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 decision-making 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 six
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 five 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 "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 issues -- 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.
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 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.
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. And 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 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.
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 work 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 Osama bin Laden'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Convention, 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 scientsts 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.
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 that 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
countries and their subsidiaries do.
And that's been the tension that you've written a lot
about and there's been a lot 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.
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.
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's 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.
Q: Thanks.
END
7:03 P.M. EST