("Quid coniuratio est?")
BILL CLINTON ON 60 MINUTES
President Clinton was interviewed on the CBS program, 60 Minutes, on April 23, 1995. Following is my summary. My comments are indented and in brackets.
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STEVE CROFT:
Mr. President, you said this afternoon that our one duty to the
victims and the families is "to purge ourselves of the dark
forces which gave rise to this evil."
Can you bring the country up to date on the status of the investigation?
BILL CLINTON:
[Hems and haws. Usual type answer about how he thinks law
enforcement is doing a great job, that the investigation is
ongoing, et cetera.]
[CN -- Clinton does not answer as to, what exactly are the "dark forces" he is referring to.]
STEVE CROFT:
...it seems almost certain now that this is "home-grown
terrorism"; that the enemy is, in fact, within. How do we respond
to that?
BILL CLINTON:
Well, we have to arrest the people who did it, we have to put
them on trial, we have to convict them and punish them. I
certainly believe that they should be executed...
[...]
[Clinton calls for "a review and reform of the habeas corpus provisions because it should not take 8 or 9 years and 3 trips to the Supreme Court to finalize, in fact, whether a person was properly convicted or not."]
MIKE WALLACE:
...Are we Americans going to have to give up some of our
liberties in order better to combat terrorism? Both from overseas
and here?
BILL CLINTON:
Mike, I don't think we have to give up our liberties, but I do
think we have to have more discipline. And we have to be willing
to see serious threats to our liberties properly investigated. I
have sent a "counter-terrorism" piece of legislation to Capitol
Hill, which I hope Congress will pass. And after consultation
with the attorney general and the FBI director and others, I'm
going to send some more legislation to Congress to ask them to
give the FBI and others more power to crack these terrorist
networks -- both domestic and foreign.
[CN -- What domestic "terrorist networks"?? What "domestic terrorist networks" is he talking about? No one has been tried. No one has been found guilty.]
[...]
LESLIE STAHL:
[Ms. Stahl had spent the day with the Michigan Militia.] What I
kept hearing from the militiamen there, and I gather this is true
among all these so-called "patriots", is the Waco incident. It
seems to be their battle cry, it's their cause. They say that the
feds went into a religious compound to take people's guns away.
They say no federal official was ever punished; no one was ever
brought to trial.
I'm just wondering if you have any second thoughts about the way that raid was carried out?
BILL CLINTON:
[irate] Let me remind you what happened at Waco and before that
raid was carried out. Before that raid was carried out,
those people murdered a bunch of innocent law-enforcement
officials who worked for the federal government. Before there was
any raid, there were dead federal law-enforcement officials on
the ground.
And when that raid occurred, it was the people who ran their "cult compound" at Waco who murdered their own children. Not the federal officials. They made the decision to destroy all those children that were there.
And I think that to make those people heroes after what they did -- killing our innocent federal officials and then killing their own children -- is evidence of what is wrong...
I cannot believe that any serious, patriotic American can believe that the conduct of those people at Waco justifies the kind of outrageous behavior we've seen here in Oklahoma City, or the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that we're hearing all across the country today. It's wrong.
[CN -- I don't wish to digress into a study of what actually happened near Waco, Texas from Feb. 28 to April 19, 1993. For those wishing to learn more about the Waco tragedy, I recommend a booklet that may still be available from The Committee for Waco Justice (Phone: 202/986-1847 202/797-9877) entitled "The Massacre of the Branch Davidians". Also recommended, "Holocaust in Waco" by Stephen Cox and R.W. Bradford in the June 1993 issue of Liberty magazine. Also recommended, "Gunning for Koresh" by Daniel Wattenberg in the August 1993 issue of The American Spectator.]
[CN -- My personal opinion in this matter is that Clinton is incredibly wrong in his statements in the above 4 paragraphs in which he talks about Waco. Being somewhat familiar with the case, my jaw drops in amazement that this man, the President of the United States, can be saying these things. Clinton is so hugely wrong about Waco in his above statements, that one does not know where to begin in critiquing what he has said. Read the recommended articles (above), then re-read what Clinton has said and draw your own conclusion.]
LESLIE STAHL:
But Mr. President, there are tens -- maybe more -- tens of
thousands of men and women, dressing up on week-ends in military
garb, going off for training, because they're upset about Waco --
despite what you've said. We're talking about thousands and
thousands of people in this country who are furious at the
federal government for what you say is irrational -- but they
believe it.
BILL CLINTON:
Well they have a right to believe whatever they want. They have a
right to say whatever they want. They have a right to keep and
bear arms. They have a right to put on uniforms and go out on the
weekends.
They do not have the right to kill innocent Americans. They do not have the right to violate the law. And they do not have the right to take the position that if somebody comes to arrest them for violating the law, they're perfectly justified in killing them.
[CN -- No one has gone to trial. No one has been found guilty. Yet Clinton here as much as declares "them" guilty. Who are "they"? When Clinton says "they" do not have the right to kill innocent Americans, does he mean the Branch Davidians? Or does he mean law-abiding militia members? In the context of his statement, he can only be referring to militia members. Yet bear in mind: no one has been tried; no one has been found guilty. At best, Clinton's statement is incredibly irresponsible. At worst, Clinton knows full well the implications of what he has said.]
[CN -- This man is the President of the United States???]
[...to be continued...]
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"