BIA's Loesch: A Bureaucrat Unafraid to Speak Out
BIA's Loesch: A Bureaucrat Unafraid to Speak Out
Harrison Loesch is an unusual Washington bureaucrat who has not been afraid to speak out about judges, his own boss, Interior Secretary Rogers C. B. Morton, the Nixon administration generally (although Loesch is a presidential appointee) and, especially the nation's Indians.
His strong opinions about Indians and how the government should handle them have put Loesch on the spot because, as assistant secretary of Interior for pulbic land management, Loesch oversees the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.
One of the demands made by the Indians who took over and occupied the BIA building for several days earlier this month was that Loesch be fired. He was accused of being anti-Indian and more interested in land development projects than in improving the lives of Indians. Even some of his associates in the government have suggested anonymously that Loesch's recent pro forma resignation, required of all presidential appointees, may be accepted.
Loesch himself dates his troubles to a public admission shortly after his appointment that he did not really know much about Indians and the issues they have raised. He went on the Dick Cavett television show after Bob Burnett, a spokesman for the American Indian Movement (AIM), "had spent 30 minutes telling about what bastards all those bureaucrats were.
"I knew I was going to get killed," Loesch said.
And he was right. One statement he made on the show "really haunts me," he said. "I said I knew nothing about the Indian problem when I came to Washington. Well, that was pretty much true, but in this pressure cooker situation, you learn fast.
"I don't apologize now (for his knowledge of Indian affairs). I'm no scholar, but I've learned," Loesch said.
Before his appointment, his experience has been limited to that of a small town western lawyer "defending a few indigent Navajos or Utes who got drunk and disorderly while passing through town."
Hank Adams, principal negotiator for the Trail of Broken Treaties, whose supporters took over the BIA, complains that Loesch "exercises almost complete control of the BIA."
Loesch is accused of passing over BIA Commissioner Louis R. Bruce, a Mohawk Indian, and running the bureau of his Interior Department office across the street, or through Bruce's assistant, John Crow.
Crow's resignation also was called for by occupiers of the building. Crow is a career Interior employee who was sent to BIA "because Loesch wouldn't demean himself by going over there, but didn't want Bruce (who also is a Presidential apointee) to run it," Adams said.
Adams accused Loesch of believing that "he knows what's best for Indians." He said, "Loesch gets in the way of appropriate legal decisions regarding fishing and water rights by insisting that the (existing) federal position is protective of Indian interests, despite what Indians may say."
Judges are "more likely to listen to the assistant secretary than they are to an Indian," Adams said.
Peter MacDonald, chairman of the Navajo nation, criticizes Loesch for "coming to a conclusion too quickly." As head of the nation's biggest Indian tribe, MacDonald has had many official dealings with the assistant secretary.
It's not that he's insensitive," MacDonald said, "but rather that he acts without a full view of the consequences."
MacDonald suggests that Loesch's snap judgments are better suited to land management responsibilities than to the BIA. "There is a difference between dealing with land problems and human problems," MacDonald said.
He, too, believes Loesch should be fired, along with assistant BIA Commissioner Crow, who is an Indian. Crow "appears to be used by those who oppose change," MacDonald said.
Crow has "been there so long that he has become a symbol of the old establishment. Seeing his face for so long is a reminder that nothing has changed," he Navajo chairman said.
Loesch's attitude may be illustrated by his own examples of major accomplishments of his regime.
He cited the Central Arizona Project, a $1.2 billion land reclamation plan, as something which will "benefit 11 tribes, five in Arizona who favor it and six others who live along the Colorado River banks which fear it--unadvisably so."
The Pyramid Lake legal action also is viewed by Loesch as a plus for Interior, even though the department's actions were sharply criticized earlier this month by U.S. District Court Judge Gerhard A. Gesell.
Gesell found that Interior had permitted private developers to divert water from the Truckee River, which feeds the lake, a primary source of food and recreation for the Paiute Tribe near Reno.
The court action "dealt only with the tip of the iceberg," according to Loesch.
"The real question will be decided by the Supreme Court" in an action brought by the Justice Department in behalf of Interior, Loesch said.
Gesell's decision affected operating critera, which change annually, according to Loesch. The assistant secretary, who believes he is an expert in water law, said he testified that "you can't justify requiring a particular amount of water in the lake because I'll guarantee you that if the water doesn't come down the river, it sure can't fill the lake. But the judge just didn't buy my act."
Interior Secretary Rogers C. B. Morton also testified, "But Morton doesn't know any more about water than Judge Gesell does," Loesch said.
The Supreme Court action challenges a 1906 decision that went against Indian claims to water rights. "If the Indians win that one, it will revolutionize water rights throughout the West," Loesch said.
He said he "conned" Morton into supporting the action.
Loesch admits to being "under fire" a lot of the time and "while I don't feel I'm to blame, you can get some other opinions on that."
"I've been criticized by urban-type Indians who are not part of my responsibility through BIA, but I believe the reservation Indians consider me a sympathetic and hard-working secretary.
"But Indians are just like the rest of us. There's no community that agrees 100 per cent on anything and no tribe is unanimous either.
"I've learned there is no Indian problem, there are a jillion Indian problems. Anyone who thinks otherwise is being utterly simplistic.
Loesch said he often feels like "you're wading through molasses, but when you look back, you can see accomplishments."
He sees the government's primary obligation to the reservation community as its "trust responsibility and how the government carries it out. We need to see they get a fair shake on development, and this, of course, has not happened."
The greatest need is for a communications network--roads--"without which they can't do anything in education, medicine, business."
Roads on reservations are "disgraceful," Loesch said, although he believes Interior's five-year program, despite budget cuts ordered by the President, will make a dent in the backlog of $800 million worth of projects and survive with $75 million for roads.
"The Secretary made a helluva charge on that," he said
Loesch remains "gung ho" about the Indian Business Development program, although its initial request for $25 million got chopped to $4.4 million before it was appropriated in the spring of 1971.
The money provides grants, not loans, to Indian entrepreneurs to "get over that last little hump which can get them into business."
The program has "put 1,123 guys into business valued at $12 million on reservations," Loesch said. The failure rate has been "fantastically" low.
"Sure we laid a couple of eggs--one guy took $14,000 and headed south--but a skilled roofer in Kansas used $4,000 to buy his boss' equipment, and now he employs four other Indians and is greatly successful."
The turnover of money within the community is needed for economic development, Loesch said.
In his hometown of Montrose, Colo., for instance, "a car dealer comes to my law office with a problem, I buy a car from him and he spends the money at the men's clothing store. The money turns over three-four times before leaving town.
"In the Indian community, the money turns over one time. An Indian needs to buy a pickup truck so he must drive outside the reservation to buy it, and zip, the money's gone.
"It will be a bottomless pit until there are Indian barbers, lawyers, carpendters," Loesch said.
"Of course, a lot of Indians don't want to get into business to go the white man's way," he added. "But more are learning they can keep their Indianness and still get into business.
"We must ameliorate the economic problems which are endemic on reservations," Loesch said.
"I've been accused by radicals of being insensitive because I don't go around beating my chest and saying, 'Lo, the poor Indian.'
"Well, I don't buy the AIM act--I disagree with their methods--but I agree the government has been lax. Through the '50s, and in the Johnson administration, there was no doubt the Indians were getting run over.
"But this administration is the best there ever was (for Indians)," Loesch said.
Before coming to Interior, Loesch had spent his entire life in Montrose, population 5,000, except for four years in the Air Corps in World War II, and schooling at Colorado College and Denver and Yale law schools.
He was born in Chicago, but "that was only because my mother didn't trust the doctors in Montrose. So she went back to Chicago for the delivery. We were there about three weeks."
Loesch (pronounced Lesh), 56, had "never been in politics, although I have been a Republican since the end of the war. The highest party position I ever held was finance chairman of the Montrose County GOP, and in a county with 18,000 residents, you can imagine what a big deal that was."
His knowledge of the Interior Department was primarily as an adversary, "taking 'em to court," in behalf of clients who were opposed to various agencies, Park Service, Reclamation, the Bureau of Land management in a county which is 70 per cent public land.
His political connection has been Sen. Gordon L. Allott, "who had gone to school with my wife." (Allott, however, was defeated this month in a bid for a fourth term. Loesch believes Allott's defeat would "erode" his support in a fight, but he doesn't anticipate a fight.)
A mutual friend, a Denver laywer, acting as a go-between, called Loesch to ask if he might be interested in coming to Washington.
"I told him yes, thinking it was a (legal) case, and asked how long I would be there. He said 'permanently, they want you to be assistant secretary of the Interior.'
"This guy has a reputation as a practical joker, so I said, 'If they don't want me for secretary, I'm not interested."
At lunch, Loesch told his wife, Louise, about the call. She convinced him to call Jack Ware, Sen. Allott's administrative aide.
Ware confirmed that the offer was solid, and "two weeks later I was in Washington."
Left behind was a law practice built up over 29 years, and three law partners who were "calling every day for two months asking where I had put someting."
Because presidential appointees must sever all business connections, "I sold out at a fire sale price" to the partners. But the move "was not a financial sacrifice."
Loesch said he had been making $25,000 to $30,000 a year in Montrose and that he and his wife considered the Level 4 position, paying $38,000 a year "to be a little raised," which he soon learned was "wrong as hell."
He also was wrong about something else: "I had the usual citizen's view that all these bureaucrats were just sitting around." But in his first year on the job "I never got here later than 7:30 in the morning and never left before 7:30 at night, and didn't take a vacation."
As his knowledge of the job increased, his hours decreased, but Loesch still is at his desk most nights at 6, and comes in on Saturdays to go over the mail.
He and Mrs. Loesch have a rental apartment in the Columbia Towers, which is "next to that other place" (the Watergate). Their only child, Jeffery, is a graduate student at the University of Minnesota.
Loesch denigrates his own appointment with the observation that "when Nixon came in, this administration was stupid--better make that unskilled--in filling sub-cabinet jobs."
He learned that "three of four others had been shot down" for the post for conflicts of interest or other reasons and that although "Allott had spent all his chips in other places," when the Colorado Republican got another chance "he thought of me. He admired my brains and knew that I knew something about public land."
If his criticism of government chieftains costs Loesch his job, he's prepared to go back to the private practice of law.
He's likely to go West again, where "you're two minutes from home, office, golf course, trout stream and ski slope." It probably won't be in his hometown, however, because "in a small town, sooner or later a lawyer has sued everybody in town.
"Besides that, this job has opened other doors. I'll probably find something more remunerative."