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for water reclamation projects -- were absolute wastes of taxpayer money and were very environmentally harmful.

I have to go on to say another campaign that I fought hard for and lost --

Let me turn the tape over.

[END TAPE TWO, SIDE ONE; BEGIN TAPE TWO, SIDE TWO]

-- was one of the biggest boondoggles in history. That was the creation of the Tombigbee Canal through Alabama, connecting the Tennessee River with the Gulf of Mexico directly. That was a huge, huge project. Who was that done by? Oh, that had to be done by Corps of Engineers because the Bureau of Reclamation only works in the West, west of the Mississippi. But anyway, that was a big boondoggle.

Some of these Bureau of Rec dams were big, unnecessary, special-interest boondoggles. But of course many of these great projects -- I'm sure it's only fair to say -- were useful.

As you were writing about these issues, in a way, it seems to me that you were going beyond what originally was kind of a local coverage, say, of the Times of Adirondacks or even a regional coverage, different areas in the West, into bringing in conservation concerns into the national policy realm. In other words, you're beginning to track JFK on what his national policy was towards conservation, or asking that question. When would you date that as having begun? Were you conscious of beginning to do that?