US Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta announced that he will resign his position effective July 7.Mineta, who is 74, informed President Bush in a letter dated July 20, citing a desire "to move on to other challenges." The Bush Administration announced the decision Friday. It has not nominated a successor. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said Mineta made the decision on his own. "He was not being pushed out," Snow said during a press conference.

Mineta, a former Democratic congressman who also served in the second Clinton Administration as commerce secretary, is the longest-serving secretary of transportation and the only one the Bush Administration has known. He leaves a mixed legacy as far as commercial aviation is concerned. Following 9/11 he helped to restore public confidence in the security of the air transport system and oversaw establishment of the Transportation Security Administration within the DOT organization, although the agency subsequently was transferred to the Dept. of Homeland Security.

His refusal to consider introducing any form of ethnic or religious profiling of airline passengers following the terrorist attacks laid the intellectual and practical groundwork for TSA's escalating policy of searching for weapons, rather than terrorists, and treating all air travelers with the same level of suspicion regardless of religion, ethnicity, country of national origin, age or sex.

Turning to commercial activities, the record also is mixed. Under Mineta, DOT continued the Clinton Administration's policy of aggressively pursuing open skies agreements with other nations and--in what would be a crowning achievement if consummated--reached a tentative deal with the EU on a transatlantic Open Aviation Area.

However, the OAA agreement hinges on the US government's easing foreign control limits on US airlines, which is a matter of federal law. DOT is attempting to use the administrative rulemaking process to amend these restrictions, a tactic that has been criticized in Congress and elsewhere and that may be prevented through Congressional action. Earlier this month, Air France-KLM Chairman and CEO Jean-Cyril Spinetta said he did not think the EU Council of Transport Ministers would find the DOT proposal on foreign control acceptable.

It was also under Mineta that DOT permitted the CRS rules to expire, enabling airlines to negotiate fees and charges individually with global distribution systems and encouraging the emergence of alternative distribution channels.