Subject: Adm. Watkins Is Picked for Energy Post
Date: Published: 1/13/89 (59 lines)
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

    Politics & Policy:  
    Adm. Watkins Is Picked for Energy Post,
    William Bennett for Drug-Fighting Czar
    ----   
    By Gerald F. Seib and Barbara Rosewicz
    Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal

    WASHINGTON -- President-elect Bush completed his cabinet
 by naming retired Adm. James Watkins to be energy secretary,
 and he picked a darling of conservatives, former Education
 Secretary William Bennett, to be the nation's first
 drug-fighting czar.
    By choosing Adm. Watkins, a veteran of the Navy's nuclear
 submarine program, Mr. Bush signaled that a main emphasis at
 the Energy Department will be resolving problems at the
 nation's 17 major nuclear-weapons production facilities the
 department manages.  Some of those plants have experienced
 shutdowns because of safety, operational and environmental
 problems, and the department has estimated it eventually
 could cost more than $200 billion to clean up the mess and
 get production rolling again.
    "I think I have properly concluded ...  that the top of
 that agency be in the hands of somebody with considerable
 experience in the nuclear field," Mr. Bush said at a news
 conference.  Mr. Bush spoke as his predecessor, President
 Reagan, released a report containing a 20-year plan to
 modernize the nation's nuclear weapons plants.
    Adm. Watkins, a Naval Academy graduate who rose to become
 Chief of Naval Operations, readily admitted that he isn't
 knowledgeable about the oil and gas issues confronting the
 Energy Department.  When a reporter asked his views on
 policies to encourage oil and natural gas production, he
 replied that the question had touched an "Achille's heel."  He
 added, "I am not an expert in this area," but pledged to put
 experts on oil and gas issues high on his staff.
    Admiral Watkins served for four years on the staff of Hyman
 Rickover, the late, irascible admiral who was widely known as
 the "father of the nuclear navy."  He commanded a nuclear
 submarine and oversaw nuclear programs from Washington.
    But Adm. Watkins attracted the most national attention for
 his role last year as chairman of a commission appointed by
 President Reagan to recommend steps to combat the spread of
 the AIDS virus.  The commission's report recommended adoption
 of legislation banning discrimination against carriers of the
 acquired immune deficiency syndrome virus -- a recommendation
 rejected by the Reagan administration but embraced by Mr. 
 Bush.

[57 lines irrelevant to AIDS have been removed. -- sysop]

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