Business: Cool Carol and the Dragon Lady

It seems hard to believe, but a Ralph Nader lieutenant now bears the chief responsibility for U.S. auto safety as head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. As if that were not enough, the consumerist who once sued the Agriculture Department over its beef grading and food-stamp rules is now Assistant Agriculture Secretary for Food and Consumer Services, overseeing the same grading of meat and food-stamp programs.

These two regulators, Joan Claybrook, 41, and Carol Foreman, 40, were among Washington's most feared and revered consumer interest lobbyists when they, along with other activists of the 1960s and 1970s, accepted sub-Cabinet positions in the Carter Administration almost two years ago. Now both are in the news: Claybrook for engineering the recall of 7.5 million Firestone "500" radial tires, and Foreman for ordering cutbacks of nitrites in bacon because they are suspected of being carcinogens.

Claybrook's appointment to NHTSA was greeted with cries of "Astounding!" and "Appalling!" from automakers in Detroit, where she was known as the "Dragon Lady." Her past days as a lower-level Government aide and then as Nader's chief lobbyist and director of his Congress Watch had shown her to be extremely zealous on auto safety. Foreman, who headed the Consumer Federation of America, provoked outcries from farm commodity producers when she became Assistant Agriculture Secretary. Each woman continues to be criticized, but now by Nader as well. He has charged that Claybrook is "a disaster" and that Foreman has "sold out" to the food industry. In interviews with TIME Washington Correspondent Eileen Shields, both women denied the roundhouse charges but add ed that they have to take more balanced views as regulators than as shake-'em-up activists.

Claybrook, a Baltimore-bred divorcee who delights in being called feisty, is proud of the record 12.9 million auto-safety recalls that her agency originated in 1977 and the 8.9 million so far this year. After long and bitter negotiations, she got Firestone to give in to the recall of 7.5 million of its "500" radial tires, which had a high level of defects. She says she expects the company to agree further this week to proceed with the recall "as expeditiously as possible," to produce an extra 400,000 replacement tires a month, and to run TV ads telling customers that a recall is under way.

Not all of her battles have ended in victory. She tried and failed to persuade her boss, Transportation Secretary Brock Adams, to make air bags mandatory in all new cars beginning in 1981 but had to settle for a 1982 to 1984 deadline. Claybrook later lost out even more embarrassingly in her attempt to tighten braking standards for tractor-trailers. She was testifying before a congressional committee on her opinion even as Adams was disagreeing with her at a press conference.