I wish I had been stronger

Below is a partial transcript from a Democratic presidential debate on December 14, 2007:
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/12/14/i_wish_id_been_stronger_richardson
CAROLYN WASHBURN: Governor Richardson, you promote your experience as Energy Secretary among your credentials. During that time, though, there were serious questions about lax security at the country’s national labs, allegations that scientist Wen Ho Lee breached security at Los Alamos. You told Tim Russert in May, “We had some issues with the nuclear secrets issue and Wen Ho Lee, but I think, on the whole, I was a good Energy Secretary.” In this era when Americans are fearful about our national security, talk about that part of your resume.

GOV. BILL RICHARDSON: Well, and I will add that in twenty-five years in public service, there are probably many more other mistakes that I’ve made, but I want to say to you that when it was with Wen Ho Lee, this was the issue of protecting our nuclear secrets. And he did plead guilty. I do feel that he was incarcerated in solitary confinement—this was wrong. I tried to change it, but I didn’t work hard enough. The point is that we do have in all of our lives—as a congressman, as a UN ambassador, as a candidate, I’ve made a lot of gaps, and I’m glad you didn’t raise them. But, you know, I’ll stand behind my record as Energy Secretary. I brought compensation to workers that had beryllium and other contamination. I brought forth a renewable portfolio standard, the first one that says electricity has to be renewable in this country. We made air-conditioning 30% more energy-efficient. And there are some cases in the Wen Ho Lee, where I wish I had been stronger, but I don’t apologize for trying to protect our nuclear secrets, and we should have done a lot more.

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AMY GOODMAN: Some of Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate. That clip ended with New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson admitting he made some mistakes in the handling of the case of Wen Ho Lee, who was the nuclear scientist at Los Alamos of Chinese descent, falsely accused by the Clinton administration of spying for the Chinese government. As President Clinton’s Energy Secretary, Bill Richardson fired Wen Ho Lee, who was then arrested, indicted on fifty-nine counts, threatened with execution. He was held for 278 days in solitary confinement. Within a year, the government dropped fifty-eight of the fifty-nine charges. And a federal judge then ordered Wen Ho Lee’s release. In an unusual statement from the bench, he rebuked the government, apologized to Wen Ho Lee. Last year, the government agreed to pay him nearly $900,000 for violating his right to privacy by leaking information to the press.

When we interviewed Governor Richardson in September 2005 in Santa Fe, he was far less conciliatory about his handling of Wen Ho Lee’s case. I spoke with Governor Richardson at a studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico. At that time, he said, quote, he stands by everything he said and did in the case.

GOV. BILL RICHARDSON: This was a man that was convicted on several counts of tampering with classified information, so—

AMY GOODMAN: But the minorest of counts. I mean, what he was originally––

GOV. BILL RICHARDSON: Well, no, it was not minor. This is where you’re wrong. It was not minor. There were very sensitive nuclear secrets that possibly were compromised and were improperly taken from his computer. Now, the judgment of the judge, I believe, is speculative. But I stand behind the very strong actions that I took to protect our nuclear secrets.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you say the federal judge is wrong in saying that you are the probable source of the leaks?

GOV. BILL RICHARDSON: Absolutely. He’s totally wrong.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, in the case of Wen Ho Lee, though, originally they said he could be a reason for the possible—well, like President Bush used in the argument for the Iraq war, he could be the source of a nuclear explosion, a bombing of the United States. And ultimately, when the judge freed Wen Ho Lee, he said he had been egregiously misled by government officials about what Wen Ho Lee was responsible for. And he was irate. He was enraged, the judge, I mean.

GOV. BILL RICHARDSON: Well, that’s his opinion. I believe that we acted properly in safeguarding our nuclear secrets. He was convicted on several counts. There were some mistakes in that case. It involved the entire federal government, and I stand behind everything that I did.

AMY GOODMAN: Gov. Bill Richardson. That was September 2005.

Albuquerque Tribune Interview

http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2007/feb/06/bill-richardson-tribune-interview/
Tribune: Some legislators have criticized you for raising money during a session, citing a state law that bars it. Federal law obviously trumps that. But some are saying that ethics should trump legalities in this, and that the moral thing for you to do is not accept money. How do you respond to them?

Richardson: Well, that's a partisan comment. That's unilateral disarmament. I've got to start raising money.

It's very clear that the law says that if I'm the governor of New Mexico, I don't raise state funds. I've always abided by that, but this is a federal race. This is a race that is national. This involves mainly traveling around the country and raising money - although I am raising money in New Mexico.

Tribune: One of the weaknesses out there that might dog you in a national campaign is the Wen Ho Lee case and the speculation that you were the source of the leak in the case. Are you concerned about that at all?

Richardson: Well, it's not a plus, obviously. But I believe I acted appropriately with Wen Ho Lee.

There were security problems at Los Alamos that still continue. But I believe there was - he did plead guilty to unauthorized use of classified materials. Perhaps the Justice Department and his incarceration may have been a little harsh.

Tribune: Were you the source of the leak?

Richardson: No, I wasn't the source of the leak. The media has many sources, and I've said I wasn't the source of the leak. You know, there were reports in the Asian press way before anyone ever talked to anyone at the Department of Energy. No, I wasn't the source of the leak. That's over with.

Hopefully, voters will see I was trying to protect our national secrets. I was the secretary of energy. You know, we've got these hugely important nuclear secrets that we've got to protect. There was continuous problems at Los Alamos. I tried to get them fixed. We made a little bit of progress, but obviously, there's still problems.

NY Times 02/03/2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/23/us/politics/23richardson.html?pagewanted=2

Sexual Harassment

In late 2005, Lt. Gov. Diane Denish told The Albuquerque Journal that Mr. Richardson
“pokes me” when they sit together, calling that more annoying and likely to be misconstrued than improper.

“He pinches my neck,” Ms. Denish said. “He touches my hip, my thigh, sort of the side of my leg.”

The governor waved that off, telling The Journal: “I tease Diane. I touch guys. It’s my way of lessening tension.”

Poor Judgment and Bad Management

Although not laid at Mr. Richardson’s door, corruption scandals have also tarnished the state —
“pay to play,” in the words of critics. Some of Mr. Richardson’s embarrassing appointees stepped down, including a former state police officer named to a magistrate judgeship who resigned after being caught ordering the release of a friend jailed on a drunken-driving charge.

“One bad judge out of 56,” Mr. Richardson said, acknowledging “our vetting procedures are not the most extensive.”
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• Richardson opposed the 1st Gulf War but endorsed W's invasion of Iraq, "I think there is such intensive pressure on both sides that only one more deadline, only one more chance for Saddam Hussein is going to be allowable. So I think the administration is wise in pursuing this course that says OK, total disarmament in two weeks and that's it."
  
• He told a gay-rights forum, Logo, that homosexuality is a choice.
  
• He said Justice Bryon White who voted against Roe v Wade was his model Supreme Court justice. It appears that Justice White voted against Miranda rights and wrote the majority opinion on Bowers v Hardwick, banning homosexual sodomy, see comments section at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/27/113257/730
  
• He was reluctant to fire Alberto Gonzales because he is a fellow Hispanic.
  
• His stance on illegal immigration is troublesome to many--he doesn't want to build a wall on the Mexican border, he wants to legalized all illegal immigrants in this country. In http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/us/politics/24richardson.html,
• Richardson initially said he would support the immigration compromise announced earlier this week. But later on, he said that after reading it in detail, he had decided to oppose it, saying the measure placed too great a burden on immigrants — tearing apart families that wanted to settle in the United States, creating a permanent tier of second-class immigrant workers and financing a border fence that Mr. Richardson had long opposed.
  
• He said during the campaign, "Iowa, for good reason, for constitutional reasons, for reasons related to the Lord, should be the first caucus and primary."
  

Bill Richardson -- friend of Bill

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2007/01/016368.php

There were two factions in the Clinton administration: the opportunists (the Bill wing) that didn't care much about the merits of policy outcomes, and the true-believers (the Hillary wing) that cared passionately about increasing our government's power over the life its citizens and about decreasing its power in the world.

Bill Richardson, who is running for president, was a member of the Clinton administration. The good news is that he was not a member of the Hillary wing; the bad news is that this makes him a member of the Bill wing.

When he was in Congress, Richardson had been a strong environmentalist. As Clinton's Secretary of Energy, he skillfully used that reputation as a shield when he crossed the environmentalists. Someone who worked with Richardson at the Energy department describes him as a truly committed believer in situational ethics. In other words, a true Bill Clintonian

Richardson's accomplishments at Energy were so limited that he once said his proudest one was building a new gym for Department employees. His one truly important accomplishment was the opening of a repository for transuranic waste (plutonium based, as opposed to high level waste) whose radioactivity is more immediately toxic and derives from fission products. This project is far less important than Yucca Mountain, which is intended to deal with high level waste and spent fuel, but is significant nonetheless. Interestingly, Richardson opened the repository in Carslbad, New Mexico, which wanted it. I'm told that, as governor of New Mexico, he used his knowledge of the Energy Department to create crises with respect to its big assets there (Los Alamos and the new transuranic repository) and then solve them.

That's not the sort of problem-solver this country needs in the White House.

UPDATE: Over at the Forum WGPu writes:

For several years in the early '90s, I worked as an engineer at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP; the facility for deep geological disposal of transuranic watse near Carlsbad). At that time Bill Richardson was a U.S. Representative whose district was northern NM (Ab'q, Santa Fe). Though the WIPP was not in his district, he worked overtime to oppose opening the facility though it was fully constructed and represented a solution to a problem in his own district (TRU waste stored above ground at Los Alamos). This opposition suited his "enlightened" environmentalist constituency in Santa Fe, and helped his regular re-election.

Later on in the '90s, after he became Bill Clinton's Secretary of Energy and, in order to achieve some success in that role, Richardson changed sides, and supported WIPP receiving its first shipment of plutonium-contaminated waste; which it did in March of '99.

Interestingly, in recent years, as governor of New Mexico, Richardson has supported expanding the WIPP facility's mission, along with siting other nuclear businesses in SE NM (e.g. uranium enrichment) since it economically benefits his now full-state, constituency. Bill Richardson is purely a political opportunist clearly in the Bill Clinton camp.