    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 13 (Monday, April 5, 1999)]
    [Pages 550-561]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Interview With Dan Rather
    of CBS News

    March 31, 1999

        Mr. Rather. Mr. President, thank you for doing this.
        The President. Glad to do it, Dan.
        Mr. Rather. I appreciate you doing it.

    Reasons for NATO Airstrikes in Serbia

        Mr. Rather. As Commander in Chief, you've sent some of our best to
    fly every day, every night, through the valley of the shadow of death in
    a place far away. Why? For what?
        The President. For several reasons. First and most important,
    because there are defenseless people there who are being uprooted from
    their homes by the hundreds of thousands and who are being killed by the
    thousands; because it is not an isolated incident but, in fact, a repeat
    of a pattern we have seen from Mr. Milosevic in Bosnia and Croatia. So
    there is a compelling humanitarian reason.
        Secondly, we haven't been asked to do this alone. All of our NATO
    allies are doing it with us. They all feel very strongly about it,

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    and we are moving together. Thirdly, we do not want to see the whole
    region destabilized by the kind of ethnic aggression that Mr. Milosevic
    has practiced repeatedly over the last 10 years, but he's been limited.
    This is, in some ways, the most destabilizing area he could be doing it
    in. And fourthly, we believe we can make a difference.
        And so for all those reasons, I believe we should be doing this.
        Mr. Rather. Why now, and why this place? The Russians, in a somewhat
    similar situation in Chechenya, had maybe 100,000 casualties. We've had
    Rwanda, Sudan--you didn't go into those places. As a matter of fact, the
    Serbians argue the Croatians did the same thing with the Serbians in
    part of Croatia. So why this place? Why right now?
        The President. Well, first of all, if you go back to Yugoslavia, we
    never supported any kind of ethnic cleansing by anybody. And the
    circumstances under which we went into Bosnia and ended the Bosnian war
    were designed to guarantee safety and security for all the ethnic
    groups, not just the Muslims but also the Croats and the Serbs. And the
    peace agreement that the Kosovar Albanians agreed to would have brought
    in an international peacekeeping force under NATO that would have
    guaranteed security to the Serbs, as well as to the Albanians.
        So the United States and NATO believe that there should be no ethnic
    cleansing and no people killed or uprooted because of their ethnic
    background.
        Secondly, we're doing it now because now it's obvious that Mr.
    Milosevic has no interest in an honorable peace that guarantees security
    and autonomy for the Kosovar Albanians, and instead he is practicing
    aggression. We might have had to do it last fall, but we were able to
    head it off. Remember, he created a quarter of a million refugees last
    year. And NATO threatened to take action, and we worked out an
    agreement, which was observed for a while, which headed this off.
        When we agreed to take action was when he rejected the peace
    agreement and he had already amassed 40,000 soldiers on the border and
    in Kosovo, with about 300 tanks. So that's why we're doing it now.
        And you asked about other places. In the Rwanda case, let's remember
    what happened. In Rwanda, without many modern military weapons,
    somewhere between 500,000 and 800,000--we may never know--people were
    killed in the space of only 100 days. I think the rest of the world was
    caught flat-footed and did not have the mechanisms to deal with it. We
    did do some good and, I think, limited some killing there. But I wish
    we'd been able to do more there. And I would hope that that sort of
    thing will not ever happen again in Africa. And that's one of the
    reasons we worked hard to build up a cooperative relationship with
    African militaries through the Africa Crisis Response Initiative.
        So I believe there are lots of reasons. But if you look at Kosovo,
    we have a history there in Europe. We know what happens if you have
    ethnic slaughter there. We know how it can spread. And the main thing
    is, there is this horrible humanitarian crisis. And because of NATO,
    because of our allied agreement and because we have the capacity, we
    believe we can do something about it there. And I think we have to try.
        Mr. Rather. You still believe you can do something about it there?
    The last few days have indicated--well, seem from at least several
    points of view, Milosevic is winning, and we're losing.
        The President. Well, we knew that that would happen in the first few
    days. He had planned this a long time. Keep in mind, before the first
    NATO plane got in the air, he already had the 40,000 troops there. Think
    how we would feel if this were going on and we were doing nothing.
    There's no question that in--we've run this air campaign for less than a
    week. We've been hampered by bad weather. We had to be cautious on the
    early nights to try to at least protect our planes as much as we
    possibly can against the air defenses, which are quite good.
        So it takes a while to get up and going. And against that he had
    40,000 troops and 300 tanks. It shouldn't surprise anybody that he's
    able to do a lot of what he intended to, even though we've had some
    success in hitting his military targets in the last couple of days.
        But I would urge the American people and, indeed, the people of all
    the NATO nations, to have a little resolve here, to stay

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    with your leaders, to give us a chance to really see this thing through.
    We cannot view this as something that will be instantaneously
    successful. This is something that will require some time.
        Keep in mind, when we took NATO air action in Bosnia, when we tried
    to alleviate the siege of Sarajevo, which was a very important precursor
    to the ultimate peace that was signed there, the air campaign went on
    for 20 days--with pauses--I think there were 12 days, at least, of
    bombing. So that's quite a bit more than has been done now--2,300
    sorties there.
        So the American people and the people of the NATO nations should not
    be surprised that what has happened on the ground has happened. It was
    always obvious it was going to happen if there were no opposition to
    Milosevic. And this thing hasn't had enough time to work. So I would ask
    for the American people to be patient and to be resolved and be firm and
    to give our plan a chance to take hold here.

    Pope's Plea for Easter Suspension of Bombing

        Mr. Rather. Let me follow up some, Mr. President. First of all, the
    Pope has asked for an Easter suspension of the bombing. Are you prepared
    to do that?
        The President. I don't see how we can do that, with what is going on
    on the ground there now. Mr. Milosevic is running those people to the
    Albanian border, to the other borders by the thousands a day; he's
    killing people. No one would like more than I to properly observe
    Easter, which for Christians is the most important holiday of all--even
    more important than Christmas, really, because of what it symbolizes to
    the living. But we can't observe Easter and honor the resurrection of
    Christ by allowing him another free day to kill more innocent civilians.
        Mr. Rather. And to those people who say, Mr. President, that this is
    the most important week in the whole Judeo-Christian calendar in many
    ways--because you have Passover, Monday, Thursday, Good Friday, and
    Easter--that it is ``obscene'' to be carrying on this kind of war during
    this period--you say what?
        The President. That we are acting in defense of the defenseless. We
    are not carrying on an aggressive war. We are acting at a time when he
    is going through the country killing people--according to the reports,
    including moderate politicians--tried to destroy records of what their
    land holdings are, tried to eradicate any historical record of their
    claim to their own land, and has given no indication whatever that he's
    prepared to stop his aggression.
        I mean, the cease-fire he offered to Prime Minister Primakov was
    ludicrous. He didn't offer to withdraw his troops to where they were
    before this invasion began. He didn't do that. He basically said,
    ``Well, now, I'll just keep my gang and sit around here, and if
    everybody wants to stop shooting, that's fine with me.''
        Since he's taken all the media out of Kosovo, we would have no way
    of knowing even whether he was honoring that or not. He could keep right
    on doing what he's been doing, and there would be no coverage of it.
        So this week is a very important week to me personally and to
    American Christians, to American Jews. Next week will be Easter week for
    Orthodox observers, Christians, not only in--the Serbs, in that part of
    the world, and among the many, many Orthodox we have in the United
    States. I hate the idea of having to continue this campaign during this
    period. But I hate more the idea that we would walk away from this
    campaign while he continues to clean out house after house after house
    and village after village after village and kill a lot of innocent
    people. I think that that would not serve to honor the occasion.

    President's Feelings About Situation in Kosovo

        Mr. Rather. Mr. President, as you always try to do, we're talking in
    measured tones. As President of the United States, you have to be
    careful of what you say. But I'm told by those who are close to you that
    you have a lot of pent-up feelings about what's happening in the
    Balkans, what we're doing there. Can you share some of that with us?
        The President. Well, I guess I do have a lot of pent-up feelings,
    and I think the

    [[Page 553]]

    President is supposed to keep a lot of those feelings pent up. But let
    me say, I think throughout human history one of the things that has most
    bedeviled human beings is their inability to get along with people that
    are different than they are, and their vulnerability to be led by
    demagogues who play on their fears of people who are different than they
    are.
        You and I grew up in a part of the country where that was a staple
    of political life during our childhood. That's why this race issue has
    always been so important to me in America. And here we are at the end of
    the cold war; we're on the verge of the 21st century; our stock market
    went over 10,000 this week; we see the Internet and all this technology
    with all this promise for all these people, not just the United States
    but all over the world. And what is the dominant problem of our time?
    From the Middle East to Northern Ireland to Bosnia to central Africa,
    people still wanting to kill each other because of their racial and
    religious, their ethnic, their cultural differences.
        This is crazy. And it is embodied in the policies of Mr. Milosevic.
    He became the leader of the Serbs by playing on their sense of
    grievance, which may have had some justification--their sense of ethnic
    grievance--and made them believe that the only way they could fulfill
    their appropriate human destiny was to create a Serbs-only state, even
    if it meant they had to go in and go to war with the Bosnian Muslims,
    and they had to go to war with the Croatian Catholics; they had to go to
    war with Kosovar Albanian Muslims and clean them all out.
        And to be doing it in a place where World War I began, which has
    been the source of so much heartache, where so much instability can
    occur in other neighboring countries in the last year of the 20th
    century, I think is a tragedy.
        And I had hoped--he's a clever man, you know, Mr. Milosevic, not to
    be underestimated. He's tough; he's smart; he's clever. I told all of
    our people that. The worst thing you can ever do in life is
    underestimate your adversary. But underneath all that, for reasons that
    I cannot fathom, there is a heart that has turned too much to stone,
    that believes that it's really okay that they killed all those people in
    Bosnia, and they made a quarter of a million refugees there--or
    millions, probably 2 million by the time it was over, dislocated from
    their home; and a quarter million people died--and it's really okay what
    they're doing in Kosovo; that somehow non-Serbs on land that they want
    are less than human.
        And I guess I've seen too much of that all my life. And I have all
    these dreams for what the modern world can mean. When I'm long gone from
    here, I hope that there will be a level of prosperity and opportunity
    never before known in human history, not just for Americans but for
    others. And it's all being threatened all over the world by these
    ancient hatreds.
        We're working, trying to bring an end to the Northern Ireland peace
    process now. We're trying to keep the Middle East peace process going.
    All of this stuff, it's all rooted in whether people believe that their
    primary identity is as a member of the human race that they share with
    others who are different from them, or if they believe their primary
    identity is as a result of their superiority over people who may share
    the same village, the same neighborhood, and the same high-rise
    apartment. But they don't belong to the same ethnic group or racial
    group or religious group, so if they have to be killed, it's just fine.
        I mean, I think that is the basis of Milosevic's power. And that is
    the threat to our children's world. That's what I believe.

    Airstrikes in Belgrade

        Mr. Rather. Mr. President, there are reports that as we speak, and
    through this evening, that there will be air attacks in Belgrade,
    itself; that you've gotten NATO to authorize it. Is that correct? Is
    that accurate?
        The President. It is accurate that we are attacking targets that we
    believe will achieve our stated objective, which is either to raise the
    price of aggression to an unacceptably high level so that we can get
    back to talking peace and security, or to substantially undermine the
    capacity of the Serbian Government to wage war.
        Mr. Rather. Does that include attacks now in Belgrade? In the
    vernacular of the

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    military, have you authorized them to go downtown?
        The President. I have authorized them to attack targets that I
    believe are appropriate to achieve our objectives. We have worked very
    hard to minimize the risks of collateral damage. I think a lot of the
    Serbian people are--like I said, the Serbs, like other people, are good
    people. They're hearing one side of the story. They've got a state-run
    media. They don't have anybody that can talk about Mr. Milosevic the way
    you get to talk about me from time to time. And that's too bad. And some
    of those targets are in difficult places. But I do not believe that we
    can rule out any set of targets that are reasonably related to our
    stated objective.
        Mr. Rather. If I report tonight that we are attacking targets inside
    Belgrade, will that be inaccurate?
        The President. I don't think that you can report tonight that I have
    confirmed any specific set of targets, because I think that's a mistake
    until we have actually carried out our mission, and I would not do that.
    You can report that I have said that I have not ruled out any targets
    that I believe are reasonably related to our objective of raising the
    price of his aggression in trying to undermine the capacity to wage war.
        Mr. Rather. You know I'm not going to go down a list of targets.
    When you say that you don't rule out any targets that could help you
    accomplish the mission, would that--declining to rule out targets--
    include the Defense Ministry, the Interior Ministry?
        The President. I don't think I should discuss the specific targets,
    because I don't want to compromise our efforts to achieve them. And I
    don't want to run the risk that unscrupulous people would actually try
    to stage civilian casualties there that would otherwise not occur. But
    you can say that I didn't rule out any targets anywhere within Serbia or
    Kosovo that would be reasonably related to our objectives. You can say
    that.

    Remarks by High-Ranking Officials and President's Policy

        Mr. Rather. Mr. President, I want to read to you what some fairly
    high-ranking military people have said privately. You would understand,
    they didn't want their names attached to it. ``Dan, we're not employing
    the full power of our Air Force.'' Another one: ``We ran over 200
    bombing missions the first day when we moved against Saddam Hussein.''
    There hasn't been a single day in which you've run as many as 50 bombing
    missions, with the possible exception of today. Why aren't we going all-
    out? You've described a situation that you feel passionately about, you
    think is wrong. Everybody knows if you had a street fight with a bully,
    you want to hit him the hardest right at first.
        The President. You have reported--and you mentioned this to me in
    the beginning that we have stepped up our attacks and that I have pushed
    for that. I think it's quite important to emphasize--again, let me say,
    again--we have done this through and with NATO. It is an organization
    that operates by consensus. One of the things that has struck me is that
    in the last 48 hours, because of the actions taken by Mr. Milosevic, the
    will, the steel, the determination, and the outright anger of our allies
    has been intensifying exponentially, so that we have now, I think,
    stronger support than we have ever had for taking the most aggressive
    action we can.
        So I will say to you, I've tried to do everything I can, consistent
    with maintaining allied unity and with achieving our objectives. I
    understand the frustration of some of our people in the Pentagon. But I
    think that the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
    would tell you that I have worked very hard with them to give them the
    maximum possible leeway, showing sensitivity only to targets that would
    have marginal benefit but cause a lot of collateral damage. I don't want
    a lot of innocent Serbian civilians to die because they have a man
    running their country that's doing something atrocious. But some of them
    are at risk because of that and must be, because we have targets that we
    need to go after.
        Now, we're getting--we've got good allied unity. I think it's worth
    something to preserve that. And I think that that's what I would ask our
    military people to understand, too. I know that our top commanders do,
    because they understand what we're trying to do with NATO. And goodness
    knows, General Clark, the American general who's the Commander of our
    NATO forces, we have

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    someone who understands Mr. Milosevic very well, who was there during
    the Bosnian talks, and who is all-out committed to the most aggressive
    possible response.
        So we're doing--we're getting steadily more and more support for
    being more and more aggressive, and I think that will only grow.

    Ground Troops

        Mr. Rather. Mr. President, I want to pose this next question with
    all respect, but also directly. Everybody acknowledges you have a
    brilliant mind; you're an excellent speaker, but sometimes people--
    people who support you and like you say, well, he parses words too
    closely--``what is, is'' argument, all of that. I want to discuss ground
    troops. In the context of speaking as directly as you possible can, when
    you say you have no intention to commit ground troops to accomplishing
    the mission in Kosovo, does that mean we are not going to have ground
    troops in there--no way, no how, no time?
        The President. It means just what it says. I'll come back to the
    point, but you say people say I parse words too close. That's what they
    said about President Roosevelt, too. He made a pretty good President.
    And when people say you parse words too closely, it usually means they
    want to ask you a question and get you to give an answer which is
    inconsistent with the objective you're trying to pursue for the American
    people, and so you don't do what they want you to do. So normally they
    criticize you not for what you're doing but for what they wish you would
    do.
        Mr. Rather. Fair enough.
        The President. I have used those words carefully. I am very careful
    in the words I use not to mislead one way or the other. And the reason
    is, I think I have embraced a strategy here that I believe has a
    reasonable, good chance--a reasonably good chance of succeeding--maybe
    even a better chance than that as long as we have more and more steel
    and will and determination and unity from all of our NATO allies. And I
    want to pursue that strategy. And I believe that all these discussions
    about, well, other strategies and should we do this, that, or the other
    thing do not help the ultimate success of the strategy we are pursuing.
    That is why I have used the words I have used; why I have said the words
    I have said.
        Now, on the merits of it, the thing that bothers me about
    introducing ground troops into a hostile situation--into Kosovo and into
    the Balkans--is the prospect of never being able to get them out. If you
    have a peace agreement, even if it's difficult and even if you have to
    stay a little longer than you thought you would, like in Bosnia, at
    least there is an exit strategy and it's a manageable situation. If you
    go in in a hostile environment in which you do not believe in ethnic
    cleansing and you do not wish to see any innocent civilians killed, you
    could be put in a position of, for example, creating a Kosovar enclave
    that would keep you there forever. And I don't believe that is an
    appropriate thing to be discussing at this time.
        I do think we've got quite a good chance of succeeding with our
    strategy if we could keep everybody focused on it. And I simply think
    that it's wrong for us to be obsessing about other things and not
    working--people are frustrated because we live in an age where everybody
    wants things to operate like a 30-second ad. This air campaign is not a
    30-second ad. It's only been going on a few days, and it's been
    undermined to some extent by bad weather. But we are blessed with
    enormously skilled pilots, a good plan, good technology, and good
    resolve by our allies. And I'd like to see us keep working on this and
    not to have our attention diverted by other things.

    Mrs. Clinton's Possible Senate Bid

        Mr. Rather. Mr. President, there's so many questions and so little
    time. You know I'm going to be in trouble if I don't ask you some
    questions on some other subjects, but I'd like to do that and then come
    back to Kosovo because I know you agree that this war situation--air war
    at the moment for us--there's nothing more important than that. But let
    me shift gears for just a moment.
        Could you describe for me what you believe to be the
    responsibilities of a husband of a United States Senator?
        The President.  [Laughter] I don't know, but I'm willing to fulfill
    them. I would do whatever. I would fill in at dinners, make speeches
    when she had to vote. I'd be the

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    main casework officer of the New York office. I'd do whatever I was
    asked to do.
        Let me say seriously, I have no earthly idea what my wife will do. I
    can tell you that before some New York officials came to her, it had
    never crossed her mind. And I still think it's a highly unusual thing.
    And I can imagine that many voters in New York would wonder whether--
    even though she and I intended to move to New York after we left the
    White House, although I would also spend a lot of time at home in
    Arkansas--they would wonder, well, does this make sense for someone to
    be a United States Senator. And that would be a burden she would have to
    carry in the campaign and to explain that--why she was doing it, that
    she was asked to do it, and demonstrate her commitment to the State and
    its issues.
        I think if she could win an election like that, she would be
    magnificent. But whatever the duties are--for 22 years now or more,
    we've done what I wanted to do in terms of my political career. So the
    deal I made was she gets the next 22 years. And if I'm still around
    after that, we can argue about the third phase. And so I would be happy
    to be the spouse of a Senator.
        Mr. Rather. And you expect to do that together as man and wife?
        The President. Oh, absolutely. I would--like I said, I don't know
    what the duties are, but I'm sure I could fulfill them.

    First Family

        Mr. Rather. Mr. President, you know Americans like to know that the
    First Family is okay, that they're doing all right. Given the year-plus,
    what you and our First Family have been through, tell us what you can
    about how the three of you are doing.
        The President. Well, I think, given what we've been through, we're
    doing reasonably well. We're not a large family. We do love each other
    very much, and we work hard to support one another. And I think that
    this trip to north Africa has been a good thing not only for our
    country--because I think Hillary has done a great job on it--I think it
    must have been good for Hillary and Chelsea, too, to have that time
    together, to do some exciting things, to be in a different environment.
    And I think they've really enjoyed it. I think we're doing quite well
    considering what we've been through. And God willing, we'll keep after
    it.

    Lessons of the Past Year

        Mr. Rather. How about yourself, Mr. President--we're here in a room
    with pictures of Lincoln, Washington, Continental Congress--and you're
    thinking about sending our sons and daughters into war. I know that. But
    I also know you tend to stay up late at night; you always have done
    that. When you look back over this year-plus, what's the moral of it?
    Does it have a moral?
        The President. Oh, yes, I think there is more than one lesson here.
    I think, first of all, the moral is--there's a personal moral, which is
    that every person must bear the consequences of his or her conduct, and
    when you make a mistake, you pay for it, no matter who you are. And it's
    true whether or not it's made public, or whether or not what's made
    public is exactly accurate reflection of what in fact happened--that's
    not the important thing. The important thing is that there are
    consequences in people's personal lives, no matter who they are.
        The second lesson is that the Constitution works. The Founding
    Fathers were smart people. They understood that partisan passions which
    very often get carried away in the temptation to seize on events of the
    moment would be too great, and that's why they wrote the Constitution
    the way they did. And they were awfully smart.
        The third thing that I think we learned this year is that the
    American people almost always get it right if you give them enough time
    to think through things and really work on it.
        And the fourth thing I think we learned is that people expect their
    elected officials to work for them, and not be forced to be focused on
    themselves or their adversaries in Washington, and that they will reward
    those who they believe get up every day and show up for work and work
    for them and their future and their children, and they will take account
    of those they believe do not.
        Those are, I think, the lessons of the last year.

    [[Page 557]]

    Resignation

        Mr. Rather. You said the American people, if given enough time--did
    you ever consider resigning?
        The President. Never.
        Mr. Rather. Never for a second?
        The President. Never. Not a second. Never. Never.
        Mr. Rather. Never entered you mind?
        The President. Never entered my mind.
        Mr. Rather. Did the First Lady ever come to you and say, ``Listen, I
    think we ought to at least consider it?''
        The President. No. She felt at least as strongly as I did that it
    shouldn't be done.
        Mr. Rather. That tells me she might have felt even stronger.
        The President. At least as strongly as I did. But it never crossed
    my mind. I wouldn't do that to the Constitution. I wouldn't do that to
    the Presidency. I wouldn't do that to the history in this country. I
    would never have legitimized what I believe is horribly wrong with what
    has occurred here over the last 4 or 5 years. So it never crossed my
    mind. And I always had faith. I just--I prayed about it. I tried to work
    on maintaining my inner spiritual strength, and I tried to come to grips
    with the work I had to do personally with my family and myself and the
    work I owed the American people. And I just decided that of all the
    options available, that wasn't one. And it never entered my mind.

    Reaction to President's Conduct

        Mr. Rather. Mr. President, I get a lot of letters--not as many as
    you do, but I get a lot of letters from parents who say, some of them
    say, ``Listen, I like President Clinton, I like what he's doing for the
    country.'' Some of them even say they'd ``vote for him again, but I
    don't know what to tell the children on the worst aspects of what
    happened last year.'' Let's try to give these parents some help. What
    can they tell the children? What do they tell----
        The President. Well, it's interesting, you know. I get a lot of
    letters from parents and from children--interesting letters from
    children--and sometimes pretty young children--11-, 12-, 13-year-old
    kids writing me, some of them, on this very point, and offended that
    they're being used in that way, because what they say is, ``What I
    learned from this is what my parents always told me--that nobody is so
    big or so important that they're not subject to the same rules of human
    conduct; and that when they do things they shouldn't, they have to bear
    the consequences. But if they bear the consequences, say they're sorry
    and go on, they should be able to go on with their lives, because they
    also know that every person makes mistakes. No one is so big or so
    important that they are perfect.''
        And so that's what I would say to our children. That's what I think
    the lessons of all those Bible stories are of the great figures of the
    Bible who did things they shouldn't have done. The reason those stories
    are in the Bible is to say, everyone sins, but everyone is held
    accountable and everyone has a chance to go on--and that all three of
    those points need to be made. And if you say that to our children, I
    think that's what needs to be said.
        Kids are pretty smart, and they--this is a good lesson, not a bad
    lesson for them. I'm sorry that I had to be the example, and it's
    painful. But the lessons, the right lessons properly learned, will be
    good for them and good for our country.

    Impeachment

        Mr. Rather. Mr. President, I hear this clock ticking, and it isn't
    the ``60 Minutes'' clock. And I do want to get back to the war
    situation, but in this category--last question, if you'll indulge me--
    you agree that whatever you do, however this situation in Kosovo turns
    out, whatever else you do, in the first paragraph of your obituary is
    going to be a reference to what you consider among the worst things that
    has ever happened to you: the only President in the 20th century to be
    impeached; one of only two Presidents to be impeached. Give me some
    sense of how you feel about that, within yourself.
        The President. Well, first of all, I'm not at all sure that's right,
    that it will be the first paragraph of the obituary. And secondly, if it
    is, if the history writers are honest, they'll tell it for just exactly
    what it was. And I am honored that something that was indefensible was
    pursued and that I had the opportunity to defend the Constitution. That

    [[Page 558]]

    doesn't have anything to do with the fact that I did something I
    shouldn't have done of which I am ashamed of and which I apologize for.
    But it had nothing to do with the impeachment process. And I think
    that's what the American people, two-thirds of them, knew all along. And
    I determined that I would defend the Constitution and the work of my
    administration. And those that did not agree with what I had done and
    were furious that it had worked and that the country was doing well, and
    attempted to use what should have been a constitutional and legal
    process for political ends, did not prevail. And that's the way I saw
    it.
        I have no lingering animosity. I don't wake up every day mad at
    those people----
        Mr. Rather. You've got to be bitter about some of it.
        The President. I'm not. I have--I'm not. I learned--look, I'm not.
    And I'm not saying that for any reason other than that I have--part of
    the learning process that I went through in the last 6 years, but
    certainly in the last--and in the last several years when I was dealing
    with this, when I saw--all these other charges, they were always false,
    they never amounted to anything. And half the people that were
    propagating them knew they were false. I realized that, particularly in
    the last year, if I wanted people to give me forgiveness, I had to
    extend forgiveness. If I wanted to be free to be the best President and
    the best husband and father and the best person I could be, I had to
    free myself of bitterness.
        And I have worked very hard at it. And I have had very powerful
    examples. I look at a man like Nelson Mandela, who suffered enormously--
    yes, he was part of a political movement that was threatening to the
    people who were in, but he didn't deserve to go to jail for 27 years.
    And in the 27 years he was there, he purged himself of his hatred and
    also of whatever might have been wrong with himself, and his hatred for
    other people. Now, if a person like that can rid himself of bitterness,
    what I went through was peanuts compared to that. It was nothing.
        And I think it's an--and any moment I spend full of anger and
    bitterness is a moment I am robbing from my wife or from my daughter or
    from my country or from my friends. So it's almost a selfish decision.
    But I do not regard this impeachment vote as some great badge of shame;
    I do not. Because it was--I do not believe it was warranted, and I don't
    think it was right.
        And I believe, frankly, if you look back at President Andrew
    Johnson, who, unfortunately, because of the circumstances under which he
    came to office, didn't have the opportunity to achieve very much while
    he was President, I think most people believe that he was unjustly
    impeached and that the fact that he stood up to it and refused to give
    in, and came within much closer than I did--he came within only a vote
    of actually being removed--reflects well on him and the history of the
    country, not poorly.
        And so I just don't have bad feelings about that. But neither do I
    have feelings of anger and bitterness against those who did what they
    did, whether they believed it or whether it was political, or whatever.
    I just think that it's past us, and we need to put it behind us, and we
    need to go on. We owe that to the American people, to let it go. And all
    of us owe it to our families and our personal lives. All the great
    players here, they need to let it go and go on with the business of the
    country.

    Serbia's Strategy in Kosovo

        Mr. Rather. Mr. President, you have been very generous with your
    time, and I appreciate it. I want to get back to the war. Let me sketch
    out for you a scenario which a number of diplomats and some military
    people have said this could happen: Milosevic will have defeated the
    Kosovo Liberation Army, self-described as such, and he will have rid
    Kosovo--driven out most of, if not all of, the Albanians. He's very near
    having accomplished that. So over the next few days, having accomplished
    that on the ground, while our air campaign tries to build this momentum
    you've talked about, he then says, ``Okay, I'm ready to talk.'' Doesn't
    that leave us defeated? Or does it?
        The President. It does if we accept that result--if we accept that
    result. Because I think we've got to say, but the Kosovars have all got
    to be able to come home, and they have to be secure, and they have to be
    given the autonomy of self-government----

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        Mr. Rather. Excuse me--you're talking about in some enclave, some
    protected enclave?
        The President. No, I'm talking about they're entitled to come back
    to Kosovo, to go back to their villages where they were, and to enjoy
    self-government and security. But keep in mind, Dan, let me say again,
    there is no scenario under which this last week could not have occurred,
    if he was willing to do it.
        Mr. Rather. You don't think the air campaign gave him the opening to
    do this?
        The President. No, no, that I'm sure of. I just met with a bunch of
    Kosovar Albanians here--excuse me, a bunch of Albanian Americans here--
    I'm sorry--in the White House. One man told me he had 24 cousins in
    Pristina. Every one of them said to me, ``Don't let people tell you that
    this NATO air campaign caused Milosevic to do that. Everybody knows
    that's a bunch of bull.''
        Mr. Rather. You're absolutely convinced----
        The President. Absolutely.
        Mr. Rather. ----that it didn't touch it off.
        The President. No. He had 40,000 soldiers on the border and inside
    Kosovo.
        Mr. Rather. And hundreds of tanks?
        The President. Almost 300--before any of this happened. Last October
    he had already created a quarter of a million refugees before the NATO
    threat got him to stop. This is a part of his strategy. He started his
    ethnic cleansing politics with a big speech against the Kosovars in
    Kosovo 12 years ago. And then he got diverted into his wars in Bosnia
    and Croatia. So I believe this is a plan he had all along.
        Now, suppose--you could take any scenario. If we had said, well, if
    you do this, ground troops are on the way. Suppose that had been said--
    it would take much longer to mobilize that than it did the air campaign.
    He had the armor; he had the men; he had the air cover; he had the
    weapons; he had all this stuff he could do.
        And the UCK, the Kosovar Liberation Army, all those people--all they
    could ever do was to fight what was, in effect, a guerrilla war, which
    they could still do. They may be run out of the country; they could come
    back; they may be run up into the hills; they can come down--with
    support they got from their kinfolks and relatives outside of the
    region.
        So I think it's very important to note that there--that under any
    set of circumstances, his military could have done what they have done
    these last 5 days.
        Mr. Rather. And you think they would have done----
        The President. Absolutely. I am totally convinced of that. So is
    everyone else that I know who's been dealing with this for any length of
    time. Would they have waited another week to do it? Maybe. But I'm
    convinced that that's exactly what they wanted to do. They didn't show
    up in those numbers with those tanks for their health. That's what they
    were going to do.
        So I think the real issue is--I think that that was a decision
    certainly made when he realized--he did not want the framework of the
    peace agreement, which was let them have self-government within the
    autonomous framework that governed Yugoslavia for all those years; and
    let's have an international force in there to keep them safe. Even
    though the international force--I want to say again, because there may
    be a lot of Serbian-Americans listening to this interview--the
    international force, we made it clear that we would not go in there, and
    neither would our NATO allies, unless they were also free to protect the
    Serbian minority in Kosovo, because so much blood has been shed and so
    many people that have been dislocated that they, too, are vulnerable to
    people taking it out on them because they're Serbs. So we said we would
    not go in there unless we also protected the Serbs.
        But, yes, I'm completely convinced. Prime Minister Blair believes
    that. Chancellor Schroeder believes that.
        Mr. Rather. And you believe it.
        The President. With every fiber of my being. I am convinced. Look at
    what this guy did in--let's go back to Bosnia. Two million refugees--a
    quarter of a million people dead. There is no question that this is his
    strategy. And he was very angry that finally what had been a passive
    resistance from the Kosovars, a peaceful resistance for 10 years, began
    to manifest itself then in violent exchanges in

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    return for--in reaction to what the Serbians had done.
        I think he wanted to clean them out. I think he wanted to ethically
    cleanse the country as much as he could. I think he wanted to
    drastically alter the population balance. I think he wanted to eradicate
    all the records of the Albanians and the property they own. I think he
    wanted to erase the history and start all over again. That's what I
    think.

    Genocide

        Mr. Rather. Is genocide too strong a word, Mr. President?
        The President. Well, as you know, I try to be hesitant in using it.
    There is no question that a few thousand people have been murdered
    because they were Kosovar Albanians. There's no question about that.
        Mr. Rather.  But you hesitate to use the word genocide.
        The President. But I think because--it's only a question of whether
    enough people have been killed yet. There's no question that what he was
    doing constitutes ethnic cleansing and that he was killing and uprooting
    people because of their ethnic heritage. There is no question about
    that. And I think that not only he, but others who are in decisionmaking
    positions, have to be held accountable for what they've done. And of
    course, this whole war crimes tribunal that's been set up to review what
    happened in the Balkans will have to review those facts. But the main
    thing I want to do is, whatever the label belongs on it, is to stop it
    if we can.

    Kosovar Independence

        Mr. Rather. Mr. President, I'm getting the wrap-up sign, and I must
    ask you--help me as a reporter. You seem to hint within the last 24
    hours, at least hint, and the newspaper stories say, ``President hints
    at a change in position''--an independent Kosovo, as opposed to a semi-
    autonomous Kosovo. Has there been a change in your thinking? Are you
    changing the policy? Is there likely to be one? Help me explain that to
    folks.
        The President. What I said, I'll say it again, because I think it's
    pretty clear. The United States has supported the historic legal status
    of Kosovo as an autonomous province of Serbia. We think it would be
    difficult for the Kosovars--politically, economically--to sustain
    independence because of their small size and because of the stage of
    their economic development.
        But what I said, and I'll say again, is that Mr. Milosevic is in
    danger of forfeiting the claim of the Serbs to have government over
    those people in their own land. That's the problem--it's his conduct.
    It's not that we've had a change of heart about what would be best, if
    you will, or that we would honor the rule of international law, which
    still has lodged Kosovo as an independent province of Serbia. It's
    whether--and we tried to tell Mr. Milosevic all along that this peace
    process was the best chance he had to keep the Kosovars as a part of
    Serbia, because there would be a 3-year period during which they could
    demonstrate, the Serbs, good faith in letting them govern themselves. We
    could protect the Serbian minority as well as the Albanian majority in
    Kosovo. And they could see that economically it would be better, as well
    as politically. He's just about blown all that off. That's the----
        Mr. Rather. You think he now has that at deep risk?
        The President. It's very much at risk--not because of a change of
    heart by us, but because of a change of behavior by him.
        Mr. Rather. Mr. President, thank you.
        The President. Thank you.

    Note: The interview was taped at 4:21 p.m. in the Cabinet Room at the
    White House for later broadcast and was embargoed for release by the
    Office of the Press Secretary until 9 p.m. In his remarks, the President
    referred to President Slobodan Milosevic of the Federal Republic of
    Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro); Prime Minister Yevgeniy Primakov of
    Russia; Gen. Wesley K. Clark, USA, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe;
    President Nelson Mandela of South Africa; Prime Minister Tony Blair of
    the United Kingdom; and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany. A tape
    was not available for verification of the content of this interview.

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