<Begin Segment 4>

EK: So you mentioned that third prong, the fund, and my understanding is you were subsequently involved with the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund. Could you talk a little bit about the Fund and that organization and kind of what your role was when you moved over to that organization?

MW: Yeah. And the Fund actually did not get established 'til 1996, which was actually towards the sunset time. The main reason was getting money. We eventually got five million to run the program, but also realized we had a very short period of time in which to do this. And the interesting piece is the board of directors were all presidential appointees with Senate confirmation. And I happened to, in between times, had a little stint at the White House Office of Personnel Management. And so there, I was actually able to help come up with the twelve names for that commission, which was actually sort of fun. And it was basically, you have to keep in mind, we were trying to do geographic, gender, age, historical perspective, as well as that. So I worked closely with all of the congressional staff, Congressman Mineta, Matsui, Senator Akaka and Inouye, getting, okay, do you have recommendations for names as well? So we were able to eventually get the names together. They actually never had to do a Senate confirmation. President Clinton actually did their appointment as a recess appointment. And part of it was, one, we had gotten the money, and two, we knew we were on a tight timeline. And these twelve people were pretty innocuous, unlike some of the confirmation hearings subsequent that you've seen. So we were able to get that through without the actual Senate confirmation.

EK: So were you detailed to the White House for this purpose, or did it just happen that way?

MW: Yes. Well, no for this purpose, but yes, I actually had a detail for six months, and it was basically to help push Asian Americans into presidential appointed positions at all levels. Well, minus cabinet. Because by the time I came on, which was June of '93, from January to June, all the cabinet secretaries, and many of the higher level appointments had been made, but there are thousands and thousands of appointments, commissions as well as actual jobs themselves. So my job was actually to then be out there talking to the community, well, on the phone talking to the community saying, "Hey, we need someone to be in the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Justice. How about some names?" those kinds of things. So we would put together, we would surface names, and I worked with... I forgot the term that they used. But I was working with African American, Hispanic, Native American, women, we were all in that cluster of groups. So it was basically sort of trading off. "Okay, I want so-and-so for this." "Wait, but we need a Hispanic female for this," so it was sort of cute. So we often would put together slates, but we were cautious of each other's needs.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2019 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.