[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 4 (Monday, February 1, 1999)]
[Pages 109-115]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Interview With Judith Miller and William J. Broad of the New York Times

January 21, 1999

Terrorist Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons

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

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``The Cobra Event'' was interesting, especially when he said what his 
sources were, which seemed fairly credible to me. And then I read 
another book about a group of terrorists shutting down the telephone 
networks in the Northeast and the Midwest.
    Q. What was that? Do you remember?
    The President. I can't remember. I read so many things. I can't 
remember. A couple years ago. But anyway, when I--and a lot of times 
it's just for thrills, but a lot of times these people are not far off. 
You know, they sell books by imagining the future, and sometimes they're 
right; sometimes they're wrong.
    So I've gotten--I don't want to sound--I've gotten a lot of sort of 
solid, scientific input. I've also solicited opinions from people 
working on the genome project, for example, and about what the 
implications of that might be for dealing with biological warfare. And 
last year, we had a whole group of experts come in here and spend an 
extended amount of time with me and then follow up with the staff on 
biological issues in particular. So I've had a real interest in this, 
and I think we're about to get up to speed.
    But we just have to be prepared for it. I mean, it's--if you look 
back through all of human history, people who are interested in gaining 
control or influence or advantage over others have brought to bear the 
force of arms. And what normally happens from the beginning of history 
is the arms work until a defense is erected, and then there's an 
equilibrium until there is a new offensive system developed, and then a 
defense comes up, going all the way back to--well, even before it, but 
castle moats which were overcome by catapults.
    And so, basically, I think what has concerned me is that we, because 
we're moving from one big issue--will there be a nuclear war between the 
United States and the Soviet Union, to now a whole lot of proliferation 
of issues, dealing with smaller scale nuclear issues, chemical and 
biological issues, missile technology and, of course, the related 
computer cyber-crime issue--is that I just don't want the lag time 
between offense and defense to be any longer than is absolutely 
necessary.
    That, I think, is the challenge for us, is to try to--before 
anything really tragic happens not only in the United States but 
anywhere else. We've had enough warning signs out there now, enough 
concrete evidence, and we need to close the door of the gap between the 
offense and defense.

Gravity and Timing of the Threat

    Q. How worried should we be, and how--we don't want to panic people. 
And research has seen some of these warning signs, and readers call, and 
they want to know, is this--how worried should we be? Is this serious 
today, and is the threat rising? Is it going be more serious in the 
future?
    The President. I would say that if the issue is, how probable is it 
in the very near-term an American city or community would be affected, 
I'd say you probably shouldn't be too worried. But if the issue is, is 
it a near certainty that at some time in the future there will be some 
group, probably a terrorist group, that attempts to bring to bear either 
the use or the threat of a chemical or biological operation, I would say 
that is highly likely to happen sometime in the next few years. And 
therefore, I would say the appropriate response is not worry or panic 
but taking this issue very seriously, expecting all elected officials 
with any responsibility in this area to know everything they can, and to 
do everything we can both to erect all possible defenses and then to try 
to make sure we are doing everything we can to stop this.
    Now, we know right now--we know that a lot of what we've done 
already has delayed WMD programs, some of which I can't talk about, but 
slowed the development of WMD programs of missile technology development 
that might deliver such weapons and other things. And we're doing 
everything we can to stop or slow down the ability of others, insofar as 
we know about it and can do something about it. And meanwhile, we're 
doing everything we can both to develop defenses and emergency 
responses. But I think we've got an enormous amount of work out there 
ahead of us, an enormous amount of work.
    And a lot of this has to be done with great cooperation between the 
Federal Government--we need cooperation of the private sector on the 
cyber issues, the computer

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issues. We need cooperation with local government on public health 
response issues, exposure--if there appears to be an outbreak. We had 
all these sort of false alarms of anthrax in California--how many?--more 
than a dozen, I think, in the last month. So we need to be able to 
diagnose and to treat and also to manage those things.

Biological Threat and Developing a Response

    Q. Does one of these threats worry you more than another, and does 
any one in particular keep you awake at night?
    The President. Well, I have spent some late nights thinking a lot 
about this and reading a lot about it. I think in terms of offense 
versus defense, if you go back to where we started, the thing that I'm 
most interested in--and you will see we've allocated several hundred 
million dollars basically to research and to applied research--the thing 
that I'm most interested in is developing the ability to quickly contain 
biological agents.
    A chemical attack would be horrible, but it would be finite. You 
know, it's just like--for the people who went through Oklahoma City, 
nothing could be more horrible. But it didn't spread. The thing that 
bothers people about biological agents is that, unless they're properly 
diagnosed, contained, and treated, that it could spread.
    For example, we know that if all of us went to a rally on The Mall 
tomorrow with 10,000 people, and somebody flew a low-flying crop duster 
and sprayed us all with biological agents from, let's say 200 feet, that 
no matter how toxic it were, half of us would walk away for reasons no 
one quite understands. You know, either we wouldn't breathe it, or we'd 
have some miraculous resistance to it. And the other half of us, 
somebody would have to diagnose in a hurry and then contain and treat. 
Otherwise, it would be kind of like the gift that keeps on giving, you 
know. [Laughter]
    And I don't mean that--I'm not trying to be macabre, but you asked 
me what keeps me awake at night, and that bothers me. And that's why the 
thing that I thought was most important about what we did last year, and 
what we learned a little bit from our defense scare--even though it was 
on a computer issue, we had this defense issue, plus we were dealing 
with all this--we'd studied for a year all this--especially this 
biological issue--is we had this work going on in 12 different places in 
the Government. So we had to organize our efforts, so that we could be 
accessible to local governments, so we could work with them, to set up 
their own preventive mechanisms.
    And I have to tell you, it may be--we may have to await--it's a note 
I made to myself that we may have to have a perfect defense. I mean, 
instantaneous. We may have to depend upon the genome project, 
interestingly enough, because once the human genes' secrets are 
unlocked, then if you and I think we've been infected, they could take a 
blood sample, and there would be a computer program which would show us 
if we had, let's say, we had a variant of anthrax. Let's suppose some 
terrorist hired a genius scientist and a laboratory to take basic 
anthrax and put some variant in it that would be resistant to all known 
anthrax antidotes.
    Q. Okay. Or a Russian scientist.
    The President. Yes. So let's just suppose that happened. And what 
you would want is to be able to take a blood sample, do an analysis, put 
it through a software program that had already been developed, and say, 
``Okay, here is--this is how the genes are different. This is the 
difference.'' And then presumably, not too long after we've developed 
this, they will already know, well, therefore, this is how you should--
how you should change the vaccine.
    And we know now--I know this is kind of bewildering, but keep in 
mind this is actually good news because, if there were no genome 
project, if there were no rapid way to do quick analysis that would go 
right to the tiniest variant, we would be in trouble. And now these 
scientists are working on this, and we're actually a little bit ahead of 
the original predicted timetable on unlocking the secrets of the gene. 
And when that happens, one of the side benefits, I think, will be to be 
able to tell these things much more quickly.
    But meanwhile, we've got this plan. We're stockpiling the vaccines, 
and we're doing all this research which the Government has to fund, 
because obviously there's no market for it, right? It's not like--
there's no market for

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it, and I hope there never will be any market for it. But we have to 
pay, the Government has to pay, for this research to develop new 
vaccines and to manage it along. And I think we will do--I think we've 
got a very good increase in the budget, and I really think it will have 
broad bipartisan support.

Human Genome Project

    Q. There's a school of worrywarts out there that says this genome 
stuff is a double-edged sword, and at some point you can envision ethnic 
weapons, looking at racial differences and try to do selective----
    Q. And targeting.
    Q. Look at Kosovo. Look at how much of the blood that has spilled is 
just rooted in this ethnic----
    The President. Yes, but I think to be fair, we're a good ways away 
from that. I think we need to worry far more about the fact that most of 
these groups--we know, for example--let's take something I can talk 
about because it's public record. We know Usama bin Ladin's network has 
made an effort to get chemical weapons.
    Q. Biological or just chemical?
    The President. Well, we know they've made an effort to get chemical 
weapons; they may have made an effort to get biological weapons. We do 
not know that they have them. It is true--if you take this thing out to 
sort of the science fiction conclusion, obviously the genome project 
itself carries the seeds of its own misuse. But right now I'm absolutely 
convinced that the advantages dwarf the disadvantages in this area.
    Plus, which all the other advantages of it--I mean, it's going to 
lead us to--we will save countless lives because we'll know in advance 
what predisposition people have, what problems they have--the genome 
project would be the seminal event--you know, when it's done, of the 
first part of the 21st century, there's no doubt about that.
    But to come back to your point, the only point I would make, 
whenever you ask me a question like that, I think it's best for you to 
remember the formulation that I started with, and it's interesting to 
think about the moat and the catapult, the spear and the shield--
anything. It's all a question of people who have money, organization, 
and an interest, whether it's political or financial or religious or 
whatever in oppressing other people or holding them down will always be 
looking for new offensive weapons.
    Our goal should always be, for the sake of the world as well as the 
security of the American people, to make sure not only that we can 
defend ourselves and counter-punch, if you will, but to develop with 
each new wave of technology to close the gap between offense and 
defense. And if we do that, I think that's the strategy that I hope will 
become at least an integral part of our national security strategy in 
the WMD area.

Anthrax Vaccination

    Q. Mr. President, in the interim we have a lot of Americans, more 
than 2 million Americans in uniform, being vaccinated against anthrax. 
Are you vaccinated?
    The President. The Secret Service told me I couldn't discuss that, 
and they have good reasons for not wanting me to do it. But let me say, 
I'm convinced that like any other vaccination, there may be some small 
rejection, but I think on balance it's a safe procedure. I've looked at 
the reports, and I think on balance, given the fact that we send so many 
of our men and women in uniform into places where they could be exposed, 
I think that they're better off being vaccinated. I do not believe that 
the threat in the United States is sufficient that I could recommend 
that to people, to the public at large.

Response to the Terrorist Threat

    Q. What about first responders or people in hospitals who might be 
exposed to smallpox, anthrax, plague, and things like that?
    The President. The real answer there is, we haven't reached a 
conclusion, but we're considering that. Because we have to work with the 
first responders, we've got the public health people looking into this 
and other people, and I think that that's a judgment that ought to be 
made primarily by people who are in the best position to make a 
professional judgment about it. So that's something that's being 
considered.
    Q. We've heard about something else that's being considered that I 
think Bill wants to ask you about.

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    Q. As you may be aware, Secretary Cohen and people at the Pentagon 
are talking about trying to create a new position of commander-in-chief 
for the continental United States because of the terror threat. And it's 
moving through the system, and at some point it's going to come to you, 
probably sometime this summer. Are you inclined to create that kind of 
position for the military?
    The President. Let me say, I think that we need to have an organized 
response, if you will, to what you might call ``homeland defense'' on 
CBW and cyber or computer terrorism issues. And now we've established a 
national coordinator on these issues in the White House. We've got this 
national domestic preparation office at the Justice Department. We've 
got a National Infrastructure Protection Center. We've got a joint task 
force on cyber defense already at DOD in response to what they went 
through before.
    So I want them to look at where we are and make some recommendations 
to me. I'm not sure that that is what they're going to recommend, and I 
think that I shouldn't give an answer to the question you ask until I 
see what the range of options are and what the range of recommendations 
is.
    Q. Do you have a leaning one way or another?
    The President. No, just except to say that it is very important that 
we outline every single responsibility that we have as a nation at the 
national level and that someone be responsible for it. I want to know--
as I said, one of the things that we learned last year that I think was 
a legitimate criticism of what we have done in our administration is 
that we had 12 different places where these activities were going on, 
and they weren't being properly coordinated and driven in the proper 
fashion. And we've tried to resolve this. And this is sort of the last 
big kind of organizational piece, as far as I know, that is yet to be 
resolved. So the military is going to make me a recommendation and I 
will respond accordingly.
    Again, the American people, this shouldn't be a cause for alarm; 
this should be a cause for reassurance. They should want us to be well-
organized on these things because--remember for years and years, when I 
was a boy we used to do all those--they had all these fallout shelters, 
and every school had its drills and all that. I mean, I'm older than 
you, so you wouldn't remember this, but----
    Q. No, we did it.
    The President. But you know, and we--it was a sensible thing to do 
under the circumstances. Thank God we never experienced it. But it was 
the sensible thing to do. And so what I want us to do is everything, 
within reason, we can to minimize our exposure and risks here, and 
that's how I'm going to evaluate this Pentagon recommendation.
    Secretary Cohen, I think, is also real focused on this now. I've 
been very pleased with the priority he's given it. And I think that all 
these guys know that after their experience with the computer issue that 
all this--tomorrow's threats may be very different from yesterday's, and 
we've got to be ready.

Funding the Response

    Q. What do you say to people, to skeptics who say all this is just 
Pentagon maneuvering, creating new bogeymen to scare us so they can whip 
up new budget authority? And it's--and that's a large crowd.
    The President. Even though we're talking about hundreds of millions 
of dollars and in the aggregate a few billion dollars, it's nowhere near 
as expensive as maintaining this sort of basic infrastructure of 
defense, the case of public health, the basic infrastructure of public 
health.
    I say to them, they should understand that we have intelligence--and 
a lot of it is in the public arena, you all write about it--about all 
the countries that are trying--the countries and the groups that want 
chemical weapons, that want biological weapons, that are trying to get 
agents, precursor agents that you can use to develop chemicals or basic 
agents you can use to develop biological weapons. And everybody knows 
now the world is full of hackers that seek to intrude on networks, that 
seek to insert bogus codes into programs and all this sort of stuff. And 
it would be completely irresponsible for us not to allocate a 
substantial investment in trying to protect America from threats that 
will be, in all probability, as likely or more likely in the future than 
the threats we think we face today.

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    That's why we started this conversation by saying, I don't want to 
say anything that will overly alarm anybody. I'm not trying to stir up a 
lot of false threats. But if you look at just what the UNSCOM people in 
Iraq--they say that they don't believe that the reporting in Iraq is 
consistent with what they believe the chemical capacity there is.
    If you look at the fact with regard to chemicals, with the Chemical 
Weapons Conventions, if we can get it properly implemented, at least we 
will be able to track probably that plus intelligence, large volumes of 
chemical stocks. But with biological stocks, a very small laboratory 
with the right materials to work with, you could develop supplies that 
could kill a large number of people. It simply is irresponsible for us 
not to both do the best we can with public health protections, do the 
best research we can on vaccines, stockpile what we know works, and then 
get out there and try to build a defense and an ability to interrupt and 
stop with export controls and any other way we can these developments, 
and it costs money.
    But to me, it's money well spent. And if there is never an incident, 
nobody would be happier than me 20 years from now if the same critics 
would be able to say, ``Oh, see, Clinton was a kook; nothing happened.'' 
I would be the happiest man on Earth. I would be the happiest man on 
Earth. If they could say, ``He overexaggerated it; nothing happened. All 
he did was make a bunch of jobs for scientists and build the Pentagon 
budget,'' I would be elated 20 years from now to be subject to that 
criticism because it would mean that nothing happened and in no small 
measure because of the efforts we've made.

Russia

    Q. Since we have so little time left, Mr. President, Russia. How can 
you be sure--since they violated the treaty that they signed banning 
biological weapons for 20 years, does it make sense to work with them 
now on biological projects? Are you certain that they are not doing 
biological research? And what do you do?
    The President. Let me say this. I think that the more we work with 
them and the more their scientists are working with us and the more 
successful we are in building a common endeavor, the more it will be in 
their interest to comply. The real danger in Russia, I think--dangers--
are two. One is--I'll take one that is outside the CBW area so it 
doesn't look like I'm waving the red flag here--when we started the 
space station--you know, John Glenn went up and then we sent the first 
two components of the space station up--it had been months since a lot 
of those Russian scientists had been paid.
    That's why it is very, very important, I think, to say we value this 
enormous infrastructure of scientific expertise they have in the space 
area, in the CBW area, and we want to work with them. This budget of 
mine would enable us to do joint work with 8,000 Russian scientists. 
Now, there are, I think, 40,000 total--we think. But that's important. 
That bothers me.
    The second thing that concerns me is that when Russia shed 
communism, they adopted a strategy which was widely lauded at the time 
in the United States and elsewhere, but they were actually--when I went 
to Russia, and you remember right after my mother died I got on the 
plane, and I went to the Czech Republic and Russia--that was, what, 
January of '94. Actually at that time, the Czech Republic was doing very 
well and was sort of the poster child of the new economy in the former 
communist countries. But when I was there, Russia had actually 
privatized more property than the Czech Republic had.
    And this relates partly to the economic crisis, but when they did 
it, they did it without having had the benefit of an effective central 
bank, a securities and exchange commission, all these other things. So 
that you had money coming in and money flying out now. And one of the 
problems they have now is that it's not a totalitarian Government 
anymore. There are a lot of private companies--all the private companies 
there by definition used to be part of the state, unless they're new 
businesses. And so one of the problems we're having is, even when 
they're trying to help us, is keeping up with what all these companies 
and their subsidiaries do.
    And that's been the tension that you've written a lot about, and 
there's been a lot

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in the press about was there missile cooperation with Iran or not, and 
does that violate our understanding, and does that call for some action 
vis-a-vis Russia? And part of the problem is, just keeping up with this 
proliferation of companies and people that used to have some connection 
to the Soviet State, some connection to the defense apparatus.
    It's not a simple process, and it's not a perfect process, but I am 
absolutely convinced that this threat reduction initiative we've got can 
kind of intensify our efforts to work with them, as well as to really 
implement the Chemical Weapons Treaty, and get some teeth in the 
Biological Weapons Convention. That's very, very important. I think that 
is the best strategy. It may not be perfect, but it is better than the 
alternative.

Response to an Attack

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

Senator Dale Bumpers' Senate Impeachment Trial Presentation

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

Note: The interview began at approximately 6:30 p.m. in the Oval Office 
at the White House on January 21 and was released by the Office of the 
Press Secretary on January 23. In his remarks, the President referred to 
Usama bin Ladin, who allegedly sponsored bombing attacks on the U.S. 
Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998. He also referred to 
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and chemical and biological weapons 
(CBW). A tape was not available for verification of the content of these 
remarks.