GOVERNMENT SCANDAL? CALL A MR. CLEAN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-01448R000401660078-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 22, 2012
• Sequence Number: 78
• Publication Date: May 10, 1991
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401660078-7
Government Scandal?
Call a Mr. Clean,,
Webster Seen to Be Member of Post- Watergate
`Honest People' Breed
4
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Maliwtoon PMO Sue Wnur
STAT
Washington has long been accustomed to hearing talk
about "wise men," people brought into government be-
cause of their experience and judgment and who are
presumed-usually because they are rich-to be free
of avaricious designs.
But especially since Watergate, a new breed has
-ome to town whose main task is to clean up scandal, to
estore popular confidence in government agencies, to
istance presidents from the failures and corruption of
heir appointees. Call them "Honest Men," or, if you
refer, "Honest People."
William H. Webster, who annoupSed his resignation
Wednesday as head of the Central Intelligence Agency, is
a classic member of the breed. He took over the CIA af-
ter its reputation had been scarred by the ran-contra
scandal and, whatever else he did, Webster succeeded 'in
the primary mission of Honest People: He
Qot t e aaen-
c 's name out of the scandal pays and restored at least a
modicum public trust to the intel i ence a encies.
"He has really been a stabilizer-a confidence sta-
bilizer," said Harry McPherson, who served as a top
lieutenant to Lyndon B. Johnson. That, McPherson
added, was especially important for an agenecy where
"everything is secret" and much of the public's knowl-
edge is based on rumor.
The rise of the Honest People owes a great deal to
popular skepticism about government bred by Water-
gate and the resulting tendency of prosecutors and jour-
nalists to look more carefully and energetically for cor-
ruption.
"We're better at exposing alleged corruption," said
Suzanne Garment, whose book "Scandal: The Culture of
Mistrust in American Politics," will be published this fall.
"We're much more prone to call given actions corrupt
than we used to be. We have more prosecutors and in-
vestigators than we used to have, and more journalists."
As a result, the demand for Honest People is rising
exponentially. "The more scandals you produce, the
more you're going to need these people," she said. "Are
we going to develop an Honest Man Industry?"
Webster was just one in a long line of Honest People
who have risen to prominence since Watergate. Indeedi
Garment, a resident scholar at the American Enterpcisill.
Institute, noted that Gerald R. Ford helped pioneer the
movement when he took over from Richard Nixon.
''~e wasr,.-g! - o.s.
The New York ''^es
The Washington *,mes
The Wall Street Journal
The Christian Selene. Monitor
New York Daily Newt
USA Today
The Chicago Tribune
oat* 10
When the Environmental Protection Agency was en-
gulfed by scandal in 1983, Ronald Reagan turned to
William D. Ruckelshaus, a former head of EPA, to quiet
things down. Reagan underscored' Ruckelshaus's main
role when he referred to him at his swearing-in as "Mr.
Clean Bill Ruckelshaus."
Who are the Honest People? "It's not easy to define
what characteristics these people have in common oth-
er than the way they're used," said John Morton Blum.
a Yale historian. But generally, they tend to have safe.
moderate politics-their job, after all, is to quell con-
troversy-along with tidy incomes and enough govern-
ment experience to know what they're doing but not so
much that they'll have lots of axes to grind.
Evan Thomas, who co-authored "The Wise Men'
with Walter Isaacson, said that Washington has highly
ambivalent feelings about Honest People. "Washington
can't relate to people who aren't leakers, gamesmen
and backstabbers, who don't engage in the great game
of trying to trump their sister agencies," said Thomas,
who is Newsweek's Washington bureau chief. "On the
other hand, we like people like that when there's A
scandal to clean up."
Both Thomas and Garment argued that Honest Peo-
ple are often more important for their personal char-
acters than for what they actually do for an agency.
"They bring a sense of order and all that," Thomas said
"but rarely do they really clean up an agency."
"The biggest problem with The Honest Man." said
Garment, "may be that with that quality of probity may.
come a certain unimaginativeness and an unwillingness to
take risks." Webster himself faced just such criticisms.
She added that there are personal downsides to being
one of the Honest People. They tend to be held to es-
pecially high standards and they tend to be discarded
once the obsession with scandal fades. "Jimmy Carter
performed that function for four years," she said. "and
look what we did to him."
CONTINUED
a.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401660078-7
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401660078-7
a2
WILLIAM D. RUCKELSHAUS
3.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401660078-7