John
Morris
I felt these groups didn't want to hear our story. In any case, when we began to communicate
with the people, we realized they also had certain objectives to protect or pursue. Since the
Corps of Engineers was considered to be the bad guy, it made a pretty good target. Even so,
we should not keep a low silhouette for fear somebody was going to shoot at us. That would
be a poor approach. I believe it's better to keep a high silhouette and let people know what we
stand for, even at the risk of getting shot at occasionally. So we went on an extensive program
to be responsive and to participate. We began to react to criticisms by the press and in
publications which were based on errors in the facts. I think I may have covered this point
earlier.
I never believed that we should take on any editorial. Everybody is entitled to his own
opinion, whether we agree with it or not. We should be serious about the facts. So we
established a program that we would respond to public criticism if erroneous facts supported
a position. That turned out to be a simple but effective move.
In the course of implementing it, we had interviews with the editorial board of the New York
Times, with the management board of the Reader's Digest, and individual discussions with
national writers. In this approach we never argued -I never did, at least, and I don't think our
people did-although I visited most of the senior organizations myself. I usually took Locke
Mouton, our public relations man, along. He helped prepare our position carefully.
I distinctly remember the N e w York Times visit. The writer was named Wayne King, and after
visiting with him and his board, we later ran into each other at the Tennessee-Tombigbee
hearing in Mississippi. King then wrote a more positive article about the Corps than I think
he would have had we not visited with him earlier.
At the Reader's Digest, a man named James Miller had written a very critical article on the
Tennessee-Tombigbee project and the Corps in general. Errors in fact prompted me to visit
the leadership of Reader's Digest in Pleasantville, New York. We spent a very busy morning
going through the article step by step. After that, I do not recall any critical articles based on
nonfactual data.
A lot of articles began to appear which were authored within the Corps or by "question and
answer" interviews. I had a verygood experience with the Bass Anglers Sportsmen S ociety.
BASS conducts an annual fishing contest that is publicized nationally. They had been fairly
critical of the Corps; however, after attending one of their tournaments and visiting with Mr.
Scott, Ray Scott and his people, they published some decent articles about the Corps on how
it was handling the water resource program, et cetera.
The Corps personnel and I, in particular, became much more available and exposed. I went
to the Audubon Society's annual meeting at Estes Park and made a keynote presentation. I
believe we got across the point that if they were able to change the laws, that we'd be
delighted to implement the changes; however, in the meantime, we intended to execute the
laws in force. The same thing with the Fish and Wildlife Service meeting in Denver. So the
point of this discussion is that not only the Chief but all the people in the Corps-the division
engineers and the district
were asked to make themselves available and to become
active, not reactive. I think it had a positive effect.
We never, of course, expected to be free of criticism. On the other hand, we felt that we had
to take some offensive against unwarranted, unjust, and erroneous criticism rather than
assume a passive attitude that with time, all will pass. It wouldn't pass.
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