Ernest Graves
Bob MacDonnell had gone down there after his time in OCE as Director of Civil Works
and Deputy Chief of Engineers. Bob Marshall took the job after he was deputy chief.
It was not at all unusual to assign a senior major general to LMVD.
Tommy Sands, who is down there now, is not in that mode. But Bill Reed had been in
senior jobs in Washington when he took over the division.
Q:
Does that make it difficult, though, for the incumbent Director of Civil Works?
A:
Not usually. But it made it difficult because Koisch wouldn't do what anybody told him
to do. He wouldn't do what Gribble told him to do. He wouldn't do what Morris told
him to do, and he wouldn't do what I had told him to do. I sent him telegrams and he'd
either ignore them or do nothing. Of course, there was a difference of view as to what
ought to be done.
Neither Bill Gribble nor Jack Morris wanted an open confrontation over this. My
recommendation was for them to ask him to do it and if he didn't agree to do it, to ask
him to retire. But they didn't want to do that.
Q:
Why didn't they want to do that?
A:
Because they had a great respect for his ability and accomplishments. And I guess they
didn't think the issue was important enough to justify this kind of a scrap.
Q:
Well, you must have.
A:
I did, because I felt that he was wrong. He had had his day in court. If we didn't want
him to do it then we shouldn't have told him to do it. Having told him to do it, if he
wouldn't do it, we should have--
Q:
Got somebody who would?
A:
Got somebody who would.
Q:
How did the Assistant Secretary of the Army come down on this?
A:
He kept asking me why we weren't doing these things. I worked very closely with his
office. We made a trip down there in the middle of the winter and almost froze to death
riding around in the bayous in a small boat. During this trip, Veysey and Koisch
disagreed about another project, the Cross-Florida Barge Canal, which had been
stopped at the order of President Nixon.
163
Previous Page
