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Dan Marcus

From: Barbara Grewe

Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 6:35 PM
To: Dan Marcus; Steve Dunne
Subject: EPA interviews

Dan and Steve:

There are essentially three interviews that probably need to be conducted with
White House related people on the EPA story. 1 ) Scott McClellan - at the time a
deputy WH communications director he was the EPA's WH contact and had to
approve all of the releases. He is the current WH communications o^rector so I
suspect they will not jump for joy at this requesCj?) Sam Thernstrom was
technically based in the Council on Environmental QuaTTty~and~aetually sent the
changes to the EPA person. He is critical and non-negotiable if we are to
address this issue. He is no longer at CEQ. He is at the American Enterprise
Institute. My guess is that if we tried to contact him re: this without WH, he
would balk big time. But who knows. 3) Jim Connaughton who is the Chair of
the CEQ. He would have been involved in discussions regarding standards and
positions CEQ thought EPA should be taking. Karen Hughes was the WH
communications dmector at the time but there is nothing at this time indicating
what role she played so I would hold off until we can articulate some reasonable
basis to ask to talk to her.

Let me know how you want to proceed on this matter. Thanks. By the way, I do
not currently plan to re-interview people the EPA OIG already interviewed. The
White House declined EPA's request to interview the above people so there is
no record of what they might say about the situation.

Barbara

2/19/2004