Ernest Graves
A:
The Chief of Engineers was the one that decided. Dan Raymond had been the Deputy
Chief, and he retired. Gribble had decided to move Morris up from Director of Civil
Works, where he had been for over three years, to be deputy chief. But they had not
settled on a successor, and Gribble decided on me to be the Director of Civil Works.
Actually, when I got there Morris had already moved up to the deputy chief's office,
so Civil Works was being run half by Morris from his position as deputy chief and half
by the Deputy Director of Civil Works, Ken McIntyre.
Q:
You and General Morris still knew each other pretty well by that--
A:
I knew him pretty well because he had taken over from Frank Koisch as Director of
Civil Works while I was still the division engineer in Chicago. I had had a lot of contact
with him then.
Q:
Recently we have had some pretty activist Assistant Secretaries of the Army for Civil
Works [ASACW] in the Reagan administration.
A:
Yes.
Q:
Would you discuss your relationship with Victor Veysey?
A:
Vic Veysey was the first person to hold this job. He was a former member of Congress
from southern California.
Vic Veysey was definitely a Republican. He had been defeated for reelection because
his district had been gerrymandered. He was definitely pro-environment, and he wanted
the Corps to be much more forthcoming in its relations with the environmental interests.
It was interesting. I think that if he had taken over that job when Fred Clarke was the
Chief, it might have gone more smoothly, for this reason: Clarke did a lot about the
environment. Bill Gribble was really more conservative than Fred Clarke. He didn't
deny the environmental aspect, but he wasn't as much of an activist concerning
environmental matters as Fred Clarke. Therefore, Vic Veysey and Bill Gribble didn't
mesh well. Veysey wanted a lot of things done; Gribble really didn't think they should
be done.
Morris tried to serve as an intermediary on this, but that didn't work too well, either.
So I came along. Veysey had nowhere else to turn but to me, and he managed to get
me to do some of these things. Perhaps with the experience of Gribble and Morris
before me, I may have been a little more successful in handling his demands.
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