Bush Choices for Key Posts Anger Environmentalists

Top environmentalists, revising their initial assessments of the Bush Administration, said Friday that White House nominations to key government posts have set the stage for a “nightmare” reminiscent of the tenure of former Interior Secretary James G. Watt.

Representatives of the so-called Group of 10 major environmental groups denounced the appointments--involving oversight of much of the nation’s park and wilderness lands--as “totally inconsistent” with President Bush’s stated commitment to environmental concerns.

“We’re holding the Administration to the standard it set itself,” said George Frampton Jr., president of the Wilderness Society. “These people are all out of the Watt school.”

The group focused much of its ire on the nomination of James S. Cason, a former Watt deputy tapped by Bush to preside over the Forest Service as an assistant secretary of agriculture.

In his past role, the group charged in a news conference, Cason played a central part in “processes and decisions that favored resource exploitation at the expense of the environment at every single turn.”

The environmentalists urged Bush to withdraw the nomination on grounds that Cason had demonstrated “a wanton insensitivity to the environmental values which he has been obliged to protect.”

The denunciations of Cason and two other Bush nominees, James Ridenour and Sy Jamison, marked a notable shift in tone on the part of the environmentalists, who until Friday had been almost unswervingly enthusiastic about the new Administration.

“This honeymoon isn’t over,” says Jack Lorenz, executive director of the Izaak Walton League of America, “but there’s a shaky period right here.”

The group vowed to fight Cason’s nomination through the confirmation process if his name is not withdrawn.

“This guy’s our Bork,” declared Frampton, referring to Robert H. Bork, the controversial Supreme Court nominee who was rejected by the Senate. “We’ve got a new era, and I don’t think the American people are going to tolerate the same old gang.”

Administration officials and congressional staffers said Friday that they expected the Cason nomination to prove problematic. “They’re really worried about this one over at the White House,” one official said.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the panel that will consider the nomination, issued a statement Friday saying he was “deeply disturbed” by reports about Cason’s record.

“We do not need another James Watt in this assistant secretary position,” Leahy said. An Agriculture Department spokesman declined to comment on the nomination.

Watt, an outspoken Interior secretary from 1981 to 1983, earned notoriety for his advocacy of proposals to sell off vast tracts of public lands and to encourage mining and oil drilling in wilderness areas.

Cason, who served in the Ronald Reagan Administration as a deputy assistant Interior secretary, played a central role in denying endangered species status for the northern spotted owl, a decision held by a federal court to be “arbitrary and capricious.”

In the course of that decision, the environmentalists charged, Cason ordered that drafts of a report critical of his position be destroyed.

In the waning days of the Reagan Administration, Cason also authorized publication of a rule permitting mining in national parks, the environmentalists said.