Happy ‘Secretaries’ Day: Will a Competent Woman Be Denied Top Energy Job Again To Satisfy Latino ‘Quota’ for Gore-2000?

(Washington, D.C.): There have been few more palpable indications of the Clinton-Gore
Administration’s low regard for the U.S. nuclear weapons program than its appointees to run the
Cabinet department responsible for the Nation’s ultimate deterrent.

First, it used the position of Secretary of Energy as two-fer sop to feminists and
African-Americans among its constituency, giving it to a black woman — Hazel
O’Leary — with no
expertise in the nuclear weapons complex and, in fact, a visceral antipathy for the
Department
of Energy’s core functions relating to nuclear weapons. She proceeded to appoint
personnel
and promulgate policies that translated that antipathy into a hostile environment for such functions
within the Department that persists long after her departure. href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾

Exit O’Leary, Enter Peña

When, after the 1996 election was safely behind them, Messrs. Clinton and Gore unburdened
themselves — and the Department of Energy (DoE) — of the serious liability Mrs. O’Leary’s
incompetence and ham-handedness represented, they initially planned to replace her with another
woman. This time around, however, the choice was to be a qualified and competent one:
Elizabeth Moler, who had, among other relevant experiences, chaired the
Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission and served on the professional staff of Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson’s
Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

In one of the more odious and demeaning examples of Clinton-Gore politicization of the
process
and content of national security decisions-making,⁽²⁾
the President and Vice President reneged
on the appointment of Ms. Moler to Energy’s top job — in the wee hours of the
morning it
was to be announced — when it became clear that there would be no Hispanic-American in
the
second term Cabinet. In the face of heavy pressure from then-HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros,
among others, Messrs. Clinton and Gore prevailed upon Federico Peña,
who had served as
Transportation Secretary during the first Clinton-Gore Administration and planned to return to
Colorado upon its conclusion, to accept a post for which he had neither any interest or any
expertise.

Gore’s ‘Word’

According to a 17 April report in the respected trade publication Energy Daily, it
took a
personal commitment from Vice President Gore to induce Ms. Moler to accept the
Department’s Number 2 position, despite the humiliation to which she had been
subjected:
“Gore promised Moler that if Peña did not serve out his term, the job would be
hers,
automatically.” Thanks to this commitment, a dedicated public servant was enticed to
provide
the Energy Department what it has sorely lacked for too much of its history since the departure of
its founding Secretary, James Schlesinger — leadership characterized by a
personal familiarity
with and an appreciation of the Department’s responsibilities for stewardship of the
Nation’s
nuclear deterrent and its supporting infrastructure.

Energy Daily goes on to report, though, that when Mr. Gore made his personal
pledge, “he did
not reckon with the congressional Hispanic caucus.”

^th

Torres’
curriculum vitae
does not suggest that he has any special knowledge of energy, nuclear
weapons or nuclear waste.”

Such a description is charitable. Rep. Torres’ voting record — as documented in Center
for
Security Policy “National Security Scorecards” since 1993 — is among the worst in Congress
when it comes to defense-related issues.⁽³⁾ As hard as it is
to imagine a Secretary of Energy more
ill-disposed to the Department’s central missions than Hazel O’Leary, such a candidate may be
selected if the Clinton-Gore Administration continues to regard the Energy Secretary as a Cabinet
post that is “a great one for minorities,” a vehicle for ethnic tokenism in the service of political
expediency.

The Bottom Line

As Energy Daily‘s columnist George Lobsenz also noted in last Friday’s issue:

DoE, unlike some other second-tier Cabinet agencies,
is
grappling with some very real national and international problems that, if
mishandled, could result in real catastrophe …. You would think an agency
entrusted with these sort[s] of missions would receive some level of respect — or
just thoughtful handling and oversight — by the White House and Congress

If the White House yields to Hispanic pressure and appoints Rep. Torres or some other
unqualified candidate for the purpose of political pandering, Congress will have no
choice but to
give the matter at least thoughtful handling and oversight.

First of all, it is doubtful that Betsy Moler would remain as Deputy Secretary of
Energy
under such circumstances. In her absence, there is unlikely to be any executive branch
counterweight to the Administration’s proclivities for pursuing policies leading not only to the
dysfunction of the Energy Department’s management of its nuclear weapons portfolio, href=”#N_4_”>⁽⁴⁾ but
toward the fulfillment of the Clinton-O’Leary goal of “denuclearization.” href=”#N_5_”>⁽⁵⁾

Secondly, the Administration would have zero chance of securing Senate advice and
consent to its Comprehensive Test Ban (CTB) Treaty. The odds against ratification —
despite
the priority ostensibly attached to it by the President — are already long, given the
treaty’s myriad
flaws, its incompatibility with the United States’ requirement to retain a credible, safe nuclear
deterrent for the foreseeable future and, not least, the fact that the CTB cannot enter into
force
for many years to come, if ever.⁽⁶⁾ Even a Congress
not paying close attention is unlikely to
repose confidence in the future viability of the stockpile in a no-test environment if the job is
entrusted to the likes of Esteban Torres.

Thirdly, the low regard for the Department of Energy evident in the Clinton-Gore
Administration’s continuing use of its top job as a repository for minority quota box-checking can
only intensify congressional interest in eliminating the DoE, altogether. At
the
very least, it must intensify consideration of the idea of re-creating an independent agency charged
exclusively with management of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile and its industrial base.
Ideally, such a genuine “reorganization” would be coupled with the reinvigoration of oversight of
these activities on Capitol Hill (the reconstitution of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy
would be one way of streamlining and improving such oversight).

Finally, it must be hoped that Congress — and millions of women across this country
— will
not take kindly to the deplorable, to say nothing of degrading, way in which Vice
President
Gore and his colleagues are treating a highly capable and well-respected female public
servant. The Department of Energy, the national interest and Ms. Moler deserve better.

– 30 –

1. See, for example, the following Center products:
The Real Scandal at the O’Leary Energy
Department: The Secretary’s Shakedown of the Nuclear Labs Over CTB ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_121″>No. 97-D 121, 2
September 1997); Where Is Peña On O’Leary’s Legacy of Denuclearizing
the U.S., Passivity
on the Growing Nuclear Threat in Cuba? (No.
97-D 16, 29 January 1997); Fiddling While the
Nation’s Nuclear Weapons Complex ‘Burns’ Down: O’Leary’s Last Denuclearization
Shot?
(No. 96-T 120, 29 November 1996); U.S.
‘Denuclearization’: Who Is Minding the Store? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=93-D_103″>No.
93-D 103, 9 December 1993); and Waste, Fraud and Abuse: DoE’s
Mismanagement of
Nuclear Clean-Up Facilitates Denuclearization Agenda ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_29″>No. 95-D 29, 25 April 1995).

2. Other notable examples of this phenomenon include: Hazel
O’Leary’s decision to declassify
sensitive nuclear-weapons relevant secrets for personal and ideological reasons (see
The Most
Important Justification for Firing Hazel O’Leary: Her Role in Denuclearizing the United
States [No. 95-D 90, 10 November 1995]);
the CIA’s 1995 National Intelligence Estimate whose
assumptions were manipulated to support the Administration’s policy of deferring the deployment
of U.S. defenses against missile attack (see It Walks Like A Duck: Questions
Persist That
Clinton CIA’s Missile Threat Was Politically Motivated [ href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-T_122″>No. 96-T 122, 4 December 1996]);
and downplaying the national security implications of dangerous technology transfers to — and by
— Russia and China (see Clinton Legacy Watch # 21: Efforts to Help Chinese
Missile Program
Reek of Corruption, Betrayal of U.S. Interests [No.
98-D 61, 6 April 1998]). See also
Politicizing National Security: Is There No Limit to What Clinton & Co. Will
Do? (No. 95-D
42, 3 July 1995).

3. Out of a possible perfect score of 100, Rep. Torres scored 15
during the 103^rd Congress (1993
and 1994); he scored 15 during the 104^th Congress, 1^st Session
(1995); he scored 21 during the
104^th Congress, 2^nd Session (1996). Included in these CSP National
Security Scorecards were the
following: in 1994 Torres voted in favor of an amendment commending the President
for
continuing the ban on U.S. nuclear testing and urging for the completion of a CTBT by the end of
that year; in 1995, he voted in favor of reducing by half the funding for the
production of tritium — a critical element in nuclear weaponry and research.

4. For example, a reorganization of the DoE unveiled last month by
Secretary Peña envisions
giving the Deputy Secretary responsibility for management and surveillance of the nuclear
stockpile, but assigning responsibility for its stewardship to the Under Secretary of
Energy.

5. See Press Barrage Signals New Phase of
Denuclearization Campaign (No. 98-D 50, 18
March 1998) and Clinton Legacy Watch # 14: A Doctrine for
Denuclearization (No. 97-D 190,
8 December 1997).

6. See Clinton’s CTB and Other Placebos Won’t Stop,
Will Compound the Danger of
Proliferating Weapons of Mass Destruction (No.
96-D 90, 24 September 1996).