Larry Craig: “when a new administration comes to town, I think it is confronted with new problems and challenges that it inherits from…”

“when a new administration comes to town, I think it is confronted with new problems and challenges that it inherits from old administrations. Certainly, the Clinton administration is no exception. I think it is incumbent on all of us, as Senators and Representatives from our States, to try to work with this administration to solve those problems that are ongoing or that may well be inherited. I think the same is true of new managers or chiefs. Unfortunately, the new Chief of the U.S. Forest Service may be no exception. Only weeks into his job, Jack Ward Thomas, who comes to that job as a noted biologist, having done excellent work before as an employee of the U.S. Forest Service, is faced with some revelations that Forest Service staff in the Northwest may have been instructed to give a national preservation group and lobbying group--the Natural Resource Defense Council--a secret veto power over timber sales. Internal Government memos, which I have with me and that have been provided to me, show a pattern of consultation between the Forest Service and the NRDC. This occurred on at least 10 different timber sales. The memos refer to some sales as ``released by NRDC'' or ``not released by NRDC.'' This suggests that the NRDC may have been given the exclusive right to secretly modify details on particular sales.”