[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000-2001, Book III)]
[November 19, 2000]
[Pages 2563-2569]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Interview With John King of CNN in Ho Chi Minh 
City
November 19, 2000

New Vietnam-U.S. Relationship

    Mr. King. Thank you for joining us. We're here in Ho Chi Minh City 
with the President of the United States, Bill Clinton, this, the last 
day of his landmark trip here to Vietnam.
    First, sir, thank you for joining us.
    The facts speak for themselves. The first U.S. President to visit 
Vietnam since the end of the war, the first ever to set foot in Hanoi, 
the Capital.
    Interested in your thoughts. You've called this a new chapter, 
turning the page in the relationship. What is it do you think it will 
mean, first for the people of Vietnam, and also for the people of the 
United States?
    The President. Well, of course, I hope it means for the people of 
Vietnam continued openness and continued prosperity. This country has 
made a lot of progress in the last few years. The economy is 
diversifying. It's becoming more open to the rest of the world. Sixty 
percent of the people are under 30 years old. Most of them have no 
memory at all of the war, and they are very much oriented toward the 
future. They are asking themselves all kinds of fundamental questions 
about what the world is like now, how they're going to relate to it, 
what their country should be. So I hope that we have opened a new 
chapter, and I hope it will be good for them and good for us.
    Mr. King. Now obviously, part of the new chapter is a widely 
expanded economic relationship. Do you have much confidence it will go 
beyond that, at least in the short term? After your meeting yesterday 
with the leader of the Communist Party here, he referred to the United 
States in a daily newspaper as imperialists, said that he hoped there 
would be respect for the different way of doing things here. You 
mentioned in your speech, nationally televised here to university 
students, the examples of the United States in the areas of individual 
freedom, religious freedom, political freedom.
    Do you have much confidence that the Government here, as it accepts 
and embraces a wider economic relationship with the West, will do 
anything to bring progress on those other fronts?
    The President. Well, I think there will be more personal freedoms. 
You know, I had a roundtable this morning with a lot of young people, 
and they were asking themselves these same questions. And I believe that 
as we implement this trade agreement, and then Vietnam moves toward 
membership in the World Trade Organization, the rule of law will become 
more important; openness will become more important; there will be a lot 
more access to the Internet and information of all kinds; and so there 
will be more freedom.
    And the question then becomes, when does it become political 
freedom, or will the political system try to restrict them more, as has 
been the case in one or two other countries? The truthful answer is, we 
don't know where it's going. But I think that the trend toward freedom 
is virtually irreversible, and these folks are too young; they're too 
vigorous. And as you can see in the streets, there is a lot of good will 
toward America here. There's a lot of interest in our country and how 
we're dealing with a lot of the challenges of the new century. So I 
believe that the trend is positive.
    Now, of course, the political leaders will have their debates, and I 
had a nice little debate with the General Secretary of the Communist 
Party here about our country, and I stoutly 
disputed that we were an imperialist country. We

[[Page 2564]]

had never had any imperialist designs here. The conflict here was over 
what self-determination for the Vietnamese people really meant and what 
freedom and independence really meant.
    But we have a chance to continue that debate now in a more peaceful 
and more constructive way. And I think the fact that they feel free to 
engage us in it and then have publicity about it--they did, after all, 
allow my speech to the country to be televised, which I think is a good 
sign. And the people came out in Hanoi and here in Ho Chi Minh City to 
see me. So--and it wasn't me; it was the United States. There's a lot of 
interest and support for the United States here. So I think we're on the 
right direction.

MIA's/POW's

    Mr. King. I want to ask you about some of the remarkable moments on 
this trip. If you're sitting back in the United States watching this, we 
see this only by the numbers: nearly 300 sets of remains returned to the 
United States during your Presidency; the money put into the excavation 
efforts. But it is numbers until you have the opportunity to see what 
you did yesterday, to actually go out into the field.
    The President. It was overwhelming. It's very important for the 
American people to understand that what has made the progress in our 
relationship with Vietnam possible over these last 8 years has been 
their cooperation in our efforts to identify and recover and return home 
our MIA's and to resolve the POW and MIA cases. And we have resolved 
hundreds of them. And in the cases where we think someone's remains are 
located, like the site we visited--we believe a plane crashed there 33 
years ago; we believe a pilot's remains are there. His two sons came with me over here. And 
we watched all those Vietnamese people working with the American people, 
up to their hips in mud, digging in the ground and taking these big 
chunks of mud over to sifters, and watching other Vietnamese sift 
through the mud for any kind of metal object or any cloth object, 
anything that would give us a clue to whether this was, in fact, a crash 
site, and whether there's something more down there.
    It was profoundly moving to me. And it is that good-faith effort 
that they have made with us--and by the way, we've made with them. They 
have 300,000 cases still unresolved. And I brought over about 350,000 
pages of documents. We have another million pages of documents we can 
give them so they can do their own resolution of these cases. That's 
what's made possible this whole focus on the future and the commercial 
relations and the educational and health care efforts, all the other 
things we're doing.

Visit to the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting Excavation Site

    Mr. King. What were your personal thoughts? You're standing there 
holding pieces of the aircraft, a label from a part of the aircraft, 
your daughter standing next to you, crying. It didn't look like you were 
terribly far from that yourself. And you're with these two big, grown 
men who last saw their father when I believe they were 6 and 8. What 
goes through your mind at a moment like that?
    The President. Well, first, I was glad we were doing it. I think it 
made me very proud to be an American and proud that we had made these 
efforts and made this progress. I was very grateful for the cooperation 
we've received from the Vietnamese Government and the individual 
villages. You know, there were just people out there, stomping around in 
the mud, trying to find some trace of those 
boys' father. And I think, for me, it symbolized 
what was best about our country and what was possible in terms of the 
reconciliation of people who have been so bitterly divided such a long 
time ago.
    It's not done yet, you know. We still have a lot of work to do to 
work through all these cases. I still hope and believe that there should 
be more freedom within Vietnam and recognition of the courage of the 
people who fought in the South Vietnamese Army, as well as for the Viet 
Cong and the North Vietnamese. And I hope and believe that the American 
Vietnamese community, over a million strong, can make an even greater 
contribution.
    Now, today we were at that port, and we talked about a big 
pharmaceutical facility owned by two Vietnamese-American women, sisters, 
and their presence here in the country. But there are a lot more things 
that the Vietnamese have to give.
    But again, to go back to your question, everything begins with what 
we saw yesterday, the attempt to identify and bring home the remains of 
everybody who's still here. It was an overwhelming moment, but it should 
make every American proud.

[[Page 2565]]

    Mr. King. Thank you. We need to take a quick break. But we'll be 
back in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in just a moment to continue our 
interview with the President of the United States.

 [At this point, CNN took a commercial break.]

Veterans, the President, and Vietnam

    Mr. King. I want to ask you a little bit about your personal 
thoughts and how--your personal journey here--and your thoughts on it. 
As a young man, you opposed the war, once wrote that you despised it. 
Yet as President, with the support of Vietnam veterans, you have led the 
effort, first to lift the trade embargo, then to normalize relations.
    As you come here, how do you think this visit will be viewed back in 
the United States, not just among the veterans' community but especially 
among the Vietnam veterans' community, and your own personal thoughts on 
sort of bridging your youth with your role now in trying to create this 
new relationship?
    The President. Well, let me answer the two questions separately. 
First of all, I hope the veterans' community will view it with pride, 
because nothing that we have done in the last 8 years would have been 
possible without the support of the Vietnam veterans in the Congress and 
in the various veterans' organizations: Senator John Kerry; Senator Bob Kerrey; Senator 
John McCain; Senator Chuck Robb; Pete Peterson, our Ambassador, 
who was a POW for 6\1/2\ years. The first 3 years, his wife didn't even 
know he was alive. He never saw his third child until the boy was 6 
years old. Pete was in Congress for a lot of this period before I named 
him to be the Ambassador. So I would think that the veterans' community 
would be very proud of this.
    And also, I will reiterate, none of this would have happened if it 
hadn't been for the cooperation of the Vietnamese with our attempts to 
resolve our outstanding POW and MIA cases. There's never been anything 
like it in the entire history of warfare, where two countries worked 
this hard, this long, invested this kind of money and effort to resolve 
the POW/MIA issues. So I would think, for most of our people who 
understand that, the central role of the American veterans in the 
Congress and the country had, this would be a source of great pride.
    For me, personally, it was interesting--my overwhelming feeling when 
I first got here was thinking about the boys I grew up with who died in 
Vietnam, four of my high school classmates. And I asked Pete 
Peterson, when he came back, how long it took 
him to get beyond thinking about how it was before. And he said, ``Well, 
about an hour,'' he said. Then he had to deal with the challenges of 
being Ambassador, and he went on with life.
    And that's kind of what happened to me. I was the--I had a few 
moments there where I felt--I was thinking about the personal tragedies 
that I had been in contact with when I was a boy. And then the moment 
intervened, and we went on with the future.

Closure on the Vietnam War

    Mr. King. Do you think the country is at peace with this now? Even 
some Democrats late in the Presidential campaign this past year tried to 
raise questions about Governor Bush's service. Do you think the country 
is ready, and should this trip maybe be the final impetus for the 
country to move on?
    The President. I hope it will be. I hope it will be. Because the war 
divided the Vietnamese from the Americans, but it also divided the 
Vietnamese one from another--and still does--which is why, as I said, I 
went out of my way to praise the heroism of the South Vietnamese 
soldiers, too, and the importance of the Vietnamese-Americans who 
supported the position we had in Vietnam so long ago and have done so 
well because of freedom.
    So we need to heal the rift within the Vietnamese community, and it 
divided Americans one from another. And I hope that the last 8 years and 
the journey we've made together in moving forward with Vietnam has 
helped to put an end to that. My sense is that it did, that we're--that 
at least the rifts are nowhere near what they were 8 years ago, not to 
mention 10 or 20 years ago.

North Korea

    Mr. King. Let's move around the world quickly. In a matter of weeks, 
you will hand off to the man who will succeed you, a man as yet 
unknown--and we'll get to that--the portfolio on some of the most 
important strategic relationships in the world. I want to start first 
with North Korea. You had, at one point, hoped perhaps to follow 
Secretary Albright and visit

[[Page 2566]]

North Korea as part of this trip, then decided in the end not enough 
progress was being made to justify that.
    Can you be as specific as possible in saying what it is you're 
looking for from the North Koreans in terms of the missile program and 
any other steps, and whether you believe it is conceivable that you 
still might get there before you leave office?
    The President. Well, I haven't made a decision about whether to go, 
so I'll answer that first. Specifically, what we seek with the missile 
program is an end to the long-range missile program and an end to the 
exports of missiles. North Korea needs the foreign exchange money. I 
understand that they need the funds, and they're very good at making 
missiles, but the people who are most likely to buy them are those that 
are most likely to misuse them down the road. So that's what we're 
trying to do.
    We also want to ensure the continued vitality of this North-South 
dialog for which President Kim of South Korea 
won the Nobel Prize, the Nobel Peace Prize, and he certainly deserved 
it. We want that to go on. And we want to have a sense about what the 
way forward is with regard to North Korea's relations with us, as well 
as the South Koreans and the Japanese.
    So it's conceivable that there could still be a trip, but I just 
haven't made a decision. The main thing is, I will hand off to my 
successor a much better situation than I found, because we, first of 
all, had to end North Korea's nuclear program, and that's what we did 
and worked on in '93 and '94. And we've been implementing the agreement 
we made with them then for the last 6 years. Now we're working on the 
missile program. And it appears that North Korea has made a decision 
that--Kim Chong-il has made a decision to have a 
more positive and open relationship with the rest of the world. And I 
think that's a very good thing. I think the reconciliation and the 
family reunifications between North and South Korea are profoundly 
important.

Russia

    Mr. King. Russia. You met with President Putin during the APEC 
meeting in Brunei. Your successor, I assume, relatively shortly after he 
takes office, will receive a proposal from the Russians to go even 
beyond anything you and the Russians have discussed. Mr. Putin, because 
of the obvious budget constraints in his country, wants to go to roughly 
1,000 strategic warheads. Is that in the interests of the United States 
national security? And do you see any potential to get to that level, 
and also, perhaps as part of that deal, get a compromise on the ABM 
Treaty that would allow the missile defense program to go forward?
    The President. Well, first of all, I don't want to say anything that 
will compromise my successor's options. I think that's important. Now, I 
think it is quite possible that we could agree to go down to fewer 
missiles in our nuclear arsenal and theirs. I think that it's important 
that there also be fewer warheads. That is, there's a difference between 
missiles and warheads. I don't think we ought to go back to highly 
dangerous, richly armed MIRV missiles, multiple warhead missiles.
    But what we have to do is to have a target design that we believe is 
adequate to protect the United States and that our missile component 
will serve. And if we do that, then we could agree with them to reduce 
the number of missiles. And I'd hoped that we could get that done even 
beforehand. So I'm encouraged by that.
    Now, on the missile defense, I think the trick there will be somehow 
having the Russians and others with equity interests here believe that 
we all have a vested interest in trying to develop enough missile 
defense to stop the rogue states and terrorists from piercing the 
barriers not only of the United States but of Russia, China, of any 
other country that might want to participate. And there is a way, I 
think, to get this done, but it will require a lot of joint research and 
a lot of trust and a lot of understanding about what the problem is and 
how we're going to develop it.
    If the technology existed which would give us high levels of 
confidence that one or 2 or 5 or 10 missiles could be stopped from 
coming into the country, it would be hard to justify not putting it up. 
On the other hand, the reason I didn't go forward is, I think it's very 
hard to justify wrecking the existing treaty system which has served us 
so well for so long, in effect, gambling that somehow, some day, some 
way, the technology will be there. We don't want to do that.
    The best way to proceed is to do the research and try to find a way 
to bring these other countries into this. Because, really, if you think 
about

[[Page 2567]]

it, everyone should have an interest in the capacity of a country to 
resist the errant missile or the missile that would be fired by a rogue 
state or a terrorist. And they can do this together.
    What I tried to do was to buy some time so my successor could sit 
down with the Russians, with the Chinese, with any others who are 
parties and interests--and our European allies, of course--and try to 
plot out a future that would leave us safer than we are today. The whole 
point is to keep getting safer, not to do different things but to have a 
system which leads to a safer world.
    And we have to consider what the impact of all these things are on 
the Indian subcontinent, where there are nuclear missiles; on the 
Chinese who might decide to build--acquire a lot more missiles or 
develop them or not. And so my successor will have time to do all that. 
And I hope we've given the next President and our partners the maximum 
number of options.
    Mr. King. We need to take another short break, but when we come 
back, we'll ask the President about his thoughts on the crisis in the 
Middle East, as well as the contested Presidential election back home in 
the United States.

 [At this point, CNN took a commercial break.]

Situation in the Middle East

    Mr. King. I want to ask you, lastly, before asking you about the 
domestic political situation, I want to ask you lastly about the Middle 
East. You met separately with Mr. Arafat and Prime Minister Barak before 
you came on this trip. It has to be a source of enormous personal 
frustration to you, because of all the time you have put into this. Do 
you have any reasonable hopes that you can bring the two of them 
together anytime soon and that we will get anywhere beyond perhaps even 
just calming the violence before you leave office, and anywhere back 
toward formal peace negotiations? Is that completely unrealistic at this 
time?
    The President. The honest answer is, I don't know, for this reason: 
I don't think they can start negotiating again until we can dramatically 
reduce the level of violence. It's not clear to me that that's going to 
happen right now, although I'm working very hard on it, and we've been 
working hard on it since I've been here. And I wouldn't rule it out.
    But the tragic thing is that they're not all that far apart on a lot 
of these big issues and that what we have seen is a sober reminder that 
the old status quo was not an option. You either have to keep making 
things better in the Middle East, or eventually they'll get worse.
    Mr. King. Is the burden on one side or the other? You came away from 
Sharm al-Sheikh cautiously optimistic you would stop the violence, have 
a cooling-off period, and then bring them back together. Obviously, they 
have not even been able to stop the violence.
    The President. Well, believe it or not, I still think Sharm al-
Sheikh was very much worth doing, because, first of all, the agreement 
that we reached there is pretty much what they'd have to do to get the 
violence back and set in motion conditions which would lead to a 
resumption of the peace talks. And I felt before Sharm al-Sheikh that we 
were slipping into a very dangerous situation regionally. And now I 
think that a lot of the really responsible actors in the region are also 
trying to get this thing shut down.
    But I can't really say more than that it's a troubling, difficult, 
and painful situation, and we've got to find a way to end the violence. 
You don't have to end every single instance of it, but there has to be a 
dramatic reduction in the violence before the parties can talk again and 
make commitments again that could constitute a peace agreement.
    Is it possible? Yes, it's possible. It's possible because they're 
not that far apart. But they might as well be on the other side of the 
globe, as long as all the shooting is going on. So that's what we're 
working on, and I hope that a way can be found to bring it to an end.

2000 Presidential Election

    Mr. King. Let me bring your thoughts back home to the United States. 
When you left on this trip, there was a dispute about who the next 
President would be. When you made your courtesy call on the Vietnamese 
President last night, you had to joke that you were hurrying home to see 
if the country had a President-elect. The recount continues, and along 
with it, the partisan rhetoric escalates. You have people on the 
Republican side speaking for Governor Bush saying the Democrats are 
trying to steal the election; Democrats on the other hand, saying that 
the Republicans are trying to deny the people a fair count of the vote 
and shut

[[Page 2568]]

down democracy. Is this helpful, in your view? The process is obviously 
not pretty. Is it helpful what we're hearing from both sides?
    The President. Well, first of all, I don't know that that's a 
particularly useful question, with all respect. You can't, as close as 
this is--now it appears that, when all the votes are counted, that Vice 
President Gore will have won a plurality of 
the popular vote. It appears that unless he wins Florida, he'll be three 
votes short in the electoral college. Therefore, everything is on 
Florida. And Mr. Bush has the narrowest of 
leads out of 6 million votes, far less than a tenth of a percent, one-
sixth of one-tenth of one percent, or something like that.
    Now, in an environment like that, you have to assume that either 
side will try to make the best argument they can, because you only have 
a whisker of difference. I think the important thing is that there is a 
process underway, and it is being shepherded by the parties--they're 
both very well represented by articulate, able people--and they have 
recourse to the courts in Florida and the Supreme Court seems to have 
been willing to be prompt in its decisionmaking.
    So I think the American people should just let it play out, and they 
should understand that, with so much at stake, both sides are going to 
make the strongest case they can. And the only thing that I hope that 
all of us will keep in mind here is that we don't know who won, but we 
do know that when people vote, they deserve to have their votes counted, 
if they can be. So we ought to just respect the process and respect the 
fact that the advocacy will take place, and it should take place. You 
can't blame either one of them for making the strongest case they can.
    This is not a crisis in the American system of government, because 
it will come to an end. It will come to an end in plenty of time for the 
new President to take the oath of office. There is a way of resolving 
these things. All these cases are in the courts, and as I said, it 
appears to me that they're being handled in a fairly prompt way. Some of 
the decisions have gone one way, some have gone another way, and we'll 
just have to see what happens.
    But I think the American people ought to let this--it seems to me 
the American people are letting this play out in an appropriate way, and 
that's what I think should be done.
    Mr. King. Look around the corner, though. You have considerable 
experience in your own right trying to govern in a very difficult 
environment, relations with the Republican Congress not terribly good 
during most of the latter half of your administrations. And now you have 
research being done on both sides about, well, maybe this will get 
thrown to the Congress, and can we disqualify electors. Do you see, A, 
with the election being so close, and then, B, with the very difficult 
fight over who wins, can whoever gets this job reasonably govern, in 
your view?
    The President. Well, I would make two points. First of all, it is 
true that I faced an unusually partisan group of Republicans. But it's 
also true that we got a lot done. I mean, I've noticed with some 
pleasure, I confess, that students of American history, several of them 
have come out in the last few weeks saying that I had kept a higher 
percentage of my campaign promises than any President in modern history. 
And we've gotten a lot done with this Republican Congress, in spite of 
all the partisanship in the last 6 years.
    We got a balanced budget agreement. We got welfare reform. We got 
just this year a sweeping measure on debt relief for the world's poorest 
nations and any number of other things. I don't want to go through all 
that, but the point I want to make is that even in a difficult 
atmosphere, where the Congress is closely divided, and the President is 
elected by a narrow margin, we should not assume that they won't be able 
to get something done. If they're willing to work hard, fight for their 
positions, and then in the end, make principled compromises, quite a lot 
can be done. That's the first thing I want to say.
    The second thing is, if you look at American history, it is not 
inevitable that the person who wins the White House under these 
circumstances will have a deeply divided country. Now, in 1876, when 
President Hayes won, he promised to only serve one term. So we don't 
know whether he could have been reelected or not, when he lost the 
popular vote and won the electoral college.
    In 1824 John Quincy Adams won in the House of Representatives when 
he lost the popular vote, and he was voted out, although he came back 
and had a wonderful career opposing slavery. But when Thomas Jefferson 
was forced to go for many, many ballots into the House

[[Page 2569]]

of Representatives, he came out of it as a more unifying figure, with a 
commitment to be more unifying. And in effect, he was so successful that 
he got two terms, and the opposition party, the Federalist Party, 
disappeared. And then two members of his party, James Madison and James 
Monroe, succeeded him, and they both had two terms. And arguably, that 
24-year period was the biggest period of political stability in the 
whole history of the republic, until you had the dominance of the 
Republicans after the Civil War, and then Roosevelt-Truman years and the 
Depression and World War II.
    So I think you--I wouldn't--I don't think we should have all these 
hand-wringing, dire predictions. We've got a system. It's underway, and 
yes, these guys are--the advocates for either side are under enormous 
pressure. And of course, they're being pretty snippy with each other 
from time to time. But look, you'd expect it. I mean, 100 million people 
voted, and there's 1,000 votes, more or less, at stake in Florida.
    So everybody ought to just relax, let the process play out. But 
don't assume that no matter who wins and no matter what happens, it's 
going to be bad for America. It might be quite good, because it might be 
sobering for the country to realize we're in a completely new era. 
Nobody's got a lock on the truth. We're all trying to understand the 
future. It's still clear that about two-thirds of the American people 
want a dynamic center that pulls the people together and moves us 
forward. And I think we still have a fair chance to achieve that.

Perspective on the Presidency

    Mr. King. We're short on time, indeed, out of time, but just in a 
sentence or two, you've been at this 8 years, and I think you have 8 
weeks. What runs through your head when you get up to go to the office 
every day?
    The President. I want to get everything done I can possibly do while 
I'm here. And for the rest, I just feel grateful. America is in much 
better shape then it was 8 years ago. We got to implement the ideas and 
the policies that I ran on in '92 and '96. I didn't do everything I 
wanted to do, but the overwhelming majority of things I wanted to do I 
was able to accomplish, and I'm grateful that it worked out for the 
country.
    And then a lot of other things came up along the way which were good 
for the country. So I'm happy now, and I'm grateful. And of course, I'm 
thrilled about Hillary's election to the Senate. And I just feel 
enormous gratitude. But there's still a lot of things I'd like to do, 
and so I'll work right up to the end.
    Mr. King. Mr. President, we thank you very much for your time.
    The President. Thank you.

Note: The interview was taped at 4:30 p.m. in the Caravelle Hotel for 
later broadcast, and the transcript was embargoed by the Office of the 
Press Secretary until 6 p.m. In his remarks, the President referred to 
President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea; General Secretary Kim Chong-il of 
North Korea; President Vladimir Putin of Russia; Chairman Yasser Arafat 
of the Palestinian Authority; and Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel. A 
tape was not available for verification of the content of this 
interview.