[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.