pd07au95 Message to the Congress on Iraq...

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You see some people feeling uncomfortable about it, and we

[[Page 1352]]

may be able to make some progress. And so I don't think we know what the 
outcome will be.

Waco Hearings

    Q. There's a report today that Mack McLarty said in a memo that 
there would be no significant action on Waco without White House 
approval. When did you know of the plan to tear-gas the compound, and 
did you personally approve it?
    The President. Mr. Mikva has said in the letter exactly what my role 
in that was, and it's consistent with what I've said all along. And I 
don't have anything new to add to that.

Bosnia

    Q. Mr. President, have you made a final decision that there will be 
no retaliation for the shoot-down of Captain O'Grady? And if so, why 
not?
    The President. I have no comment on that.

Political Reform Commission

    Q. Mr. President, speaking of special interests, do you feel that 
the Speaker is dragging his feet on the bipartisan campaign finance 
reform commission? And what else are you willing to do to make sure that 
that happens?
    The President. Dragging his feet is an apt, but inadequate, 
description of what has happened. [Laughter] I mean, we shook hands on 
that in New Hampshire. I thought it was a fairly simple deal. The man 
said--the gentleman who asked us the question, he said ``Why don't you 
guys do a base closing commission.'' We said okay. Five days later I 
wrote a letter to the Speaker. I didn't get an answer. Five weeks later, 
I wrote--I said, again, okay, here are two people that are the kind of 
people that I would put on this commission, and I'd like for them to get 
with someone you designate, and we'll set it up--Doris Kearns Goodwin 
and John Gardner. Those are pretty respectable Americans. So far, they 
have not gotten any response or had any success either.
    So we're going to keep trying. I mean, I think that it is wrong to 
say you're going to do something and not do it. So I hope we can do it.
    Q. Have you met with them--have you met with the two of them 
already, Goodwin and----
    The President. I have not, but we've obviously been in touch with 
them. And we're trying to--we're going to keep pushing until we get an 
answer one way or the other. If the Speaker does not want to do this, he 
ought to say that he has no intention of doing it. But we shouldn't just 
let it hang out here. What we ought to do is to do it.

Whitewater Hearings

    Q. Mr. President, is there anything you or the First Lady could do 
to end all of the hearings on the continuing interest in the Whitewater 
business, especially in the aftermath of the Vince Foster suicide? For 
example, there's a proposal in Newsweek magazine by Joe Klein that Mrs. 
Clinton volunteer to testify before the committees to explain her role.
    The President. I don't know what in the world we could do. I mean 
there's basically been this big--you know, I don't have anything new to 
add. We've answered all the questions. There has been a $3.6 million RTC 
investigation which basically says that what we said was there all the 
time. You know, no one questions--no serious person questions all the 
reports on whether Vince Foster committed suicide or not. I don't know 
what to do. I think these hearings will proceed and our people will 
cooperate, and we'll just see what happens.
    Yes, Bill [Bill Plante, CBS News].

Bosnia

    Q. Mr. President, we know that you just met with the leadership to 
try and make your veto of the Bosnia arms embargo lifting stick. But in 
the event that it doesn't, and not knowing as we speak what the size of 
the margin is going to be, what's the next step? What else would you 
look to do?
    The President. Well, whatever the vote is, we still might sustain a 
veto. But I was encouraged by a few people who told me that they had 
decided on reflection that it was not the thing to do now. The Rapid 
Reaction Force, after all, is showing some strength there. And I would 
remind you that the only thing that has ever worked in the last 2\1/2\

[[Page 1353]]

years is when the Bosnian Serbs thought the United Nations would permit 
NATO and the Americans who are working with NATO to use air power to 
stop the aggression so that there would have to be a negotiated 
settlement. And in the last several days, the last couple of weeks in 
Gorazde, you know, we've gotten five convoys through; there has been no 
assault on it.
    And I think that this new strategy will work if we can hammer out a 
negotiated settlement and there's a new effort there. So I believe that 
is the best strategy. I've said it all along, and I haven't changed my 
position. I'm going to try to see that position prevail.

Whitewater and Waco Hearings

    Q.  Mr. President, on both the ongoing hearings, Waco and 
Whitewater, are you convinced and can you say for the record that 
everything that is going to come out is out vis-a-vis where you stand in 
the White House and your policy decisions on both?
    The President. As far as I know--we have not added anything new to 
what was already known, but as far as I know we have been totally 
forthcoming and have said everything there is to be said on it.

Telecommunications Reform

    Q.  Mr. President, can you tell us, first of all, why you want to 
veto the telecommunications bill? I understand that you're concerned 
about concentration of media power. And in regard to that, can you 
comment on the merger yesterday between ABC and Walt Disney and the 
proposed merger that may happen today between CBS and Westinghouse and 
whether you see this concentration of power happening?
    The President. Well, I think first of all, you have to take--on 
these mergers, under our law and as a matter of economics, you have to 
take them case by case and analyze them. And all I know about the 
proposed mergers is what I read this morning when I woke up. So I can't 
comment on that.
    I do think it would be an error to set up a situation in the United 
States where one person could own half the television stations in the 
country or half of the media outlets. And we don't have a fairness 
doctrine anymore, and we don't have--particularly if we took the Federal 
Government out of--all the Federal agencies out of any kind of 
maintenance of competition or maintenance of competitive environment, by 
taking the Justice Department out of it, for example.
    I would remind you that we have the most successful 
telecommunications operations in the world partly because we have had 
the proper balance between a highly competitive environment and an 
openness to new forces and new technologies and new entries in it from 
all around the world.
    I want very badly to sign a telecommunications bill. We tried to 
pass one, this administration did, during the last session of Congress. 
One of the interest groups affected by this great drama that's unfolding 
in the telecommunications area prevented, through its supporters in the 
Senate, prevented the bill from passing in the last session of Congress. 
I hope we can get it, but we want to get it right.
    The Vice President has done a lot of work on this over the years. He 
and I have talked about this at great length. And we have negotiated in 
good faith with the Congress to try to get it right. We want very much 
to sign a bill. We believe it will be good for the American economy and 
good for the American consumers if it's the right kind of bill. So we'll 
keep working on it.
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 11:17 a.m. in the Briefing Room at the 
White House.


<DOC>
[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents]
 [frwais.access.gpo.gov]


[Page 1353-1355]
 
Monday, August 7, 1995
 
Volume 31--Number 31
Pages 1335-1381
 
Week Ending Friday, August 4, 1995
 
Teleconference Remarks to the Fraternal Order of Police

August 1, 1995

    Thank you very much, Dewey. I'm going to miss those introductions. I 
want to thank you for your 8 years of strong leadership as the national 
president of the Fraternal Order of Police. It gives me great pleasure 
to present you a Presidential commendation for your distinguished 
service to the Nation, which I believe the Attorney General will 
personally deliver to you tomorrow.
    I also want to thank the other departing board members for all the 
hard work that you have done to help us strengthen law enforcement 
around the country. I understand

[[Page 1354]]

that the elections to succeed all of you folks are on Thursday, so let 
me say as a fellow candidate, I want to wish the other candidates the 
best of luck and offer every one of them my heartfelt sympathy. I know 
how tough the last couple of days before an election can be; I've been 
there.
    Your new president will lead the FOP into a better, safer world for 
law enforcement; a better, safer world because of the hard work of 
people like Dewey Stokes; a better, safer world because of the 
partnership our administration has been privileged to forge with you and 
with men and women in law enforcement all across our great country.
    In the years before I came to Washington, it was clear that those of 
you who put your lives on the line to protect the rest of us were simply 
not getting the tools you needed to get the job done. The facts spoke 
for themselves. Crime was going up, but the number of police was staying 
the same or falling in so many cities and rural areas. It was a 
dangerous ratio.
    I also had a lot of personal experience as a guide. As attorney 
general and then as a Governor, I went to too many funerals for police 
officers who were friends of mine killed in the line of duty. When I 
became President, I knew we all had to do more. So I came to Washington 
with a clear agenda: more police, guns out of the hands of criminals, an 
emphasis on community policing and other strategies to build stronger 
neighborhoods and to stop crimes before they happen. Working together, 
we have turned that agenda into law.
    You and I and others who are on our side broke 6 years of gridlock 
and passed a crime bill that was written with the help of police 
officers all across America. We knew we needed more police officers, so 
we're putting 100,000 more police on the street. Already we've boosted 
your ranks by awarding more than 20,000 new police officers to over half 
the departments in the United States. We knew we had to get deadly 
assault weapons out of our lives, so we banned 19 types of assault 
weapons, weapons that target police officers and children. At the same 
time, we protected about 650 hunting and sporting weapons specifically.
    We knew too many criminals were getting too many chances to do harm, 
so now we have ``three strikes and you're out,'' and it's being enforced 
around the country. We knew there had to be zero tolerance for killing a 
law enforcement officer, so now in Federal law, we have the death 
penalty for anyone who murders a police officer. We also passed the 
Brady bill, which languished in Congress for 7 years. Last year alone, 
this commonsense law prevented more than 40,000 felons and fugitives 
from purchasing handguns.
    And in June, I announced my support of legislation to ban armor-
piercing bullets. Our current laws control ammunition based on what it's 
made of, and that's not good enough. Too many lethal bullets still slip 
through the cracks. This legislation will change that. It will see to it 
that we judge ammunition not on the basis of what's in it but on the 
harm it can do. If it can rip through a bulletproof vest like a knife 
through butter, then it should be history, no matter what it's made of.
    These measures are helping you bring safety and security back to the 
lives of millions of Americans and helping you to be somewhat safer 
while you're doing that very difficult job.
    And you have made a phenomenal amount of progress. Crime is down in 
major cities all around the country. Last Sunday, the New York Times 
reported that the dramatic drop in crime in New York City is a direct 
result of sensible gun laws, increased police presence, and a focus on 
hot spots, on the areas with high crime rates. A study the Justice 
Department sponsored in Kansas City yielded similar results: target an 
area, get rid of the guns, intimidate the criminals, the crime goes 
down. We are making progress.
    But you and I both know we've got a lot more to do, because even as 
the overall crime rates drop, the rate of random violence among young 
people is still going up--dramatically in many places. As a parent, I am 
sick and tired of seeing stories like the one I read recently about a 
16-year-old boy who shot a 12-year-old boy dead because he thought he'd 
been treated with disrespect by the younger boy. This story came just 
days after a national survey in which an unbelievable two-thirds of 
young gang members said

[[Page 1355]]

they thought it was actually acceptable to shoot someone if they treated 
you with disrespect.
    As long as there are stories like this, as long as young people are 
more likely to be both the victims and the perpetrators of crime, as 
long as casual drug use among our children is rising even as overall 
hard drug use goes down, as long as there are children who have never 
been taught the difference between right and wrong, we'll all have more 
work to do.
    And that's why I'm troubled by so much of what's going on here in 
Washington. We have to balance the budget, all right, but there are some 
in Congress who would do it by tipping the balance against law 
enforcement. They would replace our efforts to put 100,000 new police 
officers on the street with a block grant that doesn't require a single 
new officer to be hired. They want to cut 23 million students out of our 
safe and drug-free schools initiative--out of the programs that so many 
of you bring to our schools every day all across America. And literally, 
they want to shut down the National Office of Drug Control Policy.
    We can't give up on the war on drugs. And we can't back off of our 
support for law enforcement. And the truth is, we don't need to 
sacrifice these national priorities to balance the budget. We can 
continue to implement the crime bill and balance the budget. The only 
thing we'd have to do is to give up on an unnecessarily huge tax cut and 
to take a little longer to balance the budget. Now that luxury seems a 
small price to pay for necessities like balancing the budget and 
strengthening law enforcement at the same time.
    And believe it or not, there are still some in Congress who want to 
repeal the Brady bill and lift the ban on assault weapons. Let me be 
clear: These attempts to roll back the clock are misguided. We cannot 
turn back in the fight against crime. There are still too many streets 
in America where our children are afraid to stand at a bus stop, too 
many neighborhoods where our seniors are fearful of going to the grocery 
store, too many communities where families are scared to head outside 
for a walk on a warm summer evening.
    So those in Congress who would attempt to repeal the Brady bill or 
the assault weapons ban or our pledge to put 100,000 new police officers 
on the street, let me say one more time: You're going nowhere fast. If 
you do succumb to the political pressure from extremist groups to repeal 
any of these measures, I will veto them in a heartbeat.
    On these issues I have a simple pledge. I won't let any bill pass my 
desk that hurts you or the people you protect. That's a good American 
standard. We all ought to judge our conduct by it.
    You know, this has been a difficult period for law enforcement. You 
seem to be under assault from many fronts. Like people from every walk 
of life, police officers sometimes do make mistakes and have to deal 
with the consequences. But unlike other citizens, you also put your 
lives on the line for the rest of us every day. I'm reminded of a T-
shirt that people in Oklahoma City made after the terrible bombing 
there. It read, ``A society that makes war against its police had better 
learn to make friends with criminals.'' That's the fact.
    I'm sorry I can't be with you in person today, but I want you to 
have no doubt I am still standing shoulder to shoulder with you in the 
battle against crime and violence. It threatens us all every day, every 
night, and you're trying to do something about it. As long as you are, 

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