Red flags ahead of 'Ice Queen's' tumultuous reign

At U.S. EPA, Anne Burford was known as the "Ice Queen." Before that, she was known for being stubbornly inflexible about her political views, alienating people and being consistently late to work. But none of it stopped the Reagan administration from hiring her to be EPA's boss in 1981. Burford, who died of cancer in 2004 at age 62, is perhaps the most polarizing figure in EPA's history. She slashed her agency's budget, was cited for contempt of Congress after refusing to hand over toxic waste records and ultimately resigned after less than two years on the job. As federal investigators were vetting her for the post in 1981, former colleagues and associates raised concerns that could have served as red flags for the administration, according to FBI records obtained by Greenwire under the Freedom of Information Act. James Florio, a former New Jersey governor and Democratic congressman who authored the Superfund law and investigated Burford's EPA leadership, said in a recent interview that concerns raised in the FBI report suggest Congress didn't do its due diligence in vetting the EPA boss. "She was stubborn, she was very fixated on her views and didn't tolerate a lot of opposition," Florio said...more

Tough-minded?  Definitely.  But she was also a sweet lady who was fun to be with and who loved Sharon's Mexican food dishes.

The article says she refused "to hand over toxic waste records."  It was the White House that invoked Executive Privilege, not Anne.  She, however, paid the political price of that action.  As Jim Watt wrote, "Anne's biggest weakness was her loyalty to the President.  And in that loyalty she believed the members of the President's team would be loyal to her...".

We had many great times together, and in my copy of her book about her Washington, D.C. experience, Are You Tough Enough?, she wrote:

Dear Frank,

I didn't put in anything about the Wild Cowboy parties with the New Mexican crowd and it's a little sparse on sex, but otherwise a good read.

To a good friend,

Anne M. Burford


What the article doesn't say is whole experience broke her, and she was never the same.  It was a sad lesson in D.C. power politics that I've never forgot.