Well, as you know, there are now no legal prohibitions at the Federal Government level from proceeding with the Seabrook plant. The Nuclear Regulator… - Jimmy Carter

I obviously hoped that everything that I found would make a difference, … It ended up being way behind my wildest dreams.

I quickly learned that the congressional delegation from Alaska was deeply committed to the oil industry and other commercial interests, and senatorial courtesy prevented other members from disputing with Senators Ted Stevens (Republican) and Mike Gravel (Democrat) over a matter involving their home state. Former Idaho governor Cecil Andrus, my secretary of interior, and I began to study the history of the controversy and maps of the disputed areas, and I flew over some of them a few times. Environmental groups and most indigenous natives were my allies, but professional hunters, loggers, fishers, and the Chambers of Commerce were aligned with the oil companies. All the odds were against us until Cecil discovered an ancient law, the Antiquities Act of 1906, which permitted a president to set aside an area for “the protection of objects of historic and scientific interest,” such as Indian burial grounds, artifacts, or perhaps an ancient church building or the site of a famous battle. We decided to use this authority to set aside for preservation large areas of Alaska as national monuments, and eventually we had included more than 56 million acres (larger than the state of Minnesota). This gave me the bargaining chip I needed, and I was able to prevail in the subsequent debates. My efforts were extremely unpopular in Alaska, and I had to have extra security on my visits. I remember that there was a state fair where people threw baseballs at two targets to plunge a clown into a tank of water. My face was on one target and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini’s on the other, and few people threw at the Ayatollah’s.

I want to welcome all of you to the White House. Some of you have been here before. I think you've had a chance to meet with some of our staff this morning. And I hope that the day will be fruitful for you. One of the most important things to me as President is to have a means by which I can understand the problems and the questions that arise throughout the country-sometimes removed from Washington itself---to get a different perspective and also, of course, during my news conferences, that have been held and will always be held, I hope, twice a month, to receive questions from the Washington press corps. The number of issues that confront me are very voluminous. I'd just like to outline a few of them for you in preparation for your questions.