Theodore
something new, the recommendation was accepted, but when they
recommended that you take something off or combine, the recommendation
was rejected or put aside for further study.
The first Hoover Commission decided that every department should have an
administrative assistant secretary and should have assistant secretaries with
complete power to operate in their field. So Bill Warne was made the first
Assistant Secretary for Water and Power in the department, and he had
responsibility for the Bureau of Reclamation and the power agencies, like
Bonneville and Southwestern Power Administration.
Bill Wame may have been the one that instigated the move of the chairmanship
of FIREBRICK from the Commissioner of Reclamation to the assistant secretary
level. I'm not sure it made the Fish and Wildlife Service any happier. They had
the same problem with getting their views represented because Bill Warne was
primarily a water man, too, although he had been a newspaper editor-both of
them had been newspapermen, Bill Warne from California and Mike Strauss
from Chicago.
There was a continual power struggle between Bill Warne and Mike Strauss,
and the transfer of FIREBRICK was one of the ways in which it was resolved in
Bill Warne's favor. I admired and worked a lot with Bill Warne, too, and
almost got caught in a struggle between them one time, because Bill Warne
decided he wanted me to come up to work for him in the department. I had
been the liaison man for the Bureau of Reclamation, on the departmental water
resources committee. When an elderly-I call him an elderly gentlemen; he was
not as old then as I am now-W. G.
the executive secretary of that
group, decided to retire, Bill decided he wanted me to take that job.
Bill had a personnel man in his office who spoke to me about it. It would have
been a promotion for me, so expressed interest. I can't remember the man's
name, but he said he would go ahead and take steps to transfer me to the
assistant secretary's office.
I assumed that he would take appropriate steps and tell Mike and my immediate
supervisor, which is the way such transfers are normally handled through
channels. If the Secretary of the Army wanted you on his staff, I would expect
them to come back down through the Chief of Engineers and the Chief
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