<Begin Segment 22>

TI: You said something earlier, how because of you and others, and the experiences -- and I'm thinking Japanese Americans -- because of that experience, that prevented something worse from happening to, especially after 9/11, to Muslims and possibly Arab Americans. I guess I'm trying to get a sense of how, how that all worked. I mean, when you were in these behind-the-scene meetings, were there people actually advocating in high government levels that something like the camps --

LH: Oh, of course.

TI: -- would make sense?

LH: Definitely. There are always people, you have fanatics in every government, I mean, every administration.

TI: Now, did they have a sense --

LH: And even more so now. We happen to have a group of people going all the way back to when Ford was president, when Cheney and Rumsfeld were in the White House, where executive power shrunk because of Watergate. And then after that, I hate to say, under Iran-Contra. I don't say "I hate to say," because Reagan was, was a bit like Nixon when it came to that, not, let's say, ignoring the Constitution, ignoring the Congress. But President, Vice-President Bush, who I think extremely highly of, was somewhat involved in all of that. But through those individuals like Abrams, and Perle, and Addison, those far right-wing Republicans, some call them neo-conservatives, but they've been conservatives, and they're neo, but they're not new in the sense that they're younger new. They're the old crowd, ever since Cheney and Rumsfeld saw the executive power shrunk, they're the ones that have expanded it to the degree that I can truly say is unconstitutional. They have drawn people in like Gonzales, and under Gonzales, Yoo, who is of all places University of Berkeley, draw up executive orders saying, in essence, the president can torture, the president can do anything he wants in this "war against terror," because we are at war. Like I say, the "war against terror" will never end, the war in Iraq will end, so to speak. But these same individuals who claim that, you know, we have no experts around so we can't call on the expertise as, as they said during the Vietnam War. "We don't have the experts." But the experts are there, they're there in the Department of Defense, they're in the Defense, Department of State, CIA and elsewhere, they just don't want to listen to them. It's just like the trouble that CIA Tenet got into. They don't want to listen to the facts, the White House. They want the books cooked so that they can formulate policy based on, supposedly, what the intelligence community has uncovered. One man of integrity was Powell; he always has been, always will be, and still is. And he was sucked into this, but he truly believed in Tenet and others, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. At the minimum, developing them, chemical and atomic and nuclear, getting things from Africa, so they crucified that former ambassador and his wife who was a CIA officer. They would crucify anybody who opposed them.

TI: Now, so I'm wondering, though, behind the scenes -- and I'll use an example, Secretary Mineta, when he was on the cabinet. Did, by his presence and his experience, behind the scenes, did he help moderate the actions of the Bush administration?

LH: Let me lecture you for a moment. First of all, as much as I respect Mineta, and the first Nikkei to become a cabinet member in two cabinet positions, just recently receiving the highest foreign decoration from the Emperor of Japan because of what he's done for Japanese American relations. They aren't gonna pay any attention to this guy, "What's his name? Mineta? Oh, he's the one that looks Asian."

TI: But he was Secretary of Treasury -- or, I mean, Transportation during...

LH: Okay, now this is where the lecture comes in. You have the inner cabinet, the powerhouse, the others are peripheral. The power is in the inner cabinet. You have the inner cabinet, when JFK barely won the election against Nixon, he filled three of the four powerful cabinet positions, the inner cabinet, with Republicans. And I'll tell you who they are in a moment. And Bush becomes president only because the Supreme Court is Republican-bent, and Republicans believe in states' rights, did not allow Florida to exercise its rights, and interferes, and selects Bush as president. And he wins by a margin, didn't really win at all, and he says, "I'm going to be magnanimous and have Democrats." One, and not of the inner cabinet. Department of State -- in fact, within the government, I never say I'm a member of the Department of State, I say I'm a member of the Department. 'Cause it's the Department. It's the number one department. The first cabinet member to be in the succession line is the Secretary of State. The power is with the Secretary of State, Defense, Attorney General or Justice, and Treasury, those are the four. And of course, the National Security Council, National Security Advisor, but that's not a cabinet position, so to speak. Those are the powerhouses, those are the ones that make policy, not Mineta, not the postmaster general, even though they're now only peripherally with the government, or Commerce. They're all important, don't take me wrong, we would jump at a chance to become Secretary of Commerce, wouldn't we? Or Secretary of whatever. But they are not of the inner cabinet.

TI: And so unless you're, what you're saying is, unless you're part of that inner cabinet, your voice really isn't that powerful, it's not heard. And yet you, in your career and post career, have agreed to serve on these commissions, consult, and I'm sure you're doing it out of a sense of trying to make our government better.

LH: Of course.

TI: So in some ways, it all helps somehow, right?

LH: Oh, somehow or another, right, you all hope that, everyone in government hopes that they exercise more power than they have, or more influence than they have. But realistically speaking, that's where the power lies. All the others, it helps, certainly it does. I mean, look at what this administration has done on our environment. It just kills me to think what we have done over the years have been destroyed from the moment Bush becomes president, he won't join the Kyoto Treaty, he removes himself from other treaties. And even -- I'm sorry, I've forgotten her name -- former lady governor of New Jersey who becomes environmental chief.

TI: Right...

LH: And she quits, because, you know, she's trying to maintain the minimum or improve it a bit, but instead, they're just cutting it away.

TI: Right.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.