Crisis? Call the ad hocracy.

CRISIS? CALL THE AD HOCRACY

MARCH 28TH IS A DATE THAT puts all my problems in perspective. It reminds me that whatever is on my mind, it could be worse.

There was only one thing on my mind, however, at 7:50 am on the morning of March 28, 1979 - 10 years ago today. As a governor in office only 72 days, I was vitally interested in securing passage of my first budget - one that would reflect my administration's careful and well thought-out priorities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania - and I was hosting a breakfast meeting at the Governor's Home for freshmen Democratic legislators to help secure bipartisan support for that fiscal plan.

At 7:50 am, however, a telephone call from the state director of emergency management interrupted the meeting. There had been an accident at the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power plant, located just 10 miles downstream of us, in the middle of the Susquehanna River. I knew immediately that our ambitious agenda for leadership was about to be rudely amended.

What happened in the next five days is history. The problem had actually begun at about 4:00 am, when vital cooling water started to escape through an open valve in the newest of the two nuclear reactors at the site.

For the next two and a quarter hours, plant operators failed to read these symptoms correctly, failed to close that valve, and mistakenly shut off an emergency cooling system that otherwise would have operated automatically. The reactor core overheated, and the worst accident in the history of commercial nuclear power in the United States was well underway.

We know now that while some of the reactor fuel heated to the point of melting, a disastrous meltdown, as suggested in the popular movie The China Syndrome, would be avoided. We know now that while detectable amounts of radiation escaped into our air and water and even into our milk - the amount of contamination was limited and its impact on public health, if any, remains debatable to this day.

And we now know that a massive evacuation of the up to 200,000 people residing in that area, and its potential for panic, would have been far more dangerous and damaging than was the accident itself.

But when I answered that phone at 7:50 am on that morning of March 28, 1979, we knew none of this.

Nuclear power was still the technological marvel of our time - to some the ultimate answer to our growing energy problems, a source of energy once described as too cheap to meter - and an industry whose safety record had been, or at least was thought to have been, second to none.

I had neither reason nor inclination to challenge these assumptions. Nuclear jargon was a foreign language to me, and my exposure to emergency management at a nuclear power plant was limited to a perfunctory briefing just after I took office. I knew enough that the thought of issuing a general evacuation order first entered my mind at 7:50 am that morning and never left me through the unprecedented days that followed.

On the first day it was by no means clear that the governor would have to personally manage the civilian side of this crisis, but it was very clear that a new administration, with ultimate responsibility for public health and safety, had better start asking questions, analyzing answers, and preparing for the very worst.

Because we were so unfamiliar with the existing state bureaucracy, and because there simply was no state bureau of nuclear crisis management - let alone a precedent to study - we did something at the outset that was to serve us very well.

In lieu of the existing bureaucracy, I assembled what might be called an "ad hocracy" - a team of close associates whose judgment and competence I could trust absolutely and a support group of relevant state specialists whose judgment and competence were about to be tested under pressures that none of them had ever known before. This ad hocracy reported to me only periodically at first, and those reports were sandwiched between other pressing, but somewhat normal, affairs of state.

AT THE OUTSET, I BELIEVED IT WAS important to conduct business as usual in the governor's office, and perhaps even more important to appear to be doing so. But as the implications of the accident became more apparent, I began to cancel other appointments, and the ad hocracy virtually moved into my office for an extended and unforgettable stay.

Our first and most important task was to find out exactly what was happening at the site of the accident. I was trained both as an engineer and as a lawyer and had a well-developed respect for the integrity of facts. And I demanded much more of my sources than the opinion, conjecture, guesswork, and contradictory allegations that seemed to be the order of the day. I wanted the facts as well as they could possibly be determined and as quickly as they could possibly be assembled.

In the case of TMI this would prove to be far more difficult than any of us ever imagined. The utility, its regulators, and other groups and institutions appeared to be contradicting each other or telling the public less than they knew or more than they knew. Self-appointed experts began to exaggerate either the danger or the safety of the situation. The credibility of the utility, which first seemed to speak with many voices and then with none at all, did not fare well with us, the media, or the public.

The company began that first day by seeking to minimize the accident, assuring us that "everything is under control," when we later learned that it wasn't, and that "all safety equipment functioned properly," when we later learned that it didn't. Even when company technicians found that radiation levels in the area surrounding the island had climbed above normal, the company itself neglected to include that information in its statement to the public. The company had also vented radioactive steam into our air for over two hours at midday without informing the public.

It fell to us, then, to tell the people of central Pennsylvania, as my lieutenant governor did at a 4:30 pm press conference, that the situation was more complex than the company first led us to believe, that there had indeed been a release of radioactivity into the environment, that the company might make further discharges, and that we were concerned about all of this, but that offsite radioactivity levels had been decreasing during the afternoon, and there was no evidence as yet that they ever had reached the danger point.

Although we continued throughout the crisis to monitor what utility officials were saying, we began to look elsewhere for sources of information that would be more credible to the public as well as more helpful to us. Among others, we turned inevitably to federal engineers and inspectors who had spent most of the first day inside the plant. Three of these on-site government experts briefed us that night and joined the lieutenant governor in a 10:00 pm press conference that was to put a long Day One to bed.

However, my past reading habits would delay what otherwise might have been a deep, comfortable, and frankly much-needed sleep. I recalled reading a book, reassuringly entitled We Almost Lost Detroit, an account by John G. Fuller of the problem at the Enrico Fermi nuclear power plant in Michigan. I remembered Fuller's discussion of the consequences of core damage at the Michigan plant and realized, somewhat to my dismay, that our federal experts had not raised this issue with respect to TMI during our evening briefing.

It might be remembered that in 1979 few people realized that there really wasn't any danger of an actual nuclear explosion - mushroom cloud and all - from a nuclear power plant. That isn't physically possible. The real catastrophe - as outlined by Fuller - would be the overheating of the reactor core to the point where it actually melts down and burns through its concrete and steel containment, thereby releasing massive amounts of radioactive material, which silently but lethally could contaminate the environment for miles around and for centuries to come. The term China Syndrome was derived, in fact, from the theory that such a core would be so hot it actually could burn its way through to the other side of the earth.

I did manage to get to sleep that night, but I began Day Two with my new skepticism toward these experts and the industry fully intact.

As the authors of a specially commissioned report were to write much later, the second day of the crisis was an "interlude, a day for drawing of deep breaths...a good time for members of Congress to put in an appearance," which, of course, they did. Chairman Joseph Hendrie of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), meanwhile, was telling a congressional committee in Washington that we had been nowhere near a meltdown, although he had no way of really knowing that at the time.

The utility company was holding its first full-fledged press conference and telling reporters that the controlled release of limited amounts of radioactivity into the atmosphere soon would be terminated.

Company efforts to cool down the reactor were not working as well as expected, and self-appointed experts and eyewitnesses of dubious distinction continued to feed us unsubstantiated stories about dead animals, along with exaggerated warnings, various evacuation schemes, and a ridiculous tale - prompted by a poorly worded NRC press release - about radiation so powerful it was penetrating four feet of concrete and spreading across the countryside up to 16 miles from the plant. There also were signs popping up in grocery store windows proclaiming, "We don't sell Pennsylvania milk."

Public faith in the experts and institutions was beginning to erode, and it was clear that the credibility of the governor's office was to become much more than simply a political asset for its occupant. That credibility was to become, perhaps, the last check against a possible breakdown in civil authority and the chaos and panic that such a breakdown surely would ignite. Obviously, we were determined to preserve that check.

THE TIME HAD COME, WE FELT, FOR the state to use whatever credibility we had to put things back into perspective - to establish that the situation was not as bad as some would have us fear, nor as good as others would have us believe. In my briefings to the press that day I noted that while there was no cause for alarm, we would remain alert. I was followed at the podium by one of the experts from the NRC - a staffer who declared, to my astonishment, that "the danger is over."

I learned later that night that another on-site expert privately disagreed, and that water samples indicated that core damage was very bad.

Day Three was to become known as the day of the great evacuation scare - the day that illustrated not only the folly but the real danger of trying to manage this kind of emergency long-distance.

The day began in the early morning hours when the shift operators at TMI were alarmed by a buildup of steam pressure on a valve. Without approval from anyone, they simply opened the valve and allowed the steam, along with a substantial amount of radioactive material, to escape into the atmosphere. Helicopter readings taken directly above the plant's exhaust stack indicated a radiation exposure rate of 1200 millirems per hour - a rate high enough to warrant an evacuation if the readings had been taken in nearby Middletown, in Harrisburg, or anywhere off the plant site itself. But coming directly out of the stack, where the materials immediately were dispersed, such a reading was no more significant than those taken on the previous two days of the crisis.

Unfortunately, in a classic manifestation of what I later was to call the garble gap between Harrisburg and Washington, the NRC's Washington-based executive management team thought that the readings had indeed been taken in an off-site area and decided to recommend that we evacuate all residents within a five-mile radius of the plant. Also, unfortunately, this Washington group forwarded its recommendation up to us through our emergency management director instead of our radiation protection director - the latter of whom could have corrected the error and spared central Pennsylvania from reaching the very brink of panic.

And, even more unfortunately, the emergency management director called a local civil defense director, who called a local radio station with the news that an evacuation order from the governor might well be imminent. I had yet to be informed of any of this.

When the word finally did get to me that a Doc Collins from Washington was saying we should evacuate, I had no idea who he was or by what authority or for what reason he was making such a recommendation, and I did not intend to evacuate thousands of people on such incomplete information. For no matter how well they are planned, massive evacuations can kill and injure people - especially the aged and infirm, infants in incubators, other hospital patients, and even the able bodied bystander who, like the usher at the exit of a burning theater, happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I started asking questions. My difficulty in getting answers was compounded by the jamming of the switchboard - thanks not only to the premature disclosure of an erroneous evacuation advisory but also to the mysterious tripping of an emergency siren that had hearts pounding and eyes widening all over the city of Harrisburg.

People were throwing their belongings into trucks and cars, locking up their shops and homes, and packing to get out of town. If we were ever close to a general panic, this was the moment.

I placed a call to the NRC chairman himself, and by the time I reached him, his staff had discovered what my own radiation experts were telling me: The evacuation advisory was a mistake. The NRC group immediately withdrew that advisory, and I immediately went on the air to try to assure our people that the alarm was a false one and that there would be no general evacuation. Shortly after that, I was on the phone with President Carter. My conversation with the President was honest, open, direct and, above all, productive.

I asked for, and received from the President, a high-ranking professional who could go to Three Mile Island as his personal representative. That person would merge solid technical and management expertise with an on-site perspective and report directly to the White House, to me, and to the people on what was going on, what was not going on, and why. Harold Denton, the NRC's director of nuclear reactor regulation, turned out to be the perfect choice. His arrival later in the day would represent a true turning point in the crisis.

FOR THE MOMENT, HOWEVER, THE evacuation question was not entirely settled. While everyone was relieved that a general evacuation was unnecessary, the confusion that episode exposed in Washington, as well as in the plant, and the uncertainty over what might happen next, troubled us deeply. We began to wonder on our own if pregnant women and small children - those residents most vulnerable to the effects of any radiation - should be encouraged to leave the area nearest the plant. I decided to put that question directly to NRC Chairman Hendrie, who answered, and I quote: "If my wife were pregnant and I had small children in the area, I would get them out, because we don't know what's going to happen."

Shortly after noon on Day Three of the crisis, therefore, I recommended that pregnant women and preschoolers leave the area within five miles of the plant until further notice, and that all schools within that zone be closed as well. I also ordered the opening of evacuation centers at various sites outside the area to shelter those who had no place to go.

"Current readings," I told the people, "are no higher than they were yesterday, but the continued presence of radioactivity in the area and the possibility of further emissions lead me to exercise the utmost caution."

Harold Denton arrived at the plant that afternoon. A three-way hot line was installed there to connect him with me and with the President. Later that night, Harold and I met for the first time and spent an hour and a half reviewing the situation.

It was quite clear that his slow and relaxed North Carolina drawl, his way of smiling naturally as he spoke, his ease and apparent candor with the press, his ability to speak plain English as well as nuclear jargon were all factors that soon were to make him a believable expert on the technical situation at Three Mile Island. And it wasn't to be long before his value would be put to the test.

While he was on his way up to Pennsylvania, his colleagues in Washington finally referred publicly to the theoretical possibility of a meltdown, an accurate but poorly handled statement that caused even Walter Cronkite to lead the CBS News with the statement, "We are faced with the remote but very real possibility of a nuclear meltdown at the Three Mile Island atomic power plant."

Harold Denton joined me in a press conference that night, put the facts in perspective, lowered the level of concern, and earned his spurs with the press - and with me. As Day Three wound down, I felt we finally were equipped to handle the misstatements, second-guessing, and false alarms that were certain to continue.

Harold Denton's long series of regular press briefings in Middletown, near the plant site, began on Day Four, Saturday, March 31.

My brief visit to the young mothers and mothers-to-be who had been evacuated to the Hershey Sports Arena nearby that day preceded yet one more scare to the people of central Pennsylvania. Based on information given to it by an anonymous NRC source in Washington, a wire service ran a news bulletin that evening that read, "URGENT . . . The NRC now says the gas bubble atop the nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island shows signs of becoming potentially explosive. . . ."

This fear was totally groundless. The hydrogen bubble never would explode in the reactor vessel. As one review of the crisis later recalled, "It would blow up, instead, in the media." The bulletin, in its most cryptic and chilling form, moved like a hurricane advisory across the bottoms of prime-time television screens everywhere that Saturday night.

In Harrisburg, people steamed out of downtown bars and restaurants. Our switchboard jammed again, and a herd of reporters stampeded into the press office. We called Harold Denton at the plant and learned that there was no danger of an imminent explosion and no cause for alarm. My press secretary, skipping our normal clearance procedures, banged out a three-paragraph statement to that effect and literally ran it down to the capitol newsroom.

Concurrently, we asked Denton, who was on his way to my office, to go instead to the newsroom. Within minutes, stories quoting his statement and his impromptu news conference began to move on the wires, and another potential panic seemed to have been avoided.

During this scare, we were in touch with the White House and discussed the possibility of a visit to the area by the President. Jodie Powell, the President's press secretary, authorized me to say that the President would be joining us in the near future, and he issued a similar advisory out of Washington. That was to be, in effect, the end of the panic phase of our crisis.

THE PRESIDENT ARRIVED THE VERY next day, Day Five, and he and I toured the plant together - in full view of network television cameras. The image that was beamed around the world on April 1 - Day Five of the crisis - had its desired effect. If it was safe enough at Three Mile Island for the governor of Pennsylvania and the President of the United States, it had to be safe enough for everyone.

Over the next several days, Harold Denton continued to oversee the cooling down of the reactor core and offer progress reports to a press contingent that was fast losing interest in the story. On April 6, just 10 days after that fateful opening of what had become the most famous power-plant valve in the world, I prepared to tell our people that the crisis had been passed, and that those who had chosen to leave the area "can indeed, come home again."

The experience of Three Mile Island provided a numer of lessons that were useful not only in managing unforeseen crises but also some of the normal problems of governing as well. Perhaps the first among these lessons is to expect the unexpected and be prepared to adjust accordingly. As governor, if it wasn't Three Mile Island, it was three-mile gas lines. If it wasn't a water shortage, it was a flood. If it wasn't a transit strike, it was a subway crash.

The importance of limiting the things any executive should attempt to do in the time allowed and the importance of carefully choosing one's battles is implicit in the fact that some of the toughest of those battles are chosen for us and not by us. Of prime importance in mounting those battles is to ensure that good men and women are in place to handle the planned agenda should the boss become occupied by an item that never was planned at all. Second, when an emergency does strike, a trusted "ad hocracy" may be far more useful than an entrenched or untested bureaucracy.

It was not in the job description to function like a virtual grand jury grilling witnesses in a nuclear emergency, and then to serve as a communications center for the people, but it worked. A manager should not be afraid to scramble the organizational chart as we did during Three Mile Island - or, in perhaps a more familiar and better known example, as President Kennedy did during the Cuban missile crisis, when his own brother's advice weighed more heavily with him than that of the secretary of state or the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Third, I suggest that one be ready to restrain those who, as described by our emergency management director during the crisis, may think solely in terms of doing something, regardless of safety or necessity. This applies not only to emergency volunteers, but also to staff, bureaucrats, technocrats, academicians, medical and other professionals, and even to those in the political end.

The impulse in government to act merely for the sake of action, or to test a plan or an agency simply because it's there, has to be kept firmly under control in these circumstances.

Fourth, be wary of what might be called "emergency macho" - the temptation to stay up all night and then brag about it. While it often is important for a manager to maintain a visible and reassuring presence, anyone making life or death decisions for thousands of innocent people owes them a mind that is clear and a body that is rested.

Fifth, don't try to manage an emergency from anywhere but the site itself. This doesn't mean necessarily being onsite personally, but someone must be in charge whose competence and judgment can be trusted.

Even Harold Denton, I later learned, had been a major participant in the bogus evacuation advisory the NRC sent of Friday, March 30. He later was to concede, "I've learned that emergencies can only be managed by people at the site."

Sixth, search for and evaluate the facts and their sources again and again. Communicate those facts truthfully and carefully to the people, remembering that credibility can be as fragile as it is crucial under the heat of a genuine public emergency.

Seventh, respect but do not depend on the news media. Throughout the Three Mile Island incident, we developed a considerable empathy for the more than 400 reporters from around the world who were assigned to cover this event. Their frustrations mirrored ours in the attempts to establish reliable facts.

In many instances, our decision makers and members of the media compared notes on vital issues to ensure both the quality of the reporting and the quality of action within state government.

Eight, forget partisanship. There's no Republican or Democratic way to manage a real emergency. In our stewardship of this most basic of all public trusts, we inevitably survive or suffer together, and so do the people we are elected to serve.

Ninth, value and learn from history. While John Fuller's book on the Fermi plant proved useful, if one of my colleagues already had experienced a nuclear emergency like Three Mile Island and had recounted it in published form, such a publication would not long have lingered on my shelf.

Finally, as the well-known American philosopher Yogi Berra once said: "It ain't over 'til it's over." The year after the accident, I had to step into a new furor over a plan to vent radioactive krypton gas into the atmosphere as part of the TMI cleanup operation. Public hearings on the safety of the plan almost turned into riots.

I took the unorthodox step of asking the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group of nuclear critics, to study the venting plan, and when that organization concluded that it posed no physical threat to public health or safety, the venting proceeded peacefully.

The year after that, however, we learned that no plan had been devised to fund the billion-dollar effort necessary to decontaminate the damaged reactor. Because the site cannot be considered truly safe until that cleanup has been completed, and because the established institutions were at an impasse, we had no choice but to develop and push a national cost-sharing plan funding the plan, which is now in the implementation stage.

Finally, protracted proceedings involving the utility's application to restart the undamaged unit I reactor at Three Mile Island - proceedings which ultimately went to the Supreme Court of the United States - consumed thousands of staff-hours to ensure a maximum commitment by the operators to public health and safety and the integrity of the environment in the area before restart was undertaken.

ONE FINAL POSTSCRIPT: IN DECEMBER 1979, some eight months following the accident, I visited the Soviet Union and met in Moscow with top government and scientific leaders in their nuclear energy program to share with them some of the lessons of Three Mile Island. To our real discomfort, our Russian hosts told our party they regarded nuclear safety a solved problem, that the problems raised by our experience had been overdramatized, and quoted the head of their national Academy of Science as saying that Soviet reactors "would soon be so safe as to be installed in Red Square."

The rest is history. But one must wonder if the accident at Chernobyl might have been prevented if the people of the Soviet Union were as free to question their authorities as were Americans following the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.

Without a free press, however, the Soviet people had no opportunity to learn that Chernobyl was probably more dangerous than Three Mile Island, or even to alert their people to the accident itself, which became known only after unusually high radiation levels were detected in other countries.

For all its shortcomings, our political system makes it difficult, if not impossible, to ignore or suppress problems such as those raised by the Three Mile Island accident. Democracy may indeed be, as Winston Churchill is reputed to have once observed, "the worst system of government, except for all the rest." And for that I suggest we can be eternally grateful.

What advice would you give the governor of Alaska as he struggles with the disaster in that state?

I think it would be presumptuous of me to offer specific advice about a situation that is as demanding in its scope as the one I just outlined for you. But I think the lessons that I laid out as learned from the Three Mile Island incident apply generally to this kind of emergency.

Do you believe the Russians failed to learn from your experience in handling Three Mile Island, and did this affect their response at Chernobyl?

I've already indicated that there was a bit of false bravado in the Soviet approach to what potential lessons they might have learned from our experience. And my sense also is based on conversations with those who have been involved in the process, that Chernobyl was a very sobering incident for them, and there has been an extraordinary amount of interchange between our experts and their experts in the aftermath of that accident -- unfortunately coming seven years too late for the 40 people and then some who lost their lives in that accident.

Since the effects of exposure to low-level radiation are known to be cummulative, and since health problems from such exposure often take 20 years to show up, in retrospect, should you not have evacuated the population around Three Mile Island and asked questions later?

We based our decision on the facts we had at the time. We believed the known risks of an evacuation would cause more damage to the populace than our minimal precautionary evacuation. No one should ever think that an evacuation of the size and scope that you're talking about here can be undertaken easily or without risk. And the balancing of those risks was the ultimate decision we had to make, and at least on the record thus far it appears to have been the proper one.

What is your recommendation for dealing with the flood of drug-related cases now overflowing our federal and state courts? Do you favor increased congressional appropriations for the federal judicial and penal systems?

Obviously, more resources are necessary, and, in the supplemental appropriation for which we worked so hard on the Hill last fall, substantial new resources for our investigative and prosecutive agencies have been supplied. Allocating those resources and getting the maximum effect out of their deployment is the principal management challenge that faces us in the Department of Justice these days.

If we want to lose the war on drugs, just leave it to law enforcement. And by that obviously I don't mean to downplay the efforts of the men and women who are out there laying their lives on the line on a daily basis. But what I mean to do is to remind each of you that this war is going to be won on the battlefield of values. It's going to be won when we make an effective attack on the demand side, reduce the appetite for drugs, and make it clear that the value of a drug-free lifestyle far exceeds the potentially fatal nature of a drug-dependent lifestyle.

One of the major components of the new office headed by Director [William] Bennett is going to be to make sure we're not trying to deal with the surface problems by simply pouring more resources into law enforcement. We must attack the root problems by providing more education, more rehabilitation and treatment facilities, more accountability to the drug user - who is the ultimate support on which all of the violence and all of corruption, all of the erosion of the values that we hold dear in this country, depends.

That drug user had better get used to looking over his or her shoulder for the law enforcement official who's there to present to them their share of the enormous bill we're paying for so-called recreational drug use. It's not recreational in terms of the future of this country and the battle that we're engaged in for the soul of the next generation. That effort, together with a firm and aggressive law enforcement effort may hold out the hope that we can deal with the problem and the plague that has affected so many, particularly of our inner cities of these United States.

What is your personal position on the executive office and White House staff's lawsuit against random drug testing?

As I said in the aftermath of the decisions that were rendered by the Supreme Court - one of them in the very first case I argued before the Supreme Court as attorney general - each of the drug-testing programs that have been adopted within the federal government pursuant to President Reagan's original executive order has to be tested against the language of those decisions.

That's a painstaking process because the decisions were narrow, they related to a specific factual situation, specific groups of employees, and specific circumstances, and until that review is completed by those persons who are in charge of executing the plans, I don't think you can give an offhand answer to a particular plan.

The validation of drug testing by the Supreme Court, on the other hand, does send, in my view, a very positive signal to those in the private sector who want to use sound drug-testing programs to ensure a drug-free workplace. The private sector ought to proceed with a good deal more pace because of the lack of any constitutional problem in connection with it.

When you became attorney general, you indicated you might rescind your predecessor's order that Congress be covered by the independent counsel statute. What are you planning to do in connection with this?

I'm no great fan of independent counsels because I think that in most cases the skilled and competent professionals who work in my department are capable and have proven themselves capable of pursuing wrongdoings and corruption in whatever quarters they may find it. That certainly is their charge from me and will continue to be so, irrespective of how the so-called special prosecutor or independent counsel recommendations are carried out. The order to which you refer is still under consideration. It is being looked at in connection with the recommendations that the President may forward to the Hill as a result of the deliberations and findings of the commission headed by Judge Bell and Ambassador Willkie, and should be resolved at an early date.

What's your timetable for getting your staff and the Justice Department organized and for setting some policy priorities?

I have been at the Department since August; we are in a transition process, but there are no vacancies; competent people are in place. We have submitted to the White House what I regard as an outstanding roster of prospective appointees. They are in the throes, as are all appointees, of comprehensive background checks. And obviously we want to have them on board as quickly as possible, but we have been open for business under this attorney general from the first day.

Do you believe that the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act should be modified, and if so, how would you change it?

We suggested in the last session of Congress some changes in regard to the use of the RICO statute by private parties, which has been vexatious in some regards because it stretches RICO beyond its original intent. But I certainly don't support any restriction on the use of the RICO statute by prosecutors to deal with organized crime, or the business of crime.

There are two ways to deal effectively with these giant organizations that control illicit businesses: One is to put their board of directors, chief executive officers, and those in the executive suite in prison. Disable them. Take them out of circulation. The second is to seize their assets, to take the profit out of the business enterprise they're involved in. And there the RICO statute has proven itself to be invaluable.

It is a complicated statute. Its use by US attorneys requires express approval by the Department of Justice. But I think any suggestion that the statute should be repealed or restricted in any measurable way would be a bad mistake in terms of our efforts to deal with the more sophisticated and complicated types of criminal enterprises.

Do you forsee any change in the Justice Department's antitrust policy?

I will ask the next assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division to review our policy and the existing statutes and regulations on the books with one foremost thought in mind - and that is to alter, change, remove, or otherwise deal with any provisions in our antitrust law or policy that hinder the competitiveness of American companies in international markets.

Most American businesses compete in international markets, and we have to measure the impact of transactions - that years ago might have come within the proscription of the antitrust laws because of the restricted nature of the markets - by the vast expansion of the markets and the competitive effects of denying American companies the ability to compete effectively abroad.

Do you plan on continuing the involvement of the American Bar Association (ABA) in the judicial appointment process?

I spoke to the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Judiciary during the ABA convention in Denver, Colorado. We had a candid discussion about the role of the standing committee and the ABA, and I made it clear to them that in their own interest and in the interest of ensuring that the President has the widest possible basis for assessing his judicial choices, they ought to be attentive to three things. The first is expedition in completing their review and offering their ratings on prospective judicial nominees. The second is to preserve the confidentiality of their proceedings and thus preserve the integrity of their recomendations.

The third is to stick to their business - that is, assessing professional qualifications, judicial temperament, and the competence of nominees who were suggested to the President, and not getting into the ideological or political business, which is beyond not only the authority but the competence of the American Bar Association.

I hope these recommendations and observations were well received; they were made with the best of intentions, and if they are followed, I suspect that the President will be willing to continue the practice of all other Presidents, since at least President Eisenhower, of considering the American Bar Association's evaluation of judicial nominees.

About the Author . . . Richard Thornburgh is the Attorney General of the United States.