Engineer Memoirs
Q:
General Koisch seems like an interesting guy. The thing that caught my attention was
the sort of irony that when he was in civil works, he didn't seem that interested in
pursuing studies to their conclusion. Of course, studies yield projects. When he was in
LMVD, he was a very impatient builder.
A:
That's an interesting comment. There must have been some studies he saw worth
pushing. When he was the division engineer, for example, he was the one that got the
Red River project going. If it had not been for his determination on that, the navigation
locks on the Red River probably would never have been started.
Bill Gribble and I certainly didn't think they were a good project, but Frank felt that
they were very strongly advocated by the interests down there, and he pushed them
through.
He pushed construction, but he didn't see a lot of these studies as leading to
construction projects. That's basically it.
Q:
Were you still in civil works when Michael Blumenfeld took over as ASACW?
A:
Yes, I was. That was involved with one of the toughest jobs I ever had, which was the
water project review.
Q:
The hit list.
A:
Yes, by President Carter. I got to know Secretary Clifford Alexander and Mike
Blumenfeld very well as a result of that whole exercise.
When Harold Brown was made Secretary of Defense, I wrote him a letter just saying
congratulations. I got a very nice reply from him, which I think was probably a routine
reply, but it was thoughtfully worded. I am not sure of the date, but I believe
Wednesday afternoon I got a call from Harold Brown. It might have been earlier in the
week. He said that the White House was considering stopping a bunch of these projects
and asked me what comments I had. I said it seemed to me that as Secretary of Defense
he should caution the White House that these projects had been authorized and the
money appropriated for them through a very elaborate procedure with Congress. If
some of them weren't what should be, the way to get them stopped was through
working with the Congress to stop them. If the President just intervened and told the
Corps not to do these things, there would be trouble.
I recalled to him all the trouble there had been over the Cross-Florida Barge Canal
when it had been arbitrarily stopped by President Nixon. He said thank you, that
sounded like good advice.
166
Previous Page
