Todd Stern and the 1998 Plan to Bypass the EPA

By Constance Bell · September 10, 2026

Kept internal for years, a February 1998 memorandum outlines a scheme to strip agency autonomy and hand climate control to a small circle of political operatives.

The scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency and the bureaucrats at the Council on Environmental Quality were not the ones in charge of the American climate response in 1998. They were the tools, not the architects, of a project designed to protect a presidency from the political wreckage of the Kyoto Protocol. By the time the administration moved to reorganize its climate effort, the goal was no longer environmental stewardship, but the containment of a political liability.

What survives of this exchange is an archival description rather than the record's own pages. This summary outlines a February 12, 1998, memorandum from Todd Stern to Erskine Bowles and John Podesta, focused on the "Organization of Climate Change Effort.

The CEO of Climate

In the memorandum, Todd Stern—the lawyer and diplomat who would later negotiate the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement—did not propose a scientific committee or a policy task force. He proposed a corporate hierarchy. According to the record, Stern recommended that he serve as the "overall CEO," a title that implies a level of unilateral authority rarely found in the friction-heavy corridors of federal agencies. As the "CEO," Stern would not merely suggest policy; he would coordinate the entire program and possess the "authority to task this staff with specific assignments."

This was a deliberate strike against the institutional independence of the agencies. The record establishes that Stern’s goal was to ensure that various offices were "acting in a coordinated manner rather than independently." In the language of the clandestine service, this is called consolidation. In the language of government, it is called efficiency. But the effect is the same: the removal of dissent. By centralizing authority in a single "CEO," the administration ensured that the EPA and other agencies could not leak contradictions or push policies that might ignite a firestorm on Capitol Hill.

Document imagery from nsarchive.gwu.edu From the files: nsarchive.gwu.edu

A Board of Directors

Stern did not intend to rule alone; he wanted a "Board of Directors" to provide political cover and strategic direction. The composition of this proposed steering committee, as cited in the record, is a map of the Clinton administration's inner sanctum. The group included Erskine Bowles, the White House chief of staff who would later lead the University of North Carolina system; John Podesta, the former staff secretary and future senior advisor for climate policy; and Gene Sperling, the director of the National Economic Council—the office that coordinates the President's economic policy.

The connections here are not about environmental expertise, but about the management of power. Podesta was designated to succeed Bowles as chief of staff later in 1998, meaning the climate effort was being handed off between the two most powerful aides in the building. Joining them were Ron Klain, an attorney and political consultant who would eventually serve as White House Chief of Staff under Joe Biden, and Kathleen McGinty, an environmental advisor who later became Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

This was a war cabinet of political strategists. The public record shows that not one person on this "Board of Directors" was a climate scientist or an atmospheric physicist. Their mandate was not to solve the problem of global warming, but to manage the "diplomatic, domestic policy/implementation, outreach, communications, and congressional" aspects of the issue. The record shows that Stern would chair weekly meetings with these lead officials to ensure the administration was "moving forward appropriately on all fronts." The desk's reading is that "appropriately" did not mean scientifically accurately; it meant politically safely.

The Security Angle

One name in the core group stands out as a tell. Stern proposed the inclusion of James Steinberg, the deputy national security advisor who would later serve as the 16th United States deputy secretary of state. The inclusion of a national security official in a committee otherwise dominated by economic advisors and political operatives is not a coincidence.

While the memorandum frames the effort as a matter of "domestic policy" and "communications," the presence of the Deputy NSA suggests a hidden layer. If this file is shaped the way it looks, the administration was treating climate change not as an ecological crisis, but as a geopolitical threat. By embedding the National Security Council into the steering committee, Stern ensured that the climate effort was aligned with the administration's broader foreign policy goals, likely treating the Kyoto Protocol as a piece of leverage in a larger game of international diplomacy rather than a sincere attempt to lower global temperatures.

The Industry Gap

There is a void in the record that is as revealing as the text itself. Stern lists "outreach" as one of the five principal areas of activity, yet the memorandum is silent on who exactly was being reached. There is no mention of specific liaisons to the energy sector, no designated contact for the industrial lobbies, and no formal mechanism for integrating stakeholders from the fossil fuel industry into the planning phase.

This omission was a tactical necessity. To name the lobbyists in an internal organizational chart is to create a paper trail of influence. The pattern suggests that the "outreach" was conducted in the shadows, far from the "Board of Directors"' official minutes. By keeping the industrial lobby's role vague, the administration could maintain a veneer of independence while ensuring that no policy was enacted that would alienate the donors and industrial titans essential to the economy. The gap in the record is the shape of a corporate handshake.

The Desk's Reading

This reorganization was not an environmental initiative; it was a risk management exercise. The timing is the key. In February 1998, the Clinton administration was reeling from the domestic political backlash following the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The President was facing a ratification crisis and a hostile Congress. Stern's "CEO" model was designed to bypass the institutional paralysis of the EPA and the bureaucratic friction of the Council on Environmental Quality, replacing them with a lean, political command structure.

The desk's reading is that the entire structure was built to isolate the President from the fallout of his own policy. By creating a central authority to "task" agencies and a board of political operatives to steer the narrative, the administration could pivot its position on climate change without admitting a failure of policy. They were not building a framework for science; they were building a firewall.

If the still-withheld pages of this era were released, the desk believes they would show a systematic effort to suppress scientific warnings that contradicted the political needs of the 1998 election cycle. The pattern established here—the elevation of political operatives over experts, the use of corporate management titles to bypass civil service protections, and the integration of national security officials into domestic policy—became the blueprint for how the American state manages existential threats. The cost was the surrender of agency autonomy to the whims of the West Wing, a precedent that ensures the science will always be secondary to the spin.