WASHINGTON — Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt is headed to Capitol Hill for a hearing on a mining bill, explaining why he told reporters in 1988 that he would love to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
"I have always been interested in foreign policy," the former Arizona governor is saying, seated in the back seat of his government-chauffeured car. "And I saw the end of the Cold War coming and talked about the end of Marxism. I said to myself: 'The CIA is going to undergo a profound change and become the economic and political analyst for the post-Cold War era. And that really is an incredible job. The agency is going to have to be reinvented.' "
The CIA never came up when President Clinton and Babbitt talked about Administration jobs last fall, but Babbitt got what he wanted: an agency undergoing profound change, a department he could reinvent.
As the new secretary, Babbitt is trying to turn around 12 years of Interior Department policies that tended to favor rural industries over conservation. He wants to raise fees on miners and ranchers who use public lands, charge farmers more for water from federal water projects and manage public lands so that wildlife is protected before becoming endangered.
He is pushing for these changes when millions of people are out of work, when the environment is pitted against the economy and in an Administration that was elected on a pledge to create jobs.
Already, western senators are mounting a strong campaign against the changes, and Babbitt's boss, Clinton, has shown what some say is a disturbing willingness to back down under fire. On top of this, the Interior agencies that implement the secretary's policies have a history of clashing with one another rather than cooperating.
Enter Babbitt, a 54-year-old former governor with a record as a pragmatic problem-solver and skillful arbitrator. The son of an Arizona family that made its money in cattle and Indian trading posts, Babbitt holds strong pro-environment views that stem in part from his love of the outdoors and his reading of environmental literature.
Although he calls himself an environmentalist and was until recently president of the League of Conservation Voters, Babbitt is not an ideologue. He is described by those who know him as more interested in results than in maintaining a hard line and losing, a secretary who will "push the envelope" to protect the environment but also work to accommodate economic interests at odds with his policies.
