Zealous Lord of a Vast Domain

Interior's Watt: determined, righteous and on the move

Any number of fierce advocates surround Ronald Reagan these days, all determined to carry out last November's election mandate. Each seems, however, to interpret the mandate as his very own, as an individual summons to overhaul his special part of the System. No one is more zealous than James Watt, 43, the lanky, brusque Secretary of the Interior. His soft voice and thick glasses make him seem a little like a benign mortician, but that could be misleading. For Jim Watt has all the self-righteous conviction of the born-again Christian that he is, and his goal is no less ambitious than converting America's soul about harvesting its vast natural resources.

In a way, Watt represents Reaganism in all its extremes: the single-mindedness, the bluster, the aching for a glorious past. His whole aggressive demeanor, his background as head of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which thwarted environmental regulations, have convinced some environmentalists that his ultimate goal is to snatch the national treasures from the people and turn them over to powerful industrial interests. Since more than a few conservation activists are every bit as determined and self-righteous as Watt, that could prove a dangerous mission.

Of course, that was precisely why he was picked for the job. After Nevada Senator Paul Laxalt called Watt to his office and sized him up, he excitedly phoned the President--who had never set eyes on the keen lawyer--and said he had found just the right man. Watt was razor smart, Laxalt told the President, a steely manager who knew his field. Best of all, Laxalt declared, Watt could take pressure: he had the hide of a rhino.

In two short months the thick-skinned man who manages 550 million acres of public land has stunned environmentalists and lawmakers with the way he has decisively altered policymaking at Interior. Watt has accelerated the sale of oil and gas leases, moved to expedite the surface mining of coal, opened up wilderness areas to allow exploration of strategic minerals, halted the acquisition of more lands for national parks. He says he wants a bold, sensible program that will renew the country's growth. Says one of Watt's top aides, Stan Hulett: "Nobody could have survived making these proposals a few years ago. It took a major economic crisis to let us finally change direction."

The environmentalists have roared back, warning of ecological nightmares. "This is the first time in my memory," says former Senator Gaylord Nelson, who now lobbies for the Wilderness Society, "that the country's chief conservation officer has been an antienvironmentalist."

Watt is an autocratic and cocksure man who is quick to show his impatience with poor performance. Wary colleagues sensed long ago not to swear in his presence. He neither smokes nor drinks--no coffee either. His unbending sense of propriety is so well known that, although Watt claims he never uttered a word about it, rumors swept the Interior building that women workers should wear skirts, not slacks, on the job.

In his wood-paneled office last week, with his favorite oil painting of a bald eagle on the wall, Watt still seemed like the raw boy from his windy prairie country of southeast Wyoming. Long-legged in his gray plaid suit, he ambled down the hall and pointed out the huge office where Harold Ickes used to work in F.D.R.'s day and remarked that he could never be comfortable there. Back in his own much smaller suite, he stretched out and began talking about his job, about his goals, about himself. As he spoke, he gradually became more emphatic, some times doubling his fist as he stressed his points. "If I don't come down hard on these things," he said, "nothing will move." He said he wasted little time listening to the attacks of his critics. "These people are committed to destroying what I want to achieve and that means destroying me," he said, with the air of a man who will not let it happen.

He is supported strongly, he stressed, by a powerful religious faith. His own born-again experience, he said, had taken place in 1964 at a gospel meeting of businessmen in Washington. "My responsibility is to follow the Scriptures," he says, "which call upon us to occupy the land until Jesus returns." Those biblical admonitions, Watt explained, require a balance between utilization and preservation.

He stressed America's need to break its dependence on foreign resources, to search now for oil and minerals in order to prevent the inevitable panic rush on lands later if those resources were shut off. He insists that regulatory interference has blocked such development, that the Interior Department has been arrogant and offensive, a poor landlord. Watt has already cut way back on enforcement and investigative personnel, and conservationists are frankly worried. Says one: "Now the environmental reviews and other checks simply won't get done. That's how these developers will get past the regulation barricades."

Talking about his opponents, Watt sounded combative, and his hide showed patches of thinness as he talked of a meeting he had just held with environmentalists. His temper had spilled over, and he had accused the others in the room of deliberately poisoning his reputation. The men present were so astonished at his fury that one of them, Bill Butler of the Audubon Society, warned his staff that Watt was too hostile to deal with right now. There were a couple of wildlife representatives at the meeting, and at one point, during a discussion about predators, Watt made no effort to conceal his strong feelings that coyotes should be largely killed off. "Maybe we can get Mrs. Reagan to wear a coyote coat," he said in a clumsy effort at a joke, noting that trappers and bounty hunters would get more business. The wildlife men winced.

Watt will be a strong adversary, and even his harshest detractors consider him incorruptible. But if he is to have a chance of succeeding, Watt must build wider coalitions, reach out beyond his own supporters. His intensity is both his strength and his vulnerability. He feels he has plenty of backing. "I know the power flow," he says cockily of the Republican margin in the Senate. But what if in the process of carrying out his part of the new mandate, he misjudges the flow and gets too far out in front of Ronald Reagan? In that case Watt himself, and not the people he is determined to convert, could become the target of the President's bounty hunters. --ByRobertAjemian/Washington

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