Theodore M.
would always interview the candidates, and if I didn't think they were making
the right decision, I would give them my comments. In a couple of cases they
went ahead and hired people that I didn't think were competent anyway, and
in at least one case it was a terrible mistake, which was recognized by everyone
later. But I think the record shows that we had an excellent staff.
Koelzer brought a lot to the commission.
is the one that set up these
committees chaired by Harvey Banks and Doug Metzler and people like that,
bringing a hand-picked group of top experts together to develop reports. His
committees worked very much like the committees of the National Academy
of Sciences, and they really produced for us. That was how we got some of the
reports done. Then there were internally prepared reports. The report on
navigation that Truman Price made for me was a real classic. He made a
special copy for me with pictures of nude women sunning on the decks of
yachts and things like that that made you laugh. The idea was to show the
multipurpose use of waterways. I got a kick out of it, but we didn't leave those
pictures in the reproduced copies made for the commission and eventually
published.
Truman had a great sense of humor and I think everybody did. He had come
to us from Interior. I wasn't able to honor Mr.
idea of not getting
people from federal agencies. We had to get people who knew the programs
because we didn't have the time to train them. One reason that
Koelzer and
Lyle Craine worked so well was because they had had federal service in an
earlier stage of their careers.
The rule I followed was that we wouldn't hire anybody who was planning to
go back to his job in a federal agency. There was a young officer from the
Corps of Engineers, for whom I had great respect; he was probably a captain
at that time. He came to me and said that if I wanted, he could be detailed over
to work for the commission. I know he could have helped, but I decided not
to take him up on his offer because he would have obviously gone back to the
Corps. We didn't take anybody on detail from federal agencies.
When Truman Price came, he severed his ties at Interior. Later on he went
over to work for EPA [Environmental Protection Agency], but that was
different. EPA was not even in existence when he came to us. Howard Cook
was planning to retire, which he did near the end of the commission's life.
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