Gifford Pinchot and Aldo Leopold are largely to blame for these policies, if you want to name names, and they're WAY before Clinton's time. Though over the years Leopold changed his mind about a lot of things (eradication of predators, for one), he never made the shift over to accept (or at least, do more than hint) that low-scale ground fires were useful to remove excess fuel load on the forest floor. But Leopold moved onto Wisconsin after about 15 years in Arizona and New Mexico, and worked in a research lab for another few years before leaving the Forest Service and concentrating on wildlife and game issues at the U of Wisconsin.

Gifford Pinchot, as the first director of the (then brand new) U.S. Forest Service felt that fires deprived loggers of timber, and the policy to put out all fires stayed firmly in place until the early 1970's. By then, even though enough people were beginning to know better to make a difference, they had 50-60 years worth of built up fuel on the ground so did nothing, and it has simply been a case of the firework stand waiting for the lighted match.

SRS