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<br />002158 <br /> <br />But Bureau of Reclamation employees in the Lower Colorado <br />region remember hearing another message via IBWC that <br />summer: Mexican Commissioner David Herrara Jordan had <br />indicated that the approach used in Minute No. 241 would be <br />acceptable to his government as the basis of a permanent <br />SOlution.6 Was Mexico, then, bypassing drain waters for <br />internal political reasons, to prove its toughness to <br />Mexicali Valley interests? Were Echeverria and his <br />advisors really amenable to more moderate terms? <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />We were never to find out. The events of that summer--the <br />Echeverria visit, the joint communique, the prospect of a <br />Presidential initiative--served to focus the attention of <br />powerful individuals and interests on the salinity problem. <br />In the process, both the international issues and the nature <br />of an acceptable solution were redefined. The joint <br />communique had introduced the terms "permanent" and <br />"definitive." As the President's Special Representative, <br />Herbert G. Brownell, Jr., and his Task Force deliberated, <br />these terms came to be applied to the actual measures used <br />to reduce salinity, rather than to ~ legal or diplomatic <br />settlement. And the narrow construction placed on <br />them--that of the ultimate technical fix--Ieft only one <br />politically feasible solution. <br /> <br />Brownell, a lawyer who had served as Attorney General under <br />President Eisenhower, was appointed on August 16 and sworn <br />in on September 7. After a brief disagreement between <br />OMB--which wanted him to be headquartered in the Executive <br />Office of the President--and State, Brownell and his staff <br />were settled in offices in Mexican Affairs. He was given an <br />interagency Task Force to assist him in his work, made up of <br />representatives of eight agencies: the Department of State <br />(including the U.S. Section of the IBWC), the Department of <br />the Interior, the Department of the Army (Civil Works), the <br />Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and four entities in <br /> <br />7 <br />