    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [January 21, 1999]
    [Pages 90-96]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 90]]

    Interview With Judith Miller and William J.
    Broad of the New York Times
    January 21, 1999

    Terrorist Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction

        The President. Before you ask questions, I just want to say that I
    really have appreciated the stories you've done, because I think it's so
    important that--it's sort of a balance thing, but I want to raise public
    awareness of this and awareness also with people with influence who can
    influence decisionmaking without throwing people into an unnecessary
    panic. And I think these stories have been exceedingly valuable.
        Sandy was making fun of me today before
    you came in--Sandy Berger was. He said, ``When you started talking about
    this 6 years ago, nobody around here--people just didn't--they hadn't
    thought about it.''
        Q. Six years ago.
        The President. I've been asking them to think about this for a long,
    long time. And of course, we had it more or less in the context of
    terrorism because we had the World Trade Center and all the other things
    to worry about. But anyway.
        Q. But actually, one of my first questions--because we've heard so
    many rumors about how you got interested, and none of what has happened
    would have happened without your interest. But what was it?
        The President. Well, it was--first of all, I spend a lot of time
    thinking about 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now. I
    think that's one of the things that Presidents are supposed to do and
    especially when things are changing so much. But we had--keep in mind,
    we had the World Trade Center issue; we had the CIA killer; and then
    later you had the incident in the Tokyo subway and then Oklahoma City.
    We've had a lot of terrorist incidents, culminating in the bombing of
    our Embassies in Africa and what happened in Khobar, other things.
        One of the things that I have worried about from the beginning, with
    the breakdown of the Soviet Union before my time here, was how to help
    them deal with the aftermath of the massive nuclear system they have,
    and starting with the Nunn-Lugar funds, going all the way up to our
    threat reduction proposals in this year's budget--you know, we tried to
    hire--keep the scientists and the labs working and do joint projects of
    all kinds that would be constructive. But it was pretty obvious to me
    that, given the size of the Soviet biological and chemical programs and
    the fact that we know a lot of other nations are trying to develop
    chemical capacity and some biological capacity, that we had not only
    nuclear problems but we have a chemical and biological problem.
        And of course, the Vice President and
    others sort of sensitized me to this whole computer problem. We had the
    incident with the defense computers just a few months ago. But before
    that, I kept reading about all these non--in the line of national
    security--all these computer hackers. You know, I'm technologically
    challenged. I can do E-mail and a few other things, you know. But it
    struck me that we were going to have to find some way to try to deal
    with that, too, because of the defense implications, as well as the
    other possibilities.
        And I've had all kinds of--I also find that reading novels,
    futuristic novels--sometimes people with an imagination are not wrong--
    Preston's novel about biological warfare,
    which is very much based on----
        Q. ``Hot Zone'' or ``Cobra Event''? Which one impressed you?
        The President. ``The Cobra Event.''
        Q. That's the one.
        The President. Well, ``The Hot Zone'' was interesting to me because
    of the Ebola thing, because that was a fact book. But I thought ``The
    Cobra Event'' was interesting, especially when he said what his sources were, which seemed fairly
    credible to me. And then I read another book about a group of terrorists
    shutting down the telephone networks in the Northeast and the Midwest.
        Q. What was that? Do you remember?
        The President. I can't remember. I read so many things. I can't
    remember. A couple years ago. But anyway, when I--and a lot of times
    it's just for thrills, but a lot of times these people are not far off.
    You know, they sell books by imagining the future, and sometimes they're
    right; sometimes they're wrong.
        So I've gotten--I don't want to sound--I've gotten a lot of sort of
    solid, scientific input. I've also solicited opinions from people
    working

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    on the genome project, for example, and about what the implications of
    that might be for dealing with biological warfare. And last year, we had
    a whole group of experts come in here and spend an extended amount of
    time with me and then follow up with the staff on biological issues in
    particular. So I've had a real interest in this, and I think we're about
    to get up to speed.
        But we just have to be prepared for it. I mean, it's--if you look
    back through all of human history, people who are interested in gaining
    control or influence or advantage over others have brought to bear the
    force of arms. And what normally happens, from the beginning of history,
    is the arms work until a defense is erected, and then there's an
    equilibrium until there is a new offensive system developed, and then a
    defense comes up--going all the way back to--well, even before it, but
    castle moats which were overcome by catapults.
        And so, basically, I think what has concerned me is that we, because
    we're moving from one big issue--will there be a nuclear war between the
    United States and the Soviet Union--to now a whole lot of proliferation
    of issues, dealing with smaller scale nuclear issues, chemical and
    biological issues, missile technology, and of course, the related
    computer cyber-crime issue--is that I just don't want the lag time
    between offense and defense to be any longer than is absolutely
    necessary.
        That, I think, is the challenge for us, is to try to--before
    anything really tragic happens not only in the United States but
    anywhere else. We've had enough warning signs out there now, enough
    concrete evidence, and we need to close the door of the gap between the
    offense and defense.
        Q. How worried should we be, and how--we don't want to panic people.
    And research has seen some of these warning signs, and readers call, and
    they want to know, is this--how worried should we be? Is this serious
    today, and is the threat rising? Is it going be more serious in the
    future?
        The President. I would say that if the issue is how probable is it
    in the very near-term an American city or community would be affected,
    I'd say you probably shouldn't be too worried. But if the issue is, is
    it a near certainty that at some time in the future there will be some
    group, probably a terrorist group, that attempts to bring to bear either
    the use or the threat of a chemical or biological operation, I would say
    that is highly likely to happen sometime in the next few years. And
    therefore, I would say the appropriate response is not worry or panic
    but taking this issue very seriously, expecting all elected officials
    with any responsibility in this area to know everything they can, and to
    do everything we can both to erect all possible defenses and then to try
    to make sure we are doing everything we can to stop this.
        Now, we know right now--we know that a lot of what we've done
    already has delayed WMD programs, some of which I can't talk about, but
    slowed the development of WMD programs, of missile technology
    development that might deliver such weapons and other things. And we're
    doing everything we can to stop or slow down the ability of others,
    insofar as we know about it and can do something about it. And
    meanwhile, we're doing everything we can both to develop defenses and
    emergency responses. But I think we've got an enormous amount of work
    out there ahead of us, an enormous amount of work.
        And a lot of this has to be done with great cooperation between the
    Federal Government--we need cooperation of the private sector on the
    cyber issues, the computer issues. We need cooperation with local
    government on public health response issues, exposure--if there appears
    to be an outbreak. We had all these sort of false alarms of anthrax in
    California--how many?--more than a dozen, I think, in the last month. So
    we need to be able to diagnose and to treat and also to manage those
    things.

    Chemical and Biological Weapons

        Q. Does one of these threats worry you more than another, and does
    any one in particular keep you awake at night?
        The President. Well, I have spent some late nights thinking a lot
    about this and reading a lot about it. I think in terms of offense
    versus defense, if you go back to where we started, the thing that I'm
    most interested in--and you will see we've allocated several hundred
    million dollars basically to research and to applied research--the thing
    that I'm most interested in is developing the ability to quickly contain
    biological agents.
        A chemical attack would be horrible, but it would be finite. You
    know, it's just like--for the people who went through Oklahoma City,
    nothing could be more horrible. But it didn't

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    spread. The thing that bothers people about biological agents is that,
    unless they're properly diagnosed, contained, and treated, that it could
    spread.
        For example, we know that if all of us went to a rally on The Mall
    tomorrow with 10,000 people, and somebody flew a low-flying crop duster
    and sprayed us all with biological agents from, let's say 200 feet, that
    no matter how toxic it were, half of us would walk away, for reasons no
    one quite understands. You know, either we wouldn't breathe it, or we'd
    have some miraculous resistance to it. And the other half of us,
    somebody would have to diagnose in a hurry and then contain and treat.
    Otherwise, it would be kind of like the gift that keeps on giving, you
    know. [Laughter]
        And I don't mean that--I'm not trying to be macabre, but you asked
    me what keeps me awake at night, and that bothers me. And that's why the
    thing that I thought was most important about what we did last year, and
    what we learned a little bit from our defense scare--even though it was
    on a computer issue, we had this defense issue, plus we were dealing
    with all this--we'd studied for a year all this--especially this
    biological issue--is we had this work going on in 12 different places in
    the Government. So we had to organize our efforts so that we could be
    accessible to local governments, so we could work with them to set up
    their own preventive mechanisms.
        And I have to tell you, it may be--we may have to await--it's a note
    I made to myself that we may have to have a perfect defense, I mean,
    instantaneous. We may have to depend upon the genome project,
    interestingly enough, because once the human genes' secrets are
    unlocked, then if you and I think we've been infected, they could take a
    blood sample, and there would be a computer program which would show us
    if we had, let's say, we had a variant of anthrax. Let's suppose some
    terrorist hired a genius scientist and a laboratory to take basic
    anthrax and put some variant in it that would be resistant to all known
    anthrax antidotes.
        Q. Okay. Or a Russian scientist.
        The President. Yes. So let's just suppose that happened. And what
    you would want is to be able to take a blood sample, do an analysis, put
    it through a software program that had already been developed, and say,
    ``Okay, here is--this is how the genes are different. This is the
    difference.'' And then presumably, not too long after we've developed
    this, they will already know, well, therefore, this is how you should--
    how you should change the vaccine.
        And we know now--I know this is kind of bewildering, but keep in
    mind this is actually good news because, if there were no genome
    project, if there were no rapid way to do quick analysis that would go
    right to the tiniest variant, we would be in trouble. And now these
    scientists are working on this, and we're actually a little bit ahead of
    the original predicted timetable on unlocking the secrets of the gene.
    And when that happens, one of the side benefits, I think, will be to be
    able to tell these things much more quickly.
        But meanwhile, we've got this plan. We're stockpiling the vaccines,
    and we're doing all this research which the Government has to fund,
    because obviously there's no market for it, right? It's not like--
    there's no market for it, and I hope there never will be any market for
    it. But we have to pay, the Government has to pay for this research to
    develop new vaccines and to manage it along. And I think we will do--I
    think we've got a very good increase in the budget, and I really think
    it will have broad bipartisan support.
        Q. There's a school of worrywarts out there that says this genome
    stuff is a double-edged sword, and at some point you can envision ethnic
    weapons, looking at racial differences and try to do selective----
        Q. And targeting.
        Q. Look at Kosovo. Look at how much of the blood that has spilled is
    just rooted in this ethnic----
        The President. Yes, but I think to be fair, we're a good ways away
    from that. I think we need to worry far more about the fact that most of
    these groups--we know, for example--let's take something I can talk
    about because it's public record. We know Usama bin Ladin's network has made an effort to get chemical weapons.
        Q. Biological or just chemical?
        The President. Well, we know they've made an effort to get chemical
    weapons; they may have made an effort to get biological weapons. We do
    not know that they have them. It is true--if you take this thing out to
    sort of the science fiction conclusion, obviously the genome project
    itself carries the seeds of its own misuse.

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    But right now I'm absolutely convinced that the advantages dwarf the
    disadvantages in this area.
        Plus, which all the other advantages of it--I mean, it's going to
    lead us to--we will save countless lives because we'll know in advance
    what predisposition people have, what problems they have--the genome
    project would be the seminal event--you know, when it's done, of the
    first part of the 21st century, there's no doubt about that.
        But to come back to your point, the only point I would make,
    whenever you ask me a question like that, I think it's best for you to
    remember the formulation that I started with, and it's interesting to
    think about the moat and the catapult, the spear and the shield--
    anything. It's all a question of people who have money, organization,
    and an interest, whether it's political or financial or religious or
    whatever, in oppressing other people or holding them down, will always
    be looking for new offensive weapons.
        Our goal should always be, for the sake of the world as well as the
    security of the American people, to make sure not only that we can
    defend ourselves and counter-punch, if you will, but to develop with
    each new wave of technology to close the gap between offense and
    defense. And if we do that, I think that's the strategy that I hope will
    become at least an integral part of our national security strategy in
    the WMD area.

    Anthrax Vaccinations

        Q. Mr. President, in the interim we have a lot of Americans, more
    than 2 million Americans in uniform, being vaccinated against anthrax.
    Are you vaccinated?
        The President. The Secret Service told me I couldn't discuss that,
    and they have good reasons for not wanting me to do it. But let me say,
    I'm convinced that like any other vaccination, there may be some small
    rejection, but I think on balance it's a safe procedure. I've looked at
    the reports, and I think on balance, given the fact that we send so many
    of our men and women in uniform into places where they could be exposed,
    I think that they're better off being vaccinated. I do not believe that
    the threat in the United States is sufficient that I could recommend
    that to people, to the public at large.
        Q. What about first responders or people in hospitals who might be
    exposed to smallpox, anthrax, plague, and things like that?
        The President. The real answer there is, we haven't reached a
    conclusion, but we're considering that. Because we have to work with the
    first responders, we've got the public health people looking into this
    and other people, and I think that that's a judgment that ought to be
    made primarily by people who are in the best position to make a
    professional judgment about it. So that's something that's being
    considered.

    Response to the Terrorist Threat

        Q. We've heard about something else that's being considered that I
    think Bill wants to ask you about.
        Q. As you may be aware, Secretary Cohen
    and people at the Pentagon are talking about trying to create a new
    position of commander in chief for the continental United States because
    of the terror threat. And it's moving through the system, and at some
    point it's going to come to you, probably sometime this summer. Are you
    inclined to create that kind of position for the military?
        The President. Let me say, I think that we need to have an organized
    response, if you will, to what you might call ``homeland defense'' on
    CBW and cyber or computer terrorism issues. And now we've established a
    national coordinator on these issues in the White House. We've got this
    national domestic preparation office at the Justice Department. We've
    got a National Infrastructure Protection Center. We've got a joint task
    force on cyber defense already at DOD in response to what they went
    through before.
        So I want them to look at where we are and make some recommendations
    to me. I'm not sure that that is what they're going to recommend, and I
    think that I shouldn't give an answer to the question you ask until I
    see what the range of options are and what the range of recommendations
    is.
        Q. Do you have a leaning one way or another?
        The President. No, just except to say that it is very important that
    we outline every single responsibility that we have as a nation at the
    national level and that someone be responsible for it. I want to know--
    as I said, one of the things that we learned last year that I think was
    a legitimate criticism of what we have done

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    in our administration is that we had 12 different places where these
    activities were going on, and they weren't being properly coordinated
    and driven in the proper fashion. And we've tried to resolve this. And
    this is sort of the last big kind of organizational piece, as far as I
    know, that is yet to be resolved. So the military is going to make me a
    recommendation, and I will respond accordingly.
        Again, the American people--this shouldn't be a cause for alarm;
    this should be a cause for reassurance. They should want us to be well-
    organized on these things because--remember, for years and years, when I
    was a boy, we used to do all those--they had all these fallout shelters,
    and every school had its drills and all that. I mean, I'm older than
    you, so you wouldn't remember this, but----
        Q. No, we did it.
        The President. But you know, and we--it was a sensible thing to do
    under the circumstances. Thank God we never experienced it. But it was
    the sensible thing to do. And so what I want us to do is everything,
    within reason, we can to minimize our exposure and risks here, and
    that's how I'm going to evaluate this Pentagon recommendation.
        Secretary Cohen, I think, is also real focused on this now. I've
    been very pleased with the priority he's given it. And I think that all
    these guys know that after their experience with the computer issue that
    all this--tomorrow's threats may be very different from yesterday's, and
    we've got to be ready.
        Q. What do you say to people, to skeptics who say all this is just
    Pentagon maneuvering, creating new bogeymen to scare us so they can whip
    up new budget authority? And it's--and that's a large crowd.
        The President. Even though we're talking about hundreds of millions
    of dollars and in the aggregate a few billion dollars, it's nowhere near
    as expensive as maintaining this sort of basic infrastructure of
    defense; the case of public health, the basic infrastructure of public
    health.
        I say to them, they should understand that we have intelligence--and
    a lot of it is in the public arena, you all write about it--about all
    the countries that are trying--the countries and the groups that want
    chemical weapons, that want biological weapons, that are trying to get
    agents, precursor agents that you can use to develop chemicals or basic
    agents you can use to develop biological weapons. And everybody knows
    now the world is full of hackers that seek to intrude on networks, that
    seek to insert bogus codes into programs, and all this sort of stuff.
    And it would be completely irresponsible for us not to allocate a
    substantial investment in trying to protect America from threats that
    will be, in all probability, as likely or more likely in the future than
    the threats we think we face today.
        That's why we started this conversation by saying, I don't want to
    say anything that will overly alarm anybody. I'm not trying to stir up a
    lot of false threats. But if you look at just what the UNSCOM people in
    Iraq--they say that they don't believe that the reporting in Iraq is
    consistent with what they believe the chemical capacity there is.
        If you look at the fact with regard to chemicals, with the Chemical
    Weapons Convention, if we can get it properly implemented, at least we
    will be able to track probably, that plus intelligence, large volumes of
    chemical stocks. But with biological stocks, a very small laboratory
    with the right materials to work with, you could develop supplies that
    could kill a large number of people. It simply is irresponsible for us
    not to both do the best we can with public health protections, do the
    best research we can on vaccines, stockpile what we know works, and then
    get out there and try to build a defense and an ability to interrupt and
    stop, with export controls and any other way we can, these developments.
    And it costs money. But to me, it's money well spent.
        And if there is never an incident, nobody would be happier than me
    20 years from now if the same critics would be able to say, ``Oh, see,
    Clinton was a kook; nothing happened.'' I would be the happiest man on
    Earth. I would be the happiest man on Earth. If they could say, ``He
    overexaggerated it; nothing happened; all he did was make a bunch of
    jobs for scientists and build the Pentagon budget,'' I would be elated
    20 years from now to be subject to that criticism because it would mean
    that nothing happened, and in no small measure because of the efforts
    we've made.

    Russia

        Q. Since we have so little time left, Mr. President, Russia. How can
    you be sure--since they violated the treaty that they signed banning
    biological weapons for 20 years, does it make sense

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    to work with them now on biological projects? Are you certain that they
    are not doing biological research? And what do you do?
        The President. Let me say this. I think that the more we work with
    them and the more their scientists are working with us and the more
    successful we are in building a common endeavor, the more it will be in
    their interest to comply.
        The real danger in Russia, I think--dangers--are two. One is--I'll
    take one that is outside the CBW area so it doesn't look like I'm waving
    the red flag here. When we started the space station--you know, John
    Glenn went up and then we sent the first two components of the space
    station up--it had been months since a lot of those Russian scientists
    had been paid. That's why it is very, very important, I think, to say we
    value this enormous infrastructure of scientific expertise they have in
    the space area, in the CBW area, and we want to work with them. This
    budget of mine would enable us to do joint work with 8,000 Russian
    scientists. Now, there are, I think, 40,000 total--we think. But that's
    important. That bothers me.
        The second thing that concerns me is that when Russia shed
    communism, they adopted a strategy which was widely lauded at the time
    in the United States and elsewhere, but they were actually--when I went
    to Russia, and you remember right after my mother died I got on the
    plane, and I went to the Czech Republic and Russia--that was, what,
    January of '94. Actually, at that time the Czech Republic was doing very
    well and was sort of the poster child of the new economy in the former
    Communist countries. But when I was there, Russia had actually
    privatized more property than the Czech Republic had. And this relates
    partly to the economic crisis, but when they did it, they did it without
    having had the benefit of an effective central bank, a securities and
    exchange commission, all these other things, so that you had money
    coming in and money flying out now.
        And one of the problems they have now is that it's not a
    totalitarian Government anymore; there are a lot of private companies--
    all the private companies there by definition used to be part of the
    state, unless they're new businesses. And so one of the problems we're
    having is, even when they're trying to help us, is keeping up with what
    all these companies and their subsidiaries do.
        And that's been the tension that you've written a lot about and
    there's been a lot in the press about--was there missile cooperation
    with Iran or not, and does that violate our understanding, and does that
    call for some action vis-a-vis Russia? And part of the problem is just
    keeping up with this proliferation of companies and people that used to
    have some connection to the Soviet State, some connection to the defense
    apparatus.
        It's not a simple process, and it's not a perfect process, but I am
    absolutely convinced that this threat reduction initiative we've got can
    kind of intensify our efforts to work with them, as well as to really
    implement the Chemical Weapons Treaty and get some teeth in the
    Biological Weapons Convention. That's very, very important. I think that
    is the best strategy. It may not be perfect, but it is better than the
    alternative.

    Response to an Attack

        Q. What do you do if the nightmare comes to pass, and some country
    hits us, hits us hard, with a biological weapon? What kind of response
    would you do?
        The President. Well, first of all, if some country were thinking
    about doing that, I would certainly hope that they wouldn't have the
    capacity to do it before we could stop them or interrupt them, if it was
    a--that is, if you're talking about somebody lobbing a missile over here
    or something like that.
        I think if it happened, it would be an act of war, and there would
    be a very strong response. But I think we've demonstrated that. But I
    think the far more likely thing is somebody representing some interest--
    maybe it could be a rogue state; maybe it could be a terrorist network--
    walking around a city with a briefcase full of vials or in spray cans,
    you know.
        So what we have to do--any country with any sense, if they wanted to
    attack us, would try to do it through a terrorist network, because if
    they did it with a missile we'd know who did it, and then they'd be
    sunk. It would be--that's a deal where they're bound to lose, big time.
        Q. Would you respond with nuclear weapons to a biological attack?
        The President. Well, I never discuss the nuclear issue. I don't
    think that's appropriate. But

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    I think that we would have at least a proportionate, if not a
    disproportionate, response if someone committed an act of war against
    the United States. That's what we would do. And if somebody willfully
    murdered a lot of our civilians, there would be a very heavy price to
    pay.

    Senate Impeachment Trial Presentation by Senator Dale Bumpers

        Q. Mr. President, you have time for one more----
        Q. We're about to go. Did you have a chance to watch any of Senator
    Bumpers' presentation today?
        The President. I did. It's the only thing I've watched. I watched
    that.
        Q. He said--he criticized the House managers for lacking compassion
    for your family. He described your family as a family that has been
    ``about as decimated as a family can get. The relationship between
    husband and wife, father and child, has been incredibly strained if not
    destroyed.'' Is that an accurate representation?
        The President. Well, it's been--I would say it has been a strain for
    my family. But we have worked very hard, and I think we have come
    through the worst. We love each other very much, and we've worked on it
    very hard. But I think he was showing--you know, he knows me and
    Hillary and Chelsea, and we've all been friends, as he said, for 25 years.
    I think he was just trying to inject a human element into what he was
    saying.

    Note: The President spoke at 6:30 p.m. in the Oval Office at the White
    House. A brief excerpt of this interview was released by the Office of
    the Press Secretary on January 22, and the full transcript was released
    on January 23. In his remarks, the President referred to author Richard
    Preston; and Usama bin Ladin, who allegedly sponsored the 1998 bombing
    attacks on the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. A tape was not
    available for verification of the content of this interview.