 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community matters here. Welcome to Hawaii is my mainland. I'm Kaui Lucas. The Trump era of U.S. politics has ushered changes to Washington's climate with unprecedented velocity. Fortunately for Hawaii, Honolulu Civil Beat sent veteran investigative record reporter Kirsten Downey back to Washington. Fortunately for us today, she's here in Think Tech Hawaii's downtown Honolulu studio to give us the scoops. Welcome back to Hawaii is my mainland. Kirsten. Well thank you. Thank you so much for having me here today. So you're soon to be to be jetting off back to D.C. Yes. Going back to D.C. where we have a lot of appropriations, bills moving, and we'll be looking to see what kind of money ends up coming to Hawaii now or does not. So in the first half year of the Trump era, how's it been indeed? It has been the most ferocious political claimant I've ever seen in my life. I've never seen it so ideologically partisan. The vitriol, the kinds of language people are using to each other with each other. Now part of this is being initiated by Trump with his tweets. It turns out you can get yourself into a lot of trouble and what you say in 140 characters. You've got a mind to do so. But the response has also been corrosive. A lot of mean language and a lot of people willing to become so angry in the moment that they aren't looking to the long term good of the American people. I feel like that's one of the most important things that I can do on my job for Honolulu Civil Beaton, for our readers here in Hawaii, is to watch out for not just a rhetoric of what's happening, but what does it really mean? Well, what does it really mean? The night that Trump was elected, I was as shocked as many people. I'm sure Trump himself was shocked by the outcome of the election. And I stayed up all night the night of the election. I just couldn't sleep. I've covered politics in Washington. I was reporter at the Washington Post for 20 years. So I'd covered politics and business for many years. But his victory was really unprecedented. And people had been so much focused on Trump the man that Trump, the political candidate, sometimes was in the background. So one of the first things we had to do when Civil Beat created my job as the federal correspondent for Civil Beat was determining what has he actually said he's going to do and how would that affect us here in Hawaii? And, of course, one of the things that came most immediately and chillingly to mind, and that we've been watching very carefully, is his campaign platform of repealing Obamacare. Now, we've been fortunate—we're much more fortunate than most in the country, because a long time ago, back in the 1970s, our leaders then had the foresight to create something called prepaid health care. And basically under prepaid health care, everyone that works at least 20 hours a week gets a certain level of health care at a very low cost, subsidized by their employer. This is a system that's unique in America and very few other states have it. So one of the things that's been really interesting as this whole Trump health care, what became a debacle, really unfolded, was us trying to figure out, well, here's how they say it could be disastrous for the country, but what does it actually mean for Hawaii? Well, we had an extra layer of protection that the rest of the country didn't have. On the other hand, we'd much more aggressively expanded Medicaid. We have 100,000 people additional getting health coverage in Hawaii now through Medicaid than we had at the time Obamacare was enacted. So while we were watching this debate unfold, there were 100,000 lives here hanging in the balance. So you can imagine we were watching this unfold with baited breath and were quite relieved when ultimately the Republican measure failed and we reverted to where we are now, which for our people is really pretty good. So that is yet to be seen, how that's going to be play out, but for the time being, things seem pretty OK. For the time being, it's status quo. And in fact, what's happening now is it's putting the health care issues on the table really prominently in a way that really needed to happen anyway. Obamacare isn't perfect. There's lots of problems, and a lot of people have found their premiums have jumped and that they weren't given, being given the quality of care they thought they were going to get. So there's no question that the system needs to be changed. One of the things that's really interesting how it's happening out there is a very new awareness and a very much fuller discussion. For example, Bernie Sanders and Democrats now are talking about creating a new kind of single payer health care, either a Medicare expansion or a Medicaid expansion that could cover people and perhaps cover them better and more cheaply and more dependably than Obamacare is doing. So besides the Medicare debate or the health care debate, on Hawaii's hot topics, things that really affect us here, like the military, what's— Well, it's a mixed picture. And again, this is a really interesting thing, because Trump came in with some very harsh language about how aggressively he was going to be wielding the acts. And a lot of people were very afraid. About 20 percent of our state budget comes from federal money. And of course, we're very dependent on the military budget, and we're also very dependent on tourism. So these were three things that all seemed like they would be potentially at risk. What was going to happen with military spending? What was going to happen with our state spending that comes from the federal government? And would some of this talk about travel bans have a chilling effect on tourism? Well, what we've seen on the tourism front is tourists didn't really mind. They saw that as an internal debate to the United States, and we're having record tourism. We have not been adversely affected. In fact, some people are complaining we're having too many tourists. So in fact, that fear that we had luckily was not—did not materialize as a threat. In the military budget, interestingly, there's a great bipartisan realization right now that a lot of the budget fighting that's gone on in Congress in the last ten years have left us with a military that really needs to be replenished. So there seems to be consensus from both Republicans and Democrats, even though, while they fight on other things, that the military needs more funding. And the last budget included tens of billions of dollars additional in funding. And a good portion of that is likely to come to Hawaii. So on that front, we did okay. Then there's the third front, which is what did it mean to state funding. Trump proposed his own presidential budget blueprint, and it was draconian. It terrified everyone. And he called essentially for wiping out the funding for the East-West Center. There were a number of programs that were being eliminated. That's right. The reality is none of that ever came to pass. It ended up that both Republicans and Democrats stepped forward for programs they believe in, and we had Republicans turning up as big defenders of things that Trump had put on the table to be cut. The bottom line is that, interestingly enough, we haven't had major cuts. And in fact, we've even gotten some increased funding. Okay, so I'm very curious as our Attorney General here found his legs in speaking up on the travel bounds. Well, we know how we heard it here in Honolulu, but what was it like in D.C. to be the Washington correspondent from the state that was speaking up? Well, this is a very interesting split country right now. And anybody who saw the Electoral College map on the night of the election saw how split it is. Now, we're a very Democrat—did have a very Democratic state. 70 percent of our voters voted for Democrat or an independent, and only 30 percent voted for Trump. Nationwide, we know it was closer to a 50-50 split. Now, in Washington D.C. itself, Washington D.C. is even more profoundly Democrat than Hawaii. Only 4 percent of the voters of Washington D.C. voted for Trump. Wow. So part of what you're seeing and is what we see on the TV is a sense of extreme reaction to the election of Republican in a jurisdiction that is extremely Democrat, much more so than we are. Interestingly, our latest polls have shown that Trump has increased in popularity here in Hawaii, which came as quite a surprise to us. Did you remember what that figure was by the time? About 32 or 33 percent. Okay. But given the things that he's tweeted, given the response to the things he said, given the insults that he's leveled on so many people, we thought that there would be more of a plummet and certainly the threats. But he seems to be quite an unusual and unique political figure. I guess the one thing you can say about it, and I think Senator Schott said this very clearly at one of our editorial board meetings, is this has been an invigorating time to be watching the political process. You know, for a lot of years nobody was paying attention. Not everybody is. And I noticed this recently in the most funny way. I was watching a comedy show as late at night. I was kind of tired and I was diet going through. And there was a comedy show and it featured these schoolteachers sitting around a table. And one of them started to laugh and said, and made some joke. Well, that's something Betsy DeVos would do. Betsy DeVos, our new Secretary of Education. And I had to laugh because on a mainstream television show, the name of the Secretary of Education was named. Not only did everyone in the casting know it, but they assumed that all the audience would know it. And when have any of us known the name of who was the Secretary of Education? Who was the last one? Who remembers who the last one was? I've forgotten. I've forgotten. Give me a minute, I'll take it. But what we have is people realized from this election that elections really matter. And people have been energized, they're watching, and they're interested in a whole new way. And that's been really good for democracy. So, you've been working on, we have a picture of your, some of your deep digging. Thank you. Let's get into the story of that, the Navy. What's happening with the Navy a little bit? Well, one of the things I'm sort of trying to build up at Civil Beat is I'm trying to increase and improve our military coverage. This wasn't an area that Civil Beat had done a lot of in the past. But now, with the threat from North Korea mounting, with the Russians increasing the size of their fleet, and with the Chinese building these artificial islands to use as forward bases, and us, the forward line of defense for the United States, if anything should happen in the Pacific, military is more important to us than ever. So, I began to look at sort of how well is our military here operating. And we've had some worrisome events. We had the helicopter crash, the Marine Corps helicopter crash that killed 12, another event more recently with five deaths. And then recently in the seventh fleet, we've had some very bad ship collisions, maritime collisions that have resulted in loss of death. And what the experts are saying is that our equipment is outdated, and that a lot of people aren't being trained adequately to be able to use the equipment goes to the issue of readiness. So that got me thinking about like what exactly, what are our lines of defense here? What do we have? What are the threats? What are the real threats? We've been watching, of course, North Korea closely and we're going to be watching soon. The Missile Defense Agency will soon be releasing a report, which we hope will be unclassified, so we'll have access to it on just how much threat there is to Hawaii by North Korea. We'll be reporting on that when it comes out. But then there's also this other issue, the thing that you just referred to earlier, and that's some real problems in the seventh fleet, which is our Japan-based ships, which are overseen by Pearl Harbor. Honolulu is the home of the Pacific Command. So they're the supervisors of the fleet there. And in addition to these collisions, they've also had a very bad scandal unfolding there in the last few years. And that's the biggest corruption scandal in Navy history is unfolding also within the seventh fleet. It's involving a Malaysian defense contractor named Francis Leonard. They call him a Leonard Francis. They call him Fat Leonard. He was quite a big guy and kind of an oversized personality as well. But he's a gregarious party guy and he was really good at spocking out who was vulnerable, who could be wooed with fancy dinners, entertainment sessions, visits with prostitutes. And it turns out that quite a few of our Navy officers were vulnerable to his lures. Kristen, we're going to take a little break and come back and talk more about the lures tempting our officers. Aloha. I'm Tim Apachea, host for Moving Hawaii Forward, a show dedicated to transportation issues and traffic. We identify those areas where we do have problems in the state, but also the show is dedicated to trying to find solutions, not just detail our problems. So join me every other Tuesday on Moving Hawaii Forward. I'm Tim Apachea. Thank you. I'm Helen Dora Hayden, the host of Voice of the Veteran, seen here live every Thursday afternoon at 1 p.m. on Think Tech, Hawaii. As a fellow veteran and veterans advocate with over 23 years experience serving veterans, active duty and family members, I hope to educate everyone on benefits and accessibility services by inviting professionals in the field to appear on the show. In addition, I hope to plan on inviting guest veterans to talk about their concerns and possibly offer solutions. As we navigate and work together through issues, we can all benefit. Please join me every Thursday at 1 p.m. for the Voice of the Veteran. Aloha. Welcome back to Hawaii is my mainland. Here Friday is at 3 p.m. on Think Tech. With me today is Kirsten Downey, the Washington correspondent for Honolulu Civil Beat. And we're just talking about the Navy scandal around so-called fat Leonard. And so what's happened with that? Well, it's a really interesting case. It started initially as a dispute between competitors over contracts. Someone said, someone complained that fat Leonard was getting all the contracts. And there was an investigation and it was quickly truncated. And then there was another investigation. And at some point it became obvious that not just was fat Leonard manipulating the system. He was even manipulating the system for investigating contracts in the Navy. The bottom line is they managed to lure fat Leonard to San Diego where they arrested him. When they showed him the extent of the evidence, he agreed to plead guilty. He has not been sentenced yet. He's being held by the federal marshals, we believe in California, while they question him about the other cases that have emerged, about just how many people participated in his web. And as of now, 250 people are under investigation, including 30 admirals. Wow. That's got to have a significantly demoralizing effect, I would think. I would think so. And it's also through the whole chain of command. A lot of these men have left. They've retired. Maybe they've gone into civilian positions. That means they can't pass security clearances now. If they admit that they socialized or accepted gifts from fat Leonard. And in fact, we just had a Hawaii man, David Capone, sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. He'd been a former commander in the Navy and a top official at Pearl Harbor. And he'll be going to federal jail now. It turns out that he had had a long relationship with fat Leonard and had, and fat Leonard had even shipped multiple prostitutes across national lines to party with Capone. Well, as awful as this is, I am relieved to hear that it is bubbling up to the surface at some place where we can really have a good look at it. Yes. One can only imagine what the lives of those women were like. And that's a part of the story that really hasn't come out yet. And I think it's going to be interesting as this all comes to light. A lot of these cases are still secret. In David Capone's case, only a few of the documents are available to be looked at in the court. A number of them have been sealed. Other names, other events are coming up. As this all comes to light, I think we'll learn a lot more about what was going on. But you actually went to California to do your research. Right. Well, what was interesting as I started, well, I had seen the Washington Post's, and some really fine reporting on this, and it's sort of attractive. But what initially started out was one investigation, one investigation, three investigations, 10 investigations, 25 investigations. Now this latest number, 250 being investigated. The awareness of the depth and the expanse, they thought it had been just a few years. Initially they thought it had just been a few years, maybe 2008 to 2015. Now it appears that it had started as early as 2002. And that in fact, Fat Leonard had been so successful at ingratiating himself with Navy officers that he became one of the primary U.S. defense contractors controlling a lot of ports throughout the Western Pacific. Now it's going to be really important to bring all these aspects to light. Now, as I say, a lot of these things have been sealed, and it became apparent to me that I simply couldn't do it by just looking at what we could find electronically through PACER, which is the federal courthouse record search system, or by what we could find here in Honolulu. So Civil Beats sent me to San Diego, and I spent a week going through the documents there. It turned out that some things that had been publicly sealed were available for viewing only at the courthouse in San Diego, and that allowed me to put more flesh on the bones, you might say, of this case. Well, going back to Washington, what is it like for you going to the— I assume you get to go to the White House briefings from time to time, at least? Yes. Yes. So tell us about that. Well, I have congressional press credentials for Honolulu Civil Beat that allows me to cover things in the House and Senate easily and get through the security barriers more quickly than it would say for the public, the general public. I'll be covering things at the Supreme Court. And of course, we've got an immigration case coming up that we'll be paying a lot of attention to on October 8th, I believe, is the date. And then, of course, there's the White House itself. I have passed to be able to get into the White House grounds. There's an extra special kind of pass called a hard pass, which you try to get so that you can participate more regularly in all the events without needing approval by the White House Public Information Office. That's obviously the ideal situation. The way I've said that this Trump election and the change of power of the Trump administration has focused so much attention from all over the world, the little White House press room, the things that we see, like when we see Sean Spicer or Sarah Huckabee addressing a room, and then later you see that in Saturday Night Live. Yes. You see it, but you only see it with the cameras looking at the person who's conducting the news conference. That actually is a very tiny little room. It fits 49 people, very uncomfortably. There's a little bit of room around the edges and on the sides and in the back. There's also a lot of cameras. It tends to be very hot, and they have had 2,000 press people from around the world seeking hard passes to be able to cover those press conferences. So what you have is a very intense and combative situation with a press corps that in the past didn't have to work too hard to hold their seats, now really needing to do everything to justify them being the one that's being allowed to be questioning Sean Spicer or Sarah Huckabee. 48. That's shockingly small. It's tiny. This goes back to, you know, it's decades old. It was, I believe it was expanded maybe in the 70s, and it's outdated. Tiny little bathroom, really no place to eat. And so part of the reason that I think the environment is so hot is that they're essentially taking America's press corps covering the White House and sort of putting them in the amount of space that people get in an airline seat these days. And then watching the temperature rise. Well, how hard would it be to designate another room? Well, they'd have to actually expand the space a good bit. And I'm not sure that Trump would be interested in having additional reporters on the grounds. He isn't that happy about reporters these days. OK, so as you're going through your process of finding information, has there been over this—there's been different people who are heading the White House chiefs of staff, and have you noticed a tremendous difference in the climate from one to the other? I mean, there's been a lot of volatility. Well, the Obama campaign moved over into the presidency much more smoothly. They had a very large operation. He had—you know, Obama had a huge grassroots movement supporting him. And they had a very well-orchestrated campaign. When they moved into the White House, they brought the campaign with them in a lot of ways. In some ways, that was not so good, because it meant that they continued to present Obama as the candidate, not always as the official, the representative of the federal government. Reporters were often angry that they felt like the Obama administration wasn't as forthcoming as they should have been. That now looks like, wow, the good old days. In fact, at least there were people you could reach. And if they weren't helpful, at least you could find who it was who wasn't going to be helpful. Now, in the Trump administration, it's just like—it's as wild as the scene in Titanic where the ships, the seats are sliding down into the water. Who do you reach on this day? So part of the problem has been finding people who can answer your questions. And one of the problems with that is that if you've tried 10 times and you can't get someone to answer your question at all, at some point, reporters start to write stories without getting the answers. And that is dangerous. So too much turmoil is also having an effect on journalism. So is having a general running things an improvement? Have you noticed anything? It's hard to say for sure yet. It's been a changing cast of characters. I've been away for the last few weeks. I've been here in Hawaii reporting on health care and reporting on the Navy and reporting on some of the things that matter to us here. But also that informs me when I go back, because I know what really matters here on the ground, but I'm going to be going back into this new military run administration. And the next time you have me, I'll be able to tell you exactly what it's like to report up. Well, talking about the administrative transitions, one of the really interesting parts of your book work about Francis Perkins was you talking about the transition when Roosevelt administration came in and the behind the scenes little stories of what was done to make them not feel welcome. Right. Well, I think one of the things that's interesting is, and I think has helped in the way that I've covered it, is that I have covered a lot of transitions at this point. My book about Francis Perkins a little behind the New Deal talked about her as a secretary of labor in the FDR administration, which we tend to think of as incredibly effective and a well-oiled machine who got all these things done in the first 100 days. And yes, they got a huge amount of really important things done in the first 100 days. But it was chaotic and there was a lot of fighting and there was a lot of negative publicity. So it allows you to sort of keep things a little bit more perspective. You know, there's always a lot of turmoil in a new administration. And I think Trump is unique in that it was really such an unexpected accession to power. So well put. Kirsten, thank you so much for coming and talking to us here in Honolulu. And Godspeed. Thank you. I'll be doing my best to watch out for Hawaii and for our people. Aloha.