Remarks on Announcing Appointment of James Vorenberg and Dr. Ralph Huitt

THE PRESIDENT. Nick, you want to tell them why you're here?

MR. KATZENBACH. I'm here today because the President just appointed Mr. James Vorenberg to be Executive Secretary of the Crime Commission. With the meeting of the Commission scheduled for the 8th and 9th of September, we expect to be well on our way.

Mr. Vorenberg has already done considerable planning as to the activities for the Crime Commission to go into. You are all aware, as I am, of the President's deep interest in doing something effective about this problem, which is one of our major problems domestically. And we hope to accomplish that with Mr. Vorenberg and the staff of the Commission which we already have, and with the work of the Commission to do something really significant in terms of proposing solutions, concrete solutions, to deal with the rising crime rate in this country.

THE PRESIDENT. This is going to be one of the three or four or five principal subjects with which this administration will be dealing, and I am very proud of what the Attorney General has been able to do in attracting the very high quality personnel, and not only members of the Commission but members of the staff. It is one of the most difficult problems that faces our country and hasn't any easy answers. We want to get into the innermost recesses and make a study in depth, and we will come up with the best recommendations that this study indicates.

I have with me the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. He has brought with him Dr. Ralph Huitt from the University of Wisconsin, to be Assistant Secretary for Legislation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. He was on some kind of grant up there. How long were you up there?

DR. HUITT. Six months.

THE PRESIDENT. And he was on Senator Proxmire's staff for a year. He was on a destroyer escort during the war and later instructed at the University of Texas. He joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin in 1949, and became associate professor and full professor in 1959; he received a Rockefeller Research Foundation Award in 1960 for the advancement of education. He is Director of the Wisconsin Center for Education in Politics, member of the Advisory Board of the Committee for Economic Development and Committee for Improvement of Management in Government; he was selected in 1964 by the American Political Science Association to direct a far-reaching study of congressional reform--that is a bad word to use in this announcement--under a Carnegie Corporation grant.

So here he is and he is going to try to reform the HEW.

We are going to have a number of top staff people over there and Dr. Gardner is in the process now of selecting them, and I want to help him.

Thank you, gentlemen.