 Hey, we're back, it's the two o'clock rock here on Friday, and we have Peter Carlyle. We're going to talk with Peter Carlyle about so many things that are really interesting because he has lived in another kind of world. Sorry, Peter, I said that. Well, it's probably true. I always felt like an alien. Just to, you know, give you the short summary of it, he's been a prosecuting attorney for the city and county of Honolulu. What is it, the third elected prosecuting attorney? Well done. Thank you very much. And he was the 13th mayor. All of the mayors were elected. Yes, I thought so. That seemed to be a problem. And he's now a partner in the O'Connor firm, and good for him. And he's, you know, back to his, you know, training roots, I guess. Exactly correct. You start off, you know, you start working with the law thing, and then, you know, it progresses to perhaps another life, and then you come back to home plate. Well, you've had a number of chapters in your book, but there's more to come, I think. I hope so. I'm looking with anguish and intent on the U.S. attorney's office. Anguish in that it'll be a new experience, and content in that it will be an intent, because I think it'll be a good experience for me as well as for that office. You know, I want to link those, all these things up here in our show today with you, Peter. So the first thing is you're a prosecuting attorney, and you were a star-studded prosecuting attorney. You did the Xerox case all by yourself. You prosecuted that case. Usually the prosecutor, the chief prosecutor, does not go down and try cases, but you did. You actually went and tried that case. You know, I felt strongly about that, because I think that if you sit around and spend your life as an administrator, you miss the kind of difficulties that your own people have to go through. I mean, they have to go down there. They have to stand in front of the judge. They have to argue in front of the jury, and their reputation and their ability is online. And when you're a prosecutor, you have these enormous ethical pressures that are put on you as well. What do you mean by that? I think I was thinking about that as we drove down for the show. Ethical pressures, you represent not only a constituency, but a jurisdiction, all the people in the jurisdiction. And your job is not merely to seek convictions. And this is written into the ethics code. It is to basically make sure that you are doing it according to the rules and to everything you can within the guidance of the law. So your job is to follow the law, and not simply you have a horrible person, you know they've done all sorts of things. It's not just to convict. It's to see that justice is done. Yeah, and it has a ripple effect. What I mean is what you do down there has an effect on the way the law is treated by others. If you're a bad example, life on the guy who was the Duke lacrosse team went out and chased some people for the wrong reason, and then we suffer as prosecutors across the country. So you're right. The ripple effect can actually be national. And if it's a big enough case, which would be the type of thing that the U.S. district attorney would be doing here, the federal prosecutor, that would end up being international problems. Yeah. I think people watch what happens in court. That's why prosecutors are so important, not only in the city and county, but in the state circumstance and in the federal circumstance. Because people watch and, you know, we live in, everyone in the world lives in this kind of fabric of the sort of the civilized mantle of respecting the law. And if we stop respecting the law, it would fall apart. And somehow it begins with the prosecutor. Somehow the prosecutor makes the point, you know, you got to follow the rules. If you don't follow the rules, we're going to use sanctions on you. And then people see that happen. They see the sanctions. And they say, gee, I think I'll follow the rules. I think that's completely correct. I think it is something that has the right type of effect on a rule of law. And that's what we need to have. And that mantle is critical to a civilized society, in my opinion. But there are people out there who will routinely break the law with nothing but arrogance and narcissism and perpetual repeated offenses. And they have to be dealt with seriously. And we do that by depriving them of liberty and sticking them in a prison sometimes and sometimes sticking them in for a very long time. And although, you know, a lot of people feel that prisons ought to be reformed, and indeed, in many ways, they should be reformed. The fact is that we need to do that for all the reasons that imprisonment is necessary in a civilized society. Well, take Uesugi and the Xerox massacre, which you brought up. I mean, frankly, there is no excuse for that guy ever seeing light again. He's still sitting in his prison cell happy about what he did. The Kirk Lankford guy, who if you remember Masumi Watanabe, we never found her body, that was something that had international implications. And it was critical for us to make sure that we took this sociopathic, narcissistic, arrogant person and keep him away from civilized society from now until he's passed away. And I wholly support that and should. Yeah, because I mean, it's not only me. I don't want him around me. I don't want him threatening my life. I don't want him on the street in my community. But it's everybody. Yeah, you want to protect people from savage behavior. And whether they, the people know that this guy is like he, you know, but a lot of people, they wouldn't know. You still have to protect them from him. That's a really good point, because you know that thing about the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, juries very rarely see the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth because of the exclusionary rule. Oh, sure. You've got all sorts of reasons to keep evidence from the jury. And some of that evidence is absolutely critical. But it's kept from them. They don't see it. And then you have a travesty of justice and the prosecutor is going to be blamed for allowing this to occur when in fact it was the rules that we live by that have been, in my opinion, so inflated since the time of the Constitution that they're now no longer recognizable. I remember you were, you were not only prosecuting attorney, you were actually seeking legislation. And there was one bill, I don't remember the substance, but there was one bill that you were supporting and you were very passionate about. And you came to a meeting, I was running this meeting or involved in this meeting, I'll never forget. You got down, if you remember, you got down on your knee and you pleaded. You pleaded with the people in his meeting. Put your hands over your heart. They should support your bill. I recall that happening once, maybe twice in my career. It was really touching. I think it had a big effect on people. And I'm thinking also of Rudy Giuliani. I'll never forget. I didn't know the essence of his approach when he was a prosecutor in New York, U.S. Attorney Prosecutor in New York. Wasn't it? Yeah, he was a U.S. Attorney. His thought was, prosecute every little crime in the thought that people out there will see that you do enforce the law. And then they won't do murder. If you prosecute the little things, the big things won't get done, won't happen. The broken window theory, and absolutely effective, if you do the quality of life crimes and you do them consistently, somehow the guy who's jumping over the turnstile and is brought to the ground and handcuffed and taken off for 48 hours in detention, they say, if they're going to do this to me for that, I'm not going to mess around with this. I'm trying to think where it was where they caned somebody for spitting on the ground. Singapore. Singapore. And shortly after that, there was a lot less saliva on the ground. So I met you once in that context, in the think-tech context. I remember I came up to your office, and I was very impressed. You were running a tide ship. You were the Elliott Ness kind of prosecutor. It was an interesting media. First time I met you, I remember that. But from there, you went to mayor. And mayor's a different kettle of fish. I mean, prosecutors have relationship with the public, though. I want to add that. And that sort of is part of the transition, isn't it? As long as you're putting people in jail, people like you, as long as the potholes exist and their sewer main breaks and there's calamity around from a tsunami or something like that, it's always the mayor's fault. And rightly so. How was it being mayor? That was a real change of situation. You know, I got to say, I think it was like the icing on the cake. I really enjoyed being mayor, because you can do it in such a way that you can have a tremendous impact on the quality of people in their everyday life. And it's a rare case when somebody is the victim of a very serious crime. But if you can sit there and make everybody happier when they're driving to work, if they don't have to spend two hours going from Kapolei to Alamoana Center, if you can be part of those type of solutions to problems, that's a really good thing. But I will tell you right now, never, ever, ever engage in war on potholes. Potholes will always win. So you have to say, okay, we're doing our best, but they will come back and we will do a pavement management system, which we did, which gives you some leeway, but there will always be potholes as long as we've got salt water, a salted water or asphalt. Putting myself in your skin, leaving the practice, I mean, I showed you prosecutorial practice, like law practice in general, you have certain concepts of what it's like to be a political official. And you see it from the point of practicing law, which gives you a certain level of sophistication, but not experience. Okay, then one day you run for office and my goodness, you win. And you have certain expectations going in. And one of them is, like Mr. Smith goes to Washington, you are going to bring this idealistic solution-oriented mentality and you're going to fix everything. And you're going to bring your special talent, your special appreciation that you got as prosecutor or as counsel, whatever. And you're going to be the best mayor ever. Did you have that experience? What were your expectations going in? My expectations were not exactly like that. My expectations were is that if we could put together systems that would perpetuate themselves and address problems that were not going to be solved overnight, but you were looking to generations to come and give them a better quality of life and have Honolulu even more attractive than it already is, I would say that that's not overly ambitious and that can be accomplished. The difficulty is that you've got all the mayor wannabes screaming at you for not doing what they want you to do or if something goes wrong, it's clearly your fault. That's the other problem is there's a lot of politics in this political position. And that sometimes with the person with the right level of ambition and incompetence is a nuisance. Yeah, it's sort of like dealing with the bureaucracy. You're just passing through. We're going to be here. We can wait you out. Or somebody who is just hopelessly inept and clearly incompetent and is buying lunch for his wife, kid, whoever somebody like that might be. And they're talking righteously about their desire to make sure that things are going to be delivered from the hands of that awful demon Carlisle. They're entertaining for a while and happily most of them fall on the dentress of yesterday and don't reappear. So what part of being a mayor did you enjoy? There's a lot of things that I did and I was glad that I did it and it comes back to ding in the long run. But I believe that going out and being an ambassador for this island and for this city and county is a big part of your job. I think it was important for us to bring the advantages that were given to us by President Obama, by giving us APEC. I thought that that was a huge shot in the eyes of us. It was a big deal for sure. And a big challenge for the city. And it was done incredibly well. One of the guys who I always want to give credit to this was Louis K. Aloha, who I know has now fallen on difficult times. But he unequivocally went out and took training money and started escorting people who were going to be very, very high calibers, some of the greatest leaders in the world, from the airport to Waikiki. And that required necessarily complete safety and oftentimes closing down roads. And he did an absolutely great job of getting ready to do it and then executing it practically perfectly. Yeah, you get three results on that. One is you give them safety. Two is you impress them with how efficient you are and this is a real city. It's not just in the outback. And I guess the other thing is you show people, not only them but everyone, that we are capable of dealing with international conferences. We need to show people that. And that's a big deal because if you can get over, everybody wants to think about this as a place where you're going to get a tan on the beach. But if you can also say that is basically conducive to sort of the side talking with each other where they sit down and get the real business done and they're doing it in an environment that is really friendly and not hostile and moving ahead in a positive direction with living together with each other in the world. In terms of achievement, you look back on those years, what do you see as your biggest achievement in that period? I think always the real big question has been rail. I think rail has always been significant and I think until and one of our great benefactors throughout his career was Dan Inouye obviously and he was 100% on board on that situation at all. So to get standing side by side with him and seeing the first pillar go up and then seeing the rail start and to see it moving in a positive direction and then people talking should we call this dart dance area rapid transport you know, all of those things were very positive and he was a remarkable guy and it was a pleasure to be able to get to know him well and to work with him. I think about you know being catapulted from an ordinary person prosecuting attorney however ordinary or extraordinary that is to be a leader of a major jurisdiction in the state and to get to know all the other players like Dan Inouye. Well and the other one who I want to point out quickly who's fallen also on some sometimes physically difficult problems is Maisie Hirono. Maisie Hirono was critical to me when I went back to get the full funding grant agreement for the rail and she was one of the people between different people there in the capital both Democrats and Republicans and couldn't have been more vocal about her support of the rail in a good way so I want to sort of shout out and say I hope you're doing well and thank you for her service and we hope there's going to be many more years of her service. We're going to join you in that. We're going to take a short break that's Peter Carlisle former mayor, former prosecutor and now an attorney in a downtown firm with an election that followed his term what he thinks about rail now and what he thinks about the United States attorney's office. We're going to cover all that in 15 minutes. That's plenty of time. Right after this break. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii 25 talk shows by 25 dedicated hosts every week helping us to explore and understand the issues and events in and affecting our state. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Hi I'm Carol Cox. I'm the new host on Eyes on Hawaii. Make sure you stay in the know on Hawaii. Join us on Tuesdays at 12 noon. We will see you then. Aloha. We make responsible decisions while we cheer on our heroes and toast their success. Elevate your match day experience. If you drink never drive. Okay, we're back with a lot with Peter Carlisle. What a treat. Thank you for coming down Peter. It's great to see you. My pleasure. So, rail. Okay. You set up the funding. That was still a big political potato football. It's a hot potato. Because I mean, if you delay in a construction project of this size and magnitude, it immediately starts increasing the costs. So the second that you have have this shifted from the construction to the legal system, then suddenly everything starts to fall apart because of deadlines because of union contracts and requirements of they're being able to do things at the appropriate time. All of those things create problems. And so, the second that you had Ben Cayetano, Cliff Slater, and Randy Roth conspiring to make sure that we were not going to get this thing undone on time. And now, what did they do? They started saying oh, it's so expensive. It's so expensive. Well, you're the problem, gang. Because delay creates a crucial cost. And then knew that and that was their strategy. You know that's the strategy in trials. You delay, delay, delay, and then the witness size fall away or they fall asleep or they get tired and they go. That's the strategy. So, I'm thinking of TMT, there's a delay situation for you. You think? Anyway, so how did you know this is so even now today, and I'll ask you in a minute what you think about the current status, but that had to have a big effect on what you want to call it the mandate election with Ben Cayetano and you were there and Kurt Colwell was there. Right. How did that play? How did you participate? What were your, what's your recollections, your impressions about that campaign? It depends. I know it's the one that I won or the couple that I lost. And the answer is you finally get to the point where you see all of this foolishness which is what we have in election campaigns. And I don't know who it was who invented the fine art of sign-waving, but one it was brilliant in terms of it did have an impact. People see people on the side of the road. That has some effect on them. And unfortunately you can buy, lie, and plagiarize your way through a campaign but you can't do that if you're running an office and running it correctly. That's real business and you've got to actually do something rather than say you're doing something and have a commercial that has the lights going off behind you and all the fireworks and all the other riff nonsense. Well everybody was making some pretty high rhetoric during that campaign. And I remember the whole attempt to defame Ben Caetano who was carrying it as a mandate. Suggesting he was guilty of this, that, and the other thing. So much so that he actually ultimately filed a lawsuit for defamation. That didn't go anywhere. But that was it was a really nasty campaign. Well it was a nasty campaign. There comes a point when everybody starts digging in and it becomes more the usual and this is not entirely devoid of behavior of the media and the press. Oh I'm sure. If they can start a fight that sells newspaper or sells airtime and if that's done the way it's being done absolutely ad nauseam in Washington DC right now it divides people it causes hostility and it doesn't allow for common ground. Well I mean is it inherent in this that the ability to win that election was affected by all the all the noise and smoke and fire and commotion about rail? Oh yeah I think that the last few elections have all had to do with the rail system and I think that has to do with now at one point I became monstrously unpopular because I supported the rail system now at the end of Caldwell's terms we're not finding if you take a look at the Civil Beat polls. Saw that the other day. They said that he was less popular in Hawaii than something. Well but he's done it in impressive fashion so now it's sort of hanging around his neck. So it's a process that's going to go on for every mayor while this issue is hanging there. Yeah and the good news is it's going to see fruition I mean it's going to be finished it's madness to start talking about tearing it down and throwing it away that makes no sense and so everybody has now even Dejeu and those guys who were adamantly opposed to it at one point everybody was and went all the way from Kapolei as promised to the Alamoana center and that's going to happen. Can we do it? Can we get the money? Especially in this administration. We can do it and it's going to have to be done how long it's going to take and how much it's going to cost is a fair question. But as you said the longer it takes the more expensive it is and there's all these lawsuits that will come out for breach of the contracting agreements. Those difficulties exist and it's insurmountable. So what's your current view of it? You've written you've taken positions on this you know in your civilian role what position would you articulate today about rail? I would say that it is unconscionable to make all of those people who live on West Oahu go through a commute that usually takes up four hours of their day going and coming. That's too long and that's unfair we built that area West Oahu with the promise that they would be given decent transportation. So if government fails to keep that obligation then government suddenly becomes suspect and is no longer trustworthy. Yeah I think government in general nationally and locally has lost trustworthiness and I think you know a lot of the trustworthiness the reduction of trustworthiness in Hawaii at least Oahu has been around rail because the newspaper will make raw meat out of it every time they get a chance. And Oahu it is particularly about rail and we noticed that again in the Civil Beat poll because it said people were more hostile to what's been going on with this particular mayor than people on the neighbor islands and that is carrying the burden of rail which others have done before him. So if you were mayor again I mean not to say that you're going to run this is Carlisle I'm not going to run so that is an edict that is a final act other than that my life is over. I think we got it on the record now no surprise but if you were mayor what would you do about rail? step by step I think the idea that they have of getting an audit makes a bunch of sense I think then you take a look at between that and what the reality is if I had the ability to lop some heads and hopefully so they wouldn't return the first being the current mayor and then after that I would say you have got to keep up the other work but you need to focus on finishing what you started and it's that simple you're going to do it from here on not with bells and whistles not with pretty things here and there but you're going to get the fundamentals of a rail system established up and running now okay with all of that you're a community minded person you've been in the mix for a long time as prosecutor because you certainly get to know the community there and as mayor that's enviable how much you can learn about the community as mayor and here we are and you're practicing but you have an eye on the U.S. Attorney's Office I do why is that you sort of your DNA has been transmogrified into prosecutorial DNA is that what it is? I'm going to tell you a good story about that and that is I had the pleasure of being with the Dalai Lama for about three days and we were talking to each other and giving press conferences and we were together and he said choose to be optimistic you'll feel better because I'm the Dalai Lama and will always be the Dalai Lama and that has this certain prestige but what I think of myself as is a Tibetan monk that is what my DNA is my DNA is prosecutorial I would agree with that that's pretty much why I asked the question because I think it's true you still present as a prosecutor I think your whole way of looking at things is still as a prosecutor and prosecutors are special people because they want to see the justice that's the reason why when I was in the military most of the time I was a prosecutor and I stood up in front of the military judge in those cases and I would say may it please the court my name is Jay Fidel and I represent the United States of America it puts a chill in my back even now you said that and a chill went up in my back because you said it so accomplished and experienced I haven't experienced that yet and I would love to be able to say I represent the United States of America let's take a look at the US Attorney's Office here what's it like, how big is it why was it different than a prosecutor's office the prosecutor's office is handled by the city and county employees and prosecutors and it's under the umbrella of the authority of the Attorney General but there's case law that says really the person who's going to be doing the prosecuting so there you're representing the people of the state of Hawaii under the umbrella of the Attorney General when you get to that next level when you start saying that you're a federal prosecutor now you represent the interests of the United States all the way up to the commander in chief which of course is President Trump and you go and you represent them in federal court for the district of Hawaii this is something it is something and it's and they are elite and they are accomplished so your job is to go into an organization that is already running well and has very sophisticated and capable people and either put it, give them a little more limelight that they deserve or figure out what they think that they knew the resources that they need and how that you could sit there and voice their concerns and their needs from the perspective of being in charge of that entire operation which is about 65 people 65 people, wow, that's a pretty big office and they do very big cases the city and county is 220 people and the city and county of Honolulu is 10,000 so this is a gem of prosecutorial ability and they need to be able to be supported in whatever fashion that they can be including with sort of a wise guy type of prosecutorial thug I've always been impressed with federal prosecutors and I was thinking of this fellow that we had here in this chair a few months ago, Kenji Price in Carl Smith he was in the army he was in not Vietnam, I live in another time in Iraq and Afghanistan as an officer there he went to the University of Pennsylvania, got to be editor-in-chief of the Law Review and then he joined the Eastern District of New York which is a very classy district in Brooklyn I mean as far as Lord enforcement is concerned, when he was an assistant U.S. Attorney there, now he's here and he's a very, he's also got it in his DNA, if you will and he's a special guy and I think they all are, I think those prosecutors in the U.S., it's the way the country has developed it's a very class operation, it's a very high level club, don't you think? Kenji is, I mean he is a phenomenal guy, I mean he's got two bronze stars, his military credentials are absolutely impeccable he did phenomenal prosecutor at the line level, what I don't see from him is the experience of actually running either a section or the entire office, but he has admirable qualities from one end to the other and I think that he's a tremendous candidate and I would have crossed paths with him if I was one younger and two I had decided to go to the University of Pennsylvania which I did not go to because a friend took me down to Chapel Hill, North Carolina and I love the Tar Heels. Well, I mean I think you know the perfect guy for this job that's just my opinion and I think this is the perfect job for you too and so it's a really good match and it's at a time when we need it but we have a strange circumstance here just as in many other appointments around the country, this administration is for some reason dragging its heels on appointing U.S. attorneys in various districts and other officials and other federal agencies. So what's the process like and how long is it going to take before this settles down? I don't think anybody has an answer to that. I know that we were given, some people were called and I don't know how many people were called to give an interview and we spent about an hour talking face to face over electronics about the questions that they wanted to have answered and things that they thought what your view was and what you would do if some young AUSA came up to you and said hey listen old man you've done about four or five murder trials and I said no I've done about 50 or 60 of them so well I've got a murder trial coming down the pike what can you tell me and then I could impart what little wisdom I have in their direction and let them move forward and all of them are competent enough to be able to do that. It's been under, Flo Nakakuni was a phenomenon in and of herself Elida Noki is the dean of the history of that entire organization so he's the institutional knowledge so it's already got strong pillars and hopefully with the right person the pillars can be made even a little better. People don't know how important the United States Attorney is especially here even. I remember the stealth bomber espionage case where this fellow stole the plans for the stealth bomber and he gave them to the Chinese who now have them and who in fact have built shortly after the trial of this spy they built the stealth bomber according to the plans they got from him. I said pretty serious business. Ouch! Ouch! And it happened right here on Bishop Street within blocks of where we're sitting amazingly enough and the prosecution was within blocks of where we're sitting and we had actually a show about it the prosecutor who handled that case got permission to talk to us and he told us how it was in the prosecutor's side I tell you I was so impressed about you know a relentless, prosecutorial effort that was necessary to do that case and all of the issues but it's defending the country and I think I see that in you. You know the thing that I'd like to see is that there be a little more light shed on that if you have something like the Xerox massacre it's visceral because so many people were impacted by loss of loved ones and other people with Langford and Adam so despicable that they wanted to make sure that he was never going to come out again but I think that if you had enough sunshine on that office and the capabilities and the accomplishments that they've had I think that that would be better for everybody. I think that that would be a huge step not only for that office but for the community to also know hey look it's not just Pearl Harbor that's America it's this whole island is America and the USA and that's a golden thing for us I think that's true and I think the U.S. Attorney needs to communicate with the public about this such as the way you did when you were prosecutor and mayor and I also think that the administration ought to make these appointments really soon because it's an important appointment all appointments at federal you know executive levels are important but this is especially important. I agree with you because I'm a law enforcement guy so I believe in that to my very bones. Thank you Peter thanks for coming down. Pleasure and a half my friend. Aloha.