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EK: So you mentioned that you were working with a number of people within the Department. Can you talk about who you were working with and who you were bouncing ideas off of?

BB: Well, it was funny, it depended on the issue. But as far as a lot of things, probably Steve Colgate, who was the Assistant Attorney General for Administration, who was also a close personal friend, was my number one go-to person. Steve was a brilliant guy in many things, but he was most brilliant at tactical and political and kind of looking at "how do I approach something?" If I was all the way over onto a very political issue, I would go to the political appointee that was head of the Civil Rights Division, Brad Reynolds, at the time. And he was not the most approachable guy when I first started working for him, but during the last year I worked for him, he was very much so. We went out running together sometimes in the afternoon, I could bounce stuff off him and he would give me the lay of the land on politics and all. So there were others that helped, but those were two critical folks that helped guide me that sat in a bigger place than I sat in as far as dealing with bigger issues than I had dealt with.

EK: So you mentioned political issues, what were some of the political issues that were around at that point?

BB: You know, it's interesting, at that point, I didn't see or feel "politics". It was only a couple years into the program, I was more sensitized to, that there was. Way back then it was passed by, legislation was passed, so it had bipartisan support from what I remember, everything about it, I can't tell you exactly who voted for it, but there was enough support on both sides of the aisles. Going back to the claims that were adjudicated by the federal government back after World War II, I think it was widely known by everybody, whatever side of the aisle you sit on, that the U.S. government paid five or ten cents on the dollar. So that may have led to a lot of the support for this in the fact that most critically, civil rights were, this was quite an enormous thing that the U.S. did to folks, injustice, maybe? Good words, but...

EK: Were the politics that you were involved with internal within the Department or were they external concerns?

BB: Internally there were no issues, no issues whatsoever. The Department got behind this, the concerns were external. And it was years later, when I saw some of the external ones upfront, but initially it was just... the politics in the Department, once it was decided where this program was going, there was, nobody was bothering me at all.

EK: So were you pretty much given free rein to figure out how to do this?

BB: The good news was, the great news was I had free rein, basically. I had a good reputation in the Department, I had grown up in the Department, they knew me, a number of the key people knew me from my role in finance, my role in budget and all. I got full, pretty much full rein. I can't think of any major thing that was proposed early on that I didn't get agreement upon. There were certain things that needed signoffs, but once I got them, I could do it. The most important thing I learned in the Civil Rights Division, actually applicable to this day in my job here, is when I brought issues for, or approaches for, before I brought 'em to a decision maker, I could tell you how that was going to go because there was consensus already built on where we were headed.

So I worked on the framework and how we're going to approach everything, especially early on, until I got key people up and working and acclimated in there such as Joanne Chiedi and early on, Paul Suddes and Shirley Lloyd that helped me early on. We later added Tink Cooper. And until we had a number of the key folks that are known today from the end of the program, it was initially a one-man, one-person band. But it was a one-person band that was supported by, and I quickly got very, very much support from the groups in the community early on which was extremely helpful to me. Obviously the Congressmen, Matsui and Mineta, were very helpful to me, and then my bosses already liked me in the Department and were supportive. So it wasn't any huge head wounds for me as far as, I got to go in and battle for this and battle for that and all, and a budgeting process is always challenging, I don't care where you are, what you're looking for, you always ask for a dollar and somebody always wants to say, "I'm going to give you seventy-five cents." I went through that and that whole battle. But generally speaking, no, I mean, there was nothing that was hugely political or any huge obstacles that I faced other than the way that the law was designed and then the act was designed itself, which was you have to identify and locate these individuals. Nobody has to apply for this. This is simply a unique government program. Find me another one just like it, every government program, there's not a government program that doesn't have four thousand applications and forms associated with it, and we weren't going to have one, we couldn't require that, we had to do the work. So that's the challenge, it wasn't that, and I'm not saying it in a negative way, I'm just saying it made a very unique opportunity.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2019 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.