60 Minutes have highlighted the case of Phillip Cooney, who was the chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. His job was to advise the president on the environmental implications of decisions that he makes. Cooney's previous job had been as the chief lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute. His preoccupation during his four-year White House stint, according to news accounts, was combing scientific documents issued by the various federal agencies in order to remove damaging statements about the oil industry and the coal industry. He suppressed or altered several major studies on global warming in order to protect the interests of his former clients. After the Times revealed the alterations, in 2005, Cooney left his job and went to work for ExxonMobil.

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William Wehrum (2005–present), acting assistant administrator, E.P.A. Wehrum is a former Latham & Watkins lobbyist specializing in Clean Air Act issues. He was involved in crafting lenient rules for power-plant mercury pollution in which a dozen paragraphs were taken from a Latham & Watkins memo.

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Francis S. Blake (2001–2), deputy secretary, Department of Energy Blake played a key role in formulating Bush's controversial Clear Skies legislation, meeting with dozens of energy-industry lobbyists in closed-door sessions. Blake has since been named chairman and C.E.O. of Home Depot.

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William Gerry Myers III (2001–3), solicitor, Department of the Interior Myers has compared federal land-use regulation to "the tyrannical actions of King George." After leaving Interior, Myers rejoined Holland & Hart, where he represents several extractive-industries clients.

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