[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
[December 22, 1999]
[Pages 2343-2349]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Interview With Charlie Rose of CBS' ``60 
Minutes II''
December 22, 1999

Terrorism During Millennium Celebrations

    Mr. Rose. Mr. President, because of the recent arrest and heightened 
security concerns at airports, do you expect, worry that there will be 
an incident of terrorism before the first of the year?
    The President. Well, we are on a heightened state of alert, and 
we're doing a lot of work on this. But I would say to the American 
people, they should go on about their business and celebrate the 
holidays as they would, but they should be aware. You know, this whole 
millennial idea draws out a lot of people who are maybe, by our 
standards, deranged, and other people maybe want to use it for their own 
political ends. So if people see anything suspicious, they should report 
it to the authorities as quickly as possible. But otherwise, I should 
say, they should go on about their business. We're working very, very 
hard on this.
    Mr. Rose. It worries you?
    The President. No, I'm concerned, but I think we have, I think, the 
best law enforcement folks we could have, and they are working very 
hard. And we're doing quite well so far. So I have every hope that we'll 
get through it. But I think that what I would ask the American people to 
do is not to stay at home and hide but just to keep their eyes open. If 
they see something that looks fishy, tell the authorities and we'll get 
on it. But they should know that we're working this very hard.

Last Year of President's Term

    Mr. Rose. All right, let me--I look around this office, and I see a 
desk over there that President Kennedy sat at. And I remember the story 
he said about the Presidency, and one of the great things about the 
Presidency was he could walk to work. As you think about leaving this 
building, what will you miss the most?
    The President. I think what I'll miss the most is the work, the job, 
the contact with all kinds of people and all kinds of issues, the 
ability to make a difference, to solve problems, to open up 
opportunities for other people. There's almost no--not almost, I suppose 
there is no job like it in the world. It's been an unbelievable thrill 
and a profound honor, and I will miss it very much.
    I'll miss a lot of the other things. I love living in the White 
House. Hillary, I suppose, has done 
more work on the White House than anybody since the Truman 
administration, redoing rooms and building a sculpture garden and doing 
things like that. And we love living here. I love going to Camp David; I 
love Air Force One; I love all of the perks of the job. But the thing I 
love most is being President, doing the job every day. It just--to me, 
it's an almost indescribable honor. I would never grow tired of it, and 
I feel graced every day.

Term Limits

    Mr. Rose. If you could change the 22d amendment, would you?

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    The President. I don't know. It's probably not fair to ask. On 
balance, I think the two-term tradition has served us well. I'm glad 
President Roosevelt served the third term, because of the war. But on 
balance, I think it's served us well.
    Now, you know, I'm young, and I'm strong, and I'm, as far I know, in 
good health. I love the job. And so if I could serve again, I probably 
would. But I think that's the reason we have this limit, so that people 
like me don't get to make that decision. [Laughter]
    Mr. Rose. Are you going to leave a note in that desk over there for 
your successor, and what will you say?
    The President. I will, and I don't know what I'll say. But probably 
most of what I'll say will be predictable. I'll be wishing my successor 
well and talking a little bit about the job and offering to be available 
if I can ever be of any help.

National Economy

    Mr. Rose. Prosperity. Economic prosperity and growth has been a 
hallmark of this Presidency. How long can it last, and will it be a part 
of our future, our near future?
    The President. Well, it certainly will be part of our future. Now, 
how long it will last? The truth is no one knows. I believed when I got 
here that there was a chance that we could have a very long period of 
economic growth. Now I couldn't have known, when we started and we 
started slashing the deficit and investing more in technology, that we 
would have the longest economic expansion in history that would even 
outstrip wartime when we had been fully mobilized. And in February we 
will.
    But I think that there are some fundamentally different things now. 
If the Government can follow good policies and the Federal Reserve will 
follow smart policies, there is this enormous power of productivity 
we're getting out of the revolution in technology and information 
technology. It's just now working its way into every sector of the 
economy, and it's also continually advancing itself. So I think if we 
can keep that going and if we can keep our markets open, that's very 
important, not just the exports we sell but the imports we buy, the open 
market keeps the American economy highly competitive and tends to keep 
inflation down. And I think that's one of the things that's been under 
appreciated about this. I never will forget, back in '94 I got really 
alarmed when lumber prices went way up in a hurry, and I thought 
homebuilding prices were going to explode. And then all of a sudden, we 
had this big infusion of less costly imports.
    Now, we have to work on fair trade rules; we've got to have--we 
can't be taken advantage of, as some tried to during the Asian financial 
crisis, but on balance, these open markets are very good for us. They 
give us growth and competition, keeps inflation down. And I think that's 
very good.

Globalization and the Technology Gap

    Mr. Rose. What we want to do here in this conversation is really 
focus on the future. You've done a number of conversations about this 
century and your term in office. Thinking about the future and the 
economic health of the country, there is also this process. In 10 
years--10 years ago the wall came down; 5 years ago the web went up. 
Globalization is part of our life.
    The President. It is.
    Mr. Rose. Some worry--and Seattle might be an indication that we're 
looking at the possibility of a great gap between a two-tier system, 
between the haves and the have-nots of the world, those who get it with 
technology and those that don't.
    The President. Well, first of all, the worry is well-founded, but 
it's a constant. That is, we have had a great gap in opportunity, even 
though it's sometimes closed and sometimes open, but there has been a 
huge gap between the haves and have-nots since the dawn of the 
industrial revolution and the creation of middle class societies with 
mass wealth. Some have had it, and others have not ever created it.
    There is a chance that what will happen now is that it will become 
more pronounced across countries and within countries because of the 
advantages that technology-literate people and entrepreneurs with access 
to money will have in a rapidly changing world. That is, it's liable to 
accelerate.
    But I would remind you that in the United States we had an 
increasing gap between the rich and the poor for about 20 years, as we 
moved into this new economic phase. The same thing happened when we 
changed from being an agricultural economy to an industrial economy. In 
the last 2 or 3 years, we started to see the gap close again. And the 
answer is not to run away from globalization. The answer is to make 
change our friend. The answer is to

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have broad access to information and information technology, to have 
broad-based systems of education and health care and family supports in 
every country, and to continue to try to shape the global economy.
    You mentioned Seattle. I think that you had a lot of people out 
there protesting globalization, but they can't reverse it, and it's done 
a lot more good than bad. It's created--over the last 50 years, as the 
world has become more interconnected, we've moved away from the specter 
of war as holocaust, even though there have been a lot of smaller wars, 
and we've seen millions, hundreds of millions of people lifted into the 
middle class. So the answer is how to make this globalization more 
human, more humane, and how to shape it so that everybody has a chance 
to be a part of it.

Response to American Hegemony

    Mr. Rose. Do you hear around the world now, as I'm sure you've heard 
from heads of state and others, this kind of unilateralist--America in 
the future is too strong, too dominant, and the fear of a backlash 
against us.
    The President.  I agree with that. And I think--I've tried to be 
very sensitive to that--I think we have--and to make sure that we 
fulfilled our responsibilities. I think that, on the one hand, people 
are glad that we won the cold war, if you will; they're glad that the 
forces of freedom won. All over the world people are embracing democracy 
and market economics. But if you enjoy the level of military and 
economic strength we have and the level of political influence, people 
are going to resent you.
    And I must say--and again, I don't mean to be partisan here, but I 
think the resentment is deeper when the Congress takes as long as they 
did to pay our U.N. dues and puts the conditions on it they did, when we 
don't ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, when we basically preach 
to other people around the world, you ought to do this, that, or the 
other thing. But instead of helping them, we continue to have a very 
large military budget, but we spend the smallest percentage of our 
income on assistance to other countries to help them succeed 
economically and politically of any advanced country in the world. So we 
do some things that breed this resentment.
    Now, a lot of them resented me at Seattle because they think that 
when the United States says we ought to have core labor standards and we 
ought to have good environmental standards in a world trading system, 
that I'm trying to keep poor countries down, that I just want them to 
open their markets to us, but they won't get rich because I'm going to 
try to force them to give up their comparative wage advantage or their 
ability to grow. That's not true. So some of the resentments against 
America are not fair. But it's all perfectly understandable. I mean, 
look how fortunate we are compared to most other countries. and when 
people get in a tight spot, they want us to come help; Bosnia, Kosovo, 
the Middle East, you name it.

Prospects for the 21st Century

    Mr. Rose. Do you think this century coming up will be America's 
century, as the 20th century has been described?
    The President. Well, I think it can be. But I think we have to think 
very carefully about how we want to define that. I mean, look what we 
know will happen. We know that, barring some completely unforeseen 
event, China and, sometime thereafter, India will have economies that 
look bigger than ours, because they've got so many more people than we 
do, 4 times as many people; in the case of China, even more. We know 
that Europe will grow more integrated, I think, in the 21st century. And 
the European Union will be more and more a union. And they have 50 
percent more people than we do, and they could have a lot more than that 
if they continue to bring in other countries.
    So I do not believe that we will have the relative economic 
dominance we have today. We've got about 4 percent of the world's people 
and almost 22 percent of the world's income. But I think we can be still 
very prosperous. I think we can still be the strongest individual 
country in the world in many ways. But I think we will have to build 
partnerships with some of those who resent us now. We will have to have 
an increasingly interdependent world. Because, whether we like it or 
not--it's like globalization; interdependence is another word for 
globalization--we will become more interdependent, and we'll have to 
learn to be adroit at that. We won't be able to just say, ``Well, if we 
like it, we're here, and if we don't, we'll walk away.'' We'll have to 
really work on our partnership skills.

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Future Allies

    Mr. Rose. You touched on something that I've thought about. This 
century was marked by our friends becoming our enemies--France and 
Germany--our enemies becoming our friends. Is that going to be part of 
the 21st century, people we now look on as rivals become friends, 
friends become----
    The President. I think it is highly likely that some of the people 
that have been our most recent rivals will be our friends.
    Mr. Rose. Like?
    The President. Well, I know a lot of people are very skeptical about 
Russia now, because of the problems they've had. But they just had a 
genuinely democratic election with a lot of debate, vigorous opposition, 
brutal campaign ads, you know, the whole 9 yards.
    Mr. Rose. Did the results surprise you?
    The President. No. It's about what I thought they'd be. You know, 
still only 25 percent of them are voting for the old Communist Party; 
the rest of them are for something else, in spite of the economic 
hardship that they have faced in the last few years. So I still think 
there's a chance that if the leaders of Russia define their national 
greatness in 21st century terms, that is in terms of their ability to 
unleash the creative capacity of their people rather than their ability 
to dominate their neighbors, which was their 19th and 20th century 
definition of greatness, that they will be--we'll have a real 
partnership there. It's also possible that we'll have one with China.
    Mr. Rose. A partnership?
    The President. Absolutely. It just depends on how they view us and 
their own self-interest.

Future Rivals

    Mr. Rose. Do you see, on the other hand, people who we might 
consider friends, like Western Europe, becoming more rivals because----
    The President. I think the only way that would happen is if it were 
provoked by greater protectionism, economic protectionism outside the 
borders of Europe. That is Europe could get so big, and they could 
integrate the economy of Europe, and they'll have a lot of poor 
countries coming in just like we have poor States and poor regions. If 
they close their economy, rather than open it, that could be a difficult 
thing. But I think it's far more likely that our former enemies will 
become at least friendlier, if we're not friends, and that all of us 
together will face the enemies of the nation-state in the 21st century.
    Mr. Rose. The enemies of the nation-state?
    The President. Yes. The organized enemies of the nation-state that 
have vast money and vast access to weapons and technology and travel: 
the organized crime syndicates; the narcotraffickers; the terrorists. 
And I think the likelihood that all these people will be integrated--
there may be some rogue states that will support them, but I think 
you're more likely to see the nation-states trying to uphold stability 
in their national lives, increasingly open and democratic. Even China, I 
think, will become more open and more democratic. They're already 
electing mayors in a million little towns, literally.
    Mr. Rose. In democratic elections?
    The President. Yes. And so I think--by their standards. They don't 
have a Republican or a Democratic Party like we do, but they are having 
these elections. I think in the future the likelihood is that nation-
states will be allied against the enemies of the organized society and 
the open society.

Chemical and Biological Threats

    Mr. Rose. Do you expect in the next 10, 20 years to be a terrorist 
attack in the United States, thinking about the recent events, thinking 
about the potential for germ warfare, the potential for biological 
attacks, and the potential----
    The President. Oh, absolutely. I think that's a threat.
    Mr. Rose. A likelihood?
    The President. Well, I think it's highly likely that someone will 
try. And keep in mind, the World Trade Center was blown up just a few 
years ago. We were fortunate to catch the people who did it. Oklahoma 
City had the terrible explosion.
    What I think will happen--let me back up a minute. I have done 
everything I could as President to try to organize the permanent 
Government, the people who will be here when I am gone, and the Congress 
to deal with the long-term threat of biological, chemical, and small-
scale nuclear war, as well as the increasing sophistication of 
traditional weapons. And we are doing a massive amount of work now in 
preparation to try to minimize the chances that it will occur and--God 
forbid if it should occur--to try to minimize the impact of it. I

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think, parenthetically, one of the benefits of our research into the 
human genome is that we'll be able to analyze these viruses much more 
quickly and come up with antidotes much more quickly than we used to be 
able to. Even now, when new strains of diseases--whether it's AIDS or 
anything else--come up, we can identify them so much more quickly than 
we used to be able to.
    So what I think will happen--let me just make this point--the 
organized forces of destruction will take maximum advantage of new 
technologies and new scientific developments just like democratic 
societies do. So I think, just like the computers are all being 
miniaturized and people carry these little pads around that have--and 
now you've got these gadgets where you can use as a telephone or a 
typewriter, do E-mail, and all that. Well, the same miniaturization will 
apply to biological and chemical weapons. And if people should get 
nuclear materials that can be made into a bomb, to nuclear materials, 
which is why we've worked so hard with Russia to control access to that 
stuff.
    So we've just got to be ready. There will always be bad guys out 
there in the world who will try to take advantage of people's 
vulnerabilities.
    Mr. Rose. But aren't the odds against us, when you describe that 
kind of technological advantage--I mean, and just recently two people 
trying--in separate cases--trying to get inside America's borders with 
explosives--it gets more and more easier to conceal, and more and more 
the likelihood that an American city----
    The President. Well, if you go back through all of human history and 
you look at conflicts in weapons systems--and that's what we're talking 
about, biological, chemical weapons--offense always precedes defense; 
that is you've got to know what you're defending against.
    So my goal in this whole thing, trying to mobilize the country on 
biological, chemical weapons, and make sure the Government is doing 
everything possible, is to close the gap between offense and defense. 
And the answer to your question is we won't be severely--there might be 
incidences. I mean, the World Trade Center was blown up; Oklahoma City 
was blown up. We've got a guy in the laboratory in the Middle West, 
almost 5 years ago, who was trying to develop biological agents, 
political extremist.
    Mr. Rose. And there are scary ideas coming out of science, where 
viruses can attack certain ethnic groups?
    The President. Yes, there are people that----
    Mr. Rose. The potential of science to do harm is alarming.
    The President. But you know, it's always been that way. I mean, it's 
always been that way. And I think that I'm actually more optimistic 
than--keep in mind, no one believes that someone's going to come in and 
kill everybody in America. That's what we worried about during the cold 
war. And we still have to deal with these traditional threats. That's 
why India and Pakistan is perhaps--the Kashmiri issue is perhaps the 
most dangerous one in the world today because you've got two nuclear 
powers there who are somewhat uncertain about one another and why we 
have to work hard to avoid that.
    But yes, there will be problems. Yes, there could be terrible 
incidences. But I would say to the American people, they should, on 
balance, be hopeful. But what they should do is to support the 
leadership of this country in putting maximum resources into research 
and development so that we're prepared. And I think we will grow 
increasingly sophisticated in picking these people up, increasingly 
sophisticated in detecting these weapons, and what we can't afford is to 
have a long period of time where these offensive capabilities of the new 
age are better than the defensive capabilities. If we can close the gap 
between offense and defense, we'll be fine.
    Mr. Rose. What's interesting about a conversation about the future 
with you is that because of this office and your curiosity, you see and 
know more than almost anyone. I mean, you are aware because you talk to 
the scientists; you talk to people responsible.
    The President. I think about it a lot.
    Mr. Rose. You do?
    The President. Sure. I have to. See, I think one of the jobs of the 
President, because of the unique opportunity of the office you just 
described it, is to always be thinking about what will happen 10, 20, 30 
years from now, and to allocate some time and effort to make decisions 
for which there will be almost no notice.
    You know, right now, I mean, hardly anybody reports on or thinks 
about the work we're doing in biological warfare or chemical warfare--
the speech I gave at the National Science Foundation--but it's fine. 
It's what my former national

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security aide, Tony Lake, used to call ``the 
dog that doesn't bark.'' And there is a sense in which there's a bunch 
of dogs in this old world you don't want to bark.
    Mr. Rose. It's the old notion about if the tree falls in the forest 
and nobody hears it, did the tree fall? Can you--are there things that 
we don't know about that alarm you, this sense of science and where it's 
at and what's coming down the pike, that gives you great pause?
    The President. Well, there are a lot of things that concern me. You 
know, we've done a lot of work--the other thing that, besides the 
chemical and biological weapons--trying to protect computer systems.

Year 2000 Problems

    Mr. Rose. Speak to Y2K. Where are your concerns, and do you think 
that most of those----
    The President. My concerns, well, they're much more traditional in 
Y2K. I think we've done a good job here. We've spent a lot of money--I 
say we, the American people, not just the Government, the private 
sector--we've spent a lot of money, tried to be ready. I feel a high 
level of confidence. It wouldn't bother me a bit to get on a commercial 
airline, for example, on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day and fly 
around. I think our systems are in order here.
    My concerns really are for some of our friends around the world that 
have more rudimentary computer networks and capacities and whether they 
will have a shutdown that they won't be able to immediately fix or get 
around.
    Mr. Rose. And make them vulnerable to what?
    The President. Well, if there were problems in the financial system, 
what if records disappeared and people lost money? That would be 
destabilizing in some countries. If power systems----
    Mr. Rose. And make them vulnerable to outside forces, to kinds of 
elements you mentioned earlier?
    The President. Well, maybe, but I think more internal 
destabilization. What if a power system shuts down in a big country with 
a hard winter? How long will it take to get back up before anyone would 
freeze to death? I mean, these are the kinds of practical problems that 
I'm concerned about.
    But I think that--I'm talking about something far more insidious, 
though. What we have to--this is, again, offense and defense. What we 
have to do--this technology of computers is changing so fast, and we've 
got a lot of whizbangs out there, and they can make a ton of money 
working for bad guys. So what we've got to do is to continuously work on 
protecting the cyber security, the infrastructure of the information 
economy, just like we're trying to deal with chemical and biological 
warfare and the miniaturization of weapons and all this.
    But most people are good people. We've got plenty of talented 
people. We just need to be imagining the future, thinking about all the 
problems as well as all the opportunities, and then prepare. Society 
always has problems; there are always misfortunes. But basically, I 
believe the future is quite promising and far more exciting than any 
period in history. I wish I were going to live to be 150; I'd love to 
see what happens.

Possibilities of the Future

    Mr. Rose. Would you like to be cloned?
    The President. No. I wouldn't wish that on anybody. [Laughter]
    Mr. Rose. There is this thing, too. I mean, think about Chelsea's 
children, your grandchildren, say the year 2050, whatever the 
appropriate time might be. What's this world going to look like? Is it 
going to be more interesting, more challenging? How will we travel; what 
kind of food will we eat; will we go to other planets?
    The President. I think we'll be eating food that's like what we eat 
now. I think it will be safer. I think we'll know a lot more about it, 
even safer than it is now. I think that in big, urban areas, I think 
we'll still have our love affairs with cars. I think they will be much 
more safe. They'll be made of composite materials that are much more 
resistant to wrecks. And I think where there is a lot of heavy traffic, 
I think that we'll all travel by a computerized plan.
    I also think there will be a lot more rapid rail transit. I think it 
will be safer. It'll be better, and I think we'll be able to do things 
while we travel and spend more time. I think we will go into outer 
space, and at sometime in the next century, I think there will be large, 
permanent platforms sustaining life in outer space that will basically 
be jumping-off places to distant planets and maybe even beyond. That's 
what I think will happen.

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    Q. Hold on one second. I know you've got to change tape. Okay.
    Mr. Rose. You said computerized plan----
    The President. No, I meant cars. You want me to say it again?
    Mr. Rose. How much time do we have?
    The President. I just misspoke myself.
    Mr. Rose. How much time do we have here?
    The President. I don't know, 10 minutes, 5 minutes?
    You want to do that again?
    Mr. Rose. The last question? All right. Okay.
    Think about the future of your grandchildren, Chelsea's children, 
the year 2050. What will life be like then? What kind of food; what kind 
of transportation; will we be living on other planets? Will we still be 
concerned about things that concern us now, like overweight, stuff like 
that?
    The President. I don't think all of the problems will go away. I 
think the food will be pretty much like it is now, but even safer. I 
think that on Earth, we'll travel in automobiles, still, but in traffic 
jams, we'll have automated systems. I think there will be a lot more 
high speed rail. I think we'll travel in ways that give us more free 
time to do things while we travel.
    I think that there will be large platforms in outer space that will 
be jumping-off places to distant planets, and I think that the 
biomedical advances will be stunning. I think a lot of cancers will be 
cured. I think there will be a vaccine for AIDS. I think that the 
research in the human gene and the revolution, the continuing revolution 
in microchips will enable people to probably cure spinal cord injuries 
by having a programmed chip that goes into the spine and replicates all 
the nerves that were damaged.
    I think that it'll be a fascinating time. And I think there will be 
lots and lots of continuous daily communication with people across 
national and cultural lines.
    Mr. Rose. Would you go to space if you had the opportunity?
    The President. I might. I'm real interested in it. I like it a lot. 
I think it's important.

Post-Presidential Plans

    Mr. Rose. What one thing do you most want to accomplish--I've got to 
go--when you leave this office? What's the single most important thing 
for you to accomplish when you leave?
    The President. You mean, after I'm not President anymore?
    Mr. Rose. After you're not President.
    The President. I think the most important thing is for me to be a 
useful citizen of this country and of this world, because I've had 
opportunities here only my other living predecessors have had. And I 
think that for me to be able to continue the work I've done in racial 
and religious and ethnic reconciliation and trying to convince people 
that we can grow the global economy and still preserve the environment 
and trying to empower the poor and the dispossessed, in trying to spread 
the universal impact of education and use technology to benefit ordinary 
people, these kinds of things--I think I should continue to do this work 
and trying--I want to get young people into public service. I want them 
to believe this is noble and important work.
    So I think, in a word, I have to be a good citizen now. That's the 
most important thing I can do when I leave office is to use the 
maximum--to the maximum extent I can, the knowledge that I have, the 
experience that I've gained to be a really good citizen.
    Mr. Rose. Thank you, Mr. President.
    The President. Thank you.

Note: The interview was videotaped at 5:10 p.m. in the Oval Office for 
later broadcast, and the transcript was released by the Office of the 
Press Secretary on December 28. The text of this interview follows the 
transcript as released by the Office of the Press Secretary. A portion 
of this interview could not be verified because the tape was incomplete.