Word: gorsuch
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...embarrassed White House moved to contain the image spill, launching its own probe of the EPA and proposing a compromise to try to settle the contempt case against Gorsuch. But it could do little to muffle the echoes of earlier Capital scandals: whining paper shredders, charges of lying under oath, mysterious erasures on subpoenaed documents, leaked memos and harassment of whistle blowers. Problems began for Lavelle soon after she assumed the $67,200-a-year EPA post ten months ago. Ambitious but short on administrative skills, "she came into the agency like a Mack truck," said one former EPA official...
Despite their seeming philosophical kinship, Gorsuch and Lavelle had a strained relationship. Friction between the two officials increased as Congress gave the Superfund closer scrutiny. According to colleagues, Gorsuch felt that Lavelle, who had worked for two years on Reagan's public relations staff when he was Governor of California, had been forced on her by the White House. Lavelle exacerbated matters by bragging about her ties with Presidential Counsellor Edwin Meese. Although Meese says he knows her only slightly, Lavelle referred to him fondly as her "godfather...
...final fillip, Gorsuch learned of Lavelle's scathing memo on Perry. Lavelle was summoned to Gorsuch's office on Friday, Feb. 4, reprimanded ostensibly for the memo, and asked to resign. Lavelle initially okayed a press release announcing the resignation, but had second thoughts over the weekend and decided that as a presidential appointee she could take her case to the White House. The White House turned a deaf ear, however, and issued a curt statement on Monday that Lavelle was "terminated today at the request of the President." Gorsuch fired several of Lavelle's top aides...
...Congress was not convinced. At week's end Dingell's subcommittee voted to widen the Superfund probe by issuing new subpoenas for testimony from Lavelle, Gorsuch and 35 other EPA employees, plus dozens of additional documents. Democratic Congressman James J. Howard of New Jersey, chairman of the House Public Works Committee, demanded an FBI investigation of a recently installed paper shredder outside Lavelle's office that the EPA said had been used to destroy "excess copies" of documents withheld from the House. The EPA told Scheuer that Lavelle's appointment calendars, which he had subpoenaed...
...Despite Gorsuch's efforts to foster a different impression, the controversy has only heightened suspicions that her goal, and that of the Reagan Administration, is to slash the agency's budget and staff so deeply that its regulations become flaccid. Environmentalists like to say that during her stewardship, the EPA has been transformed into the "industry protection agency." Morale among employees has sunk so low that the EPA is the most leak-prone bureaucracy in town. "It's not easy to run an agency when the whole work force is either under subpoena or at the Xerox...