President Bush is expected to nominate James Connaughton, a lawyer who has represented General Electric and Atlantic Richfield in suits against the U.S. EPA over Superfund cleanups, to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality. He wants Linda Fisher, who leads Monsanto’s government affairs office, to be second-in-command at the U.S. EPA. He has picked a ranching industry lobbyist, William Geary Myers 3d, to be the chief lawyer at the U.S. Interior Department. And, in case you’ve forgotten, Bush’s choice for Interior deputy secretary, the No. 2 position in the department, is mining industry lobbyist J. Steven Griles. If the president gets his druthers, the top enviro official at the U.S. Justice Department will be Thomas Sansonetti, a Wyoming lawyer who specializes in minerals and energy and is a member of the libertarian Federalist Society.
