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TI: Okay. So I'm going to now jump to September 11, 2001, and wanted to get your, because of your experience of being a foreign service officer, what you lived through during World War II, you're probably in this unique position in terms of your perspectives on what's happening in our country today. And so I want to start with the terrorist activity on September 11th, and what were your thoughts when this was unfolding and you heard about this?

LH: Well, knowing that the Twin Towers had been a target several years previous, we should have truly increased what security measures we had taken as far as the Twin Towers were concerned. But I don't think anyone that I knew of that was involved in anti-terrorist activities would realize that terrorists would hijack an airplane and ram them into the Twin Towers. Of course, they were very shrewd, they got the ones that were leaving, I guess, New York or Boston to ram those while their gasoline tanks were completely full, to realize, they would know then that would cause major fires, probably not even realizing, though, that the buildings would actually collapse. One aspect of it I want to mention, though, is as I mentioned in my speech here during the reunion of 2001, I was involved in a presidential commission that was looking into Muslims putting, being put into camps like we were, along the same lines that we were, in the event of war or continued major Muslim activities against America.

TI: Let me clarify this. So, the last reunion, was that before or after...

LH: Oh, long before 9/11.

TI: Yeah, so it was before 9/11.

LH: Oh, yes.

TI: And you were on this commission looking at --

LH: Rounding up Muslims in America.

TI: And this was before 9/11.

LH: And this is before 9/11, because of all their activities, Al-Qaida and others, in the Middle East and elsewhere.

TI: But this was, you were still in the foreign service, or this is post-foreign service?

LH: Oh, yes, but I was a consultant on-again, off-again, to the Department of State. And in fact, on rare occasions, I'm still on call.

TI: Okay. So, so tell me as much as you can about this, this commission.

LH: Well, my attitude, obviously, you would know, that we shouldn't do such things. And as it's worked out, they pulled in American citizens, including Padilla, and put them away, no due process of law and writ of habeas corpus. No lawyers, families don't know where they are, and for year on end. They did things that were even worse than what we went through during World War II. And I, I can only say that thank God, in a sense. If it hadn't been for our experience, something similar could have happened to elements of the Muslim population. You know, it's the same old business, why didn't they do the same against the Italians and Germans that they did to us? Because we concentrate on the West Coast, it was the West Coast that was really up in arms, as I said, Hearst, name it. And they couldn't handle, literally, hundreds of thousands if not millions of Germans and Italians, could they? So they would have just hit, who knows, a hundred thousand, five hundred thousand Muslims from certain countries, aliens, some citizens, who's to say? But they couldn't put them all away. But it's like the "war on terror," the President harps on this: "We must win this war." Terror has been here from the time mankind came on earth. It'll be with us forever, you know that as well as I do. You never win a war against terror. Terror will always be there. You try to keep it, you know, encamped the best you can, circumscribed as best you can, but it's always going to be there.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.