(The following article by Frank Davies was posted on the San Jose Mercury News website on July 6.)
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Norman Mineta recalled vividly how the nightmare of 9-11 consumed his dream job as transportation secretary and ultimately rekindled bad memories of his own family’s internment during World War II.
In the uncertain days after the 2001 attacks, when Arab-Americans feared hate crimes and government overreaction, President Bush turned toward Mineta at a Cabinet meeting.
“We know what happened to Norm Mineta in the 1940s, and we’re not going to let that happen again,” Bush vowed.
It was a defining moment for Mineta, the former congressman who leaves the job of Secretary of Transportation on Friday, 5 1/2 years after Bush made him the only Democrat to serve in his Cabinet.
“What the president said that day had a tremendous impact on me. It gave me a great feeling,” Mineta said during an interview on the deck of his home overlooking Maryland’s Rhode River, which feeds into Chesapeake Bay.
It also had an impact on policy. Mineta was a 10-year-old Japanese-American in San Jose, Calif., when his family was shipped to a camp in Wyoming after Pearl Harbor, the searing event of his childhood.
“It happened because many Americans could not distinguish between the people who flew those planes in the attack and those of us who were Americans too,” Mineta said.
He didn’t want history repeated and ordered airport screeners not to use racial or ethnic profiling.
“I’ve been criticized for going after blue-haired grandmothers at airports, but I just felt very strongly about this, and I had the president’s backing,” he said.
Mineta is leaving the Cabinet on good terms with Bush. The president asked him to stay on a few months longer, but Mineta said he has a good job opportunity, which he won’t disclose, and can only negotiate further by leaving office.
Only two other original Bush Cabinet members still serve, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. At 74, Mineta is the oldest Cabinet member, recovering from serious back surgery. It doesn’t seem to bother him when he and his wife, Deni, tool around the Chesapeake aboard their 29-foot Chris Craft cuddy.
The key to his longevity was his relationship with Bush, “my constituency of one,” as Mineta puts it, and the recognition that transportation issues are not partisan or ideological.
Working on road, rail and airline issues for 20 years in Congress, Mineta was known for bipartisanship and a favorite mantra:
“There’s no such thing as a Democratic highway or a Republican bridge.”
He turned down Bill Clinton’s offer of the transportation post so he could chair the House Public Works and Transportation Committee. Then he left Congress to become a Lockheed Martin vice president, followed by a brief stint as Clinton’s commerce secretary in 2000.
When Bush offered him the transportation job, Mineta weighed the decision carefully.
Clinton and Al Gore encouraged him to take the job. Former House colleagues warned him of pitfalls. Republican Bill Cohen, Clinton’s defense secretary, told him about life as a political outsider in the Cabinet.
“This job was something I was always interested in,” said Mineta. “But I didn’t want to be seen as a turncoat to Democrats. I told President Bush I would remain a Democrat.”
Mineta said he forged an agreement with Bush that allowed him latitude on transportation issues. Unlike former Cabinet members Paul O’Neill and Christine Todd Whitman, who chafed at having policy dictated by White House officials, Mineta said he had the elbow room to work on Amtrak, fuel efficiency standards and other issues.
But there was a tradeoff: Mineta would not intrude on the big controversial issues, from the war in Iraq to the debates over detention and interrogation in the war on terrorism. Some Democrats criticized Mineta for staying in the Cabinet, but he was comfortable with compartmentalizing.
“I didn’t get into other people’s bailiwicks,” he said. “And I didn’t expect Rumsfeld to say, `Hey, Norm, you guys are really sucking air on Amtrak.'”
Mineta’s record as the longest-serving transportation secretary will be dominated by 9-11, and the actions he took to secure airports, seaports and restore the confidence of the flying public.
On that dark day, working the phones in the White House bunker, Mineta gave the official unprecedented order after three hijacked airliners hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon: “Bring all the airplanes down.”
There was no contingency plan for doing this. Monte Belger, deputy administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, said he would ground all flights “per pilot discretion.”
Mineta shot back: “Screw pilot discretion. We have to do this now.”
Fourteen months later, Mineta completed a transformation of airline security, meeting 36 mandates on time, from explosive-detection devices at all but a handful of airports to a federal workforce of 65,000 airport screeners, now part of the Homeland Security Department.
“He was just the right person for that job after 9-11. He knew airlines and what had to be done,” said former Sen. Alan Simpson, a Wyoming Republican and longtime Mineta friend. He then recalled a conversation with Bush:
“I told George he really picked a good one in Norm. He said, `Boy, do I know that.'”