________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
Heiberg had a very good working relationship, and I think we all respected him as an
individual and how he ran the office. My own personal experiences were with Victor Veysey.
He was the first Assistant Secretary for Civil Works, when I was in Public Affairs, and it was
a rather vitriolic kind of early start that I witnessed then.
Like everyone is in any transition when you're with a federal agency, we were looking
forward with some anxiety as to what it is we're going to have to do. We're going to have to
bring aboard and educate that person as to who we are and what we are. There was some
feeling that we might have to fight all the old battles all over again because anybody who
wants to make a cut would look around and certain things seem to be obvious things to cut
whether they've been disproven over and over again or not. Also, there was the Corps'
positive can-do attitude. We wanted to get on with getting our guy, the Assistant Secretary
for Civil Works, and making sure he had the opportunity to know us and understand us so
that he would be our best representative.
So, with all of that, we were really looking forward to the new administration. The Reagan
transition folks were well advised in all the papers as to what was going on--only we
couldn't find ours. No one seemed to be interested in these early days about the Army Corps
of Engineers and what was going on. We kept waiting for the phone to ring, for somebody to
come get briefed about us and what we were doing because we wanted to get in early and we
had a lot of staff work done and we had everybody prepared--Bory Steinberg and others--all
ready to make the necessary contacts. Nobody called for the longest time.
Now, you have to remember that my last duty day was in December because I reported to
work in the Ohio River Division in January. The time between the first week in November
and the end of December is about seven weeks long, so there's only a short period in there.
What might have been happening with transition teams toward the end of December and
January might have missed me.
The other major things that were happening during my period in Civil Works were the
National Waterways Study and the National Hydropower Study. Even in the short four
months' time I was there, I got very involved in them, to include going out on the road with
the Institute of Water Resources folks and being a front person for public meetings in various
parts of the country on the hydropower study and the waterways study. We would take
testimony and listen to the talk, give talks, that sort of thing.
To get back to what started all this, I don't remember a Stockman Manifesto stated in those
kinds of terms.
Q:
Okay. That might have been late in December, I think.
A:
If it was dated December, at that point, that's about when we were starting to have some
contacts and maybe looking to see something happening.
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