Letter to the editor:

We don’t need another Watt

Tue, Aug 13, 2019 (2 a.m.)

The Sun’s Aug. 2 editorial “Trump’s dangerous new appointee puts public lands at even higher risk” is so right about William Perry Pendley’s unsuitability to be Interior secretary.

In the 1980s, Pendley was protégé and assistant secretary to the infamous Interior Secretary James Watt.

Watt wanted to open up 80 million acres of undeveloped land for drilling and mining by 2000. He also stirred controversy by mocking affirmative action when, in 1983, he said of a department coal-leasing panel: “‘I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent.”

Watt was later indicted on 25 counts of felony perjury and obstruction of justice, and accused of making false statements before a federal grand jury investigating influence peddling at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

We don’t need an Interior secretary who was mentored by Watt.

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