 This is Ralph Winnie from Enchanted Lakes. I am here with the esteemed Brian Letterer by phone from Washington, D.C. Brian is a good old local boy, Punahou graduate, worked for Senator Matsunaga, and was in the Carter administration. Brian, how are you doing this evening in D.C.? Oh no. Oh no, oh no. Well, tell us a little bit about... I grew up in Pearl City by the old Pearl City tabric before the H-1. Okay. Well, start by telling us a little bit about where you grew up in Hawaii and how you got to D.C. and your work with Senator Matsunaga, more importantly, your work with Jimmy Carter and Rosalind. Yes, I miss her, she just passed. Yes, yeah. She was very special lady, but let's start out with Matsunaga. What happened was he was running for re-election in 1968, and I knew him. I mean, you know, we were local people. I mean, we knew Matsunaga in a way and so on. And I mean, I acted politically. Well, I did my senior honor thesis at Harvard on Vietnam, which, you know, how we sort of created the independent Republic of Vietnam in 1945. And so Matsunaga wanted help on that matter because it was a big issue in the 68 election. I knew him. And so he asked me to be his daily, he created a position called Daily Press Person. I had worked for the advertiser a couple of summers. And so I rode with him in his car, in Kowloon, and advised him on Vietnam and what happened, and it also handled his press relations. And so we did that and he was wonderful to work with. I mean, very personal, and, you know, a veteran and 442 and all that stuff. And so when he was working with me, he won, then I went to work for him for a year, I worked for him as a special assistant. And the other thing that is fabulous. I mean, he was just, you know, he was a local guy. And he was serious. The thing I liked about him, he, you know, he was a 442, like, you know what, and he was serious about his responsibility. And he, and in a way, and Burns are the people who got a stainless in 59, when I was a freshman at Poho. Just, they were so professional. And so he was very professional and very friendly to work for, took respect in my counsel, but also I knew that he was the member, not me. Right. And so I worked for him for a year. Now, I needed, the reason I didn't stay was I wanted to go to law school. And I had graduated in Christie's before I worked for him from the London School of Economics in London, in Southeast Asia, got a Master's in International Relations in Southeast Asia and China. So that was also helpful. So I could give it in some credibility on Vietnam, which it helped him stay focused. So he didn't get caught into the controversy in the war movement. Anyway, we had a very good working relationship. He was very professional, very helpful. And then later on, when I wanted to become the People's Counsel of DC, he recommended me to Mayor Walter Washington. So I was grateful for that. And that we remain, so I was active in Washington and he was in Washington. So we remain friends and colleagues all the way through till the end of his life. And how did you get connected to with the Carter administration? Well, with the Carter administration, I had worked in 72 with McGovern. I was a surrogate. He was a Democratic nominee in 72. And I was a surrogate for him in New York City. So I represented him at debates. I also ran, was an organizer in the Bronx. Being an area that was very volatile in 72, had a lot of a co-op city, which was a lot of people with Jewish ancestry that had been moved out of Manhattan up into the Bronx. And they were very antsy about stuff that was going on. So we had good relationships with the people there, which I did. And then I lived with a nice family on the Puntson River on the other side of the Bronx. And got to know New York City very well. So that was in 72 working for McGovern. I got to know him. He was a lot of fun. He was very professional. Now, the reason he lost the election in my professional opinion is because Nixon opted in Jim Crow, which in other words, he took away the Southern anti-civil rights base that had been in the Democratic Party since 1860. And really since 1872, when in order to get the federal troops out of the South, the Democrats in the South agreed, they made a deal not to deal with civil rights, and they would vote Democratic. It was pretty unholy. And so that went along for a long time. And they always voted for the Democrats. And then in 1970, 1960, Kennedy, that's how he got elected. I was a sophomore in high school, a punter when he got elected in 1960. I graduated in 1960. I remember the Kennedy-Nixon debates, and when I listened to Kennedy, I just, I loved, I just really appreciated him. And so he became president. Well, he, you know, we had the Bay of Pigs. And I remember my dad co-authored The Ugly American. And then I had written a sequel to The Ugly American called Sarkand, which in 1965, which was about being sucked into award Asia. And Kennedy read that book. And the manuscript before was published, and he and my dad had a conversation in the OO office about the manuscript. And Kennedy told my dad that he, my dad, it was special assistant to the Commander-in-Chief Pacific. So he had the highest security clearance. So I don't think that Kennedy was talking out of shock. Some person who didn't have the security clearance. And so he, and he retired as a captain. And he would have been an admiral if he wanted to come back to Washington and become the congressional liaison for the Navy. But he did, he wanted to be a writer. And again, and stay in Hawaii. He liked surfing. I hope you like surfing. Oh, I like surfing. He's the one that got me to learn how to surf. Were you able to teach President Carter or Mrs. Carter how to surf? No, they never came to Hawaii to surf. They were being farmers and playing Georgia. But what Carter did, now this is what I was leaving up, they would got me involved with him, was when I worked with McGovern at 72, you know, I really wanted, you know, I mean, we had a, we won work in New York, but Nixon won pretty decisively, as we know, overall. And what happened in 76, I was looking for a candidate. I wanted, you know, to see if we could be Nixon or somehow get to Whitehouse. Right. And so while I was doing that, the energy crisis hit. If you recall, the Arabs did their thing. And so I got asked to come down to Little Rock and represent a community group in 74, 75, two separate years in two different rate cases involving Arkansas Power and Light. And I had been a criminal defense lawyer, but you know, electric utilities, you're litigating engineering. Right. So the good thing about it is that my best subjects were math and science, even though, you know, and I thought actually when I went to Harvard College, I was there in 63. I took a year off between high school and college and went to Europe. And so I was in Europe in 62, 63 in Germany to improve my German. I studied four years of German. Punahou is a model of school and I had my two German teachers had been some Athenian translators at Nuremberg. I mean, this is quality and Punahou. That's Siegfried Ramler and one of them. Siegfried Ramler and right old Pichl. Okay. And so in fact with Ramler was also we formed the advertiser. This was another thing that was kind of fun. The advertiser had a contest for people who could write the best foreign affairs essay. And so Ramler was our advisor in 61. And we entered the, there were five of us and we won the contest. We were wrote about China, communist China, and it's dry for all power. So we got a free trip to Washington. And we met Matanaga and in Norway and it was just a super trip. Courtesy, the advertiser, that was a result. One was one of the most meaningful projects that you worked on while you were in the Carter administration. Well, so going back to how I Carter, so I was in Little Rock the two years. And I thought of something that I said, you know, we're going to win the White House in 76. We need to be able to beat George Wallace in the south. Okay. Well, George Wallace, of course, with anti civil rights. As we well know, you know, and so what I what had happened is the civil rights, the voting rights bill started to blind into effect. Kennedy, Senator, President, and his attorney general brother Robert Kennedy had gotten an interview in the Congress. When they were in the White House and gradually, you know, and there was a lot of resistance in the south. But they got it through. And so in 76. From the first time, as a result of the effects of that, applicant Americans could vote in the south. You know, it hadn't happened in 100 years. Right. And the reason it hadn't happened is because the governor wanted to let the Republicans stay in office. They didn't then wanted to put all troops out. So they made the deal in 1876, don't enforce the civil rights laws. And we'll let you stay in the White House. That was deal it was made. So 400 years. Jim Crow basically was in effect. And then civil rights laws were passed because of Dr. King and the other activists. So in 76, I said, you know, this is really interesting situation because the only one who really understands that George Wallace can be defeated by a southerner is Jimmy Carter. He was the governor of Georgia. Yeah. At the time. And he was a Naval Academy graduate and a nuclear engineer, very smart guy. And a Chris born again Chris man of great integrity. And so, you know, I had worked in these campaigns, but I said, most of the people who are going to run in 76. Assume that they can write off the South. But I said, if someone can defeat George Wallace in the South, they're going to be president. And I said, Jimmy Carter can do it because African Americans will vote in the election in the South for the first time since 76. 1876. And most of the people who were running for president had no clue about that. They just assumed. But the only reason I saw it was because I spent the two years of Arkansas on the utility cases that I was looking for a way to find a candidate and so I thought I met Bill Clinton too because he was, you know, from Arkansas. And I really looked at what was going on in the south. But it also opened a new career for me to become people's counsel because I was very experienced. In any event. So I signed up with Carter. Conjured and most of my political friends. I ran part of Michigan for him. 76. I was an organizer for him in a surrogate. Did he win Michigan? Yes, he did. And we won what I was particularly assigned in Flint, Michigan. Okay. And he won the election. But what he did when he got the he was very smart to get the nomination what he did is he got his name on all the southern ballots. Whereas the other conceited it. And he ran North Carolina and all of the southern states, including Texas and he ran the table. He had he like by doing what he did in the south, he had the nomination locked up. They didn't know what you know when it came to the New York primary. Yeah. But that's Carter Carter Carter Carter, you know, was a naval academy crack, you know, a naval officer very well prepared a nuclear engineer. I grew up under a naval. My dad was a command naval officer naval Academy. Sorry. You know, could it. And he was his great strength was command. So for example, when they had the naval invasion of Sicilitas in 1943. When they had the invasion, they had 50 ships, one of them had lights on. And he was a navigator on the light ship. The Navy trusted his command ability. It all the way through his career. The other ship had their lights out all the way through his career he had command authority, because he grew up in New York City he was a street guy and he knew how to talk to people. He had sniff sniff around. Right. And the reason I never, you know, that they wouldn't let him out of Hawaii so it became my home is because the the commander in chief Pacific. Didn't have any confidence in the intelligence from the intelligence sources. He trusted my dad who made frequent trips out to Asia. And talk to people. Plus he had the local papers flowing in. I remember an and translating and read them so he just find out what was going on. And it was better intelligence than the four star admiral in charge of all the forces got the CIA. And I don't want this conversation with President Kennedy. Who read the manuscript of star care. Was that he'd been completely hoodway. By the CIA in the Bay of Pigs. And when he, and he said, you're me, you're right. You know, we shouldn't be in Vietnam. He wouldn't, he was going to get out of Vietnam. That's my professional opinion. I think that's why he was killed. Actually, it go into Vietnam. And did did did did Carter have a follow a lot of the same principles as Kennedy? Would you say? Yes. Carter was very smart. I mean, when Carter became president. In 76. He had a very young administration. His best secretary, Judy Powell was 32. His appointment secretary was 25. You know, and of course he had young children. And me and others. And so, and they like to have fun. So that's been in with me. You know, I like to have fun. I got them into the congressional softball league. Oh, okay. Would, would, uh, you know, I played on the team and I was co-coach. And we, you know, they were young. So, you know, Jody was played on the team, the press secretary and the appointment secretary. I mean, we really hung out together. They were young. And we run the streets together. We had a lot of fun together. Did you invite them to come in? This is Hawaii. Oh yeah. And they also helped me become people's council. Okay. They called up. Mayor Washington and said, he's, he's, he's on, oh, he's okay. Do it for us. And people's council is a position in DC that represents all the great payers with the utilities. And one of the things I learned from people like Jimmy Carter and George McGovern and my dad, we'd go all in. I mean, if you're going to go to war, so to speak, do it properly. And what, what I thought, and I had been, I had some roots in general because my stepfather was a tinkerer and he invented the dialysis process, the kidney machine. Ah, okay. And so it, you know, he used to fly radio control model airplanes and stuff like that. And so I was able to do for law school, study international relations, which I did, you know, not really law. Chinese law at Harvard Law School and Japanese law at University of Washington. And so I really got myself, you know, up in that stuff. And then I had to pass the bar exam. So I took the bar review course and I did pass it in Hawaii and DC. Wonderful. We're going to have to end it. Unfortunately on that note, sounds like you've had a very, well, that's fine. This is fine. I appreciate it. You know, but I'd say, you know, Hawaii is great. Okay. I grew up in Hawaii. Honolulu is still my hometown. I'm licensed there. And I recommend all of you who are on listening to this in Hawaii really enjoy yourself and I can serve. Well, put on an old Brian. Great interview. And we will talk soon. Thank you all for listening.