Short-Term Commerce Secretary : Verity Determined to Leave His Mark on Job

As other upper-echelon Reagan Administration officials plot a return to private life, retired Ohio steel executive C. William Verity is relishing his role as “the new boy on the block.”

Just four months into his job, the new Commerce secretary appears determined to leave an activist’s stamp on his agency, although he allows “I have a lot of catching up to do.”

“There’s so much going on, it’s hard to get your arms around it,” he said in an interview. But Verity, soft-spoken and gracious like predecessor Malcolm Baldrige, says he considers himself a “late bloomer” at 71.

His first months in office have been anything but placid.

There have been trade tangles with the Japanese, attacks from conservatives over his views on Soviet trade, a run-in with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and a staff upheaval.

And whales.

“I never had any idea I would be in charge of whales some day. And I had no idea it would take so much of my time,” Verity said, referring to his recent recommendation for sanctions on Japan for their killing of minke whales in violation of international whaling agreements.

That action, while mostly symbolic, won plaudits from conservationists.

As the Commerce Department celebrates the 75th anniversary of its creation on Friday, Verity has been pressing ahead with his own schemes to more fully automate the activities of the once staid but now sprawling agency.

Commercializing Space

The department administers U.S. trade policy, probably its most vital role in a day of $170-billion trade deficits. But it also collects and analyzes economic data and serves as home for the Census Bureau, the National Weather Service, the Bureau of Standards and a host of other agencies.

One of Verity’s first moves was getting behind a program for encouraging the commercialization of space--a project, he said, which brought him into immediate conflict with the space agency. “NASA doesn’t want anybody else out there,” he said.

And Verity set up a program to help smaller companies “get into the export game” by capitalizing on exchange-rate changes that are making U.S. goods more competitive abroad, a project he says is now his top priority.

“It may be that a new boy on the block can help move things along,” the white-haired former industrialist said in an interview in his sparsely furnished office in the Commerce Department.

The office is a huge room built to the specifications of Herbert Hoover, the commerce secretary from 1921 to 1928, but more recently festooned with the cowboy and rodeo memorabilia that were the pride of Baldrige, an immensely popular Cabinet secretary among agency employees.

Baldrige’s death last summer in a freak rodeo accident brought Verity, a long-time Republican fund-raiser and Reagan supporter, out of a comfortable retirement in South Carolina. He had been chairman of Armco Steel.

But he was not able to win over all former Baldrige loyalists.

Some of the highest-ranking agency officials have quit since Verity took the helm, the most recent departure coming last week with the resignation of Bruce Smart, an under secretary well respected on Capitol Hill for his expertise on trade issues.

Verity and Smart had a number of personality clashes, according to other department employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The friction culminated in Verity’s withdrawal of his earlier recommendation that Smart be elevated to the No. 2 Commerce Department to succeed former Deputy Secretary Clarence J. Brown.

Brown, a rival to Verity in early speculation on whom President Reagan would pick to succeed Baldrige, also resigned his post soon after Verity’s confirmation.

Still, Verity’s no-nonsense approach, particularly his tough stance toward Japan, has won him a lot of fans in the business community.

“It has endeared him to a lot of people around here. Other secretaries and other U.S. spokesmen have not been urging the government to start speaking in plain language to these guys,” said Richard Muller, a Washington representative for Chrysler Corp.

Soon after taking office, Verity went on the offensive, telling a Tokyo audience that Japan faced near-certain retaliation if it continued to restrict its markets while underpricing its own products in U.S. markets.

“I understand their culture, I understand that they are a closed society,” Verity said in the interview. “They’re not the least bit interested in opening their society.”

When he was nominated, congressional conservatives balked at Verity’s long support of closer ties with the Soviet Union as past chairman of a U.S.-Soviet trade advocacy council.

Weathered Opposition

And some Jewish groups considered troublesome his public skepticism toward the Jackson-Vanik law, which denies preferential trade treatment to the Soviets because of their refusal to allow free Soviet Jewish emigration.

Japanese-Americans rued his use of the term “Japs” in a pre-confirmation speech. And environmentalists were unhappy about his industrialist’s record on clean air and clean water.

However, since he was sworn in last Oct. 19--the day the stock market crashed--Verity has weathered most of these criticisms.

But he says that’s he’s learned one thing: the difference between running a steel company and running a federal agency.

“I think you find out you’re not really in charge,” Verity said.

“The big difference is the mission of private business is to get something done. In government, this is not so. In government, it’s to move toward solving a problem, but to get everybody on board with you as you try to solve it.”

“And that just requires a lot of time and a lot of massaging of people’s feelings.”