The Weed Agency (6 page)

Often Wilkins wondered if Humphrey was pulling his leg, but there had been no overt signs that Humphrey was a deliberate prankster. “Unsafe? This is the Department of Agriculture, not Afghanistan.”

Humphrey’s placid exterior hid his willingness to tease. “Really, Mr. Wilkins? Am I to understand that a veteran of the Carter White House is implying the inquiry, ‘what could possibly go wrong?’ ”

Wilkins learned to like working for Humphrey.

Sure, Humphrey could be stuffy, arrogant, and an insufferable snob, but he was also an eager teacher, a treasure trove of information in the workings of government, and an insightful student of human psychology. He was the oldest of old school in style but adaptable to any challenge the world threw at him and utterly unflappable in dealing with whatever problem
bedeviled the agency on any given day. He could even, on the occasional night after a drink or two, be funny.

Humphrey’s marriage remained a mystery to Wilkins. He had met Humphrey’s wife, Dolores, at the office Christmas party, and she seemed a pleasant enough woman who worked as a hospital administrator. Wilkins would periodically ask how she was, and his boss would give generic pleasant answers. The more Wilkins observed Humphrey’s reticence to talk about his wife, the more he suspected something wasn’t well.

The couple had no children so far and Humphrey never suggested that some might arrive someday. At the second Christmas party, in 1980, a procurement contract analyst was met in the office by his wife and their brood of five kids. Wilkins noticed that neither Humphrey nor Dolores warmed at the sight of them, and in fact Humphrey’s wife seemed to avoid them. Wilkins wondered if one or both were infertile, and sensed that the pair channeled the energies usually devoted to making a family into their jobs.

Periodically, Wilkins got the impression that Humphrey’s interest in life outside government and politics was merely studying the role for the appropriate small talk needed to grease the wheels of his professional life:
“How about those Redskins?” … “No, I haven’t seen
Apocalypse Now,
but everyone who does see it either loves it or hates it.” … “I just feel so bad for all those athletes who have trained so hard and who won’t go to Moscow for the Olympics.”

Humphrey’s true passion was work, and Wilkins found him to be an unparalleled mentor. He taught Wilkins to thrive using the oldest and most basic equipment; upgrades were rare, held up by a Byzantine procurement process, and every transaction had to be checked and double-checked for security risks and contractor quality assurance and a million other reasons that sounded good in theory but proved nearly unworkable
in practice. The purchase of one fifteen-page guide for a word processor required the supplier to fill out seventeen pages of forms.
¹¹

Humphrey also taught Wilkins to never fire anyone; only to transfer them. To fire someone was to risk a lawsuit, and in many cases, the federal government had already spent some considerable sum to train them. Besides the hassle of actually removing a name from the payroll and all of the associated paperwork, Humphrey considered an unfilled job a sin; his aim was to have as few empty slots as possible.

“If a job is unfilled, someone might get the idea that it’s not necessary,” Humphrey lectured on more than one occasion.

Perhaps most importantly, Humphrey believed in never leaving a dollar unspent. Humphrey rarely lost his temper, but unused account funds at the end of the fiscal year were the one time you could count on an eye-bulging, vein-throbbing tirade.

“If we have money left in our budget at the end of the year, the Powers That Be will conclude we don’t need as much in the next year’s budget,” he emphasized, time and again. “To achieve our mission, we need more resources. Always. Forever. Never let anyone hear that we have enough money to meet our goals.”

Not only was Humphrey masterful at persuading Congress to send ever-larger sums to the agency, but he managed to siphon off bits and pieces from other portions of the federal budget. In an early conversation, Humphrey revealed, “Through our interagency working group, portions of our funding come from partnerships with the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Interior, Defense, Treasury, HHS, the U.S. Trade
Representative, EPA, Secretary of State, USAID, Transportation, and NASA.”
¹²

“NASA?” Wilkins asked incredulously. “What, are we on the lookout for killer weeds from outer space?”

APRIL 1983

U.S. National Debt: $1.34 trillion

Budget, USDA Agency of Invasive Species: $39.6 million

It only took about four years of working side by side for Wilkins to feel like he had finally decoded Humphrey.

The breakthrough arrived one Friday night after the two had dinner with their wives at Wilkins’s house in Takoma Park.

Dolores and Wilkins’s wife, Candice, had retired to the other room, teasing their husbands that the shop talk had become unbearable. The work talk had abated a bit, and the two men were half-watching a television where David Copperfield pledged to make the Statue of Liberty disappear.

Wilkins asked a question that had been nagging at him for years. “So how did you end up at the agency, Adam?” Late at night, and after many drinks, Wilkins felt bold enough to use his first name. “You’re the smartest man I know. You could do anything. Why are you an administrative director of a federal agency most people have never heard of?”

Humphrey stared at the television screen, where Copperfield continued to promise the impossible.

“You think I’m a magician, don’t you, Jack?” he said with a not-entirely-sober giggle.

“I’ve seen you run rings around guys who want pieces of our
budget, and they come out of the meeting convinced that giving us more was their idea all along,” Wilkins said with raised eyebrows. “So, yeah, I’d like you to teach me that Jedi mind-trick someday!”

“Genetics, I suppose,” Humphrey said, triggering a puzzled expression from Wilkins. “My father was, in his time, perhaps the best car salesman in New England. For a while, at least. Studebakers. Then he moved on to running advertising campaigns for the dealers in the area and across the state—television, radio, newspaper, print advertising, the works. He was quite good at it. A master, really. Understood people inside and out. It’s not that he taught me everything I know, but he certainly set me on the path of studying how people think, how they make decisions, how to … nudge them in the direction you would prefer.”

“So why aren’t you selling cars? I can see you out on the lot, saying, ‘Just get behind the wheel of this all-new Chevrolet Caprice Classic.’ ”

Humphrey smiled. “My junior year of high school, I was on track to be valedictorian. All set to apply to Harvard. Brightest future ahead. One day, I come home from school and my father tells me he has bad news. He’s been laid off, but … things will be okay.”

Humphrey’s smile disappeared. “The cars weren’t selling. My father didn’t make the cars, he didn’t price them; his job was to get people into the dealerships and he did that—as well as anyone. And they let him go anyway.

“He’s certain he’ll find work again soon, but the family has bills to pay. We try to act like everything’s normal, but month by month, the money is getting tighter. My parents tried to hide it, but it was obvious. Senior year, I apply to Harvard … and I’m accepted! But when I tell my parents … they look heartbroken instead of elated.”

Wilkins exhaled with sympathy.

“It should have been one of the happiest moments of my life—and it’s all ruined by the fact that they’re terrified they won’t be able to afford it. The financial aid system wasn’t as well organized or generous then—most Ivy League students were from families making, oh, probably at least twice the national median income, and we were scraping along on savings. Anyway, the short version is that come next fall, all of my friends and classmates are going off to other colleges—and I’m spending a year working for the local parks department. And yes, weed management was one of my duties.”

“Urgh. But you ended up at Harvard, so things turned out okay.” Wilkins tried to remain cheery.

“Yes, but I had a whole year to contemplate the faceless, unknown middle-management budget-cutter who deemed my father extraneous, and who turned my bright future upside down,” Humphrey fumed. “ ‘What’s good for General Motors is good for America’—HA! Wilkins, every day in this country, somebody loses their job for no fault of their own. Sometimes it’s a mass layoff, sometimes it’s just one person, but the effect is the same on the poor soul deemed expendable: no sense of where their next paycheck is coming from, just, ‘Thank you for your service, clean out your desk, see you, goodbye.’ Eventually Dad found another job and did all right. But I knew then I would never end up selling cars, or working for some fool in an executive suite who might toss me out to save his quarterly earnings report. No, I would go into government.”

“I know that feeling. Change the world. Make it a better place. Still, most folks ignore the federal government, thinking we’re just faceless bureaucrats …”

Humphrey chortled. “We ‘faceless bureaucrats’ actually have all the power.”

“Oh?” Wilkins laughed. “That’s news to me.”

“Everything we’re taught about power within our government
is wrong,” Humphrey said, slurring his words slightly. “Presidents can get impeached. Members of Congress can lose their seats at any time. Or lose them in redistricting. There’s the Supreme Court, I suppose, but they’re mostly reacting to what the courts bring to them, and most of them have one foot in the grave already. Most of those we perceive as powerful are actually quite limited in their ability to use it, and lose it surprisingly easily. CEOs get tossed by their boards of directors all the time. The Wall Street titans lay awake at night fearing a sudden market crash. Hollywood stars live in fear that their next picture will flop. A professional athlete can be king of the city, and then suddenly one twist of your knee and it’s all over. No, most of the people perceived as powerful have a quite tenuous hold on their stature.”

Humphrey didn’t need it, but he poured himself the dregs of one of the wine bottles and continued.

“But in the middle of the most power-conscious city in the hemisphere, plugging away, is the civil service. Presidents come and go, congresses come and go, and yet free from scrutiny and unmolested, tens of thousands go about their business, writing the rules, choosing what is and what is not really enforced, and spending millions upon millions.”

Now Wilkins couldn’t help giggling. “Kneel before the power of the deputy administrative director!” he bellowed in mock authority.

“Visible power, like demanding others kneel, is what makes you a target,” Humphrey said with a shake of his head. “But power isn’t always visible. People think we’re paid poorly, but I am a GS-15, Step-8, whose salary is given the Washington locality adjustment of an additional 22 percent;
¹³
the benefits are
generous, with paid personal days, and near-total job security. Unused sick leave credit at retirement. Matched contribution to retirement benefits. Retirement health care. Quite a bit of domestic travel with per diems, and international, too. I make more than most of those in the private sector, with no fear of layoffs, and pay cuts are effectively impossible.”

Wilkins sat and stared at his boss, strangely convinced—and in fact, strangely convincing—that he anonymously enjoyed a power-to-scrutiny ratio that would make the president green with envy.

“So you’re saying that we’re the ones who really rule Washington?”

Humphrey nodded.

“Okay, you are
drunk
. No way you’re driving home tonight. I’m calling you a cab.”