Word: burford
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Burford leaves, but big problems linger for EPA on the Hill
...Anne Burford was surrounded. White House aides were a solid Greek chorus subtly pressuring a recalcitrant President Reagan to let go his besieged Environmental Protection Agency chief. They convinced him that she was a roadblock to settling the dispute with Congress and restoring credibility and employee morale at the battered EPA. Burford's mentor in the Administration, Interior Secretary James Watt, advised her that her support was eroding and that she should consider quitting. Finally, shortly after 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, she received a call from Reagan Friend Joseph Coors, a Colorado brewery mogul, who had been...
Congress was in full cry after Burford's scalp, and the war whoops were not coming just from the political opposition. House G.O.P. Leader Robert Michel and Senator Robert Stafford, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, called for her ouster. Other Republicans wrote to Reagan urging that Burford be dumped in favor of a politically independent scientist. By week's end White House aides were busy drawing up a list of eligible replacements, and the hints had become broadsides. Reagan's aides had reached the conclusion that Burford was a political liability...
...feisty Burford did not seem to wilt under the heat. Even as the White House prepared to dislodge her, Burford insisted that she had done nothing wrong and would fight being "fed to the wolves." In a stunning public break with the White House, Burford told her aides, who dutifully leaked her remarks to the press, that Reagan and his advisers had botched the EPA crisis from start to finish. She said that she thought Reagan had received bad advice and that she had opposed his decision to withhold subpoenaed documents from House subcommittees probing charges of mismanagement, conflict...
...Burford's impassioned self-defense apparently was prompted by the news she received last week that the Justice Department would no longer defend her in the contempt-citation suit. Officials there explained that it would be a conflict of interest to act as her lawyer at the same time that it was investigating charges of mismanagement at the agency. Responded Burford archly: "I think we just made a breakthrough. Now maybe we can get some good legal advice over here for a change...