US Presidency
1996

We need new laws to crack down on money laundering and to prosecute and punish those who commit violent acts against American citizens abroad, to add chemical markers or taggants to gunpowder used in bombs so we can crack the bombmakers, to extend the same power police now have against organized crime to save lives by tapping all the phones that terrorists use. Terrorists are as big a threat to our future, perhaps bigger, than organized crime. Why should we have two different standards for a common threat to the safety of America and our children? We need, in short, the laws that Congress refused to pass. And I ask them again, please, as an American, not a partisan matter, pass these laws now. Third, we will improve airport and air travel security. I have asked the Vice President to establish a commission and report back to me on ways to do this. But now we will install the most sophisticated bomb detection equipment in all our major airports.