Theodore
most egregious of these requests was for help in taking the cost sharing out of
the land enhancement in the Boeuf and
bayous project. I felt that it was
kind of ironic that here I had been one of the people fighting to keep certain
things out of the federal program, and now I had to help put them back in
because it was my job to help members of Congress.
But I have always looked on my role as primarily a staff role in which you do
what it's your responsibility to do. I guess that's why my philosophies never
became imbued into the policies until much later.
Let me just ask you, before we get off the Bureau of the Budget, one last
question. You've been talking about your relations, and the Bureau's relations,
with various Corps personalities, but there are some people whose names have
not popped up and, in a sense, they're notable by their absence. I'm talking,
in particular, about people in the Department of the Army, as distinct from the
Corps of Engineers.
I think, by this time, Dick Hertzler was already over in the office that became
the Office of Civil Functions. That particular responsibility shifted among
various offices in the
and early '60s in the Department of the Army, so it
depends on what year you're talking about. But the question is, did, in fact, to
your knowledge, the Department of the Army try to exert some control over
the Corps' civil works functions, or was the relationship really between the
Corps and BOB as sort of short-circuiting the Department of the Army?
A: Dick Hertzler was another refugee from Ezra Taft Benson when he reorganized
the Department of Agriculture, and was our primary contact with the office of
Civil Works. We had a lot of contact with Dick Hertzler, but, frankly, Dick
did not have the power or the knowledge that Joe Tofani had. Dick was a
wonderful person, and I liked him a lot. We had been friends for years before
he went to the Department of the Army, and we always tried to work through
him, but he had Dewey Short as assistant secretary. So the top-level
relationships were between Bob Merriam, assistant director of the Bureau of the
Budget and Dewey Short. But when it came down to getting something done,
we relied much more on Joe Tofani. Dick had the role, I think, of trying to
rationalize decisions that were being made by powers that were more powerful
than his particular office. That was the way I looked at it. Dick was in a
difficult position because he basically agreed with us, and we had pretty good
with him and Howard Cook, but when it came down to the decisions,
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