In the spring of 1983, after a high-profile EPA scandal prompted that agency’s boss to resign, FBI agents started grilling Bill Ruckelshaus’ neighbors outside Seattle.
Ruckelshaus was then-President Ronald Reagan’s pick to step in to try to boost morale and burnish the reputation of EPA — and the administration — in the wake of a Superfund controversy that prompted then-Administrator Anne Gorsuch Burford’s resignation that March.
Ruckelshaus’ friends, his colleagues and even some of the Reagan administration’s critics thought he was the right man for the job, according to FBI records obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News under the Freedom of Information Act.
He was the “perfect choice,” said one neighbor who had lived next to Ruckelshaus’ family in Medina, Washington, for several years. Another called Ruckelshaus a “real patriot” of unimpeachable character who believed that the United States to be “a country of law and not of men.”
