[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 6 (Monday, February 13, 1995)]
[Pages 209-211]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks Announcing the Nomination of Michael Carns To Be Director of 
Central Intelligence and an Exchange With Reporters

February 8, 1995

    The President. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm delighted to see you all 
here. I thank the Members of Congress especially for being here, Senator 
Thurmond, Senator Specter, Senator Leahy, Congressman Dicks. Is 
Congressman Gilman here?
    It is my pleasure and honor today to announce my intention to 
nominate General Michael Carns to be the next Director of Central 
Intelligence.
    General Carns will face a challenge whose difficulty is matched only 
by its importance. The cold war is over, but many new dangers have taken 
its place: regional security threats; the proliferation of weapons of 
mass destruction; terrorists who, as we have seen, can strike at the 
very heart of our own major cities; drug trafficking and international 
crime. The decisive advantage United States intelligence provides this 
country is, therefore, as important as it has ever been.
    As President, I've had the opportunity to appreciate just how 
important that intelligence is to our national security. Most Americans 
never know the victories our intelligence provides or the crisis it 
helps us to avoid, but they do learn about its occasional setbacks. And 
as we prepare our intelligence community to face new challenges, we must 
not forget its many successes.
    General Carns' broad experience and exceptional qualities make him 
the right leader for our intelligence community in this time of 
challenge and change. He's distinguished himself as a fighter pilot, a 
military commander, and a manager. He's a proven innovator, open to new 
ways of doing business and skeptical of conventional wisdom. He 
understands the critical importance of intelligence because he's had to 
rely on it when the lives of Americans and the security of our country 
were on the line. He's taking this

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critical assignment after having already dedicated a whole lifetime of 
outstanding service to our country. I thank him and his wife for that 
decision.
    After graduating from the Air Force Academy in 1959, he went on to 
fly over 200 combat missions in Vietnam, where his heroism earned him 
the Silver Star and the Distinguished Flying Cross. He served as 
director of operations for the Rapid Deployment Task Force, deputy 
commander-in-chief of the United States Pacific Command, vice chief of 
staff of the Air Force, the office he held before entering a very short-
lived retirement last September. And somewhere along the line, he even 
found time to get an MBA from Harvard, something for which I have 
already forgiven him. [Laughter]
    General Carns also served as director of the Joint Staff during 
Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Both Admiral William Crowe 
and General Colin Powell, who relied on General Carns to get the job 
done when our Nation was at war, know and appreciate the full measure of 
this fine man.
    His exceptional accomplishments are rooted in a tradition of 
patriotism and service instilled in him by his father, Major General 
Edwin Carns of the Army, and by his mother, Jan, whom I had the 
privilege of speaking with yesterday. Mike and his wife, Victoria, have 
carried on this tradition and passed it along to their own children, 
Michelle, a cadet at the United States Air Force Academy and, Mark, who 
serves in the Air Force. Let me say to their entire family, the country 
is proud of your service, and I am, I say again, especially grateful to 
you, Victoria, for supporting this move today.
    General, your mission will be greatly helped by the distinguished 
commission, led by our former Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and former 
Senator Warren Rudman, that I have asked to review the missions and 
structure of our intelligence community. Together, and with the help of 
the Congress, you can build a strong consensus for reinvigorating U.S. 
intelligence so that it pursues clear priorities and puts its resources 
behind the core missions that will continue to give our Nation the most 
timely, relevant, and honest intelligence in the world.
    As we look to the future, I also want to thank the outgoing Director 
of Central Intelligence, Jim Woolsey, for his service. Thank you, Jim, 
and we're delighted to see you here today. No one has been a more 
forceful advocate for the intelligence community, in my own case, 
beginning long before I became President. His efforts to streamline 
collection systems and improve the quality of analysis will pay off for 
our country for many years to come.
    I'd also like to express my deep appreciation to our Acting 
Director, Bill Studeman, who has served our Nation admirably for 32 
years now. Both of you have earned our Nation's gratitude.
    Finally, to the men and women of our intelligence community whose 
work often goes unheralded, let me say on behalf of all of us and all 
Americans, your country owes you a debt which can never be fully repaid, 
but we respect it and we appreciate it. What we can do, and what General 
Mike Carns and I will vow to do, is to work with you, to support you, 
and to challenge you as we build an intelligence community for the next 
century.
    General Carns.

[At this point, General Carns thanked the President and made brief 
remarks.]

    The President. This is the first test of his centralized 
intelligence. [Laughter]
    Any questions?
    Q. Are you going to find any spies around?
    General Carns. I think I recognize that voice. [Laughter]
    Q. Do you think that the CIA needs an overhaul? I mean, they've made 
a lot of mistakes recently, haven't they?
    General Carns. I would be happy to respond to your questions as soon 
as I am confirmed. In the meantime, I will keep my counsel.
    The President. Let me just say one thing. I think recently they 
deserve a lot of credit for uncovering mistakes that were made in the 
past. After all, the Ames problem developed before the recent history--
it was uncovered in recent history. They deserve credit for solving 
problems. The same thing with that big building out there.
    Q. It took a long time.

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    The President. Well, we've only been here 2 years. I'm pretty proud 
of what Mr. Woolsey did and what the CIA has done. I think they deserve 
credit for solving problems.

Baseball Strike

    Q. Mr. President, on another topic, there's been a lot of talk on 
Capitol Hill today, and a lot of opposition from Republicans to your 
suggestion that Congress get involved in the baseball strike. Can you 
tell us about that?
    The President. I'll send the legislation up there. I think that this 
is--they should be reluctant; I was reluctant; we're all reluctant. If 
we had a baseball commissioner, we wouldn't--none of us would have been 
in here. I respect their reluctance. What I think will happen is, I'll 
send the legislation up, they'll hear from the American people, and 
they'll make their own decision. Meanwhile, I hope that the--last night 
I really began to hope that they'd work it out on their own. That's 
still what ought to happen, that's the best thing, and I hope they'll do 
it.
    Q. Do you have any regrets about getting involved in the first 
place?
    The President. No, because if I hadn't named a Federal mediator, 
without a baseball commissioner, then I would have felt that we hadn't 
gone the last mile to try to help resolve it. So I'm glad I named Mr. 
Usery. He did the very best he could. And I still hope they'll work it 
out.
    Thank you.

Surgeon-General-Designate

    Q. What are you hearing from the Hill about Dr. Foster? What are you 
hearing about from the Hill----
    The President. I don't know. I haven't heard much from them, but I 
had lunch with a number of House Members today who said that, based on 
what they knew, they were for him, and so am I. I think he's a good man. 
You read the editorial from his hometown newspaper, the Nashville 
Tennessean, that came out in the last couple of days. His colleague, the 
only physician in the United States Congress, the doctor from Tennessee, 
Republican doctor from Tennessee, who stood up here with him when we 
announced him. He is a good man, who has delivered thousands of babies 
and devoted his life to trying to prevent the kind of problems that he's 
now being criticized for. I believe he should be confirmed, and I 
believe he will.
    Thank you.
    Q. Do you think this is just a tactic to get people to defeat him 
because he has favored abortion rights?
    The President. I think he's a good man, and when he has his hearings 
the American people will think so, too.

Note: The President spoke at 2:20 p.m. in the Roosevelt Room at the 
White House. In his remarks, he referred to Dr. Bill Frist, Senator from 
Tennessee.