A maligned political star, but no lack of energy

When U.S. Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson began his freshman year at Tufts University in the mid-1960s, he could not imagine that one day he would make history by becoming the first person to serve simultaneously in two Cabinet posts.

"I was a fraternity guy," said the recently embattled energy official and highest-ranking Hispanic in the Clinton Administration. "To be honest, all I cared about was baseball."

But in his senior year, Richardson got an idea. "I decided I was going to run for president of my fraternity," he said. Richardson joked, though, that "everybody knew that fraternities really didn't do much."

"So I ran on a platform saying, 'We're going to make fraternities relevant,' " the former seven-term New Mexico congressman said.

Richardson — who spoke yesterday in Dodds Auditorium — won the election and took the first step toward an extensive career in public service. One of the high points of his tenure came in 1998 when he made history by serving concurrently for several months as both energy secretary and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

A personable man, Richardson easily elicited a round of laughter from the crowd yesterday with a quotation from President Clinton: "If there's one word that comes to mind when I think about energy, it really is Bill Richardson."

And Richardson has devoted a great deal of energy recently to trying to keep his department in order.

Recent high oil prices, the missing hard drives containing U.S. nuclear secrets at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a controversial September tap of the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve and discrimination charges in the case of Chinese-American scientist Wen Ho Lee have dogged Richardson this year, bringing him under scrutiny by Congress and the public.

"What I would like to share with you is what's on my mind," he told his audience in Dodds. "My staff has been telling me the job I'm doing is great, but I think it's probably good if I'm here to hear some dissent."

And dissent is exactly what some audience members offered.

One audience member asked Richardson how he planned to restore confidence in the "foreign-born scientist community" after the controversy involving Wen Ho Lee, who was accused of leaking U.S. nuclear secrets to the Chinese.

"Well, I don't think Wen Ho Lee was racially profiled," Richardson said, "but we need to work to erase the notion that if you're a foreigner, somehow you're not welcome in our national laboratories." He said he recognized that "many of our nation's best scientists are foreigners, particularly Asian Americans."

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Richardson also responded to concerns about high oil prices and stressed that the energy situation is quickly becoming one of the most critical issues on the political docket.

"This is the issue I want you to watch because it affects everybody," he told the audience. Richardson cited the 14-percent rise in the nation's demand for oil during the past decade. He noted that it is difficult to ask people to buy fuel-efficient vehicles and to conserve energy when the booming economy now is making gas-guzzling SUVs and sports cars more affordable.

"What we need in this country," he charged, "is an energy policy that number one, deals with supply, and number two, deals with demand."

"We need to keep talking to OPEC" to prevent potential energy crises, Richardson said. He also noted that it is important that the nation continue to pursue alternate energy sources, such as "solar, wind, biomass and bioenergy."

Alluding to these concerns, Richardson issued a challenge to students.

"You are the United States' elite, you here at Princeton," he said. "You have a special obligation to give something back to your community, or your country, whether that be working for the government, or working in your community, or just running [for office]."

The audience laughed when Richardson recounted President Clinton asking an "energetic" Cabinet member to serve as energy secretary. Clinton told him, "Bill, I need you here closer to me. I've got this nice, quiet department with no problems or anything."