Theodore
Eisenhower himself was any more, or even as conservative as Truman, for
example. But a lot of this is in perception. If Taft had been elected, it would
have been more conservative. Taft was an old-line Republican, but Eisenhower
was not. In fact, I'm not sure that Eisenhower knew whether he was a
Democrat or a Republican until they asked him to run for the presidency.
And there were a lot of liberalization in policy made in the Eisenhower
administration. One that I was directly concerned in, for example, was the
Corps' single user policy for navigation projects.
Resources and Civil Works Division, Bureau of the Budget
Was that after you went over to work at the Bureau of the Budget?
Yes. I went over to work on the staff of the Resources and Civil Works
Division of the Bureau of the Budget in 1954. The division director was Carl
Schwartz, and Floyd Peterson was the assistant director for the water and
power side. There was another assistant director for the agriculture side, and
there was a special projects branch also. My immediate superior was Charlie
Warner, and Charlie Warner always called himself an "old mud digger" from
the Corps of Engineers Philadelphia District. He grew up in Delaware and
worked in the Philadelphia District in the dredging unit. He eventually ended
up in the New York Division office and was involved very much in dredging.
He knew every inch of the Delaware River and all the other rivers up and down
the Delaware and New Jersey coasts. He was brought into the Bureau of the
Budget to work on the Corps' budget and he knew where a lot of bodies were
buried,
Floyd Peterson was another old Corps hand out of Minneapolis, or somewhere
in the Midwest, possibly up where Gene Weber came from. And Pete had
come into the Bureau to replace Charlie
after he had gone up to the
Library of Congress as their first senior specialist in engineering and public
works, a job that I had later. Charlie
was a very rigorous thinker, a
conservative on economic principles, and the A-47 Circular would have
probably been a little bit too liberal for him, but he was gone by the time I got
there. Ed Ackerman may have had some involvement in the preparation of
Circular A-47, but he had left the Bureau of the Budget before I got there. Ed
Ackerman was really a brilliant man. have great respect for him-a real
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