EPA head resigns for personal reasons

CHRISTIE WHITMAN, sometime opponent of the Bush administration over environmental issues and a lightning rod for the administration’s critics, resigned yesterday as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Whitman said in a letter to President Bush that she was leaving to spend time with family. "As rewarding as the past two-and-a-half years have been for me professionally, it is time to return to my home and husband in New Jersey, which I love just as you do your home state of Texas," she wrote.

With Whitman's departure, Mr Bush loses one of the most prominent women in his cabinet a moderate former New Jersey governor selected by the president to help soften his image as a political conservative, particularly on environmental issues.