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MN: Bill Clinton is in office, President Bill Clinton. How did you get the CRS?

RO: The first position is gonna be drug policy.

MN: Oh, okay.

RO: Okay? All right.

MN: How did you get this drug policy position?

RO: Well, in the Clinton administration, actually, I was involved in the campaign, and I also was involved in the transition committee. We were looking for candidates for recommendations to positions. And, but in the end, the reason I got the position at the drug czar's office is the drug czar was a professional personal friend of mine, Lee Brown. He had been a police chief in a number of jurisdictions from Oregon to Texas to New York. But we had served under Attorney General Levy's national minority advisory council. He was the chair and I was the vice-chair. So it was a body made up of leaders from different parts of the justice system, and I was the only Asian American... Asian American. But we were, we were together for maybe six years or so, and we conducted hearings across the country in Indian reservations, in ghettos, everywhere, talking about the problems of the criminal justice system in minority communities. I had an opportunity to select an Asian expert, and I used Paul Takagi out of UC Berkeley, who wrote the chapter on Asian Americans. But Lee Brown was someone I worked with on that body, and then he'd been police commissioner in New York and at Atlanta. And his last post was in Houston. So he called me and he said, "Oh, the President called and invited me to be the drug czar." And I said, "Well, you gotta say yes." And he was actually looking at a couple of other posts, but I said, "Well, you need to say yes." So I was sworn, when he was sworn in at the Rose Garden, he invited me to attend. And then I went by his office afterwards and I said, "You know, I've been working on transition and I got about three positions I picked that I like," you know. "One is CRS and one is BJA and the other one here, the associate director." And he says, "It's yours."

So it wasn't, it's really not necessarily politics, contributions or whatever, it's professional associations where you... he knows what I can do. He knows what my philosophies are. So when I got that job, he took a program called the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program, which was in the supply side, it was focusing on drug interdiction, and he put it in my shop under local, so it'd involve instead just federal agencies then, instead, we involved state and local drug enforcement agencies working in partnership with federal. So we created a new model, a way of co-locating individuals so they gained trust and share intelligence, and then they jointly execute. So it just really improved the effectiveness. But he took, he had a lot of confidence that I was a program developer, I could, I could forge collaborations. And the interesting part is, my staff, when they heard I was appointed, "An Asian lawyer from Los Angeles? Oh, my god." And the guy, head of HIDA was a Japanese American retired military from Hawaii. He didn't say much, I understand, but I'm sure he was thinking the same things. It's kind of nice, when I'm ready to leave, he sent, gave me a little note and says, "Oh, you're the best boss I've ever had."

MN: Now, being a female, too, I mean, isn't this a very male-dominated field?

RO: Yeah. Everywhere, you know, you have individuals there from every federal agency that has any kind of enforcement function, and then you have your treatment and your education folks and all. But in my shop, I worked with every agency and most everyone was white male. There, there was some interesting conversations sometimes. I would meet with somebody from Justice or Treasury or somewhere, and they're not used to Asian American women, women, period. And so they have a hard time looking at you when you're talking to 'em, so they look at your staff, and then they'll look at my ear or something like that, but they can't look at me. So I trained my staff to look at me so they would have to look at their ear. [Laughs] But things started to change, you know. It has not to do so much just the agency, it's the country. Being in Washington, D.C., you didn't see any Asian leaders. The only visible people is maybe Connie Chung. And I would have to go and give speeches at conferences, national conferences, and so you'd go off to these big old hotels and dressed up, and I had a little pageboy at first, too, you know, the little old bob. And I'd come walking through the lobby, you know, and people would point at me and follow me and chase me down and stand in my way and say, "Connie Chung?" That happened. And then sometimes they don't know it's Connie, but they say, "I see you on television." And I think it's important; I'm glad to see that there are still Asian women on TV or period. Not that we see as much as we did in the past, but we're not a part of the system. And now, now it's changing. You have inclusion at all levels, and maybe not as much as we used to see in the media, but in the administration.

MN: So now you're with the CRS. That's when all the church burnings were going on.

RO: Hmm?

MN: The church burnings?

RO: Yes.

MN: And can you talk about that and how you went into these communities?

RO: Well, I was about ready, after two years in the White House, I'm ready to come home. And because two years, you know, every day is seven, it's dog days, you know, and dog years you had to measure things. So I'm ready to come home. But Ms. Reno asked me to come to CRS. She, we met when I visited her program in Miami on drug diversion with acupuncture when I was with the City of L.A., and that she had also visited and came to see some of our drug programs in central L.A. And so she knew me, and then while I was at Drug Policy, I would involve her to speak at some of my conferences. And so we connected, and she, she wanted someone at CRS, not a judge, not a lawyer, but she wanted someone that could work with cops, work with civil rights groups of all minority backgrounds and all, and she just, she said, "You're my lady." And so what can I say? And it's an agency you just love, and they were involved in every issue during the Clinton administration. The race initiative, church arson, race-based policing, hate crimes, I can go on and on, we were in the middle of it. And what was nice for the Asian community activists and advocates, if I'm in the room, they'll have a seat at the table. And that's something I sought to do. One of the things I did is, the agency had been gutted, but because of the church arson, they are allowing me to build up, and then we started moving into hate and race initiative, we developed the One America Dialogue. One of my treasures from my tenure is a signed copy from the president, says, "Thank you, Rose." And it's, it's been very, very rewarding. One of the most lasting contributions is the kind of people I brought in. I brought in... he had to compete, but I sought him out, Ron Wakabayashi, to become the regional director here in Los Angeles, and he's doing a phenomenal job. I see him from time to time and he is recognized... first he was an outsider, and now, within the organization, they see him as one of the top, and if not the top. So I'm very proud of wherever I've been able to hire, groom talent, and be inclusive. At CRS, I have ten regional offices, and by the time I had left, now like three women were heads of those office, and then we had an Asian, a Latino, an African American, and it changed the whole organization. Because our work is intergroup conflicts, and the kinds of people we brought in bring different kind of perspectives and experiences.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.