Columnist Jon Ralston: Pols jockey for position in Yucca battle

Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2001 | 8:38 a.m.

* Whose audit is it anyway? Most of the reports about the General Accounting Office draft audit have said that it was requested by Rep. Shelley Berkley and Sen. Harry Reid. But what's interesting is the behind-the-scenes (barely) jockeying for credit that the delegation's two Democrats have engaged in since the report was released last week. (Note to Reid: Berkley's the one up next year, so why not lavish all the hosannas on her?)

The facts: Berkley actually requested the GAO probe on Feb. 12 after she and others received an anonymous letter replete with knowing allegations about the Yucca Mountain project's alleged mismanagement. Two weeks later Reid pushed the GAO to look into the matter, too.

So Berkley was first and deserves the credit for stoking the engine. But, as even she acknowledged during an interview on "Face to Face" on Monday, without the Senate majority whip on board, the audit train may never have left the station.

* Whose story was it, anyway? The Reid folks, who are ever-hoping to get their man into the national spotlight, pitched the story to the Washington Post before allowing the local Fourth Estate peons to have the audit. So it was the Post that actually broke the story in its Friday edition, which appeared on the paper's website late Thursday night and allowed Las Vegas One to actually be the first local outlet to report the breakthrough.

If you don't believe it was the Reid folks who persuaded the Post to publish the story, guess who the national newspaper gave credit to for ordering the audit? Here's the paragraph from the Post:

"Reid, who commissioned the GAO study, said yesterday that the findings will provide him and other opponents with powerful ammunition in the effort to defeat a project that has already cost the federal government $8 billion."

Mission accomplished: Majority whip portrayed as powerful guy. Wonder how Berkley felt upon reading that in the Post.

* Whose death knell is it, anyway? The Post account also contained a very strong quote from Reid about the future of the dump project in the wake of the critical GAO audit. Here's what he told the newspaper:

"I think it's the beginning of the end of Yucca Mountain. This report is a damning indictment of a process Americans relied upon to protect their health and safety."

Really? Now that hardly seems consonant with an interview the Senate majority whip provided for Business Week, in which he was much more equivocal about whether he can actually stop the repository. Here's some of that Q & A:

BW: Do you have the votes to have this issue go your way?

HR: It's going to be a real uphill battle.

BW: So will you be able to block the Yucca project?

HR: Well, we're going to do our best. You know, I don't like to say what we can do when I'm not sure. I'll just do the best I can.

What Reid and others know is that Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, as the Post and Berkley predicted, next year will still recommend Yucca Mountain as the permanent repository site. But, as the Post report said, "the GAO study has greatly complicated the administration's efforts, particularly because it reflects the views of Bechtel SAIC Co., the private contractor hired by the Energy Department to oversee the project."

* Whose party is for the dump, anyway? That letter by the delegation to President Bush, asking him to delay the designation decision and a no-brainer move after the release of the audit, was a bipartisan epistle signed by all four members. But that was in stark contrast to the news release sent out the same day by the state Democratic Party, which attacked the president and Abraham for their decision to "ignore science" in their quest to build a Nevada waste dump.

That, too, is S.O.P. for the Democrats in the dump fight since Bill Clinton wielded his veto pen and Bush waffled so badly during the campaign. But now the delegation letter will force Bush to either keep accelerating the dump siting process or slow it down.

It is a beautiful set-up by the Democrats. And during a campaign year in which the economy will dwarf almost any other issue and perhaps level the playing field, a partisan divide on the dump could decide some races -- or so the Democrats hope.