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I have not talked to Alan lately, but I do not want to see us move so strongly against fear of inflation that we impede growth. We have to keep expanding opportunities for the working men and women of this country. I just saw this little summary of what Greenspan said. That is what I was told. That is why I do not want to get into commenting on his -- -- Visit to China Are we going to China? We may have it. We may have something on that -- you know, yea or nay -- before the close of business today. There is talk that you are hitting the ground walking. Where'd you get we ? November. There is a lot of talk that you are hitting the ground walking rather than running, that you are taking -- or that you are starting slow. Are you concerned about that? No, but you are not moving ahead on the budget. You are not moving ahead on any agenda. Moving ahead on the budget -- I mean, we are spending a lot of time on it. I know we have got some meetings -- meeting with budget team, 10 a.m. But you mean in terms of sending up legislation or -- -- Yes, and that there is no sort of an active agenda that you are pursuing from day one and that you are putting things off, you are studying things, you are waiting. Well, I have been a President since January 20th, and I think it is a little early to make conclusions one way or another on all that. The environmentalists say they are going to be making a litmus test out of ANWR . Is there any chance you are going to reconsider the Interior seat? I am in favor of prudent development there. I remember the pipeline. I remember the arguments against it. And I also know the effect it did not have on the caribou. You may remember that. Phrases that lived on from campaign history about caribou bumping up against the pipeline. A lot's been made about how you are doing things differently -- you have a different way of doing business. Was it important to you to particularly demonstrate that in this first week in office? Not to do it differently, but it is important to me to do it my way. And that is what we are trying to do, and what I will do. I have to do that.

dialogic

That is the stuff you are going to remember is taking them to the park and pushing them on a swing and hearing them laugh. That is going to be what is most precious in your life, and you just want to make sure you do not miss out on that. Let us talk about My Brother's Keeper. It is an initiative that you said gets to the very heart of why you ran for president. The truth is is that a lot of young men of color are not doing well, partly because they do not have dads in their lives, partly because they do not have networks of support. It is important to me partly because, you know, I grew up without a dad, and I know that I went through my own struggles. You talked about the cycle, but you have broken the cycle for your own family. I try every day for Michelle and my girls to be what my father was not for my mother and me. Does this I mean, the fact that you did not have a dad has it changed your life as a father yourself? Yeah, you know, I I made a decision in young adulthood that it was going to be important for me to make sure that I was there for my kids. I have really tried to make sure that I did not miss parent-teacher conferences, that I did not miss the ballet recitals or the soccer games. I tried to be disciplined about, if I am in town, being home for dinner every single night. And I think it is made a difference. You know, the one thing the girls know about me is I love them to death. How do you think your girls would describe you? I think they would say that I am a good, fun dad who teeters on the edge of being embarrassing sometimes. You know, we set, you know, some pretty firm rules early on in their lives about cleaning up after themselves and making their beds and waking up on time. They have got their acts together. And we really do not have to check on their homework or nag them too much about stuff. They handle their business. So we are really proud of them. Right. What is harder, being and I think my dad would maybe have a comment on this but being a protective father of teenagers or president of the United States?

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Well, as you know from experience and you may have chafed under this a little bit they do have a Secret Service detail, which I have joked the main reason I ran for reelection was to sustain that all the way through their high school years. You know, I do not worry too much about their social lives. They are growing up in a place I once called home. And my sister Barbara and I gave Sasha and Malia a tour when their father became president. I actually met them in this very room when your wife brought them here to tour their new home. And I taught them how to slide down the banister. So you can thank me later. Yes, I very much appreciate that. They have not broken any bones, thanks to those lessons that you gave. Yeah, I taught them the proper way, right? Safety first in this house. One of the things we said is to enjoy every minute. You know, you are living history. But are they enjoying their life here? What is been great is the fact that they have been able to have a pretty normal life. They have got great friends. They have got sleepovers here. They go over to their friends' house to sleep over. They go to the mall. And what I have been really proud of is the fact that they have not gotten an attitude. They do not take this for granted. Finally, the main point of that letter was to, you know, ignore the polls And I know that for Barbara and me it was hard to listen to people criticize our dear dad. Can they stay away from that? Do they or do they take the criticism to heart? They do not really feel deeply burdened by some of the chatter in the news, because it is really not part of their lives. But I am sure that the letter you wrote, you and Barbara wrote, and the example you guys set sure helped them a lot. And Chelsea Clinton, you know, had dinner with Malia one time, which was really generous. You guys are a fairly exclusive club of people who had to put up with this nonsense and turned out to be just amazing young women.

dialogic

Let us talk about ISIS to begin with. Did they bring down that Russian plane? Well, we do not know that yet. I think we are still looking at all the details. Any kind of aviation tragedy like this requires a lot of forensic work. It becomes more difficult when we are not actively involved on the ground. We are offering full cooperation with the Egyptians, with the Russians and others. But a lot of this is peace work. But there is a possibility that they may have taken place. A lot of the intelligence community seems to think it is more of a probability. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on House Intelligence Committee thinks it is. And he told me last week that this would mean that ISIS has fully eclipsed Al Qaeda as the greatest terror threat in the world. Number two, what we have known for a long time, since the duration of my presidency and before that, is that a small network of people if they have got some skills and bomb making capabilities can carry out some big damage. And this is why we have ramped up our aviation security not just here in the United States but overseas. If there is a carrier coming here, then we are working with that airlines and that airport to make sure that they have got certain procedures. Now, we do not fly directly over the Sinai to the United States, and as a consequence we do not have those same arrangements at those airports. But this is something that we have known is a consistent vulnerability in this modern era. And that is part of the reason why we invest so much in not only putting safeguards in place but also learning each time there is an incident like this to see how this might have happened. But if ISIS with affiliates in so many countries right now, even Afghanistan, if they decided now to go to international terror, that is a game changer, is not it? Well I have to tell you, ENTITY AQAP in Yemen Al Qaeda in Yemen we know has had plots consistently over the last several years to try to bring down an airliner. I think that one of the challenges of these international terrorist organizations is that they do not have to have a huge amount of personnel. If there is a crack in the system, then they potentially can exploit it. And they are looking for these cracks to exploit. What makes ISIL the challenge that it is right now is primarily the fact that they are occupying territory in two countries that are not governed effectively in those spaces.

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All right, so in Iraq, when you get into the Sunni areas of Iraq there is not strong governance. And their ability to sustain themselves in those areas are the primary and principle concern we have. with respect to ISIL. that Vladimir Putin will start to take them on? Well Putin, I think, from the start has been sincere in seeing ISIL as a threat. The reason he went into Syria is not primarily because of ISIL, but to prop up Assad. And part of our goal is to underscore for him and for everyone in the region that ISIL is the primary threat and you cannot solve the ISIL problem if, in fact, you have got a country that is governed by somebody who is illegitimate and that the majority of Syrians reject. Can you convince him? What is interesting is we have already seen I think a growing awareness on the part of the Russians after several weeks now of fairly high paced bombing that they are not going to win this militarily. I think they understand that. They may not admit it publicly, but you are already starting to see indications of that. And it is a modestly positive sign that they have engaged with us, the Saudis the Turks and others to try to broker a political transition plan. Now, they have not yet come to the conclusion that Assad cannot be part of a new Syria. And I think it is going to take some time for them to get there. But our goal here, and John Kerry, I think's, done outstanding work in starting to create a platform and a set of principles whereby we agree that a political s solution is what is required, that it has to be inclusive, that there is going to be a transition phase. And, by bringing in the Iranians and the Russians, which is tough for us and tough for a number of our coalition allies they are now at the table. We are starting to shape who are the groups that could responsibly govern Syria. And some of your critics say, even your friendly critics say, like Fareed Zakaria, that what you have on the ground now is not going to be enough. Every couple of months you are going to be faced with the same choice of back down or double down. I think what is true is that this has always been a multi-year project precisely because the governance structures in the Sunni areas of Iraq are weak, and there are none in Syria.

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And we do not have ground forces there in in sufficient numbers so simply march into Al-Raqqah in Syria and clean the whole place out. And as a consequence, we have always understood that our goal has to be militarily constraining ISIL's capabilities, cutting off their supply lines, cutting off their financing at the same time as we are putting a political track together in Syria and fortifying the best impulses in Baghdad so that we can, not just win militarily, but also win by improving governance- But ISIS is gaining strength, are not they? Well, no, I do not think they are gaining strength. What is true is that from the start our goal has been first to contain, and we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq. And in Syria it they will come in, they will leave. But you do not see this systematic march by ISIL across the terrain. What we have not yet been able to do is to completely decapitate their command and control structures. We have made some progress in trying to reduce the flow of foreign fighters. But one of the things that I will be talking about when I see President Erdogan in Turkey and discuss this with the G20 is that we have still got to do more work in controlling the border so that the influx of foreign fighters is much more reduced. And you know, what we also have to do is frankly work with the Iraqis to strengthen their capabilities. Because one of the big challenges throughout this campaign has been that the Iraqi military has proven itself to be effective in protecting Baghdad. But it is much harder for them, because they are primarily Shia, to move out into Sunni areas. And part of our goal has to be to recruit more effective Sunni partners in Iraq to really go on offense rather than simply engage in defense. So what do you think when you hear someone like Ben Carson get up in a debate and say, Hey, this would be easy. We can take ISIL out just by bombing their oil fields in Anbar, that is what a general told him. What I think is that he does not know much about it. And look ENTITY, I think it is fair to say that over the last several years I have had access to all the best military minds in the country and all the best foreign policy minds in the country. And I am not running for office. And so my only interest is in success.

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And if I am down in the Situation Room talking with people who have worked in these regions and have run major military operations from the chairman of my joint chiefs of staff Joe Dunford to, you know, individuals like General Allen, who was involved in Iraqi operations back in 2007/2008, and they do not think it is easy, then it is probably not easy. And what we have been able to do is to shape a strategy that first and foremost contained the momentum that ISIL had gained. We are now in a position where slowly, incrementally we are pushing back against areas where we know we have got some solid partners like the Kurds and the Peshmerga. But until we get the Syria political situation resolved and until Assad is no longer a lightning rod for Sunnis in Syria and the that entire region is not longer a proxy war for Shia/Sunni conflict we are going to continue to have problems. That could take a generation. That is not going to happen anytime soon with making sure that ISIL continues to shrink in its scope of operations until it no longer poses the kind of threat that it does, not just primarily to us, but to neighbors in the region like Jordan or Saudi Arabia and that the humanitarian crisis that is taking place with millions of people who are fleeing the country that that can be relieved. You are not running for office. But as you know, the Republican candidates are putting your foreign policy on the ballot. If you were up on that stage, how would you respond? Well, what I would say is that America is not weaker; it is stronger around the world than when I came into office. And that can be measured by the influence that we have on a whole range of transnational issues, the cooperation that we get on not just counterterrorism, but on critical issues like climate change the work that we are doing in Asia that I will be traveling to talk about in terms of creating the kinds of rule based systems that preserve our freedom of navigation and try to push back against Chinese efforts that may threaten the peace and prosperity of the region. You know, there was a lot of talk among these Republicans about the success of Putin's strategy in the Ukraine. But in fact, because we were able to mobilize the entire international community, we have been able to you know, not only reduce the fighting in Ukraine, but now we are still on track to potentially resolve that peacefully.

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So you know, one of the things that is striking to me, ENTITY, is that pub public opinion around the world about the United States is significantly higher than it was when I came into office. We have not seen the kinds of big threats against the United States that sadly we saw during something like 9/11. We have been able to take more than 180,000 troops or 150, 60, 70,000 troops out of harm's way while still maintaining coalition partnerships. And in everywhere from Latin America to Africa we helped to shape the agenda for a more peaceful, prosperous world. So when you hear rhetoric like this, ENTITY, about America's never been in greater danger that is rhetoric. But when you think about it, when you reflect on it, where have you fallen short? You did not expect to have several thousand troops in Afghanistan, more than 3,500 troops in Iraq. Well, I think actually in Afghanistan let us take Afghanistan as an example. I do not think any of us were ever under any illusion that we could withdraw every single troop out of Afghanistan and that country, which is one of the poorest in the world, that has gone through 30 or 40 year so fighting would be completely stable. Our very premise, our strategy was always that we were going to have to provide the kinds of advice the kinds of training, the kinds of military support that would be required so that this nascent democracy began to work. And that is exactly what we are doing. I when I consider where we have fallen short, what is absolutely true is that in the Middle East and in Syria in particular the you know, enormous changes that took place post Arab Spring were ones that do not happen, you know, every ten years. And we have not been able to get the kind of success on the ground with countries that were fragile to begin with that were governed by dictators to create the kind of civil society that would allow for a functioning, if not perfectly democratic, then at least civil society and government. And when you hear the Republicans talk about well, you know, we'd go in and fix this right away. We are going to win in Middle East. What is clear is that you do not have any sense of how difficult it is. And they do not have a lot of sense of history, including the recent history of our efforts in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Donald Trump is speaking about history. He wants to bring back Operation Wetback from President Eisenhower and deportation force.

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What would that mean? Well, I think the name of the operation tells you something about the dangers of looking backwards. And the notion that we are going to deport 11, 12 million people from this country, first of all I have no idea where Mr. Trump thinks the money's going to come from. It would cost us hundreds of billions of dollars to execute that. Imagine the images on the screen flashed around the world as we were dragging parents away from their children and putting them in what, detention centers and then systematically sending them out. Nobody thinks that that is realistic, but more importantly, that is not who we are as Americans. What do you think when you hear people cheer for that? Well, what I think is that there is always been a strain of anti-immigrant sentiment in America, ironically from folks who themselves two generations back or even one generation back were immigrants themselves. And it is the job of leaders not to play into that sentiment. And given what happened in 2007, 2008, given the fact that despite the recovery, I think people still have some post-traumatic stress and are still concerned about prospects for jobs and economic security in the future it is easy to play on those fears. But that is not that is not what you want from your president. And to their credit Republican and as well as Democratic senators and or presidents in the past, including Ronald Reagan, including George H.W. Bush, including George W. Bush have understood that we are a nation of laws, but we are also a nation of immigrants and that proposing radical and necessarily cruel solutions to a problem that can be solved by some good, old-fashioned legislation of the sort that passed on a bipartisan basis in the Senate and I would've been able to sign two years ago if the House Republicans had allowed it to come to the floor 'cause there was a majority on that floor to vote for it we do not want I think, a president or any person in a position of leadership to play on those kinds of fears. You say we are a nation of laws. On the issue of Guantanamo, one of your big promises, closing Guantanamo Speaker Ryan says you cannot close it on your own, do not have the authority. Do you have the authority to close it on your own? Well, here is what I know is that we need to close it. If you take a survey of retired generals folks who are currently in uniform they will tell you that this is a consistent recruitment tool for jihadists.

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It is contrary to our values. It costs huge amounts of money. So it is my job to, first and foremost, work with Congress to try to find a solution. And what we have been able to do during the course of this administration is to systematically transfer and draw down the numbers who are there. My hope is that by the end of this year we are seeing close to under 100 prisoners remaining and detainees remaining. And when they say no? Well they I am not going to one of the things that I have been consistently trying to do is to give Congress the chance to do the right thing before I then look at my next options. And Congress is going to have an opportunity, I think when they look at the numbers, when they look at how much it costs for us to detain these individuals, when they hear from both current and retired military officers who say this is not what we should be doing they are going to have the ability to make their own assumptions. So you are not ruling out doing it on your own? My job right now is to make sure that Congress has a chance to look at a serious plan and look at all the facts and we will take it from there. Will you rule out executive action? We will take it from there. You have called Hillary Clinton a good friend, strong friend, one of America's finest secretaries of state and said she'd make a great president. ENTITY, I am not going to make endorsements when, you know, I have said in the past it is important for the process to play itself out. Would he make a great president? You know, I think Bernie is capturing a sense among the American people that they want to know the government's on their side, that it is not bought and paid for, that you know, our focus has to be on hard working, middle class Americans not getting' a raw deal. I think Martin O'Malley has important things to say. I am confident that we are going to have a good, strong Democratic candidate, and that they will be able to win in November. Finally-- when you were a student, you spoke out, you protested apartheid in South Africa. If you were on the campus of University of Missouri today, would you be a protestor? Without knowing all the facts I have read enough to know that there is clearly a problem at-- the University of Missouri. And, that is not just coming from students. That is coming from some faculty.

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And I think it is entirely appropriate for students in a thoughtful, peaceful way to protest-- what they see as injustices or inattention to serious problems in their midst. I want-- an activist student body just like I want an activist citizenry And, you know I'd rather see them err on the side of activism than being passive. I think that what you saw with the University of Missouri football team, and the coach, you know, standing up for something that they think is right-- harkens back to a powerful tradition that helped to bring about great change in this country. See, that is what I wanted to ask you- --and making sure that you are engaging in a dialogue, because that is also how change happens. The civil rights movement happened because there was civil disobedience, because people were willing to get to go to jail, because there were events like Bloody Sunday. But it was also because the leadership of the movement consistently stayed open to the possibility of reconciliation and sought to understand the views even views that were appalling to them of the other side. Because there does seem to be a strain on some of these campuses of a kind of militant political correctness where you shut down the other side. And I disagree with that. You know, I have now got, you know, daughters who-- one is about to go to college-- the other one's-- you know, going to be on her way in a few years. And then we talk about this at the dinner table. And I say to them, Listen, if you hear somebody using a racial epithet, if you hear somebody who is anti-Semitic, if you see an injustice, I want you to speak out. And I want you to be firm and clear and I want you to protect people who may not have voices themselves. I want you to be somebody who is strong and sees themselves as somebody who is looking out for the vulnerable. But I tell 'em-- I want you also to be able to listen. I do not want you to think that a display of your strength is simply shutting other people up. And that part of your ability to bring about change is going to be by engagement and understanding the viewpoints and the arguments of the other side.

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And so when I hear, for example, you know, folks on college campuses saying, We are not going to allow somebody to speak on our campus because we disagree with their ideas or we feel threatened by their ideas-- you know, I think that is a recipe for dogmatism. And so, but I want to be clear here 'cause, and it is a tough issue because, you know, there are two values that I care about. I care about civil rights and I care about kids not being discriminated against or having swastikas painted on their doors or nooses hung-- thinking it is a joke. I think it is entirely appropriate for-- any institution, including universities, to say, Do not walk around in black face. It offends people. Do not wear a headdress and beat your chest if Native American students have said, you know, 'This hurts us. This bothers us. But we also have these values of free speech. And it is not free speech in the abstract. The purpose of that kind of free speech is to make sure that we are forced to use argument and reason and words in making our democracy work. And you know, the you do not have to be fearful of somebody spouting bad ideas. Make the case as to why they are wrong. That is how-- that is how things work in-- in-- in a democracy. And I do worry if young people start getting trained to think that if somebody says something I do not like if somebody says something that hurts my feelings that my only recourse is to shut them up, avoid them, push them away, call on a higher power to protect me from that. You know, and yes, does that put more of a burden on minority students or gay students or Jewish students or others in a majority that may be blind to history and blind to their hurt? It may put a slightly higher burden on them. But you are not going to make the kinds of deep changes in society-- that those students want, without taking it on, in a full and clear and courageous way. And you know, I tell you I trust Malia in an argument. If a knucklehead on a college campus starts talking about her, I guarantee you she will give as good as she gets. Sounds like you have been having some good dinner table conversations.

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You first time met with President Putin in Slovenia, and now in Slovakia is going to be your 12th meeting. Do we need a fresh start? And what do you expect for this meeting? First of all, we do not need a fresh start in my personal relationship with Vladimir Putin. It is important so that we can he and I can have good talks, and we can understand each other and understand the decision-making process. Vladimir makes a lot of decisions. And I make a lot of decisions. And I like to talk about him about, Well, why did you do this? or Why did you do that? And I suspect he likes to ask me the same questions. Secondly, we have got the framework for a good strategic relationship, which is important. The campaign came, and in American public life, I mean whether it be foreign policy or domestic policy, often you kind of shut down when the campaign comes. People were not really sure who was going to be the next President for a while. I'd call it reinvigorate. We have got the framework, and it gives us a chance to move it forward. Your father was a pilot, was a hero of Second War. What the best the people who can to those who won the war. What can you say to the patriots? My answer is, is that, thank you for your sacrifice. The Russian veterans the people of Russia went through an unbelievable period of time of sacrifice. The stories of courage and bravery against the onslaught of the Nazis was really fantastic. I mean, it was a great lesson for bravery. And same in our country they call it the Greatest Generation ; that is what they call the World War II people because they sacrificed. And it still this world still requires sacrifice in different ways. And I am looking forward to the celebrations. The wartime alliance, do you have lessons for us now? We have again the common enemy. He sees clearly the common enemy. And we will talk about that common enemy that is still active. The enemy there is a set of beliefs they believe in, and I believe the best way to defeat those beliefs is by spreading freedom and democracy. Free societies spend more time listening to their people and the demands of their people as opposed to being able to fight and spread in this case fighting an ideology that is an ideology of hatred as this as your good country full fully understands. American-Russian relationship what was the biggest success during your first term? And what are your plans for next 4 years?

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VH1 Save The Music, you have been involved for a while. When did you first hear about the program, and why did it draw you? Well, I am trying to remember whether I first heard about it from my wife or whether I read something about it. But I actually wrote a letter to John Sykes because I was so excited about what they were doing. I had been in school music when I was a young person, starting at the age of 9. And I had been really, really upset about all these schools dropping their music programs when I was Governor. And Hillary and I redid the school standards in Arkansas. We tried very hard to protect the music programs and the arts programs and the physical education programs for the people who were not in team sports. And so I realized that all over the country these schools were under more and more financial pressure, and they thought that maybe the path of least resistance was just to get rid of the music programs. And so here was someone trying to do something about it. Growing up I know, I have watched a lot of tapes on you. We did Rock and Roll ENTITY a while back with you. I loved it. They gave me a copy of that. Music education was really important to you, obviously, growing up Looking at where you are now, arguably one of the most important people on the planet, what did music education do for you, and how has it come to play in your life now? Well, first of all, it gave me an outlet for all this energy I had. It gave me a constructive way to be creative. It also taught me discipline, and it taught me that to create something beautiful required hard work and discipline. It taught me how to be to create alone and also how to work with a group, in a band, a jazz band or a combo. It is such a wonderful when I was a kid and I'd have a tough time, as long as I could play, I could always be okay. I could just be in a private place. And it fueled my imagination. And it gave me an appreciation of things in life that has stayed with me to the present day. I can still go in my music room that Hillary built me upstairs in the White House and play for 15 or 20 minutes, and all the cares of the world go away. So you guys have got to remember that when you are playing. Clinton said it.

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Let us talk about, there was a resolution passed in Congress a few days ago, unanimous resolution, saying that music education was extremely important. Why is it so important that this was passed, and what is it going to do in the future? Well, I think it was important that it was passed because it shows that the Representatives of the people of both parties have now are acknowledging that it is important and it is a problem because there are so many schools that do not offer it anymore. And I think it will tend to increase public awareness of this, public support for maintaining the music programs. The ENTITY's Advisory Commission on Music and the Arts did a study a couple of years ago, and Hillary was the honorary chair of the committee. They found that local pressure, parental involvement, community involvement was the single most important factor in either keeping or restoring music programs to the schools. I think also, though, the Congress and the ENTITY have a responsibility to keep putting as much money out there to the schools to pay for their other expenses as possible the buildings, the teachers, to have smaller classes so the schools will have the money they need for the music programs. But you know, there is lots and lots of research on this now which shows that if a good school music program increases academic performance, that a lot of young people learn in different ways and are dramatically stimulated by music. So that is another reason we ought to be for this. It actually will help the overall learning enterprise. That is an important point because I think everybody thinks of it as just an art, and it stops there We have had a lot of artists helping us this week with VH1 Save The Music week and the Today Show. Mariah Carey was out yesterday; A.J. McLean from the Backstreet Boys; the Goo Goo Dolls. Today we have Bon Jovi playing at the Today Show in Rockefeller Center. I love Bon Jovi. I am a music fan of his. I like his acting. He is doing very well in the movies now. He is been to the White House to visit Hillary and me on several occasions. And I am pleased for his success, and I am grateful that he is helping today. What does it say to the public to have such important sort of star power behind a program like VH1 Save The Music? Well, I hope that it increases the public's awareness. I mean, these people could all be doing something else.

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Next week, ENTITY makes his first visit to Europe as ENTITY. a summit with NATO heads of government, talks on the Middle East with , and meetings with the Governments of Spain and Italy. Today, ENTITY has invited us to the White House to discuss the issues facing the West. It is the first time an American ENTITY has met European journalists in a television program of this kind. ENTITY's travels come at a pregnant time. He leaves an America somewhat doubtful about its world role as it absorbs the sudden, final collapse in Indochina. He faces a Western Europe hungry for reassurance, but again somewhat doubtful of America's present will and capacity to back up that reassurance. ENTITY, we are gathered in the room from which Franklin Roosevelt delivered his famous fireside chats to rekindle the American spirit during the Great Depression of the thirties. Do you see your travels to Europe as necessary to rekindle the spirit of the Atlantic Alliance? I think the trip has a perhaps broader aspect or implication. First, I should say that the closeness between the United States and the Western European countries has a long history and an important future. The trip, as I see it, is aimed at solidifying and making more cohesive this relationship-economically, diplomatically, and militarily. I also see it as an opportunity for us to take a look at the past and consult about the future and to make our personal relationships even better. And if we approach it with that attitude or with those viewpoints, it is my opinion that we, as well as the other allies, can make substantial progress. So many commentators see the Europeans in need of some reassurance. Do you feel that is part of your mission? I am sure that my presence there, and what we intend to say, and what we intend to indicate by our actions, will be very, very helpful in this regard. Has your handling of the Mayaguez incident, in effect, done some of that work for you by reaffirming America's will to respond when challenged? I am sure that both domestically in the United States, as well as worldwide, the handling of the Mayaguez incident should be a firm assurance that the United States is capable and has the will to act in emergencies, in challenges. I think this is a clear, clear indication that we are not only strong but we have the will and the capability of moving.

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ENTITY, it seems to me that the handling of the Mayaguez incident proved your own determined character, but not necessarily the American will. It was short, and it did not need any Congressional decisions. What has weakened the credibility of the American commitments, I think, in the eyes of the allies are these restrictions and limitations that Congress has put on the Presidency. And then there is also feeling that a kind of neo-isolationism is rising in Congress. I was wondering how you would deal with this doubt in American credibility? Now, I believe there are some new indications that indicate that Congress is taking another look, and perhaps the Mayaguez incident will be helpful in that regard. There were some limitations, but we lived within them. But it was rather short, and it did not require an extensive commitment. But there are some things taking place in the Congress today that I think ought to reassure our allies that the United States--ENTITY, the Congress, and the American people--can and will work together in an extended commitment. Let me give you an illustration. This past week, the House of Representatives, in a very, very important vote, defeated an amendment that would have forced the withdrawal of 70,000 U.S. military personnel on a worldwide basis. And of course, that would have affected our commitment to NATO. And the vote in the House of Representatives was 311 to 95, as I recall. It was a much more favorable vote this year than the vote a year ago. I think this is an indication that the American people are getting out from under the trauma of our problems in Vietnam. Senator Mansfield--the Democratic leader in the United States Senate--has always, in the past, been demanding and favoring a withdrawal of U.S. military personnel from NATO. Just the other day, he publicly stated that he was reassessing his position and wondered if it was not now the time to perhaps keep our strength there until certain other circumstances developed. During the debate in the House of Representatives, the Democratic leader, Congressman O'Neill of Massachusetts, said this was not the time or not the place or not the number for the United States to withdraw troops from overseas. What I am saying is, we may be entering a new era, an era that will be very visible and very substantive in showing the United States capability and will to not only do something in a short period of time but to stick with it. Are you taking a Congressional delegation with you to Brussels?

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It might not be very helpful for Members of Congress to explain the situation in Congress, and it may also have some advantages vice versa. We have a continuous flow of Members of the Congress, Senators and Congressmen, traveling to Europe, and I think it is good. They meet periodically with their counterparts in various European countries. So, there is no doubt that the attitude of Congress will be well explained to heads of state and to other parliamentarians. I do not think it is necessary to take on this trip Members of the House and Senate. May I focus one moment on the shade of difference between the political and the military type of assurances the United States can give to Europe? Europeans are concerned not as much at the link between the American security and the European security but between American security and what we may call the future of European democracies, which are in trouble in some cases. How do you look at the all-political problem from this point of view? We, of course, have to be most careful that we do not involve ourselves in the internal politics of any country, European or otherwise. We, of course, hope that there is stability in any and all governments, in Europe particularly, and that the political philosophy of the party that controls the country is one that has a relationship to our own political philosophy, not in a partisan way but in a philosophical way. And when we see some elements in some countries gaining ground--the Communist element, for example--it does concern us. We, of course, were encouraged by the fine vote of the Portuguese people. I think the Communist party got only 12 percent of the vote and the non-Communist parties got the rest. But, unfortunately, that vote has not as of this time had any significant impact on those that control the government, but nevertheless we approve of the political philosophy of the people of Portugal. We are concerned with some of the elements in the government. ENTITY, could I come back to the Congressional question for a moment. Are you saying that as a result of the trends you see now in the Congress that you are no longer, as you were at your press conference on April 3, frustrated by the restrictions Congress has placed on the Chief Executive? I said this was the beginning, perhaps, of a new era. Could it lead to the Congress reversing itself on the War Powers Act? I doubt that. I think the Congress felt that the War Powers Act worked reasonably well in the Mayaguez incident.

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But there are some other limitations and restrictions imposed by Congress which I think are counterproductive or not helpful--for example, the aid cutoff to Turkey. Turkey is a fine ally in NATO. We have had over a long period of time excellent political and diplomatic relations with Turkey. I am working very hard, for example, to try and get the Congress to remove that limitation on aid to Turkey. We have been successful in the Senate. We hope to do so in the House. But there are some others, plus that, that I hope we can modify or remove in order for the ENTITY to act decisively, strongly, in conjunction with the Congress, but not hamstrung by the Congress. ENTITY, the Europeans have been deeply struck by a poll recently indicating that the American people would only accept military intervention to defend Canada and no other country. Now, this seems to indicate a deep sense of isolationism or at least neo-isolationism, and I wonder what you feel about that question, what you think of that poll, and how you think you can react against that trend in your own country? I am positive that that poll was an aftermath of our involvement in Vietnam. I believe that the United States, the American people, will completely live up to any international commitments that we have. That poll was taken in isolation, so to speak. It was not related to any crisis or any challenge. I think the record of the American people in the past is one that clearly indicates we will respond to a challenge, we will meet a crisis and will live up to our commitments. The history is better than some poll taken in isolation. You do not feel that there is, then, an isolationist mood in America at this stage? I think there was one developing during and even to some extent after the war in Indochina or in South Vietnam. But now that we are freed of that problem, it seems to me that the American people will feel better about their relationships around the world, will want me as ENTITY and will want the Congress as their Congress to live up to the commitments and be a part of an interdependent world in which we live today. ENTITY, could we move on to the relations with the Communist world and the question of detente.

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It seems to many that the United States is moving into a new emphasis in its foreign policy away from detente towards more support for the allies; in fact--Secretary Kissinger has even used the word--of a need for a new abrasive foreign policy. How would you describe the post-Vietnam foreign policy, and is it shifting away from detente? I do not think there is a contradiction between reaffirmation and strengthening of our relationships with our allies and a continuation of detente. The United States, through many administrations following World War II, has had a consistent foreign policy. It is my desire, as ENTITY, to build on this foreign policy that has been developed over the years. It does encompass working with our allies in Europe, in the Middle East, in Africa, in Latin America, in Asia, and in other parts of the world, and I think by strengthening those relationships, it gives us a better opportunity to use detente for the purposes for which it was designed. Detente was not aimed at solving all the problems. It was an arrangement-and still is--for the easing of tensions when we have a crisis. Now, it cannot solve every crisis, but it can be very helpful in some, and it can have some long-range implications; for example, SALT I and hopefully SALT II. What I am saying is that our policy can be one of working more closely with our allies and, at the same time, working, where we can, effectively with our adversaries or potential adversaries. ENTITY, Secretary Kissinger has just repeated the American commitment to West Berlin. He called it, as I recall it, the acid test of detente. Now, the Soviet Union has recently challenged the four-power status of Berlin by raising some questions about East Berlin. Do you think that this is helpful for detente or that this is something which goes into the general area that you just described? It would seem to me the broad description I gave can be very applicable to the problem raised involving Berlin. If the allies are strong, that will have an impact on any attitude that the Soviet Union might take, and at the same time the existence of detente gives the Soviet Union and ourselves an opportunity to work in the solution of the problem in an atmosphere with less tension.

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Do you get the feeling in Congress that there is a certain suspicion that the Russians are getting more out of detente, as some of the leading Members of Congress have said, than the United States? I think there are some Members of Congress--and perhaps some in the United States in the nonpolitical arena--who have the impression that the Soviet Union has been a bigger beneficiary than the United States. I strongly disagree with that viewpoint. I think detente has had mutual benefits. And I would hope that as we move ahead, the mutuality of the benefits will continue. I do not believe that those who challenge detente and say it is one-sided are accurate. I think they are completely in error. May I put the question differently? Since detente is a way of looking at current affairs, do you subscribe to the argument that the United States should only do what it finds in its own interests, no matter how appealing detente may look at times? Should the United States stick only to what it finds in its own interests, no matter how appealing detente may look? You mean in the United States interest vis-a-vis the Soviet Union or the United States vis-a-vis its allies and friends around the world? Also, in terms of, say, the European Security Conference, for instance, where the question has been raised as to what the usefulness of this whole exercise would be for the Europeans and the Americans without a counterpart? I would hope that detente would have a broader application than only in our own self-interest. But I must say that we have to be very certain that what we do does not undercut our own security. Detente has been used on some occasions, if my memory serves me correctly, to ease tensions on a broader area than just in U.S.-Soviet Union relations. Could you tell us whether the recent talks between Dr. Kissinger and Mr. Gromyko1 have helped to overcome some of the obstacles that you encountered on SALT? They, of course, went into the status of our SALT II negotiations. I do not think I should discuss any of the details. I think they will be helpful in the resolution of some of the negotiations that had to follow after the Vladivostok meeting last December.

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Do you feel that from now on, when there are certain problems going on the periphery of the Western world and of detente, you should take the Russians to task on those subjects in a harsher way than you have done up to now--in Vietnam, for example, and the help they gave to the North Vietnamese? We have indicated quite clearly that we did not approve of the supplying of Soviet arms to the North Vietnamese. We have clearly said that detente is not a fishing license in troubled waters. I think that the implication of that statement is very clear. We intend to be very firm, but detente gives us an opportunity to be flexible and flexible in a very meaningful way. So, it will be orchestrated to meet the precise problem that is on the agenda. ENTITY, on SALT, one more question, if I may. Do you think, sir, that to solve the problems that have come up in SALT II, it requires a political impetus and decision by the two leaders involved, namely, yourself and the General Secretary? We found from the meeting in Vladivostok that there were certain issues that had to be solved at the very highest level, and Mr. Brezhnev and myself did do that. I suspect that as we move into the final negotiations it will be required that the General Secretary and myself make some final decisions. And therefore I would hope that the preliminaries can be gotten out of the way and most of the issues can be resolved, and then the final small print, so to speak, can be resolved when Mr. Brezhnev and I meet, hopefully this fall. you said a moment ago, talking about detente, if the allies are strong, detente will work. A lot of commentators--and one noted one in Newsweek this week--see a perceptible sliding among the allies in Western Europe with the growth of pacifist spirit, a growth of Marxist philosophy in certain governments in the West, and wonder and are asking whether they are not going to end up in the embrace of the Soviet Union in making an accommodation with the Soviet Union. Do you have any slight fears as you set out for Europe that that is what is happening to the Western alliance and you need to do something about it? I have followed the recent meeting of the secretaries of defense, so to speak, and the report I got back was encouraging.

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We do have to upgrade, we do have to modernize our military capability in the Alliance, and I think we will. I am convinced that in the political area, the meeting we are going to have will be helpful and beneficial in that regard. So, although I see some problems in one or more countries internally, I think basically the Alliance is strong. And as long as our allies in Europe see that the United States is not going to pull out, that the United States will continue to be a strong partner, I think this will strengthen the forces favoring the Alliance in our European allies. Therefore, you believe that these problems can be settled without too much difficulty? I certainly recognize the problem between Greece and Turkey involving Cyprus. There are to be both Karamanlis and Demirel in Brussels, and I hope to meet with both and see if we can in any way be helpful. I think this is a solvable problem and there is a beginning of the negotiating process that hopefully will lead to a solution. We have to recognize that everything is not perfect, but that does not mean we cannot solve those problems that are on our doorstep. Now, ENTITY, there is another problem which is perhaps more important still, which is the one of Portugal. It is going to make, I suppose, discussions in NATO very difficult with a Portuguese Government which is dominated by the Communists. Do you think that eventually a new law or new regulation should be made so that countries who do not follow the ideology of the Western world can leave NATO or should be encouraged to leave NATO, such as the pro-Communist Portuguese Government? I am concerned about the Communist element and its influence in Portugal and, therefore, Portugal's relationship with NATO. This is a matter that I will certainly bring up when we meet in Brussels. I do not see how you can have a Communist element significant in an organization that was put together and formed for the purpose of meeting a challenge by Communist elements from the East. It does present a very serious matter, and it is one that I intend to discuss while I am in Brussels. ENTITY, it has been reported that when the Portuguese elections were approaching and it looked as though the Communists were going to do much better in the elections than they actually did that you were in favor of some action by the United States to reduce the possibility of their success and possibly using the CIA in some form. Could you tell us about that? I do not think I ought to discuss internal matters that might have involved another country.

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We had no involvement. So, I think I should leave it right there. ENTITY, you and your mission in Europe will be very close to Portugal. You will be stopping in the Iberian Peninsula, in Madrid. Spain is one country which does not belong to the NATO community, and it does not belong to the Europe of Nine , either. The Spanish people have been asking for a long time to be more closely associated with the European defense--collective defense setup--and your Government perhaps has looked with even more sympathy of recent to the Spanish request. How do you view this policy by the Spanish Government at this time? Well, the United States has had a long and friendly relationship with Spain. In 1970, we signed a friendship agreement. In 1974, we had a declaration of principles that involved our relationship in many, many areas on a broad basis. We think Spain, because of its geographical location, because of other factors, is important in the Mediterranean, in Europe. We believe that somehow Spain should be eased into a greater role in the overall situation in Europe. I am not sure that is something that has to be done at the present time, but it does seem to me that Spain, for the reasons I have given, ought to be brought more closely as far as our relations in the Alliance. Has the Portuguese development, ENTITY, speeded that thinking? ENTITY, in your first speech when you became ENTITY--first important speech--you talked of Europe, you talked of alliance, and you never mentioned the word Europe, and you were criticized for that in Europe. And you still since have given the impression that, for you, Europe is more the NATO organization than the Community. I would like to ask you, do you consider Europe as an entity? Do you think it should have its own independence and its own unity? What are your views on that? I do consider Europe as an entity. On the other hand, we have direct relationships with the major nations in Europe through NATO. On the other hand, we do in the future and have in the past worked within the economic system with Europe as a whole. For example, we have worked very closely with the International Energy Agency, which is a very important part of our efforts to avoid future problems and to develop some solutions in the field of energy. We look upon Europe as an entity, but on the other hand, we deal in a specific way with Europe, or major nations in Europe, through our NATO alliance.

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How vital do you think is Britain's participation in Europe? I do not believe I should get involved in how the vote is going to turn out on June 5,2 but I think Europe is strengthened by Britain's participation. I think our overall Western world economic strength is likewise improved and strengthened by Britain's participation. You mentioned the international energy organization, and there is a good deal of dissatisfaction among European governments that they have done much more in reducing the consumption of petrol than the United States has. I know you have tried, and I was wondering now, in view of the fact that Congress did not come up with a bill, are you going to raise the import tax by another dollar? I agree with you entirely. The European nations have done a much better job in reducing the consumption of petrol, or gasoline as we call it, and I admire them for it. As ENTITY, I have tried to convince the Congress that they ought to pass a comprehensive energy program that would aim at conservation on the one hand and new sources of energy on the other. Now, I am going to make a decision in the next 48 hours as to whether or not I will increase by $1 the import levy on foreign oil. They have done literally nothing affirmatively to solve our energy problem. Perhaps the imposition of the extra dollar will stimulate the Congress to meet the problem that is important from the point of view of not only ourselves but the consuming nations--those in Europe, ourselves, Japan. I am very disturbed, I might say, about Congress' lack of affirmative action. The statement by the Shah that he is going to increase the price again by 25 percent has not helped you in Congress, has it? I think it probably has helped us, because if the price of oil is increased and we have no defense against it, it proves the need and necessity for the United States to have the kind of an energy program that I have proposed. If we had that program in place, the one I recommended to the Congress in January, the threat of an increase in the oil price would be far less. It is the lack of action by the Congress that puts us more and more vulnerable to price increases by OPEC nations. So, I hope this prospective or threatened oil price increase will get the Congress to do something such as what I have recommended. Then we would not have to worry about that.

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Did you try and persuade the Shah not to raise the price of oil, as he is quite influential in the group of OPEC nations? We talked about it. I did point out that it could have very adverse economic impacts, not only on the consuming nations--like Western Europe, the United States, Japan--but it could have very, very bad effects on the less developed nations, who are more of a victim than even ourselves. I would hope that there would be a delaying action, but in order to make ourselves less vulnerable for this one and for other threatened increases in the future, the United States has to have a strong energy program, an energy program that is integrated with that of Western Europe through the International Energy Agency. And I can assure you that we are going to keep urging and pressuring and trying to move the Congress so that we end up with the kind of a program that will preclude these increases. Could I ask one other question on energy? Defense Secretary Schlesinger said in an interview this week that if there came another oil embargo, the United States would not be so tolerant this time and could act, and he even mentioned military action. Now, could you explain what that means? I would rather define our policy this way. We have sought throughout the Middle East to have a policy of cooperation rather than confrontation. We have made a tremendous effort to improve our relations with all Arab countries. And we have continued our efforts to have good relations with Israel. If we put the emphasis on cooperation rather than confrontation, then you do not think about the potentiality that was mentioned by the Secretary of Defense. Since we do believe in cooperation, we do not consider military operations as a part of any policy planning that we have in mind. Well, we put emphasis on cooperation, not confrontation, so we in effect rule out the other. In the spirit of cooperation, we are looking at the United States for leadership in the area of development of alternate sources of energy. We are particularly looking at you for obtaining a nuclear fuel---enriched uranium, natural uranium--and, very important for us, access to technology. you plan to do in this area--in this critical area for many countries of the world? I will be making a decision in the relatively near future as to how we can move affirmatively in this area to provide adequate sources of enriched uranium. We must do it.

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The basic problem is whether you do it through government on the one hand or private enterprise on the other. We will have a decision; we will get going because we cannot tolerate further delay. ENTITY, there is a great concern in the world about the proliferation of nuclear matter, and the more nuclear powerplants are going to be built, the more the United States is going to supply them, the more of that material will be available in the world. I was wondering whether--the question is the reprocessing of this material. I wonder whether it would be possible to find a multilateral way of trying to reprocess this material, because there is a question of prestige with so many governments involved. We are concerned about the proliferation of nuclear capability. We are trying to upgrade the safeguards when the powerplants are sold or made available. We think there has to be continuous consultation on how we can do it technically and how we can do it diplomatically. We are going to maximize our effort, because if the number of nations having nuclear armaments increases significantly, the risk to the world increases, it multiplies. So, this Administration will do anything technically, diplomatically, or otherwise to avert the danger that you are talking about. ENTITY, the oil and energy race is intimately tied up, of course, with the Middle East. You and Secretary Kissinger have said recently that your reassessment of policy in this most explosive and dangerous area, which has been going on for 2 months, is not yet complete. It is a little difficult to understand how you could have spent 2 months and are, as you say, meeting next week with no new policy. I think my meeting with is a very understandable part of the process. He, of course, has a deep interest and concern in a permanent, peaceful solution in the Middle East. I want to get firsthand from him his analysis, his recommendations. Of course, that meeting will be followed by one with Prime Minister Rabin here on June 11, where I will have the same intimate relationship, where he can give me his analysis and his recommendations. ENTITY, it has been some time since there was an authoritative statement of United States policy vis-a-vis the Middle East with reference to U.N. Resolution 242, which calls for secure boundaries and withdrawal from occupied territories. Would you care to state the policy once again?

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Of course, the United States voted for U.N. Resolution 242 and 339 , so we do believe that within the confines of those words, any policy in the long run has to fit. But the details, because they were quite general in many respects--the details will be set forth in the policy statement that I will make sometime after meeting with . Do you think that the question of Russian policies and overtures in the Middle East should be duly linked perhaps to other areas? The Soviet Union, as a cochairman of the Geneva conference, obviously has an interest in and a responsibility for progress in the Middle East. I notice that they have been meeting officially, diplomatically with representatives from Israel, and they have been meeting in the same way with many Arab nations. ENTITY , Mr. Schlesinger has again stressed the possibility of using force in case of an embargo in the Middle East, and he said that if there was another embargo, the United States would not have so much patience as last time. How do you feel about that, and in what case do you think military force could eventually be used? As I said a moment ago, the policy of this Government is one of cooperation, not confrontation. And if you put the emphasis on cooperation, then you do not include within any plans you have any military operations. I do not think I should go beyond that, because everything we are doing in the Middle East--the numerous meetings I have had with heads of states, the many consultations that Secretary Kissinger has had with foreign ministers-it is all aimed in trying to, in a cooperative way, solve the problems of the Middle East. And none of those plans that we have incorporate any military operations. ENTITY, if you could give us a longer perspective of history. Some of your aides believe that the West is in decline. And I was wondering whether you share that outlook? I think the West is in a very unique situation today. The West, so to speak, by most standards is technologically ahead of any other part of the world. The West, I think, under our system of free governments, is in a position to move ahead, taking the lead in freedom for people all over the world. It seems to me that whether it is substantively or otherwise, the West could be on the brink of a leap forward, giving leadership to the rest of the world.

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There is one aspect to the Middle East, ENTITY, which possibly concerns your visit to Europe this next week. Some of your officials have said that one of your concerns was possibly to suggest to the Alliance that it widen its sphere of attention and interest. Does that mean into the Middle East, and what exactly do you have in mind? I do not think the Alliance, as such, ought to involve itself in the Middle East. Of course, every one of the countries in Western Europe, including the United States and Canada, have an interest in a permanent, peaceful solution in the Middle East. And each of the countries will have an impact, some--for one reason or another--more than other nations. But I do not think the Alliance should, as a unified body, move into these very delicate negotiations. What is this initiative that you are reported to be considering to suggest that it does widen its sphere of attention? Well, it would be in a broad, but not substantive way. The impact of each nation, if we could all agree, whether it was done through the Alliance, would be extremely beneficial and most helpful in getting the Arab nations, as well as Israel, to resolve some of these longstanding, volatile questions. Do you mean asking individual members of NATO to do more in the Middle East? Back in NATO--I would like to move back to Europe very briefly--I would like to come back to your answer on your attitude towards the Common Market. I had a feeling by what you were saying that you have a slightly cool attitude towards the Common Market. Do you still believe and support the unity of Europe in the same way as supported it but which was less strongly supported by ? I give full support to the Common Market, the European Community efforts in trying to resolve some of the difficult economic problems. Under this Administration, under my time as ENTITY, we will work together, I hope. And there have been some recent illustrations where we have been able to resolve some very sticky problems in the field of agriculture in a very constructive way. And I have some good evidence, I think, by recent developments that will be the attitude of the Community. ENTITY, are you apprehensive of European rivalry? I am not apprehensive, because I think America is strong and we have the will and we have got the technical capability. I think we can compete with any segment of the globe. I do not like to discount it, but I think competition is beneficial to everybody.

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Secretary Shultz did give rather a bleak news conference in Moscow and seemed to have struck out, coming back empty-handed. That may or may not be true; maybe you are getting private information otherwise. And what are your maximum and minimum goals for this summit? What do you really think you can get out of it? Oh, Helen , I have not tried to pin it down to success or failure or terms of that kind. We are going there to try and basically eliminate if we can or certainly reduce the distrust between our two countries. We have to live in the world together. And it is that distrust that causes the problems and causes the situation with regard to arms negotiations. As I cited to our Russian friends when they were in here the other day that statement-it is not mine, I wish it were-but a statement that I read in the press the other day that summed it up so succinctly; and that is that nations do not distrust each other because they are armed, they are armed because they distrust each other. Well, do you think you can get anywhere near a semblance of an arms agreement? Will you negotiate Star Wars at all? Well, I will be presenting the same thing that I told those others. My concept of the strategic defense system has been one that, if and when we finally achieve what our goal is, that is a weapon that is effective against incoming missiles-not a weapon, a system that is effective against incoming weapons-missiles-then rather than add to the distrust in the world and appear to be seeking the potential for a first strike by rushing to implement my concept has always been that we sit down with the other nuclear powers, with our allies and our adversaries and see if we cannot use that defensive system for the elimination of nuclear weapons. And that, certainly, I will discuss there and try to impress upon them how firmly we believe in this. I do not think the negotiation of facts and figures about which weapon and how many and numbers and so forth in weaponry should take place at the summit. I think that belongs where we have already put it and that is with the arms control negotiators that are already in Geneva. That is their kind of figuring that should go on. We should not be doing that with all of the things we have to discuss at the summit meeting. At that meeting there are a number of things-some of them I hinted at in the speech in the U.N.-regional situation.

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In other words, try to, as I say, eliminate the distrust that exists between us. ENTITY, if I could pursue the SDI a little bit more. Considering what you told the Soviet journalists when they were here last week, there seems to be some discrepancy between your comments to them and your comments today about what the conditions for deployment would be. Could you explain it to us now? Yes, because I have already explained that to our allies at the United Nations, and this was the first misunderstanding that I have seen about it. I went through the transcript of that interview, and I mentioned it three or four times through there, in the transcript. And I think it was someone just jumped to a false conclusion when they suggested that I was giving a veto to the Soviets over this; that, in other words, if that thing that I have just described to you, that meeting, took place and we could not get satisfaction, that I would say, Well, then, we cannot deploy this defensive system. I could not find any place where that was anything but an erroneous interpretation of what I'd been saying. Obviously, if this took place, we had the weapon-I keep using that term; it is a defensive system-we had a defensive system and we could not get agreement on their part to eliminate the nuclear weapons, we would have done our best and, no, we would go ahead with deployment. But even though, as I say, that would then open us up to the charge of achieving the capacity for a first strike. We do not want that. We want to eliminate things of that kind. And that is why, frankly, I think that any nation offered this under those circumstances that I have described 'would see the value of going forward. Remember that the Soviet Union has already stated its wish that nuclear weapons could be done away with. You say today that you would go ahead with deployment if you had the system and there were not international agreement on mutual deployment. The other day you said that that deployment would be only on condition of what you call disarmament. This misunderstanding, it seems to me, on whoever's part has caused a lot of confusion. Does that disrupt your negotiations with Gorbachev, and what can he expect when you have said this to his journalists and now you are telling us something different? No, I am not telling something different.

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I am saying that reading that transcript of what I told to the journalists-someone has jumped to an erroneous conclusion. I do not find anything in there-maybe it is because I have talked about this with so many individuals, as I have said, at the U.N. and all-that maybe having more of an understanding of it, I see it more clearly than some others might. But I have not-and I have had others now that look at this transcript and they do not get that interpretation, that I am giving anyone a veto over this defensive system. May I ask you, Mr. ENTITY, it seems that in the recent weeks you have been more flexible in the way you have talked about the SDI. You have not said that it could not be a bargaining chip, as you used to say it very often before. The demands that have been made on us already with regard to arms control are that we stop the research and any effort to create such a defensive system. And I have said that there is no way that we will give that up, that this means too much to the world and to the cause of peace if it should be possible to have an effective defensive system. In discussions here in the office, I have likened it many times to the gas mask-1925, when all the nations of the world after World War I and the horror of poison gas in that war. When it was over, all the nations got together in Geneva and ruled out the use of poison gas, but we all had gas masks, and no one did away with their gas masks. Well, this, in a sense, is how I see what this could be. The defense that would-it would be so practical and sensible for any country, including the Soviet Union, to say, why go on building and maintaining and modernizing these horrible weapons of destruction if there is something that can be implemented that makes them useless? ENTITY, Secretary Shultz held a press conference in Iceland today on his way back to report to you and with him was a senior official-not identified, but we can guess who it is-who held a background briefing for reporters. And he said that the impression that the American delegation got during this weekend's talks in Moscow was that Mr. Gorbachev was concerned that U.S. policy was influenced by a small circle of anti-Soviet extremists.

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Now, if Mr. Gorbachev said that to you personally, how would you respond, Mr. ENTITY? I would respond with the truth as clearly as I could enunciate it. This is one of the things that I feel with regard to the distrust, that the Soviet Union tends to be distrustful and suspicious that things that are presented to them are perhaps concealing some ulterior motive. And I want to discuss with him the record-our own record, that if this were true, that if the United States was guided by some desire to one day assault the Soviet Union, why did not we do it when we were the most powerful military nation on Earth right after World War II. Our military was at its height. We had not had the great losses in the millions that the other nations had had that had been there longer. We had not been bombed to rubble as all the rest had, and we were the only ones with the ultimate weapon, the nuclear weapon. We could have dictated to the whole world, and we did not . We set out to help the whole world. And the proof of it is, today, that our erstwhile enemies-and there could never have been more hatred in the world than there was between the enemies of World War II and ourselves-they are today our staunchest allies. And yet here is a former ally-there are Americans buried in the soil of the Soviet Union that fought side by side against the same enemies. And so, I think we can prove by the record that any fair-minded person would have to see that we did not have expansionism in mind. We never took an inch of territory as a result of the victory of World War II or of World War I, for that matter. And on the other hand, to point out to him why we are concerned about them-that their expansionist policy is very evident. The gunfire has not stopped for a moment in Afghanistan. We could name all the other spots where they or their surrogate troops are in there. So, this is my hope, that I can convince him, if he is a reasonable man-and there is every indication that he is-would see that if we both want peace, there'll be peace. ENTITY, your remark that you think Mr. Gorbachev is a reasonable man brings me to another question.

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I assume that you have been doing a lot of reading about Mr. Gorbachev, the man, and Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union, and that perhaps you have even seen some videotapes of him in action. What sort of an opponent do you expect to face across the table at Geneva? Ralph , I would think that any Soviet leader who reaches the office that he holds would be a formidable opponent. If he does not subscribe to the party philosophy, he would not be in that position. ENTITY, this Yurchenko case is very puzzling, baffling to everyone. Is it baffling to you? Have you ordered an investigation of the CIA handling? And have you gone even further to order an investigation of handling by any agency of defectors per se? Well, right now the Justice Department is investigating the INF and their- or INS, I mean, and their handling of the Medvid incident down in New Orleans to see just what led to all of that. I have to say that-coming as they do together-these three particular incidents, you cannot rule out the possibility that this might have been a deliberate ploy or maneuver. Here you have three separate individuals in three different parts of the world who defected and then recanted and, of their own free will, said they wanted to return to the Soviet Union. And in every one of the three incidents, we insisted on and did secure the last word, the final meeting with each one of them, to make sure that they understood completely that they were welcome here, that we would provide safety and sanctuary for them here in the United States. And in every incident that was repudiated, and we had to say that, of their own free will, as far as we could see- ENTITY and for whatever reason, they wanted to go back. So, were we had by Yurchenko? And is this a sort of a disinformation plan to disrupt- On the other hand, there is no way you can prove that it is. So, you just have to accept that we did our best in view of their expressed desires, and then they did what other defectors before them have not done, and they-oh, I think here and there, there is been one or two that went back. So, you cannot rule out personal desire, homesickness, whatever it might be.

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I am sure that, as has been suggested by someone discussing this, that people who go through that must be under quite some strain, and it must be a traumatic experience to step forth from the land of your birth and denounce it and say you want to live someplace else, in another country. Either they honestly did feel they wanted to defect and then changed their minds, or the possibility is there that this could have been a deliberate ploy. It sounds like you are leaning toward the latter, that there has been something very systematic No, maybe I spent more time explaining why I did not think you could rule that out but- I said there is this suspicion that has been voiced by more people than me- and all I have to say is we just have to live with it because there is no way we can prove or disprove it. Do you think that that makes the information that he did give the CIA worthless or perhaps even, you know, that it was misinformation? Well, actually, the information that he provided was not anything new or sensational. It was pretty much information already known to the CIA. So, that would tend to support your thought that perhaps this whole thing was cooked. If you want to take it that way. I am not going to comment on that one way or the other. Would you say you are perplexed by it? I think anyone is perplexed by this. I think it is awfully easy for any American to be perplexed by anyone that could live in the United States and would prefer to live in Russia. You'd better tell them one more time that there is no way to tell either way. You said it about four times, but the questions keep coming back. We got it. to the summit preparation. What do you expect from the summit on the human rights issue? You have been very cautious on the human rights issue in the Soviet Union. I have always felt that there are some subjects that should remain in confidence between the leaders discussing them. In this world of public life and politics, if you try to negotiate on the front page-some items-you have almost put the other fellow in a corner where he cannot give in because he would appear in the eyes of his own people as if he is taking orders from an outside government.

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And the greatest success that, I think, has been had in this particular area has been with predecessors of mine who have discussed these subjects privately and quietly with- Are you encouraged by Yelena Bonner being allowed to have medical treatment in the West, or do you think it is just something to defuse the issue before the summit? I do not know, but I welcome it. But let me point out also this does not mean that human rights will not be a subject for discussion. They are very important to the people of our country and, in their view, of a relationship with the Soviet Union. But I do not think that it is profitable to put things of this kind out in public where any change in policy would be viewed as a succumbing to another power. ENTITY, talking of spies, some months ago-I forget the date-in one of your Saturday radio speeches, you said there were too many Soviet and East European diplomats in this country and too many spies among them. And you said, in effect or perhaps precisely, that you were going to cut these numbers down. Could you brief us on what has happened since then, sir? Well, we are having discussions about that and reducing numbers. We recognize that when we do anything of this kind there is going to be retaliation, but what we are trying to do is to simply arrive at agreements that will be mutual and with regard to reductions of staff and numbers in each other's countries. or within this administration? ENTITY, -this has been done at a ministerial level. If you could go quickly, we can get one more round, but you have got to do it quickly. Is Weinberger trying to sabotage the summit? And are you trying to overthrow Qadhafi? Secretary Weinberger is not trying to sabotage anything of the kind. He is been most helpful in all of the meetings that we have had on this. And all of the talk that we unhappily read about feuds and so forth; again, this is a distortion or misinterpretation of my desire for what I have always called Cabinet-type government, where I want all views to be frankly expressed, because I can then make the decision better if I have all those viewpoints. And the fact that we have debate and discussion in that regard, in that way, should not be construed as feuds and battles and so forth. I want all sides. You want it-it is okay in the public?

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It is okay in public and on the front page? Well, not the way it is been portrayed on the front page. Well, but it'd been portrayed not in the spirit in which I just spoke of it. It is been portrayed as animus and anger and so forth, and it is not that kind. It is the devil-advocate type of thing where I hear all sides. Now, with regard to Qadhafi, let us just say we do not have a very personal relationship. Were you going to try to overthrow him indirectly? No comment on are you trying to overthrow him? I never like to talk about anything that might be being done in the name of intelligence. ENTITY, your health is vital to the long-range success of any progress that you make at the summit. Why will not you permit the release of the test results from your periodic examinations to reassure the public that there is no recurrence of the cancer? First of all, that term the recurrence of cancer -you have given me an opportunity to give an answer I have wanted to give for some time. I am deeply appreciative of the concern of people and all the letters of condolence and good wishes and so forth that I have received. But I feel the people have been doing this under a little misapprehension. The whole thing has been portrayed as that I was a sufferer of cancer, I had cancer. And then an operation took place, and now I have had a good recovery. No, the truth of the matter was, I had a polyp. There are two kinds of polyps in the intestines, and one kind, if allowed to go on, eventually becomes cancerous and then would spread. It is true that it, within itself, had begun to develop a few cancer cells, but it was still a self-contained polyp. The only way that type of polyp can be removed is by major surgery. So, in reality, the only real illness that I suffered in any way and at any time was the incision. And my healing was not a healing of cancer; mine was a healing of a 10- or 12 inch incision. So, I am delighted to get this out and on the table before you. Yes, they gave me a complete schedule, and they said we will want to do this down the line periodically, and then, it gets farther and farther apart as time goes on.

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It would mainly be an examination, periodically, to see if any further polyps of that kind-if one could start, then, I suppose another could start. And then, if so, you'd want to get rid of them. The examinations that I have had are also spaced out, like this last time, are part of the kind of annual physical that I have had for many years and long before I came here. Where, once I used to go into the hospital for a few days and have all the whole physical done, well, now we do it in bits and parts. So, this last one, mainly I went in and they simply examined the incision-wanted to see how the healing was coming-and then I had some x-rays of the lungs, which had nothing to do with the operation, but that are a normal part of the general physical that I have. Now, there will be another trip there coming up in the near future and that will be the first trip for a look at the intestines for the possibility of polyps. And so, when the doctors come out and when the doctors-they say the same thing to me that has been said to you-maybe I will have them say it to you instead of me repeating it-when they stand there in front of me and say, You have had 100-percent recovery. I go out and tell you that and you think I am covering something up. I just would suggest that, while I am not suggesting we do not believe you, it would be reassuring to a lot of people to see the test results and know what is being done and how it is being done and- Well, the test result, in the cases of this kind, is simply to tell you what happened. For example, if they do the examination to see-to check if there is another polyp-well, the only test is they say to you there was not one or there is one; whichever way it comes out. So, it is a case of verbalizing. There is not any report to be given you that-oh, incidentally, I also had the blood check taken this time also with the x-rays. But that was done here a few days before, not at Bethesda. They take a little blood, see what it is. And that would be done, this would have been done, now, even without any physical examination.

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They always do this prior to a trip abroad, make sure that they know what is there, and in the event of an accident or anything, they know what could be needed. ENTITY, we were talking about Qadhafi, but do you think the U.S. should give some aid to the rebels in Angola, as it is doing in Nicaragua or in Afghanistan? We were embarked on a plan of trying to negotiate the Cubans out of Angola and the independence of Namibia, and this also involved that in that there would be a reconciliation between UNITA, the Savimbi forces and the present government, which, more or less, was installed by the presence of the Cuban troops. Now, with the elimination of the Clark amendment, we are still most supportive of that, that we believe a settlement in Angola should involve UNITA, and the people of that country have a choice in making a decision as to the government they wanted to have. And so, all of this is going forward. So, you do not envision your covert aid to rebels in Angola because of the Clark amendment, as you mentioned, having been- No, I think there are some areas where we could be of help to them. I have no further questions, Mr. ENTITY. Well, how do you feel on the anniversary of your reelection? I wish the Congress would have a sharp memory of it as they are discussing tax reform and some other things. Do you have any particular goals for the next 3 years? tax reform, a program that will set us, even longer than 3 years, on a course for the elimination of the deficit; then, the achievement of a balanced budget amendment, so that once and for all we will be free of this. And I have had one tucked away in the back of my mind for a long time, that once we can do that, then, I would like to see us start on the reduction of the national debt. Well, then, would you veto the House version of the Gramm-Rudman as it stands now? Well, that is a general thing; this is talking about a particular piece of legislation.

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Let me take a couple of questions. And if I were speaking to the Panamanian people, I would tell them that the affection of the American people for the people of Panama is still very much intact, strong. Secondly, I would say to the Panama Defense Forces, the PDF, they have a useful role to play, and they will in the future of Panama have a useful role to play. And if Noriega were to leave office, we would have good relations with Panama. We would have good relations with the Panama Defense Force. And clearly, the good feelings between the American people and the people of Panama would grow and prosper. And so, I would hope that Noriega would leave and that the results of this election would be recognized. The fraud in the election has been condemned by people all across the world; the European Community, leaders in our hemisphere, all the way to Japan -- people speaking out in indignation against this thuggery and against what the man has done. So, I just want to be sure that the people of Panama understand that relations can quickly return to normal if Mr. Noriega will leave and set aside his dictatorship and permit democracy to prevail. Do you think they have any doubt about that? And are not you calling for a coup on the part of the PDF? I mean, the Catholic Church in Panama also has basically been saying the same thing to the PDF. That I just said? Are you saying that you would like the PDF to get Noriega out? I would love to see them get him out. We'd like to see him out of there -- not just the PDF, the will of the people of Panama. It sounds like you are calling on the people of Panama to rise up and basically have a revolution. Is that what you are trying to say? A revolution -- the people rose up and spoke in a democratic election, with a tremendous turnout, said what they wanted. The will of the people should not be thwarted by this man and a handful of these Doberman thugs. That is what I am saying. What do you think the people should do now? The people should do everything they can to have the will of the people respected. They ought to heed the international calls, and they ought to just do everything they can to get Mr. Noriega out of there. Have you been in conversation and contact with President Cerezo and others? Venezuela apparently has offered Noriega asylum.

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Have you been in contact with the Venezuelans, and do you have thoughts on when and where Noriega should go? No, but I have no doubt that countries would receive him. Why, have you had any assurances indirectly on that? Well, I have a habit of not liking to go into detail with what I talk to others about. But I am just confident that they would receive him, and I think Noriega knows this, too. You said the other day that you would not favor dropping the drug indictments. But if he were to go to someplace that, either through prearrangement or postarrangement, did not have extradition arrangements with the U.S., how would you feel about that? Yes, because if he has -- no, he was saying, if there was a country that prohibited extradition -- and he ought to think about that. think we have any control over that. Would you allow him into a country that did not have an extradition But I am obligated as ENTITY of the United States to respect our laws and to go forward on fulfilling obligations under the law. But if he went to a place where there was not any extradition treaty, then that would be a different situation than if he went to a place where there was an extradition treaty. Do you care which one he does? Yes, I'd like him to -- well, I care that he does whatever it is that it takes to get him out of there right now. And that is what I'd like to see happen. I think it is right for the people of Panama. It is right for the democracies in this hemisphere. You cannot have an election that is blatantly stolen, where people that win are beaten up by thugs. So far, you have struck out -- and so did President Reagan -- in trying to get him out of power. Do you have any other options? Still at the plate, and we will stay at the plate until we can help the people of Panama have the democracy for which they spoke so articulately in an election. And we are not going to give up on it. A couple of days ago, you said that the goal of your sending those extra troops down there was to protect American lives.

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Now you seem to be adding a new, much more outspoken dimension to your intention here, which is to see Noriega leave and leave I am not changing the definition of the role of the American troops at all. Have you had any contact with him indirectly, sir, in the last 2 days? No, you asked the question properly. How does it feel personally, after over a year of seeing this drag on -- -- now this thing comes to a head? How does it feel when you read the accounts and see the pictures? See, I think there is a whole new ingredient in Panama, regarding the relationship with Panama. And I think the election made so clear that the people want democracy and made so clear that that democracy is being thwarted by one man that that in itself could be the catalyst for removing Noriega. Now, why do I say that? Because, heretofore, you have not heard the neighboring countries around Panama speaking up. You have not seen the EC , our friends in Europe, speaking up and denouncing what happened. And I think the Japanese weighed in on this. So, I think this is a very different climate now and one much more conducive to possible change, because the people spoke so overwhelmingly, and heretofore, that has not been quite as clear. Never underestimate the power of the people, even though their will seems to have been frustrated short-run. Do you think the OAS will do something on Wednesday? And I'd love to see a very powerful and strong statement coming out of there, and I'd like to see it as unanimous. But I am not sure what will come out of it. ENTITY -- you are worried about the people in Panama and what they have gone through, and it is in their hands. Are you concerned, though, about any violence that might be started by anything that the people would do to change the situation where innocent lives may be lost or children would be hurt and families disrupted as they try to make a change for democracy? I always worry about the loss of innocent human life. And I would be worried about that. Would you caution them against rising up in violence? We will protect American lives in every possible way. That is a solemn responsibility of ENTITY, and that is one of the reasons I augmented our forces in Panama -- is the reason I augmented them.

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Are you concerned that the situation there -- with your calls and mounting pressure internationally -- would lead to a situation right now in Panama that might lead to violence that would, in fact, endanger American lives more than they would be otherwise? I mean, I would be concerned about any escalation of violence that would endanger American lives. And I think we are in a good position to protect our American lives and interests. Do not let it die. The people could see that as inflammatory, like it is a call to -- -- to revolt. Would you add any words of caution No, I would add no words of caution. The will of the people should be implemented. And if I wanted to increase the rhetoric, strengthen it, I would do so. But I think I have phrased it just about the way I feel. What? And the will includes -- -- demonstrations in the street? What form would you say Look, I am not about to get into proposing a three-point action plan for the people of Panama. All I want them to know is that if they get rid of Noriega they will have an instant normalization of relationship with the United States and there will be a useful role for the Panamanian Defense Force. And I think there has been some doubt about that, perhaps in the Panamanian Defense Force itself, as to how we now view the Force, because of the thuggery of its leader. And this gives me an opportunity to clarify that specific point, as well as to repeat my support for Endara and Calderon and Guillermo Ford, who was so brutally beaten. Are you contemplating sending even more American troops down there now? Well, if I were, it would be unlikely I would announce it here, just before landing in Starkville, only because I think it would be prudent to do it differently. I have no short-run plans, but that does not preclude anything I will do in the future. You know Noriega. Is it strictly power that he wants or is there a point where he could be negotiated out? I think it is power that he has wanted, but I do not know what his view is now that he is seen a total repudiation of his rule. And you see, I keep coming back to the fact that what happened the other day in the election is something quite different than has been on the table before. So, I just do not know the answer to it.

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It might be now he'd like to find a way to get out. I would hope that would be the case, but I do not know that for a fact. He has lost all support, all respect -- the man is considered just out of it, an outlaw, by the world community now as a result of what happened. I do not have an answer for it. Are you saying that the United States at this juncture has, more or less, done what it could and that now what we are going to do is lend moral support to whatever the Panamanians decide? That we really cannot from the outside do anything further? No, what I have said is that we have taken certain action to protect American lives. I have now spelled out, although I hope it had been understood before, what it would take to have good relations with the United States; and I will continue my own efforts internationally. You see, I do think it is important that it not be the United States, the Colossus of the North, coming down there to try to dictate to the people of Panama. And that is one of the reasons I spent a lot of time last week working with the international community and instructing the State Department to do the same thing. So, we will continue our international efforts. Are you disappointed in the response to that of the PDF and some of the Panamanians to why you sent the troops down there? Are you disappointed in their response? I mean, you have come out here to clarify your views. No, I am not disappointed in the response. What I am trying to do is make clear to the Panamanian Defense Forces that there is no vendetta against the Panamanian Defense Forces as an institution. There is clearly the desire to see Mr. Noriega get out of office. I do not know how they have reacted to the American forces. ENTITY, how long can the people of Panama be expected to put up with Noriega? About 4 days ago when they demonstrated loud and clear they do not want any more. They have had it; and their will should be respected and honored. So, we have got to find a way to have that magnificent expression of democracy be honored. Are there certain things that you and the administration are sending them immediately, once Noriega leaves? We'd recognize immediately the Endara government.

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As soon as he is sworn in, we would return our Ambassador; we would remove our economic sanctions; we would, in essence, have normalized relations with a country for whom we have great affection and whose people have great affection for us. If you talk to those two delegations that came back, both of them -- the liberal members of the delegation, the conservative members, the Republicans, the Democrats -- all of them certified, stipulated that the people of Panama have great affection for our country and for our people. So, you'd see an instant release of this oppression; and you'd see an effort by the United States to help Panama go down the road to democracy and to help them economically, as best we could, and to welcome them as they rejoin the family of democracies in this hemisphere. We would not need a lot of delaying or thinking about it either. But it has to have the -- with that -- it is the departure of Noriega and the recognition of the people's will; those two have to go together. Was there some development this morning or some intelligence that you got that caused this today? No, but I know because I was talking to General Scowcroft yesterday and talked to Secretary Baker this morning. And I have had an uneasy feeling that perhaps what I have told you here today was not known clearly there. And it gives me a chance to -- well, the question as to how we view the Panamanian Defense Force itself, what would happen if Noriega left, vis-a-vis the United States of America, and I hope it is known Well, I think in a situation of this nature, where the head of the PDF has become such a pariah, that there perhaps -- been misunderstanding there as to how we view the institution itself and other of its officers. But if they come in there and Noriega goes and they respect the will of the people, I -- you know, we see a very useful role for the Panamanian Defense Force, in their own internal security and for their own -- any threat they might feel they had to the external security. If the PDF asked for U.S. military help, how can we respond? What would we do? Asked for it to do what? If they asked for military support -- if the PDF asks for military support from the United States.

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Thank you for your time; I appreciate it. It takes time to do something like this. Why do you think the race is so tight, given the economy, the issues, the incumbency? Well, I think for one thing, things have been good for a long time, and I think a lot of people may take it for granted and may not have they may not be as clear as they should be, which I hope we can use the last week to do, on what specific policies contributed to it and what could undermine it. I also think that, you know, there is not as much general awareness as there might be about the differences between the two parties on health care, education, the environment, and crime, where I believe that the things we have done over the last 8 years had a measurable impact on all those things going in the right direction. And a lot of most Presidential races are fairly close, you know, because a lot of Presidential voting is cultural. I mean, a lot of it is cultural. So I think there are a lot of reasons it is close. Also, keep in mind, in the history of our Republic, only two Vice Presidents have ever been directly elected President. One of them when Martin Van Buren succeeded Andrew Jackson, we were effectively a one-party country then. And the other, when George Bush defeated Michael Dukakis, the country was not in as good a shape as it is now, but it was in pretty good shape, and Bush basically destroyed Dukakis. It was a hugely negative campaign with a lot of charges that were never effectively rebutted. There have been differences on the issues, but neither one of them has called each other's patriotism into question or whether they are normal Americans. Basically, the rap that was put on Dukakis was like reverse plastic surgery. So I think that that explains it largely. At the end of the interview, I am going to ask you to make a bet with me. What physical change in you says that you have served 8 years and it is a job that really takes a toll? Well, I think I am in better shape, better health than I was 8 years ago, in a lot of ways. I think that is about it. I have got a few wrinkles I did not have 8 years ago. I have had a good time. I have enjoyed it.

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One of the most important jobs that you, as a President, have is to talk to the country in the wake of national tragedies, frame the issues for the American people. the Oklahoma City bombing and the Columbine shootings. Where were you when you first heard about the Oklahoma City bombing, and what was your first reaction, personally? And then how did you think you should frame that to the American people, to help them understand what is really a national trauma? And where were you when you heard it? I was in the White House. I believe I was in the White House, because I remember making a statement at the beginning, right in the Rose Garden, saying what you would expect me to say, expressing the Nation's sympathy for the loss but also urging the American people not to jump to conclusions about who had done it. Remember in the beginning, there were a lot of people saying it was obviously some sort of act of foreign terrorism. There was one man that was brought back on an airplane. He was flying out of the country through to London, and he was brought back, suspected of maybe being involved, and he was not . And of course, subsequently, it was a domestic terrorist act. But then when I went to Oklahoma, at the memorial service, what I tried to do was to elevate what the people who had been working in that building were doing. They were all public servants, and it was at a time when it was quite fashionable to bash the Government. And I told myself, even, that I would never refer to people who worked for the Government even in agencies I thought were not performing well as bureaucrats again, because this whole we have gotten, for more than a dozen years, a sort of demeaning rhetoric about the nature of Government and the nature of public service. And I tried to point out that these people were our friends and our neighbors and our relatives, and they were an important part of America's family and that their service ought to be honored in that way. And also, obviously, I took a strong stand against terrorism. And I was able later I went to Michigan State and gave a commencement speech and tried to amplify on that. But I really believe that was the turning of the tide in the venom of anti-Government feeling.

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Did you see was it a conscience thought to you that this could be the turning of the tide, and if you focused it correctly, if you said, You know, you cannot love your country if you hate your Government, that this would crystallize that feeling? I think I felt that after I had some time to think about it. In the beginning I was just horrified about all those people dying, all those little kids killed and hurt. What I am trying to get at is, once beyond that obvious first reaction I mean, it occurred to me that, you know, the American people are fundamentally decent, and they have got a lot of sense. And I thought that this might break a fever that had been gripping us for too long. And you thought, if I can take advantage of this opportunity I mean, to have this tragedy in every tragedy comes an opportunity, so is this an opportunity where I can make people rethink that idea. I think in a way, at least at some maybe not even at a conscious level, the American people were rethinking it. And I think maybe that is why what I said at the memorial service struck a responsive chord in the country. What I am trying to get at is, was that a deliberate thought on your part? That I have an opportunity as President to Well, I thought that yes, I was conscious of what I was saying. Did you connect it in some way to a kind of metaphorical bomb-throwing of Newt Gingrich, of the real anti-Government stance that he was taking at the time? I was careful not to do that. I wanted it to change the American peoples' attitude toward public servants and their Government. But to do it, you had to focus on what happened. One of the things that I did not like about Newt and he certainly was not responsible in any way for the Oklahoma City bombing because one of the things I did not like about him is, he was always blaming the 1960's or liberals for everything that went wrong. When that woman, Susan Smith, drove her kids into the lake in South Carolina, he blamed the 1960's, and it turned out that the poor woman had been sexually abused by her father, her stepfather, who was on the local board of the Christian Coalition or something. And when that woman dropped her kid out of the window in Chicago, he blamed the welfare culture. So I did not want to get into where I was doing reverse blame.

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I just wanted to try to make it clear to the American people that we should not have a presumption against Government in general or public servants in particular. Where did you first hear the news about that? And again, what was your reaction to that? I believe I was in the White House when I heard that, but I am not sure. But I know that I called the local officials and the school officials from the Oval Office. You know, that was only the most recent and the most grotesque of a whole series of highly visible school shootings that we have had a number of them in the South, one of them in Jonesboro, Arkansas. That was in my home State, and I knew some of the people who were involved, who run the school and in the county and in the city. What I thought there was that I thought a lot of things. I thought, number one, how did those kids get all those guns, and how could they have had that kind of arsenal without their parents knowing? And I thought, after I read a little about it, how did they get so lost without anybody finding them before they went over the edge? We had a spate of before all these killings associated with that kind of darkness on the net, network What do you mean, darkness on the net? Well, those kids were apparently into some sort of a were not they into some sort of satanic-like thing? There were, earlier, a number of kids who killed themselves who were into talking to each other about destruction, but they were not killing other people. And I just kept I worry that I worried then; I worry now about the people in our society, particularly children, that just drift off, and no one knows, or people feel helpless to do anything about it. You know, I could not help thinking, wondering whether those kids could have been saved if somebody got to them, and then whether all those other children would still be alive. It seemed shocking to me and a lot of other people that after that there was no we did not get any new gun control legislation after an event like that. It is going to be interesting to see what the voters in Colorado do. They have a provision on the ballot now in Colorado to close the gun show loophole. I think what happened is that well, first of all, you cannot say nothing came out of it, because there was an organization of young people in Colorado that then organized kids all over the country for commonsense gun legislation.

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Now we have the Million Mom March, and they are very active. But the truth is that when legislation time comes that a lot of the people in Congress are still frightened of the NRA, because even though there is broad public support for these measures, they are still not primary voting issues for a lot of the people who are for them. Whereas, the NRA can muster an enormous percentage of the vote maybe 15 percent, maybe even 20 sometimes for whom that is a primary voting issue. So if you have got an issue where you are ahead 60-30 but in your 60 it is a primary voting issue for 10 percent of the people, and in their 30 it is a primary voting issue for 20 percent of the people, the truth is, you are a net loser by 10 percent. That is the way that is what happens in Congress and State legislatures. They know they could lose their seats. You see the tirade that Charlton Heston has carried on against Al Gore and me, before saying that I was glad some of these people were killed because it gave me an excuse to take people's guns away. We never proposed anything that would take anybody's guns away. I saw a special you may have seen it on television the other night on ABC. Peter Jennings actually went out and went to some of these gun shows. And he was talking to all these people who were absolutely convinced that we wanted to take their guns away. The NRA is great at raising money and building their organizational power by terrifying people with inflammatory rhetoric. I guess that is why, since LBJ passed the first law after Bobby Kennedy was killed, I was the first President to take him on. You got Brady and assault through, but why did not you take the opportunity with this post-Columbine atmosphere? I mean, you called the White House Conference on Violence immediately But it focused on, like, violence in the media Yes, but we also did lots and lots and lots of events and then you thought you could reason with the NRA. No, I did not think I could reason with the NRA. I thought Congress would be so shocked and the public was so galvanized that we had a window of opportunity. And what happened to that, is my question. They knew that they could not afford to have their Members voting wrong on closing the gun show loophole or banning the importation of large capacity ammunition clips, which allows people to get around the assault weapons ban. Were you powerless to do something about that?

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No, we had tons of events. And we got a vote if you will remember, we finally got a vote in the Senate, where you can bring things up, where we got a majority vote for it. Al Gore broke the tie another reason he ought to be President, he broke the tie. But we could not get a bill out of a conference committee, that had it in there. You would have won that vote. We could win the vote today if you could get a vote. But the leadership of the Republican Party, as long as they are in the majority in both Houses, they can control things, especially in the House. You can write the rules so that you can just keep stuff from coming up. And we had lots and lots and lots of events at the White House, not just one. We had a ton of events. We brought people in. We talked about it. We finally got the vote in the Senate. We got 50 votes. Then Al broke the tie. We got 51. And there is no question that we could pass it. But I will remind you that one of reasons that Democrats are in the minority today in the House is because of the Brady law and the assault weapons ban. And interestingly enough, we did not there is not a single hunter has missed an hour; not a single sport shooter has missed an event an hour hunting I should have finished the sentence or a single sport shooter has missed an event. But they acted like the end of the world, but a half million felons, fugitives, and stalkers have not gotten handguns because of the Brady law. The ironic thing is, there is no reason here when we tried to pass the Brady law they said, Well, this will not do any good because all these criminals get their guns either one-on-one or at gun shows or urban flea markets. Let me change the subject. I feel passionately about this, and I am glad I took them on. I am just sorry I could not win more. There are a lot of good people out there in America who work hard; their only recreation is hunting and fishing; they do not follow politics all that closely; they get these NRA mailings. They are good people, but they think they can believe these folks. And they know that if they can stir them up, they can raise more money and increase their membership. And they do it by basically terrifying Congress.

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How would you characterize race relations today, as compared to when you took office? Well, I think, first of all, the country is changing. It is growing ever more diverse and, therefore, more and more people are having more contacts across racial, ethnic, and religious lines. And I think that, ultimately, the more people relate to each other, the more they come to not just tolerate I do not like the word tolerance in this context because it implies that one group is superior, putting up with an inferior group and tolerating them. I think the more they come to genuinely appreciate each other's heritage, find it interesting, and find a fundamental common humanity I think a lot of it is just systematic human contact. And beyond the human contact, I think that the race initiative we started led to hundreds of efforts all over the country to have honest conversations. You know, sometimes people work around each other for years and they do not know the first thing about one another. I mean, there are people who probably work in the White House who see each other every day that do not know the first thing about one another. So I think that the one thing we did was to spark all these conversations and also to highlight systematic efforts that were working in local communities and try to get them replicated around the country in communities, in workplaces, in schools. I think that there was a genuine effort to deal with that. I think the third thing is that we may have had some impact on it, I and my administration, because we were so much more diverse than any other administration in history. So I think the climate in the country was positive for that. And you sense that change in climate from those factors in Because this is one of your main priorities? All the rhetoric is about racial inclusion. Now you know, we could argue about the policies. I think that the Republican policies are still divisive, but the rhetoric is about inclusion. And even they a number of their members have taken a different tack on immigration. Do you have any special message to young people, any sort of valedictorian thoughts to the kids in school right now, as you leave office?

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First of all, I think that they should realize that they are very fortunate to be living in this country at this time, fortunate because of our economic prosperity, fortunate because of our enormous diversity, and fortunate because of the permeation of technology in our society, all of which enables us to relate to the rest of the world and to one another in different and better ways. Secondly, I think they should understand that our future success is not guaranteed and depends upon their interest in public affairs, as well as their private lives and their participation. One of the things that is really concerned me about this election is all these articles that say that young people think there is not much in it for them. I think maybe that is because there has been a lot of debate about Social Security and Medicare in the debate. But it is actually not just an old folks' issue, because when all of us baby boomers retire and I am the oldest of the baby boomers; the baby boomers are people that are between the ages now of 54 and 36. So when we retire, unless everybody starts having babies at a much more rapid rate, or we have hugely greater immigration, there will only be two people working for every one person drawing Social Security. Now, more of us are going to have to work into our later years. And more of us have a choice now because one of the good things that Congress did unanimously was to lift the earnings limit on Social Security. Because the baby boomers, most of them, I know, are obsessed with our retirement not imposing an undue burden on our children and our grandchildren. We have to build a clean energy future to avoid global warming. Two stunning studies have come out in the last month, and because of the Presidential campaign, they have not been much noticed. One analysis of a polar icecap says that the 1990's were the warmest decade in a thousand years. The other projecting study estimates that if we do not change our greenhouse gas emissions, the climate could warm between 2.4 and 10 degrees over the next century; 2.4 is too much. Ten degrees would literally flood a lot of Louisiana and Florida.

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Then you have got this incredible scientific and technological revolution that will lead to, among other things if you just take the human genome alone, a lot of the young people in America today, when they have their children, they will get a little gene card to take home with them from the hospital, and their children will be born with a life expectancy of 90 years, because they will be able to avoid so many of the illnesses and problems that they have a biological propensity to. So this is a fascinating time to be alive, but it is not free of challenges. So I would say to the young people, you ought to be grateful you are alive at this time. You will probably live in the most prosperous, interesting time in human history, but there are a lot of big challenges out there, and you have to be public citizens as well as private people. Do you think that people should go to jail for possessing or using or even selling small amounts of marijuana? I think, first of all This is after we are not publishing until after the election. I think that most small amounts of marijuana have been decriminalized in most places and should be. I think that what we really need one of the things that I ran out of time before I could do is a reexamination of our entire policy on imprisonment. Some people deliberately hurt other people. And if they get out of prison if they get in prison and they get out, they will hurt them again. And they ought to be in jail because they cannot be trusted to be on the streets. Some people do things that are so serious, they have to be put in jail to discourage other people from doing similar things. But a lot of people are in prison today because they, themselves, have drug problems or alcohol problems. And too many of them are getting out particularly out of the State systems without treatment, without education, without skills, without serious effort at job placement. You are talking about any offender? But there are tons of people in prison who are nonviolent offenders, who have drug-related charges that are directly related to their own drug problems. Do not you think those people should we be putting nonviolent drug offenders in jail at all, or should we put them in treatment programs that are more fitting and not ENTITY I think it depends on what they did. You know, I have some experience with this.

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Well, let me just say about my brother whom I love and am immensely proud of, because he kicked a big cocaine habit I mean, his habit got up to 4 grams a day. He had a serious, serious habit. He was lucky to live through that. But if he had not had the constitution of an ox, he might not have. I think if he had not gone to prison, actually been put away forcibly somewhere, I think his problem was so serious, it is doubtful that he would have come to grips with it. I mean, he was still denying that he was addicted right up until the time that he was sentenced. So I am not so sure that incarceration is all bad, even for drug offenders, depending on the facts. Let me finish. I think the sentences in many cases are too long for non-violent offenders. I think the sentences are too long, and the facilities are not structured to maximize success when the people get out. Keep in mind, 90 percent of the people that are in the penitentiary are going to get out. So society's real interest is seeing that we maximize the chance that when they get out, that they can go back to being productive citizens, that they will get jobs, they will pay taxes, they will be good fathers and mothers, that they will do good things. You have got mandatory minimums. Would you do away with those? I certainly think they should be reexamined and the disparities are unconscionable between crack and powdered cocaine. I tried to change the disparities, and the Republican Congress was willing to narrow, but not eliminate, them on the theory that people who use crack are more violent than people who use cocaine. Well, what they really meant was that people who use crack are more likely to be poor and, coincidentally, black or brown and, therefore, not have money. Whereas, people who use cocaine were more likely to be rich, pay for it, and therefore be peaceable. But my own view is, if you do something violent, it is appropriate to have an incarceration. But I think we need a serious re-examination in the view toward what would make us a more peaceful, more productive society. I think some of this, our imprisonment policies, are counterproductive.

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And now, you know, you have in a lot of places where, before the economy picked up, prison-building was a main source of economic activity, and prison employment was one of the big areas of job growth. Do you think people should lose access to college loans because they have been convicted of smoking pot which is now law? I think that, first of all I mean, those are people that seem to need a loan the most. First of all, I do not believe, by and large, in permanent lifetime penalties. There is a bill in Congress today that has bipartisan support that I was hoping would pass before I left office, but I feel confident it will in the next year or 2 which would restore voting rights to people after their full sentences have been discharged, and they would not have to apply for a Federal pardon to get it. I changed the law in Arkansas. When I was attorney general I changed the voting rights law in 1977, to restore voting rights to people when they had discharged their sentence. And my State is one of the relatively few States in the country where you do not have to get a pardon from the Governor to register to vote again or from the Federal Government, for that matter. But I do not believe in making people wear a chain for life. If they get a sentence from a jury, if they serve it under the law, if they discharge their sentence, the rest of us have an interest in a safe society, in a successful society, and seeing that these folks go back to productive lives. You know, keeping them with a scarlet letter on their forehead for the rest of their lives and a chain around their neck is not very productive. Just to wrap this up, do you think that we need a major rethink of what these drug sentencing laws are? I think we need to look at who is in prison, what are the facts Well, they are filled with drug prisoners, these jails. most of them are related to drug or alcohol abuse, but there are some non-violent offenders unrelated to drug or alcohol abuse, which is not to say that I do not think white-collar criminals should ever go to jail. But I think we need to examine the natural tendency of the American people, because most of us are law-abiding, is to think when somebody does something bad, we ought to put them in jail and throw the key away. And what I think is, we need a discriminating view.

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There are some people who should be put in jail and throw the key away, because they cannot help hurting other people. And I believe that one of the reasons for the declining crime rate is that we have a higher percentage of the people in jail who commit a lot of the crimes; a very small percentage of the people are multiple, habitual criminals. And if you could get a significant percentage of them in jail, the crime rate goes way down. Now, on the other hand, there are a whole lot of other people in jail who will never commit another crime, particularly if they have if they get free of drugs or free of their alcohol abuse and if they get education and training and if somebody will give them a job and give them another chance. And what I think we need is a serious reexamination of what we have done, because we have done a lot of good in identifying people who are habitual criminals and keeping them in prison longer, and that is one of the reasons that the crime rate has gone down, along with community policing and improving the economy. But we also have just captured a whole lot of people who are in jail, I think, longer than they need to be in prison and then get out without adequate drug treatment, job training, or job placement. But the society is moving on this. I notice now back in Washington, there is a really good program where maybe two, that I know where they try to keep people who go to prison in touch with their children, and they use the Internet so they can E-mail back and forth. They try to, in other words, not cut people off so completely that they lose all hope and all incentive of returning to normal life, and they try not to damage these kids so badly, to reduce the chances that the kids will follow in their parents' footsteps. Let me change the subject. I think we need a whole new look at that. The sentencing guidelines, the disparities, are only a part of it. We have to look at how long should certain people go to prison from the point of view of what is good for society. We need to completely rethink it, because criminal laws and sentencing tend to be passed sort of seriatim in response to social problems at the moment. You, in general, restored judicial discretion and replace the kind of panic legislation that was passed about crack or The reasons for the sentencing guidelines in the first place was to try to reduce the arbitrary harshness.

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It was not because they wanted to make sure everybody went to jail for a while; it was because the citizen guidelines tended to be abusive on the other end of the spectrum. I think we may need some sentencing guidelines, but I think the impact, the practical impact of the ones we have has led to some people going to prison for longer than they should and longer than they would have under the old system. I am going to change the subject. What was it like to run a war night after night? I mean, was it your mentality in feeling that as all of that was going on as you go to sleep every night? You were literally praying? You know, it is easy for people to talk about war when it is appropriate to use military force, but you have to know that once human beings start using big, powerful weapons, there will be unintended consequences. We wound up bombing the Chinese Embassy. We hit a schoolbus. And we have the most skilled Air Force and the most sophisticated weapons in all human history. In the Gulf war, which is normally thought of as a 100-hour war and a model of sort of technical proficiency, we had 4 1/2 months to settle in and prepare there, and still a lot of the American casualties were from friendly fire. The same thing happened even in the small engagement in Grenada and President Reagan. There are once you start killing people, there will be unintended consequences. How do you get yourself personally comfortable I mean, how do you get yourself, as a person and as a politician, ready to make that decision with a level of comfort you are now going to go ahead and do this? You have to be convinced that the consequences of inaction would be more damaging to more people and to your country. And in the case of Kosovo, I did not think it was a close case. They had already killed several thousand Kosovars, and they were running a million of them out of their homes, 800,000. It was a clean case of ethnic cleansing. And I thought the United States and our European Allies had to stand up against it. We could not let it happen in the heart of Europe. If we did that, we would lose the ability to stop it anywhere else. And would not it be on your conscience in some way, for having failed to stop it?

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Look, it took us one of the things that just tore at me and in the end it did not require much military engagement, although it required some was how long it took me to build a consensus. It took me 2 years to build a consensus among our Allies for military action in Bosnia. And you know, what happened there was, after the slaughter at Srebrenica we finally got you know, everybody said, Okay, let us go we did a few air strikes, and all of a sudden we were at Dayton and the peace talks. And for all the raggedness of it, the Bosnian peace has held, and it is better now because we turned back the tide of ethnic cleansing. And I just knew, you know, there is no point in letting it happen again in Kosovo. How do you feel, then, about Rwanda? You did not have the allies; you did not have intelligence, all kinds of things. Is there anything that we could have done to prevent it? Do you feel any responsibility in that, personally? I feel terrible about it. One of the reasons that I went to Tanzania to be with Mandela and try to talk to the Burundians into the peace agreement because before my time, over 200,000 people were killed in Burundi. Same deal the Hutus and the Tutsis, same tribes, fighting the same battles. In Rwanda the thing that was shocking about Rwanda was that it happened so fast, and it happened with almost no guns. The idea that 700,000 people could be killed in 100 days, mostly with machetes, is hard to believe. After that, we began working very earnestly in Africa to train troops to be able to go in and prevent such things. We worked very hard with something called the Africa Crisis Response Initiative. And when I was in Senegal, I actually went out of Dakar to another city to watch a training exercise at least a parade exercise and talk to the troops from Senegal that our American soldiers were working with. We are now working with the Ghanaian forces and Nigerian forces to give them the training and the capacity to prevent the resumption of the slaughter of Sierra Leone. So I think that I hope the United States will be much, much more involved in Africa from now on, and everywhere.

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In economic development, we passed the Africa trade bill this year; in fighting ENTITY, TB, malaria in Africa; in debt relief, we passed a big debt relief legislation this year; and in helping them to develop the mechanisms to do this. The African countries have leaders who are willing to go in and take their responsibility in these areas if we will give them the logistical and other support necessary to do it, if they are trained to do it. That is what happened in East Timor, where we did not have to put troops on the ground, but we sent 500 people over there and provided vital airlift and logistical and other support, so that the Australians and New Zealanders and the other troops that came in could bring an end to the slaughter there. In Europe it had to be done by NATO, and the scale of it and the power of the Serbian Government was such that if we had not been directly involved with our NATO Allies, we never could have turned it back and Milosevic never would have fallen. If we had not stopped him in Bosnia and Kosovo and kept the sanctions on, the people would never have had the chance to vote him out. So I feel good about that. I wish we had been Rwanda, if we had done all the things we have done since Rwanda and Africa training the troops, supporting them, working with them what I think would have happened is, the African troops would have moved in; they would have stopped it; and we could have given them the logistical support they needed to stop it. Another reason to vote for Gore. Another huge reason to vote for Gore, because, you know, Governor Bush has said that he does not think that is the business of the American military. We are only supposed to fight and win wars and let everybody else do this. He kept talking about Kosovo, I noticed, in a way as if we were the only forces in Kosovo. We were only 15 percent of the soldiers in Kosovo. Let me change the subject, back to Washington. Why do you think you were such a lightning rod for partisanship and bitterness and so much hatred during your term now? I think there were a lot of reasons. The Republicans really did not they believe the only reason they lost in '76 to Jimmy Carter was because of Watergate. They believe that, from the time Mr. Nixon won in '68, they had found a fool-proof formula to hold the White House forever, until some third party came on. That is what they believe.

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Did you ever hear anybody articulate that, the Republicans I had a very candid relationship with a lot of those guys. They would tell me what was going on. I think they really believed that America saw Republicans as the guarantor of the country's security and values and prudence in financial matters, and that they could always turn Democrats into cardboard cutouts of what they really were; they could sort of caricature them as almost un-American; and that basically the Congress might be Democratic most of the time because the Congress would give things to the American people. But the Republicans embodied the values, the strength, the heritage of the country, and they could always sort of do, as I said about Dukakis, reverse-plastic-surgery any Democrat. So I came along, and I had ideas on crime and welfare and economic management and foreign policy that were difficult for them to characterize in that way. I think I was the first President in a long time that never got a day's honeymoon. I mean, they started on me the next day. I think, secondly, I was the first baby boomer President, not a perfect person, never planned to be I mean, never claimed to be and had opposed the Vietnam war. So I think that made them doubly angry because they thought I was a cultural alien, and I made it anyway. Southern Baptist, because the dominant culture of the Republican Party President Reagan put a nicer image on it. But the dominant culture were basically white southern Protestant men who led the surge of the new Republican Party, first under President Nixon and the silent majority and, you know, blue-collar people, and then it came to an apotheosis under President Reagan. So I think that, you know, they did not like losing the White House, and they did not like me, and they did not like what they thought I represented. And that all happened at the time you had this huge growth in conservative talk shows and these you know, sort of associated think tanks and groups and networks that grew up in Washington from the time of Nixon through the time of Bush. And I think they had sort of a permanent alternative Government set up by that time. And they went to war the first day of my Presidency.

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Because you were the most threatening politically, and they despised what you represented culturally, age-wise and think they honestly disagreed with me on a lot of the issues as well, but a lot of it was, they were mad they were not in, which is one of the reasons they are working so hard now. And one of the big challenges that we face in the closing days of this election is to motivate the people that agree with us to the level that they are motivated. Were you surprised about the difficulties you had in your own party with Sam Nunn on the gays thing and Moynihan on health care and Kerrey on the economic plan? Not particularly, because I will come back to the gays in the military. Do not , because we have run through that. And the answer to that is, no, because a lot of the Democrats who were culturally conservative and pro-military thought that gays in the military coming up so early was inconsistent with the whole New Democratic approach we were taking. But as I explained to you, I think when we talked last, I did not bring it up first. Now, on the other issues, the fundamental problems there was that there were no easy answers. I mean, Bob Kerrey comes from Nebraska. He and Jim Exon were Democrats, but Nebraska is one of the most Republican States in the country, and I think, you know, he thought we should have maybe cut spending a little more or raised taxes a little less, or cut taxes a little less on lower income working people so we would not have to raise it as much, you know. And I think and we'd been through that tough Presidential campaign. But I did not take offense to that. Moynihan believed, first of all, with some justification, that he knew more about most areas of social policy than anybody else did. I think he thought we were making a political mistake not to do welfare reform first, which turned out to be right. We did make a political mistake not to do welfare reform first. And secondly, I think he felt that the system in Washington could not absorb in a 2-year period the economic plan which he strongly supported. The NAFTA trade agreement, which he strongly supported, which was controversial within our party, and then this major health care thing. He really did not believe and he is told me that, you know, he said, you know, We just do not have time to do these.

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He said, The system cannot absorb this much change in this short a time. Hillary gets a bum rap for that. That was basically my fault, because I knew that basically there is only two ways to get to universal coverage. You either have to have a taxpayer subsidy, which is what we have done now with the Children's Health Insurance Program, because now we have got the number of uninsured people going down in America for the first time in a dozen years, primarily because in the Balanced Budget Act, we insisted the Democrats did on getting the Children's Health Insurance Program, which is the biggest expansion of Government-financed health care since Medicaid. You either have to do it that way or you have to have an employer mandate where the employers have to provide the health insurance, and then you exempt smaller businesses and subsidize that somewhat. I did not take offense at it. You know, they thought I was being bullheaded, and I think, in retrospect, they were probably right. What was your relationship with Newt like? I had an unusual relationship with him. Was it It depended on which Newt showed up. But I thought the good Newt, I found engaging, intelligent, and that we were surprisingly in agreement in the way we viewed the world. But you know, Newt supported me in virtually all of my foreign policy initiatives. And after he got his Congress, he realized that a hundred of them had never had a passport. I remember him calling me once, wanting me to get them to go on foreign missions. He said, If you ask them, then they cannot be attacked back home for boondoggle trips. So we actually had a very cordial relationship. He was also very candid with me about his political objectives. And he, in turn, from time to time, would get in trouble with the rightwing of his own caucus because they said I could talk him into too much. We had a pretty good relationship. You know, on the other hand, as I told you, when he did things like blaming every bad thing that happened in America on Democrats in the 1960's and all that, I thought it was highly destructive. At some point, probably around 1996, I got to the point where I no longer had personal feelings about those things. But you know, things like the Whitewater investigation and the Travel Office investigation he was smart. He knew there was nothing in that stuff. It was all politics to him. It was about power.

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But he really did believe that the object of politics was to destroy your opponent. And you know, he ran Jim Wright out of the Congress on account of that. That is what he thought he was doing. And he had an enormous amount of success in the beginning, and he won the Congress basically by having that take-no-prisoners, be-against-everything approach. Did not he tell you once on the phone that he was planning to lead a revolution against you? Well, he thought he was leading a revolution, and I was in the way. And I think he really believed, after '94 What did you think when he says this to you? I am out there to destroy I am going to take you on. I thought he was a worthy adversary, and I thought I would defeat him, because I thought the American people would stick with me. I think he thought that he could create, for the rest of my Presidency, a sort of an almost a parliamentary system where he would be the prime minister and make the policy, and I'd be in charge of foreign policy, and he'd help me. I mean, historically, the Newt versus Bill, I was just trying to think back, there has not been as powerful I mean, powerful and as antagonistic a Speaker to the President, not in modern times. You had an actual enemy. You had somebody actually out there daily fighting you, not a not a Lyndon, not a McCormack. Everybody went with Reagan and gave him what he wanted. That is what they decided to do. And you know, now I have a Speaker in Hastert I can really work with. But he still has the dominant power in the caucus is Tom DeLay and Dick Armey. And if they had their druthers, you know, they'd still follow that approach. But the balance of authority is so power is so close in the House that more often than not, we work things out. But in the Senate, you have got the same thing with Lott. You know, Lott I have a very cordial personal relationship with. I have a lot in common with Lott in terms of our background and childhood and, you know, that whole thing. How did you develop your strategy in sort of dealing with Newt and outflanking him? Well, that is part of it.

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You know, I felt after they won that when the people actually saw the fine print on their contract, they would think that there was a contract on America instead of a contract with America. And then I felt that I had to oppose them when I thought they were wrong. But I could not let them push me back into the old confrontation where they could say, Clinton's an old Democrat. He is defending everything, even the indefensible, so you may think we are going too far, but America has to change, because this is a country in constant change. So that was for example, instead of just fighting them on the budget, I offered my own balanced budget. That is because I felt they had to have a chance to run their and then when we got to the Government shutdown, I was not just against what they were doing; I had an alternative. See, I believe and I think it is more important, I think it is easier for Republicans to be against everything than Democrats because people view us as the party of affirmative Government. And since I believed in balancing the budget, I just did not want to do it the way they wanted to. What is your bottom line on Newt, historically? I mean, what is your if you were an historian, what would you say about Gingrich? That he was immensely successful in, first of all, consolidating the power of the Republican Party and its rightwing and then in winning the Congress, winning the historic struggle for Congress in '94 by opposing me right down the line. And in '94, the people the economy was getting better, but people did not feel it yet. The budget we passed did not impose great tax burdens on ordinary Americans, but they did not know it yet. And the crime bill we passed was going to help bring the crime rate down without interfering with people's gun rights, but they did not know it yet. So you had the best of all times to run through a gaping hole. And then I had made the mistake of trying to do both, trying to do the economic plan and NAFTA, which dispirited some of our base supporters. And then I tried to do health care under circumstances that were literally impossible. You could not get a universal coverage plan passed through Congress. So I made a lot of errors, and he ran through them, and he therefore changed the Congress.

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Then I think people will say that we had one of these historic battles that periodically happens in America about the role of the National Government and, indeed, what the meaning of the Nation is. And I think he thought he could actually carry out the revolution that President Reagan talked about, you know, drastically shrinking the Federal Government, drastically limiting its ability to act in the social sphere and moving it to the right. And to me, we had a series of battles that were really the latest incarnation of this ageold battle of what does it mean to be an American, what is the idea of America, what is the purpose of a nation? There was my veto of the Newt tax bill after Newt was gone. The battle over the same thing is now happening, shaping up over the courts. The most important issue in this election may well be what happens to the courts. Because there is now already we are one vote away from having enough votes that would repeal Roe v.Wade. But there is this other issue in the courts which I think is quite profound, which is, there are five votes right now to restrict the ability of Congress to require the States to participate in protecting the American people in a lot of fundamental ways. But it is the same battle that we had between George Washington and John Adams and Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall on the one side and Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Payne, and a lot of other people on the other in the beginning; the same battle Abraham Lincoln had around the time of the Civil War. Did the Federal Government have the power to enslave them? The same battle we had at the dawn of the industrial revolution when Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson asserted the authority of the Nation to proscribe basic conditions in the workplace and protection. And it was the same battle that Franklin Roosevelt fought. Now we are in the fifth battle over how to define America. And in the first three skirmishes, we won. But I see that as a big issue in this election, a huge issue. Let us talk about impeachment a little. You are going to in the history books, it is going to say, of course, that you were the second President ever to be impeached. Do you feel that that will cloud your real accomplishments? And I am just grateful that, unlike Andrew Johnson, I was less embittered by it and I had more support from the public and in the Congress, so I was able to resume my duties and actually get a lot done for the American people in the aftermath.

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Did you ever get so angry during it that you think it clouded your judgment? I got angry, but I always was alone or with friends who would deflate me, so I do not think it ever clouded my judgment on any official thing I took. You know, I realized that when it was all over, I would have the responsibility to work with the Republicans, as well as the Democrats. One of the things I had to learn as I said, it took me almost my whole first term to learn it is that at some point Presidents are not permitted to have personal feelings. When you manifest your anger in public, it should be on behalf of the American people and the values that they believe and the things they do. You just cannot a lot of this stuff you cannot take personally and especially when I realized that for the people that were directing it, it was just politics. You know, it was about power and politics. So I was largely able to purge myself of it. And I had very strong personal feelings about it, but I tried never to talk about it. in private? Yes, because Presidents will always be under siege in some way or another. And if you do not want the job and the attendant heat, you should not ask for it. Does it make you uncomfortable to talk about this episode now? I just think the less I say about it right now, the better. What do you think of Ken Starr now? I think he did what he was hired to do. You told me you never really met him and had no ill feelings. I met him. You know, I met him once when he interviewed me. He was hired to keep the impeachment thing I mean, to keep the inquiry going past the '96 election and to do whatever damage he could. That is why he was put in, and he did what they asked him to do. What is your take on Henry Hyde, who was supposedly Mr. Reasonable, and then he seemed to defy the will of the people after the '98 elections, where he kind of got repudiated? Well, he did what he was hired to do, too. I mean, the rightwing was in control of the Congress, and they thought they had paid in '98, and they thought they would never have to pay again. They thought it was a free shot to put a hit on me, and so they did.

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Once the elections were done, I remember seeing you a week before, and clearly Democrats were going to take the House in a way they had never taken it before in an off election. And it was a referendum on this issue, and then they went ahead him and the Republican leadership went ahead despite that. What does that tell you about them? That they wanted to they stayed with their rightwing, and they thought they would pay no price in 2000, because they thought, whatever happened, it would all be over by now. And they thought they could put a black mark on me in history, and that was really important to them. They were just angry, and they thought they had paid once, and they would not have to pay this time, because the American people would move on to other things as they always do. And so they did it. It is not an issue now in this election, really. It is in three or four House seats, but not many. It is an issue to me. I have tried the only way it should be an issue in the election is that it indicates how important it is, if they should maintain their majority, they have somebody in the White House that can restrain them. Because it is just an example of other things they were doing to the environmental laws of the country, to the education laws, to the health care system. The American people should not be expected to dwell on it. They should not have to deal with it. Who do you think really came through for you and got up and defended you? There were 800 people, including a lot of Republicans who did not even like me, who filed testimony talking about how inappropriate it was. Then there was that bipartisan panel of career prosecutors who said that no one would bring any criminal charges on this. So a lot of people who came forward who had no particular reason to do it but who cared about their country and were offended by what was going on. Do you think in some way this is sort of a referendum on sort of the nature of morality or the character of America in some way? No, I think people strongly disagree with what I did. I think that they just were able to discriminate between a bad personal mistake and the justification for a Constitutional crisis. I think it said more about their ability to discriminate between two different kinds of problems than any changed moral standards. In the sixties we always talked still they talk about karma, you know, your karma?

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Did you ever look at it in terms of what is in my karma that I got this shit-hammer dropped on me? If I had not made a personal mistake, they would not have the pretext to do what they did, even though what they did was wrong. Do you think it benefited us, that process, that we learned from all that, from the impeachment process? Well, the one thing it did was it pointed out all the other excesses. What was that? That civil lawsuit against me was bogus. Even the judge, who was famous for disliking me personally, threw it out as having no merit. So I think that what it did was, at least for the time being, it took a lot of the venom out of our public life. You know, even as hard as George Bush and Al Gore are hitting each other now in this election, they are by and large hitting at each other over the issues. I mean, Bush has got some ad up now questioning Gore's integrity, which is amazing that Bush would question Gore's integrity, but anyway. But he knows that there is a certain number of voters who vote for Republicans because they are convinced that they are morally superior to Democrats, not withstanding the fact that we are awash in evidence now that they are not. And so he is doing that, but there has been very little of that, even from him. They are basically the level of venom is lower than it was. And maybe I absorbed enough for several years. Because I think it is just crazy for America with all these fabulous opportunities and some pretty stiff challenges out there to waste our elections and our public officials' time with things that we know are bogus or trivial and cost the taxpayers a fortune, for no other purpose than for one side to pursue political advantage over another. There will always be some of that, but my instinct is that in the next 4 years, we will have a lot less of it. The press as President, you have a relationship with the press that is unique to anybody in the world. What is your take on the press in America? Well, I think that, first of all, it is very difficult to generalize. I think that on the balance, it is a great advantage for the President to have a bully pulpit that can reach everyone in America and everyone in the world instantaneously.

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And any criticisms that a President has about negative press or incessant carping or whatever you have got to temper that with the fact that they make it possible for you to do your job in a communications age. And they work especially the working press, I have an enormous amount of respect for them. I mean these people that are on this airplane, because I have worked hard and I keep long hours, it is a hard job for them, because they have to they go around in the vans, not in Air Force One or the helicopters. They have a lot of hard work to do, and I think by and large, most of them do it as well as they can and as honestly as they can. I have an enormous amount of respect for them. Now, there is another part of the press that are kind of part of almost a celebrity political press that are that go all the way from the columnists to the people that are on all these talk shows all the time. And they have in order for them to be successful, their comments have to have edge. They tend to be more negative and more dogmatic in their attempts to be and sometimes there is more heat than light in a lot of what is said in a lot of those forums formats. But that is part of the new age we are living in. And also they are sort of on the cutting edge between the serious press, the tabloid press, and pure political advocacy and entertainment. You have got all these segments now that are kind of blurred together, compounded by a 24-hour news cycle, and the fact that there are umptydump channels people can watch, some of which are news channels that know they have to go after narrowly segmented markets, and they are targeting certain audiences. So it is a very different press environment, and if you took it all seriously, it would run you nuts. But you cannot once you realize kind of what the environment is, you just learn to deal with it. I think the important thing is to for Presidents, especially to try to hear the criticism, because it is not always wrong. I find it easier, really, when it comes from thoughtful columnists who are really trying to make a serious contribution to the national debate. Even in some other forums it is important. Which columnists or reporters do you think have been particularly good or particularly smart in their coverage of you in the last 8 years?

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Well, I think just in terms of columnists, I think Tom Friedman is the best foreign policy writer we have today, by a long stretch. I think he understands the world we are living in and the one toward which we are moving. Therefore, whether he is criticizing me or analyzing an issue or whatever he is doing, he is trying to do it from a completely honest point of view of trying to say, here is where the world is; here is where we are going. I think Ron Brownstein is one of the best political columnists in America today, one of the two or three best. And you know, he understands this whole New Democrat movement that I have been a part of. He understood the ideas that underlay the '92 campaign and the whole Democratic Leadership Council effort, everything we are trying to do. And he made it his business to study that. I regret that his other responsibilities at the Post do not give him time to write more columns, because I think he is very good. No, I think that it was sort of like this Wen Ho Lee deal in a way. I mean, the same guy got a story, and it was kind of overwritten, and dire things were predicted. But I think whatever I feel about that, it has to be tempered by the fact that the Times has a serious conscience when it comes to the national issues. I think they really have tried consistently to think on the public issues, I think they really have done an excellent job of analysis and are trying to come out in the right place in the right way. So whatever I feel about that is tempered by that. Do you think institutionally it is working right, the press as a whole, the major newspapers, the networks, and so forth? I think they are doing the best they can in a very new and different environment. I have a lot of sympathy with them. So you do not have resentment towards them? Like, a lot of Presidents just hated once done, they just hated them. You know, how can Presidents hate the press? I mean, they can gripe all you want about all the negative coverage you get on the evening news or on these talk shows or being blasted in the newspaper or having to get on something where they are dead wrong like on Whitewater, whatever it is dead wrong, but still, every day they are right in all kinds of other things about all the things that affect the American people and their lives.

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And anytime you want a microphone to have your say, you have got it. What creature comforts are you going to miss the most about leaving the White House, not living there? Everybody says I will miss Air Force One the most once I have to return to commercial travel. But what I will miss the most is not the creature comforts; it is the honor of living in the White House, which I have loved. I have loved living there, because I love my country; I love the history of my country. I know I was a pretty good American historian before I got there, and I know a lot more than I did then, and I have read a lot about Presidents that most people do not know much about, including me before I got there. And even more than that, I will miss the work. I love the work. I actually have loved doing this job. Even in the worst times the whole impeachment thing I just thank God every day I can go to work. I love the job. I have always loved it. Looking at the other side of the coin, what is there anything that seems attractive to you about not living there anymore? It will be the first time in 20 years you know, I have been I was Governor for 12 years, and 10 years, the last 10 years in a row so it will be the first time in 18 years that I have really had a private home that was my primary residence, and where I will get up every day, feeling a responsibility to be of public service, but knowing that I am basically in control of my life again. And it will be an interesting challenge for me. Eighteen years is a long time to be a chief executive, living in public housing, with every day scripted out you know, hours and hours a day, particularly if you work like I do. It is a challenge, and I am going to be interested to see whether I can meet it and what it means, you know, to go into this next chapter of my life. I am actually excited about it. What is the one thing about being what is the one thing that would surprise either Bush or Gore about being President that they just cannot know now? What advice would you give the next President? Now, Al will not be as surprised by that, because he is been there 8 years. It is another good argument for voting for him, because he is experienced and he makes good decisions. He makes good decisions, and he is had experience.

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And the environment, I think, will be less hostile for either one of them than it was for me, and they will have more of an opportunity to craft cooperative solutions, because almost under any conceivable scenario, the Congress will be even more closely divided than it is now. You know, the Democrats are going to pick up some seats in the Senate. They might even be in control. But if they are, they will just have a one-seat majority here, too, and I think the Democrats will win the House. But if they do, they will not have any bigger majority than the Republicans do now, maybe a little more, but not much. So you will have a very closely divided Government which will require them to all work together. So I think they may have a less hostile environment than I did, and I hope they do, but I think they will still be surprised at how many different things they will have crash in on them at once. What would you tell them to do? You say, look, here is what you have got to do as the next President. Here is what I would like you to do. Well, first of all, I think after the election, they ought to get more rest than I did. You know, I did not really take a vacation. I think they ought to clear their heads. I would advise them to work as hard as they can to get a good Cabinet and a good staff, and then really emphasize teamwork, and when you come to the tough decisions, do what you think is right. A lot of these decisions, you know, that were unpopular that I made Bosnia, Haiti, debt relief in Mexico, taking on the NRA, doing the debt thing reducing the deficit, I mean, right now, it is like smooth sailing. But it is just not in the nature of human existence to be free of difficulty. And I think when you come down to those tough decisions, you just have to do what you think is right, tell the American people why you did it, and hope they will go along with you. So this comes out after the election. So do you want to give me a prediction. And I think if he does not , the only reason that I think that he might not win is if they vote a higher percentage of the people that want Bush to be President vote than the percentage of people that want Gore to be President.

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Could I begin, ENTITY, with a twopart question? What is the significance of the South African election to you and the American people? And do you have any particular message for the people of South Africa that we could take back to them? First of all, I think it would be difficult to overstate the significance of this election to the American people for many reasons, first of all, our own history of racial division. We, after all, fought a great Civil War over slavery, and we continue to deal with our own racial challenges today. So all Americans, I think, have always been more drawn to the problems and the promise of South Africa than perhaps other nations have been. Secondly, our own civil rights movement has, for decades, had a relationship with the antiapartheid movement in South Africa. So this will be a great sense of personal joy to many, many Americans who have been involved in this whole issue personally. And finally, it is important to the United States because of the promise of harmony and prosperity in South Africa and what that might mean, not only to South Africa but to many other nations in the region and to the prospect of a revitalization, a new energy, a new peace, a new sense of possibility throughout at least the southern part of Africa. The United States is elated at the prospect of these elections. We have contributed to the effort to fight apartheid. We have tried to support the effort to have good elections and to make them meaningful, and we want to celebrate with and support South Africa. But we realize that the real work will begin after the election, of continuing to live in harmony, of fighting the new problems every day, of making democracy work, of dealing with the social problems and the very severe economic problems. And we intend to be a partner from the beginning. Shortly after the election I will announce a substantial increase in United States assistance and support for building South Africa economically, dealing with the social problems, helping the political system to work. And then in June, we will have here a very large conference sponsored by the Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown, in Atlanta, bringing together large numbers of American business people to give us the opportunity to urge them to be involved with South Africa in the rebuilding. Well, I do believe that we ought to dramatically increase our assistance, which we will do. I think we ought to dramatically increase our private investment in South Africa, which I intend to work on.

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I think we ought to do what we can to mobilize the resources of other nations to also contribute. And I intend to spend a lot of time and effort on that. I do not know that I would say it is exactly like the Marshall plan or that that is exactly what is needed, but it is obvious that a lot of money, a lot of investment, and a lot of opportunity is going to be needed to sort of jumpstart South Africa. And I think that the promise of this new democracy is that people will be able to live up to their potential. And I intend to do what I can to be a strong partner in that. This is the last one to would you you would probably be going to Africa soon, and is there any intention of paying a visit to our country? I assure you I am going to send a very high-level delegation to the inauguration to celebrate the elections. And I have been talking with my staff about when I can go to Africa. This year, because of the 50th anniversary of the ending of World War II, I will wind up making three trips to Europe, and I will go to Asia in the fall. But in 1995, 1996, my travel schedule is more open. I think that the United States, frankly, has not with the exception of South Africa has not paid as much attention to Africa as it should have and to its long-term potential and particularly to those countries that are trying to resolve their political problems and do things to help their people. Well, I do have some thoughts, actually. I think it has worked in South Africa partly because people with enormous influence decided to be statesmen instead of wreckers. After a certain amount of time, you had the leaders of the various groups deciding that there was no longer a future in fighting and killing and dying, that splitting the country up was not an option, and that somehow they were going up or down together. And then they translated those understandings into concrete commitments, not just an election. An election is only part of it, although a big part. I think the decision to go for a government of national unity for 5 years is absolutely critical to this and making the decision before you know the outcome of the election. The decision to have a bill of rights, the decision to have a constitutional court, I think all these things have made a huge difference.

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And I think what you have got in other places, these sort of ancient divisions racial, ethnic, and religious divisions where people have not come to that wisdom; they do not understand yet, for whatever reason, that in the end they will be better off if they work together and that controlling territory is of nowhere near the significance in terms of quality of life and meaning of life that it was 100 years ago. It is almost as if, in some of the places that you have mentioned and you have written so powerfully about Bosnia, and I know you care a lot about Azerbaijan; you have the Abkhaz problem, you have all these things it is almost as if the cold war sort of imposed a freeze-frame on the history of a lot of these places. And then when it went away, people woke up and resumed the attitudes that they had held in the early part of the 20th century, which they carried over from the 19th century, as if there had been no communications revolution, as if there had been no changes in the global economy, as if all these things had happened. Here in this country, too, the ethnic diversity of the United States ought to be our greatest asset as we move into the next century. It used to be in America that the burden we carried was the burden of the fight between blacks and whites going back to slavery and the Civil War and the aftermath. And there was a study released in our press last week that said sometimes these groups resented each other as much as they resented the white majority, depending on what the facts were. So we are still dealing with this. I have to tell you, I believe that if the elections come off well, and especially in the aftermath of the agreement yesterday where Chief Buthelezi agreed with Mr. Mandela and Mr. de Klerk to participate in the elections and they worked out the constitutional role for the King of the Zulus I think when that was done I think if this election comes off, it will send a message around the world that there is another way to deal with these problems and that if it can be done in South Africa, how can you justify the old-fashioned killing and fighting and dying over a piece of land, over divisions which are not as important as what unites people in other places. I mean, it is amazing; you think of it contrast what we see in Gorazde with what we see about to happen in South Africa. It is a matter of enormous historical impact.

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And I think that when it is shown around the world it has to reverberate in ways that we cannot fully assess but that have to be positive. Well, first of all, we have not finalized the amount of the aid package. We are working on it now, and we are going to get as much money as we can during this fiscal year from funds that are idle in the appropriate accounts. That is, there are some we are looking, we are scouring the Government accounts for things, money that will not be spent that we can put into this. And we will do as much as we possibly can. South Africa is a country of 40 million people where 7 million are homeless, for all practical purposes. If you look at it in the larger sense, if you look at the amount of investment we have, we have only a billion dollars invested now in South Africa since the advent of the sanctions and I am glad that I could lift the sanctions but a billion dollars. In the early eighties we had $3 billion. And one of the things that I intend to do in June with this conference that Secretary Brown is having is to do everything I can to accelerate return of American investment to the levels of the early eighties, and then to exceed that, because we know, as a practical matter, if you look at the incredible human and natural resources of South Africa, that there would be more American money, private sector American money than Government money. Now, next year and the year after we are going to stay after this thing on a multiyear basis we may be able to do better. But I think, given the condition of our budget laws and where the money is right now and the fact that we are in the middle of a fiscal year, we are going to do quite well. What are you trying to do with this money? Well, first of all, I want to encourage the South African leadership, once it is elected, to tell us what they think should be done with it. I do not want to be we are in no position to be dictating that; we should be asking them. But I can tell you, I know we can make it available for economic development projects, for human resource projects like housing and health and education, and for democracy and institution building how do you set up a system which will deliver these services and function properly.

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It occurs to me, for example, the interconnection in South Africa and southern Africa generally, the transportation and waterways and the potential for telecommunications interconnection to leverage economic growth explosively throughout the region, is very great. It might be that your leaders would say, Well, if you have this amount of dollars, put it into these investments because they will generate more opportunities. It may be that your leaders will say, We cannot stand the sight of all these people living in substandard conditions; put more of it in housing. It might be that there is a public health problem that you want to deal with. I think that we should be guided in part, or in large measure, by what we are asked to do by the new leaders of the new South Africa. ENTITY, do you have any plans to invite the new South African President to Washington? Yes, I will issue the invitation promptly after the election. Well, we are certainly prepared to do that, to make that kind of investment. And we have, as you know, invested some money, as I said, since I have been ENTITY, I think somewhere in the range of $35 million, just to try to make the political process work right. If you ask me one thing I have learned in my own life growing up as a young boy in the segregated South, it is that this is something that you never solve, you just have to keep improving, you have to keep working with. My own interest in politics in America was inflamed overwhelmingly by my opposition to racial segregation in my own State, my own community, our own neighborhoods, our schools, and the terrible consequences which flowed from that. And so I thought, well, you know, when I grow up maybe there is something I can do to solve this. And when I ran for public office and when I served as a Governor of my State, and then when I became ENTITY, I think that I will always be able to say I did things to make it better. But this is not the sort of thing you solve. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, identifiable differences will always be used by narrow-minded people or frustrated people or ignorant people or sometimes bad people as a lever, a wedge, a means of acquiring power or influence or dominance or just inflicting harm.

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The ultimate test of your democracy will be whether a disciplined effort can be made to take the attitudes represented, as you acknowledge, by your leaders and keep working until they become more and more and more real in the daily lives of every citizen of your country. It will get better, but you will always have to work on it. If they work at it I think it will get better. But I think you will, first of all, people will always tend to show a certain affinity to organize their living patterns around people who are more like them. But some people will seek a more integrated life. That is my experience in the South; that is my experience in America. I mean, I was amazed when I traveled around in other parts of America that a lot of people that I knew in other parts of the country lived a more segregated existence than I did, for whatever reason, maybe just the nature of the population of their communities. But I think there will always be a certain amount of cohesion of people of the same race or ethnic group or religious group, particularly if they have strong religious convictions. You see that all over the world. You see that here. To a certain extent, there is nothing wrong with that and it is not unhelpful. What is unhelpful is if that is used as a way to divide people and if it leads to some sort of legal or practical discrimination. And I think what Mr. Lewis is saying is absolutely right. We still have too much of that in America. We had a meeting here this morning, just for example, we had a meeting this morning; we had a couple of hundred people in the Rose Garden to talk about how we could better immunize all of our children in America. And it is appalling that a country as wealthy as we are only immunizes about two-thirds of our kids, about 64 percent of our children under 2 with all the recommended childhood immunizations. And it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that one of the reasons is that children under 2 are more likely to be children of color and more likely to be poor than adults over 50 who tend to make the decisions that control public policy in this country. So we had a meeting today to celebrate trying to organize ourselves with some discipline at the community level to eradicate not only a health problem but a problem of discrimination against the young, the poor, and often, children of color.

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But I think you see this played out over and over and over again in every society. And what I think is going to happen in this country is that increasingly we will come to understand that the fact that we are a multiracial society is an enormous asset in a global economy, but only if we take advantage of it, only if we educate all our children, keep them healthy, and teach people to live together in ways that permit them all to succeed. South Africa has an enormous asset now. You have a biracial society; you have some other ethnic groups, too, I know, and mixed race, but you have essentially two great large ethnic groups of people, each of whom have different experiences, different backgrounds, different contacts throughout the world now. It can be a terrific asset for you that you are different, but only if you use it. You can now turn it into an asset. So I guess my answer to Tony is, some places it will be better; some places it will be worse throughout the world. highly homogeneous, coherent societies that think they can operate with great discipline by their own sets of cultural rules which are widely accepted within the society, who will then attempt to do well in the global economy by having high rates of savings, investment, and exporting to others but keeping their own life; or open, multiethnic societies which welcome the whole world and try to find a way to make strength out of diversity. And what you are going to see is each of those societies will be dealing with the conflicts that any course of action dictates. You have got a great reform movement going on in Japan, fighting great opposition, because they are saying, We need to be more open; we need to appreciate diversity more. But we do not want to be so open we do not have any discipline or control or direction, or whatever. And you have America saying, This diversity is a great asset for us, but not if we have so little discipline our crime rates are too high, our education systems are too poor, or whatever. So you have these two great models, each of them trying to find the strengths of one another. You have a chance to do that in South Africa. And it is a unique opportunity, at least in that part of the African Continent. And I think the world will come beating a path to your doorstep.

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It will not just be the United States; the whole world will start showing up down there when you pull this election off, because they will be so exhilarated by the moral and the practical potential of what it is you are engaged in. That is what I believe. I'd like to answer the question it is a good question and a fair one and I'd like to sort of I will give you two answers, consistent one with the other, but I think showing what I perceive to be the dimension of the problem. First of all, the leaders of the country have taken great steps to minimize the prospect of that development by agreeing to a constitution with a strong bill of rights and a constitutional court and by agreeing to a government of national unity and by also, frankly, siding with international global developments that are consistent with human rights, renouncing terrorism, renouncing the spread of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. All these things augur for a government that will be balanced and fair and will not tolerate as official policy the abuse of human rights. If that should occur, I would think the United States should have the same obligation to speak against it there as we did before in South Africa and as we do now elsewhere in the world. I think the far greater danger for the man who wrote the piece and it was a very moving piece, I thought the far greater danger is what is in the heart of millions of people who to go back to your question who have not yet bought into the whole process that is unfolding. And who knows how many people there are carrying what wounds inside who may think they have some opportunity and some position to which they might be elected or just some opportunity because of their newfound freedom for payback time? I mean, that is something that no one can calculate. In other words, democracy requires every day millions and millions and millions of decisions in a country as large as 40 million, by people they just make decisions sometimes you will begin to make them almost subconsciously to support the democratic process, to show personal restraint, to respect the rights of other people, to deal with all these things.

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I think that is going to be the far bigger challenge, is when you get the government in place and you have got the laws, you have got the bill of rights, you have got all this stuff, the government's going to try to do the right thing, I think the majority party will try to do the right thing what will happen is, what about all the people up and down the line? And what is in their hearts? Those are things that happen to free societies, and you will just have to work at stamping them out and minimizing them. I think the United States should focus more on Africa as a whole, as a continent. Do you intend to do that? And I intend to do that. Now, you know today, of course, we are profoundly I know that I will not use your term, but you know what occupies our headlines, of course, are in the north, Somalia and Sudan and the problems there and then moving down the continent to Rwanda and Burundi and then moving down to Angola where more children have been injured by land mines than in any war in human history. It is not on CNN at night, so people do not talk about it. And we are terribly troubled by Rwanda now, but it was not so many months ago that in a period of months it is estimated that as many as a quarter of a million or more people died in Burundi. There are other countries where progress is being made, where democracy is beginning to work, where people are beginning to try to put together these things that will make a successful country. And it seems to me that the United States ought to be working with countries that are trying to make good things happen, as well as doing what we can to alleviate human suffering where there is a tragedy. And I think we need a more balanced and more aggressive policy in Africa, and I am hopeful that we will be able to provide one. We have been so caught up with our own financial problems and cutting back on everything. And in our country, foreign aid of all kinds has a history of being unpopular among the people and, therefore, among the Congress. But I think that if there is a success in South Africa, which I expect there to be, I believe America will try to come to you; I believe the world will try to come to you; I think there will be a fascination about it.

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The first thing I want to ask you is, how can you feel so secure about your security right now? In fact, when the incident occurred, within a matter of seconds a Secret Service agent was upstairs at the White House there with me. They have worked very hard to increase their ability to protect the President every year. And they get better at it every year. I have a high level of confidence in them. This incident could have happened at any time, I suppose. I regret it, but I do not think the American people should worry about it. We live in a democracy. The one thing I do hope people will draw from this incident is that the congressional Members who were brave enough to vote for the crime bill, to stand up to the brutal pressure the NRA put on them and the threats they leveled against them, to try to get these assault weapons off the street were right. That man had a modified assault weapon with a magazine with at least 20 bullets. And I think it is a good thing that we are trying to move against that. But in a free society where people have free movement and where there are lots of guns, this kind of thing can occur. We have to get out here and be with one another and talk to one another. So I am just going about my job and doing it with a very high level of confidence in the people whose job it is to protect the President. ENTITY, hearing that from you makes us feel a lot better. We asked our viewers to call into us, to write into us, to E-mail us with their questions for you tonight, so I'd like to take some time and talk about some of their questions. Linda Parker from Hartford wants to know how you feel about colleagues who have distanced themselves from you lately. Congressman Sam Gejdenson and Jim Maloney, who is running for Gary Franks' seat, did not show up when you appeared here a couple of weeks ago. How do you feel when your colleagues do this? Well, first of all, I can say for Sam Gejdenson that is just not an accurate characterization. I went to his district at his invitation and campaigned for him at a time when nationally I was not in nearly as good a shape in the polls as I am now, so I just think that is a bum rap. And Mr. Maloney, my wife has been to Connecticut campaigning for him. I took no offense at that. I think that it was a very successful trip to Connecticut.

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Afterward, surveys show that the support rose for Mr. Curry, our candidate for Governor up there. And I feel very good about the State of Connecticut and the relationship I have had with the Democrats. I also think, however, that every Member of Congress and every Senator should seek to run, to some extent, a campaign that is tied not to the President but to their constituents. What I like to hear a Member say is, When I voted with the President, I did not do it for him, I did it for you. John Francis from Stratford wants to know your thinking on that. Well, here is what happened, and I think it is very important for the voters to listen to this. The Republicans put out this contract, and they said, If you will give us control of the Congress, we will take you back to what we did in the 1980's, trickle-down Reaganomics. We will give massive tax cuts, mostly to upper income people. That must be appealing in Connecticut; you have a lot of upper income people. We will give massive tax cuts. We will increase defense; we will increase Star Wars. And we will balance the budget in 5 years. That costs a trillion dollars. The only way to do that is to cut everything, including Social Security, across the board 20 percent. You say, we do not want to do that. Then you have to cut everything else in the Government across the board 30 percent. That bankrupts Medicare. If you do not do that, you are right back to where they were before, massive deficits, shipping jobs overseas. Connecticut lost 150,000 jobs in the last 4 years because of that kind of economic policy. We need to invest and grow with discipline. We do not need a lot of easy promises. We need to embrace the challenges of the global economy, invest, and grow. If they carry through on their promises, they cannot keep their promise to cut the taxes and increase the spending and balance the budget without going after it.

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You are giving a major speech in Paris in a few hours' time on what you describe as a new era of transatlantic union. And obviously, the picture in Europe is much more encouraging, it would seem, than a few years ago. What is changed, in your view, and what needs to be fixed? This is the what is changed is the we have gone beyond the Iraq period for two reasons. People are beginning to see progress. And therefore, people that at least governments that felt like they did not want to participate in the liberation of Iraq have now wanted to participate in the reconstruction of Iraq. And their people are beginning to see some success. Maliki has moved things Stockholm and comports himself like a leader would, and he speaks hopefully about the future. Secondly, that there are a lot of issues that we are focused on that kind of send a signal that cooperation is necessary to change the conditions of the world for the better cooperation on ENTITY, cooperation on malaria, cooperation on trade, hopefully, discussion about climate change, cooperation in Afghanistan. In other words, the agenda is varied, and it is profound. And my speech basically says that by focusing on these issues and by working together in a unified way, we can be trans-formative, just like we were in the past. Europe used to be inward looking right after World War II necessarily so to rebuild. Now we can be outward looking as we help others. I also have a I am a believer that liberty is transformative the power of liberty is universal, that moral relativism must be rejected, and that we have got to have confidence in liberty to help others so that we are more secure ourselves. And one of the areas of Europe where liberty has been sort of partly transformative is clearly post-Soviet Russia. And you have had very strong personal relationship with Putin. First of all, is your assessment that Putin is still basically in charge? Let me start with the second. My personal relationship is important because we had differences. And therefore, if you work hard to establish a relationship of trust, that you are then able to air out your differences in a way that is respectful of the other person, and at the same time, find common ground. One area of common ground that has really not been given much attention is Iran. I agreed that the Iranians should have they have the sovereign right to have civilian nuclear power. Putin obviously believes they should; witness the cooperation on Bushehr.

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We both agree, however, that they cannot be trusted with the knowledge that comes from enrichment. And therefore, Putin suggested to the Iranians that Russia provide the enriched uranium necessary to run their fuel plant. And as I said yesterday in the press conference, that this really undermines the argument for the Iranians because if, in fact, their only focus is on civilian nuclear power, they readily accept the plant, the fuel, and the offer of Russia to pick up the spent fuel. So there are areas where we cooperate, and there are areas where we have disagreements. And yet I believe the best foreign policy for the American ENTITY is to be in a position to earn the trust of those where there is not a hundred-percent agreement. And by the way, any American ENTITY will find out there is never a hundred-percent agreement, even with your closest friends. And so the first part of the question yes, look, I think it is I went to Sochi. Putin introduced me to Medvedev. And he, in not only his body language, but in his words to me that Medvedev is going to be in charge of foreign policy. I think it is I will take him for his word, and then we will watch and see what happens. How concerned are you about issues like human rights in Russia? I think it matters when people speak up, whether it be in Russia or China or anywhere else. In Russia's case, there was early on in my Presidency, I remember talking to Vladimir Putin on behalf of the Catholic Church, where there were concerns about the Church being able to have a robust presence. Vladimir Putin is sensitive to religious issues. He has a beautiful little Orthodox church on his own property, which he proudly showed me and Laura one time. He made sure I met some of the Jewish community when I was there in Russia. And so he is sensitive to religious liberty, more so than some other countries. And is Western leverage reduced by the fact that Russia has a good chunk of the world's natural energy resources? I think it certainly changes the equation on a lot of foreign policy. It is interesting to watch the European Union wrestle with energy independence. Early in my Presidency, nations were saying they were going to get rid of nuclear power.

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And I questioned them quietly, on an individual basis, about that decision, because if you get rid of one source of power, you have to find another source of power, unless, of course, you do not care whether your economy grows. So I predicted to some of these leaders that there would be an issue in terms of having a sole source supplier, particularly of natural gas from Russia. And my only point is, is that this energy issue complicates a lot of foreign policy issues, including that between the EU and Russia, as well as that between the United States and Venezuela, or the world and Iran. And the question is, what do you do about it? What we need to do about it in the United States is to get this Democratically controlled Congress to allow us to explore for oil and gas. We did an energy study when I first became ENTITY that predicted it would be an issue if we did not explore for oil and gas. And what people do not understand is hydrocarbons are necessary as we transition to a new era, based upon new technologies. It takes time and money to develop these technologies. The world is in the process of doing that. The United States is spending a lot of money on research, both privately and publicly. And yet we forgot the notion of transitioning. And so we do not explore in ANWR, we do not explore for oil shale, we do not explore off the coast of America, and we should be. In terms of the oil price, which is obsessing most of the world now, is there anything individual governments can do, in your view? It took us a while to get to where we are; it is going to take us a while to get out of it. And the truth of the matter is that there is either got to be more supply or less demand. And demand does not decline overnight, although patterns and habits are beginning to change in the United States. You notice some of these car manufacturers are now announcing they are going to be manufacturing smaller automobiles. I think that people have got to recognize that, I mean, our policy in America has been robust on the development of new technologies and weak on finding enough hydrocarbons so that we can become less dependent on foreign sources of oil. You mean the magic wand? And in terms of these conferences, I notice there is going to be a conference in Jeddah, and your national security staff I was asked this at a press conference last night.

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Of course, I am going to go home and take a look at what it all means, and I will decide who is going to attend on our behalf. But if I might repeat, the solution to the price of hydrocarbons is either more hydrocarbons or less usage of hydrocarbons. During my trips to the Middle East I have got great relations with the leaders there, and I talked to King Abdallah about increasing the supply of oil, on the theory that if you harm your consumers with high price, they will find other ways to power their economies as quickly as possible. And secondly, he should not want to see kind of a worldwide contraction as a result of consumers spending money on energy that ends up overseas, as opposed to spending money on opportunities in their respective economies. So I think people, if they take a sober look at the world's supply, there is just not a lot relative to demand. One of the things that could help is that if some countries, big consumers of hydrocarbons stop subsidizing their populations so that there is a response to price on the demand side. Iran has been very much on the agenda again, all this week Ahmadinejad has all but said no to the latest incentive package. If that stands, what is the next step in your view? And sometimes the world tends to focus on the process as opposed to the results. And I have tried during my Presidency to say, we need to focus on the results. Here is your way forward; if you choose not to, there will be a consequence. And the consequence in this case, in the diplomatic channel, is sanctions that are effective. So we will work with our partners on implementation of the sanctions thus far in place through the U.N., and work with them on additional sanctions, including through the U.N. process, as well as through the financial process. What is at stake here? On the theory that there are people inside Iran who, one, are suffering as a result of the decisions their Government made; but secondly, leaders inside of Iran who are sick and tired of the isolation brought about by this regime. In 2003, the Iranians had agreed to verifiably suspend; we had agreed to say, there is a way forward, working with our European partners. Then Ahmadi-nejad gets elected, changes the tone and changes the policy.

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And so my only point there is that and this is the point I make to our partners is that the Iranians had adopted a different attitude during my Presidency in other words, in the relatively near past and that is not to say they cannot do it again. And the consequences of Iran having a nuclear weapon are substantial. They are substantial in the Middle East. If the people in the Middle East do not think that the United States and Europe, for example, are going to work to provide security, they will find their own ways to secure themselves. And what the Middle East does not need is a nuclear arms race. It does not need the instability that comes from an innate fear that the West is not strong enough or willing enough to take on the problem. In my judgment, it is the international issue that faces all of us. And therefore, success in Iraq is important; it has consequences for the Iranian issue. It is important for us to have security agreements with our friends. We, the United States, has security agreements with UAE, for example. When you go to the Middle East and you sit in my seat and listen, yes, there is concern about the Palestinian state. But the dialogue has shifted dramatically from solve the Palestinian state and you have solved the problems in the Middle East, to now solve the Iranian issue and you solve the problems in the Middle East. Let us assume that Ahmadinejad does not respond to this latest package, that there are additional sanctions. You clearly feel very strongly about this issue. That is why I put all options on the table. What happens if at the end of the year, you have tougher sanctions, but you still have no resolution? I do not want to speculate on that. My hope is, is that let us get the tough sanctions in place. And alternatives not just for the United States, alternatives for a lot of other countries, some of which the world needs to think about as we head into this arena. We do not want a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. But you would be willing to hand over a status quo which was slightly improved, i.e., tougher sanctions? Actually, it is not status quo because there is a multilateral forum in place that will enable ENTITYs to more likely deal with this issue. I have made it clear that it is difficult for the United States to achieve an issue in a one-on-one situation with people like Ahmadi-nejad or Kim Jong Il.

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I have changed the foreign policy of the United States to make it more multilateral because I understand that diplomacy without consequences is ineffective. And the only way to achieve consequences through diplomacy is for there to be a universal application, in this case, of sanctions. You know, I tell my partners, we are asking you to sanction. I know you are sitting there saying to yourself, Well, it is easy for him to say because they have already sanctioned. And the question facing countries is, does money trump effective diplomacy for the sake of peace and security? Postsurge, are things heading in the right direction, in your view? And as a result of violence being down, the economy is growing and political reconciliation is taking place. And the lesson learned in this postconflict period in both Iraq and Afghanistan is, you got to have security. I gave a speech at the Air Force Academy that said it is a different set of issues that we face now than we faced 60 years ago in postconflict. First of all, the conflicts took longer to resolve in World War II, and yet the reconstruction was done in relative peace and security. Here it took little time to accomplish the initial military objective, and reconstruction had to be done in the face of a lot of violence. And in 2006, it became apparent that our strategy of training and encouraging the Iraqis to take the lead was not working; sectarian violence was severe. As you know, I made the decision to send 30,000 more in because we recognized that and had belief that security would yield this kind of evolution of democracy, and it is. The number of laws they passed, the Iraqi Parliament have passed, have been I would say it certainly exceeded expectations. And they passed their budgets faster than we have passed our budgets. The British Government, Gordon Brown had said yesterday, I think, that he will announce sometime in the coming weeks future plans for British deployment in Iraq. British officers have acknowledged that in the recent fighting in Basra, the American military role was crucial to making sure that there was a response. Is there not a concern that, whatever the justifications for a British withdrawal, that a British pullout of troops could have an effect either on American deployment or on the situation as a whole? Or are you relaxed about it? I am , first of all, appreciative of the fact that Gordon Brown is constantly in dialogue with us about what he and his military are thinking.

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Secondly, we ourselves are bringing out troops based upon return on success. And thirdly, I am confident that he, like me, will listen to our commanders to make sure that the sacrifices that have gone forward will not be unraveled by drawdowns that may not be warranted at this point in time. I am looking forward to discussing with him. We have had some discussions. He was going to be at 3,500, I think, if I am not mistaken; he is now at 5,000. I think he is at 4,200. It is greater than he thought, in other words In other words, the Government took a look and said, Well, maybe we ought to leave more troops in. My only point is, is that timetables you say, timetable for withdrawal, and our answer is, there should be no definitive timetable; there ought to be obviously a desire to reduce our presence, but it is got to be based upon success. All I can tell you is, from my perspective, the British response has been that way. They have said, we are going to have we think we will be at 3,500, but then adjusted their plans based upon the conditions. Still looking for them. And the obvious question your critics ask, particularly in Britain, is if we'd known at the time there were not any WMD, would there have been this war? Well, you know, that is one of those great hypotheticals that we did not know. Now having said that, I still strongly defend the decision. The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power. But ENTITYs do not get to do redos; they do not get to do look-backs, ifs. All I can tell you is, is that we thought for certain there was weapons of mass destruction, as did the nations that voted for 1441. See, the interesting thing about history is that short-term, kind of momentary history, is that people forget what life was like at the moment that this decision was made. One, people forget that we tried to solve this problem diplomatically. Will Bush go to the United Nations, or will they move without trying to solve this problem diplomatically? Well, we did go to the United Nations; I insisted we go to the United Nations. And we worked diligently from the summer of 2002 until March of 2003 to see if we could not have solved this. We went back to the United Nations for a resolution.

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And in the meantime, we are working with our allies and friends. We did not realize, nor did anybody else, that Saddam Hussein felt like he needed to play like he had weapons of mass destruction. It may have been, however, that in his mind all this was just a bluff. After all, there had been 17 United Nations Security Council resolutions, the world was not serious, which leads me back to the point that when the world says something, it better have it better mean what it says, otherwise people who are destabilizing just do not take it seriously. And so I was asked in Germany one of the guys said, You making any mistakes? One of the mistakes was my language made it look like that I was anxious for war; that because of my language, I did not understand the consequences. Well, of course I understand the consequences. And I understand better than anybody that the Commander in Chief has got an obligation to comfort those who have lost a loved one because of his decision. And then the man went on and said, Well, was it a mistake to get rid of Sad-dam Hussein? You very movingly described in one interview this week that how difficult it is to put young American men and women in harm's way and how much time and energy you have tried to devote to doing what you can, obviously, to comfort the families of someone who has been killed And making sure they understand that the sacrifice will not go in vain. Nothing worse than a politician making decisions based upon the last Gallup poll when people's lives are at stake, or where they have made a sacrifice. And I tell these folks and they want to know look, there is a lot of them, and I have not visited with all the families. Many, many families look at me trying to determine whether or not, one, I believed that it was necessary; and two, whether or not I am going to let their son or daughter kind of lie in an empty grave when it comes to the sacrifice they made. They want to know whether or not the ENTITY if he believes it was necessary, whether or not he is going to see this thing through, regardless of what they are screaming on the TV sets. You are flying into Britain where your public awaits you, and you know there is a tough public there sometimes. Do I care? Only to the extent that it affects people's view of my the citizens I represent. Do I care about my personal standing?

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One of the questions, of course, they ask, is, do you feel a sense of personal pain over the Iraqi civilians who have I feel a sense of pain for those who were tortured by Saddam Hussein, by the parents who watched their daughters raped by Saddam Hussein, by those innocent civilians who have been killed by inadvertent allied action, by those who have been bombed by suicide bombers. I feel a sense of pain for death. I feel a sense of pain for the families of our troops. I read about it every night, or I used to read about it every night. But I get a report every day about whether or not the U.S. has suffered casualties. And when I get those reports, I think about those mothers and fathers. And I meet with a lot of families a lot in order to be able to it is my duty to try to console and comfort. And many times, the comforter in chief ends up being comforted, by the way, by the families, the strength of the families. This is a volunteer army, and these kids are in this fight because they want to be in the fight. And they believe in it. And yet these poor parents are looking at oftentimes looking at negativity, just people quick to report the ugly and the negative. But it is hard to report on the schools that are opening or the clinics that are opening or the playgrounds that are filling up. I have great faith in the power of liberty. First of all, I was not surprised when people went to vote in defiance of the killers. I was pleased, but not surprised, because I believe in the universality of freedom. And I say to people, I am concerned about the comfortable isolating themselves and saying, who cares whether somebody over there lives in a free society? And I will say in my speech, moral relativism must be challenged, this notion that it does not matter what forms of government are I think it does matter. I think it also matters, along these lines, that when I talk about freedom, it is just not freedom from tyranny, it is freedom from ENTITY/ENTITY; it is freedom from malaria; it is freedom from hunger for two reasons. One, it is in our national interests that we defeat hopelessness. And secondly, it is in our moral interests. A nation is a better nation when it feeds the hungry and takes care of the diseased.

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And therefore, when I go to the G-8, my message to the G-8 is, yes, we will talk about the environment, and that is important. But George W. Bush is going to be talking about those people who are needlessly dying because of mosquito bites. And I expect them to honor their obligations. Why do not you match what the United States of America does? We are putting up $30 billion for ENTITY/ENTITY, $1.6 billion for malaria. And why do not you match us? And so we are going to go to the G-8 and we are going to sit down and say, Have we matched? Because there are people needlessly dying today. And we will come up with a good solution for greenhouse gases by getting China and India at the table. And it is going to take time to evolve, but I am going to remind people we can act today to save lives for the good of the world. That means shorten my answers. No, no, I will shorten my questions. First of all, your relationship with Tony Blair I am struck, in your last question, that you seem to share with him a genuine passion for ideas and that politics matter. How would you describe your relationship with Blair? I would say, first of all, it is a relationship forged by fire. We share as you can tell, I have this idealistic streak, and so does Blair. But we also understand that this idealism is a practical response to the world. These acts are not isolated acts of lawlessness. We are in a war. A lot of people hope this was not the war you know, just kind of dismiss it as, oh, there is some irritated guys, you know, just kind of making some moves. We viewed it as an ideological struggle that requires response through good intelligence, sometimes military, obviously, sometimes law enforcement, all aiming to dismantle and protect our people dismantle the cells and protect our people, but that ultimately, freedom has to defeat the ideology of hate. Was Tony Blair your poodle, to use the You know, look, this is the convenient one of the great things about Western press is that they oftentimes retreat to the convenient rather than trying to, you know, probe the depths of a relationship or the depths of somebody's feelings or the basis of philosophy. It is convenient to say, you know, warmonger, religious zealot, poodle.

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I mean, these are just words that people love to toss around foolishly. How do you think and how do you hope that you and Blair but particularly yourself how would you hope that the achievement what is your greatest achievement or your greatest pride as ENTITY? Well, first of all, just so you know, I am not going to be around to see it. It takes a while for history to have its you know, to be able to have enough time to look back to see why decisions were made and what their consequences were. So you know, I'd hope it'd be somebody who would use the influence of the United States to help transform societies by working on disease and hunger and freedom. Does this job take its toll on you? You got to have a set of beliefs that are the foundation for your very being. Otherwise these currents and tides and 24-hour news and politics will kind of leave you adrift. And I tell people that when I get home, I am going to look in that mirror and say, I did not sacrifice my core beliefs to satisfy critics or satisfy pundits or, you know ENTITY's Future Yes, I am going to think about that, yes writing a book. I am going to build a Presidential library with a freedom institute at SMU Southern Methodist University all aimed at promoting the universal values that need to be defended. I am very worried about isolationism and protectionism. The world has gone through these isms before. And you watch and see, the protectionist debate is mounting in the United States; it is mounting in Europe, certainly. It was much easier to kind of blame the economic woes on external forces, and therefore, the response would be, okay, let us quit trade, let us make sure our jobs are not going elsewhere, and that is some of those concerns are legitimate. On the other hand, it is a forerunner of isolationism, and you know, I remind people that we have been through a period of isolationism and protectionism right before World War II. And so I am going to set up a this is not , like, you know, a headquarters for the Republican Party. And by the way, just so you know, the foreign policy I have just outlined for you is you know, it is not a hundred percent received amongst conservative thinkers in the United States either. Do we have 90 seconds? I would say 90 seconds.

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Just one very quick this is going to seem slightly flippant, but you are going to the greatest fan club of The West Wing television show in the world on Sunday. Since you are the only person who can review that program from experience I have never watched it. Because I do not watch network TV. I seriously do not watch TV. You know, I watch sports, but I'd much rather read books. And I do, I read a lot. I may even read yours. But I will not be able to find it because it is written by so-called written by the other guy. Last question, which comes back to Iraq again. Gordon Brown and I thought your question on the pain you feel personally was quite clear and absolutely strong. Gordon Brown a couple weeks ago phoned a voter who was upset about Iraq, and apologized on behalf of the Government, not for the war, which he still thinks was the right thing, but for the kind of suffering of the Iraqi people. But they are living in a free society. Everybody is going to have to handle their own internal business the way they want to. But my view is, is that when you talk to Iraqis, they are thrilled with the idea of living in a free society. Do they like the fact that violence is still there? But every society reaches a level of violence that is tolerable. And has that reached Iraq? I do know they live under a Government that they helped elect, or they elected. And there is still a lot of work to be done, do not get me wrong, but and you know, the thing that people ought to focus on is the courage of the Iraqis. They put up with a lot of violence, Muslims killing Muslims. But first of all, there have been some accidents, but nobody can claim that the United States or Great Britain are intentionally killing innocent people. As a matter of fact, warfare has changed a lot. It has, but before the war, hundreds of thousands were discovered in mass graves Freedom trumps tyranny every time. And it is hard for people to see that. It is hard for people sitting afar to say, Is not that beautiful, somebody lives in a free society? And my point is, is that I think it is important for those of us who do live in free societies to understand that others want to live in free societies. And it takes time and sacrifice and effort to get that done.

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I want to ask you about Libya and the latest developments . U.N. mandate allows you, allows the coalition to protect the no-fly zone, to protect civilians, but it does not give any leeway to go after Gadhafi. Will you stay in Tripoli ? Well, look, first of all, we have been successful so far in accomplishing the very specific objectives of the mission under the U.N. Charter, which was to establish a no-fly zone, to make sure that we provided humanitarian protection at a time when that was urgently needed. Gadhafi had turned his troops on his people and said that they should go into Benghazi, a city of 700,000 people, and show no mercy. And because the international community rallied, his troops have now pulled back from Benghazi. The United States came in early to shape the environment so that a no-fly zone could operate safely, taking out, for example, Gadhafi's air defense systems. And so U.S. planes have already been significantly reduced in the area, because what is now happening is that all the other members of the coalition are maintaining that no-fly zone. You are absolutely right that Gadhafi may try to hunker down and wait it out even in the face of a no-fly zone, even though his forces have been degraded. But keep in mind that we do not just have military tools at our disposal in terms of accomplishing Gadhafi's leaving. We put in place strong international sanctions. We have frozen his assets. We will continue to apply a whole range of pressure on him. But with respect to the military action, that specifically is done under the U.N. Security Council resolution, and calls for maintaining the no-fly zone and ensuring that the people of Libya are not assaulted by their own military. Can you and will you give military support to the rebels? Well, you know, obviously we are discussing with the coalition what steps can be taken. I think that our hope is that the first thing that happens once we have cleared the space is that the rebels are able to start discussing how they organize themselves, how they articulate their aspirations for the Libyan people and create a legitimate government.

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And you know, potentially what we may see is that all the enthusiasm the Libyan people had for a change in government that was occurring a few weeks ago but that Gadhafi, through just brutal application of force, made people fearful, that that can resurface. And it may be that it is not a matter of military might, but instead an idea that is come to the Libyan people that it is time for a change that ends up ultimately sweeping Gadhafi out of power. But we are going to be examining all our options, but our first task right now is to shape the environment so that, you know, Gadhafi's forces cannot attack his own people; maintain the no-fly zone. And the United States' role, once that environment is shaped, is actually significantly reduced because we have got a broad-based international coalition, including Arab states, that believe in the same thing that we do. Is it a contradiction when a Nobel Peace Prize winner authorizes the use of force on the eighth anniversary of the ? Well, listen, the when I received that award, I specifically said there was an irony, because I was already dealing with two wars. We were in the process of pulling our troops out of Iraq, and I was still dealing with an Afghanistan war that had dragged on for many years but had not been sufficiently focused in terms of accomplishing a clear goal of protecting the American people. And so I am accustomed to this contradiction, of being both a commander in chief but also somebody who aspires to peace. The situation here is entirely focused on making sure that the Libyan people can live out their own aspirations. You know, we are not invading a country. We are acting under a mandate issued by the United Nations Security Council, in an unprecedented fashion and with unprecedented speed. We had a limited task, a focused task, and we have saved lives as a consequence. And I think the American people do not see any contradiction in somebody who cares about peace also wanting to make sure that people are not butchered because of a dictator who wants to cling to power. We want to talk about your trip and your message to Latin America. Many said that you said things that people expected, but there were not details. That is and is part of a more . Certainly what is true is that the relationship between the United States and Latin America has evolved I think in a very positive way over the last several years.

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I mean, if you think about the countries that we are visiting, Brazil, a country that used to be under a dictatorship, transformed itself into a democracy, is now a growing economic giant not just in the region, but around the world . A center-left government, but one that embraces free enterprise and open markets and trade. Then I went to Chile, also once was under a dictatorship, has now transitioned to a full-fledged democracy. President Pinera perceived to be a center-right president, but he is also somebody who cares deeply about social inclusion and alleviating poverty inside his country. You come here to El Salvador, you have got President Funes, who was elected under the banner of the FMLN, a left-wing party, but is now operating in a very practical way. In some cases, it is causing him problems, both on the left and the right. And what I think that shows is that the entire region is much less interested in ideology, much less interested in left or right. It is interested in practical results. How can we solve problems to help kids get an education, help people support themselves and find a job, help businesses develop, help the entire region grow. And that is the kind of partnership that we want. You know, we still have specific programs that we are involved with here in El Salvador. You know, they received a millennium challenge grant that provides over $400 million to help this country develop. They are one of four countries that we have selected for a partnership for growth that will involve us working very closely with their economic team to find out what are the barriers to economic development in this country. So we still have, yes, very specific programs, but the overall context has changed, because we want to be seen as a partner to a region that is already growing, already vibrant, and that recognizes it is not coming hat in hand to the United States to solve problems. You know, Brazil, Chile, they are solving their own problems. In some ways, you know, they are doing some things that we should envy. And they are a leader in biofuels. You look at Chile, how they have managed fiscally. They have done a good job managing their budget, even through a recession.

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And so this is a two-way street instead of a one-way street, and that basis of mutual respect, mutual interest, mutual trust, you know, that is what I think will forge a very strong relationship in the Americas, throughout the Americas, into the future. I want to ask you about immigration , immigration problems, and they are asking, when will it be enough, when will these types of attacks ? temporary protective status like Salvadorans have and legalize people ? Well, keep in mind that temporary protective status was targeted very specifically at people who were not just escaping economic challenges, but very real political challenges. And so that is not going to be the solution to the overall immigration problem. I am going to need some help. I can get the majority of Democrats to support it. I need some help from Republicans. But we are going to put forward, as I said in the State of the Union, our proposals, our plans for comprehensive immigration reform. I will make the argument to the American people once again as to why this is necessary. And in the meantime, I think one of the interesting things that we are seeing, despite some of this crazy legislation that has been introduced by people who I think are just trying to get attention, and is offensive, on the other hand you have seen some legislation, for example in Arizona, that was proposed and now is being pulled back because businesses are starting to recognize this is not good for business. And perhaps some of my Republican friends are going to start recognizing if they looked at the last census, that they are going to have a very hard time winning any elections if they continue to deliberately target anti-immigration sentiment. And so, using the bully pulpit, I want to be absolutely clear to the American people, we are a nation of immigrants. Most of us came from someplace else. And you know, there is a legitimate role to make sure that we have secure borders, that we have a strong process of legal immigration, that we are making sure that businesses are not exploiting undocumented workers. But ultimately, we are going to have to have a comprehensive approach that also includes taking those who are already in the United States, living in the shadows, and giving them a pathway towards a legal status. And we are going to we are going to continue to fight for that. He then met with you and now the ambassador, the U.S. ambassador has to Mexico. There was an agent who was murdered in Mexico.

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