Why is NOAA under the Dept. of Commerce and not the Dept. of the Interior? Nixon was pissed off

[Mrs. Overall]

at the Dept. of Interior Secretary for opposing the Vietnam War, so he punished him by putting the newly-formed NOAA under the Dept. of Commerce instead of where it originally belonged, under the Dept. of the Interior.

Fascinating! This post is in connection to today's news about Wilbur Ross (Dept. of Commerce) threatening to fire officials from NOAA for not agreeing with Trump's Alabama assessment of Hurricane Dorian. NOAA is oddly under the Dept. of Commerce because of Nixon. This sort of spite sounds so Trumpian or perhaps Trump's continuous revenge tactics are so Nixonian.

Here is more:

Commerce secretaries have long bemoaned the presence of NOAA, a scientific and fisheries agency, in a cabinet department devoted to promoting U.S. trade and economic development. But beltway insiders knew why: President Richard Nixon was furious when his interior secretary, the politically volatile Wally Hickel, took aim at the Administration's Vietnam War policy. So Nixon punished him by not making the newly created NOAA part of the Interior Department, which already housed the U.S. Geological Survey.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/01/why-noaa-commerce-department

And more:
The Battle for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):
https://schanes.wordpress.com/2008/05/21/the-battle-for-the-national-oceanic-and-atmospheric-administration-noaa/

[lindysalsagal]

1. Umm, I'm not an insider, but interior agents lack contacts with foreigners, where weather starts

before it arrives here. In the old days, shipping and commerce would have provided weather information, i.e., sailors who navigate the oceans on annual wind patterns and changes.

[Mrs. Overall]

2. Not sure what you disagree with here. NOAA was founded in 1970 and was originally supposed to be

under the Dept. of the Interior (along with the USGS, National Parks, etc.), but out of spite, Nixon moved it to the Commerce Department.

[lindysalsagal]

3. OK. I stand corrected.

[spanone]

4. K&R...

it should be out of the reach of politics....and we see, it ain't.

[Hortensis]

5. :) I would have loved to hear Obama's discussion of this in person.

... Give you a few examples. There are five different entities dealing with housing. There are more than a dozen agencies dealing with food safety. My favorite example—which I mentioned in last year's State of the Union address—as it turns out, the Interior Department is in charge of salmon in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them in saltwater. (Laughter.) If you're wondering what the genesis of this was, apparently, it had something to do with President Nixon being unhappy with his Interior Secretary for criticizing him about the Vietnam War. And so he decided not to put NOAA in what would have been a more sensible place.

As to Nixon's...quirks, John Dean of Nixon's Watergate WH has written a number of books that show how typical of certain types of conservatives Nixon was, W is, many in this WH and Republican caucuses are. Not all conservatives by any means, but typical of the kind who should never be allowed near power.

Thanks, Mrs. Overall

[Tanuki]

6. Kai Ryssdal made a good point...

Link to tweet