A longtime friend of Clinton, he served as National Security Advisor during the president's second term. During the first term, he was top deputy at the National Security Council. Interview conducted November, 2000 by Chris Bury How did you first get to know Bill Clinton? I first met him in 1972, when we were both working for George McGovern's presidential campaign. I was traveling around on the plane with Senator McGovern, writing speeches. Bill Clinton was running the state of Texas. I remember landing for a rally at San Antonio, and this rather tall, young fellow with a white sort of southern suit came bounding up the plane to escort Senator McGovern down to the rally. So I met him back then. But I really got to know him much more closely in the 1980s. He was then governor. He came to Washington frequently to testify or for National Governors Associations meetings, and we would spend time together. I tried then to convince him to run for president in 1988. . . . He was almost convinced, but then he decided not to run in 1988. But again, in 1991, when he decided to run, I told him I would do what I can to help him. You were his chief foreign policy advisor during the campaign in 1991-1992. In that campaign, then-Governor Clinton focused on domestic policy, the economy, the deficit. He didn't spend a lot of time on foreign policy. Back then, was he someone who was going to relegate foreign policy to the back burner? No, I don't think so. Don't forget that he had graduated from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown. He had studied abroad. He obviously knows the world quite well, and traveled widely, even as a governor. Obviously, the campaign in 1992 was "about the economy, stupid," as we were reminded periodically by Mr. Carville. But we actually talked a bit about foreign policy in 1992 in the campaign. The objective there was to make clear that Governor Clinton could handle foreign policy. We talked about Russia. We talked about Bosnia. We talked about Haiti. And in some cases, really we're out in front of incumbent President George Bush, who obviously was well regarded in foreign policy. I don't believe that Governor Clinton lost any votes because of foreign policy back in 1992. That was my job -- to make sure he didn't lose any votes because of foreign policy. In 1992, one of the few times that Governor Clinton did take a strong position in foreign policy was in Bosnia. He took a tougher position on Bosnia than President Bush did. Yes. Yugoslavia had broken up. There already was terrible turmoil and bloodshed. The position of that preceding administration was, "We have no dog in that fight," -- that we really had no national interest in what was happening there. Governor Clinton and Senator Gore felt very differently. They believed that we were seeing the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II. They believed that if this was not stopped, it would embroil all of Central Europe. And so we frequently spoke out on Bosnia during the campaign. Was that the first major foreign policy dilemma for the new administration-- squaring what Governor Clinton had said about Bosnia with reality on the ground, once the new team took office? We inherited three major crises when we came into office. . . . You always are trying to launch your own initiatives in terms of things you want to see achieved, but you're also inheriting the problems that are sitting there when you come in. In our case it was Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia. And we spent a good part of the first two years trying to solve those three problems, as well as dealing with the larger questions of enlarging and modernizing our alliances and helping Russia and China make a transition. But those three problems together were the big crises that we inherited. . . . Bill Clinton spoke out so strongly about it during the campaign. Then, when he first took office, he had to deal with it. Perhaps the world wasn't ready to deal with it in as strong a way as Bill Clinton would have liked. In fact, was he trapped a little bit? Things are often more complex when you're sitting in the White House than they are on the campaign trail. As we took office, it became clear that the Europeans had a different view of this problem than we did. We were prepared much earlier than the Europeans to use NATO force against the Bosnian Serbs and against the slaughter. And it took us really two years and a lot of horrible incidents to really get the Europeans to understand that what they were doing, which was admirable. They had forces on the ground in a UN force that were essentially helping get food through to people so they wouldn't starve -- in a sense, protecting the victims, but also shielding the victimizers. And it really was with the massacres at Srebrenica two years later that Europe galvanized, and saw that really this was not going to be solved unless Europe used force to help resolve it. Did the president regret not committing American force earlier? He was enormously frustrated during this period of 1993 and 1994. It was fairly easy to build consensus with the United States government about what we should do. It was much harder to get the Europeans to go along. And they were on the ground. They had the equity, in a sense, of having soldiers on the ground, of trying to alleviate the suffering. We did not. And as we tried to convince them that that was not a long-term solution, they were pretty stubborn about it. But as time went on, as the situation didn't get better, as the slaughter continued, I think their attitude changed. I think they came eventually to see things more as we did. The summer of 1993, the first time President Clinton uses forces -- the strike against Iraq. Do you remember anything about the president's decision making at that point? When and how did he decide that it was right to go ahead and strike against Iraq? We had discovered that the Iraqis were responsible for a plot to assassinate President Bush when he traveled to Kuwait. We operated a very small, highly confidential group, until the evidence was unmistakable that this was an Iraqi bomb that came from the government of Iraq. And we had the forensic evidence to demonstrate that. I remember the night that we did this. Obviously, it's always a sobering experience when you authorize the use of force. I think the president felt that we had to do this to send a clear message that this kind of official terrorism will not be tolerated, to establish a deterrent. But then once we launched the strike, we were, of course, dark, so to speak, in Baghdad. We actually were watching one of your competing networks, CNN, who had cameras there. And the first indication that we had that targets had been struck was actually from watching CNN. . . . This was something the president we had to do, and I don't think that there was really much doubt in his mind about it. In September of that year, the culmination of the Oslo Accords is the Arafat-Rabin handshake. What do you remember about that day? It was obviously a very exciting and energizing day. I think there was a sense that a new chapter had been opened. There was still deep distress between Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat. We all remember the famous handshake, but there was a conversation that took place before they went out, in which the president said to Rabin, "You know, you'll have to shake his hand." He had not done that before in all of the years and all of the negotiations that his people had taken part in. And Rabin looked pained by this, because from Rabin's point of view, Arafat would have been his enemy. And he said, in his very taciturn way, "Okay, I guess." And then Rabin looked at the president and he said, "But no kissing." And, of course, we then went out to the ceremony, and we had that signing. The president brought the two together almost physically to get them to shake hands, but the handshake was extremely important symbolically. Is that where Bill Clinton really got his inspiration about the Middle East? He formed a bond with Rabin, particularly, at the time. He never campaigned on making Middle East peace progress a cornerstone of his foreign policy. Is that where the ideas would have began? Every American president, really, going back to Richard Nixon, has considered the Middle East to be one of the most difficult, dangerous and important areas of US interest, and has been deeply involved in the process. The president has actually had a longstanding personal interest in the Middle East. I remember when he first met Rabin during the campaign, when Governor Clinton met Rabin. . . . I think that Rabin saw this young fellow and didn't quite know what to make of him. But a very close, fond and personal friendship and partnership developed with Rabin over the years. That helped propel the president forward, but I think just as importantly was his feeling that, in the absence of a peace process in the Middle East, we will just see more turmoil. So you describe a relationship with Rabin that began with Rabin not seeing Clinton as his equal in any way, but which then developed? Yes. I think it became a real partnership, a very close, personal friendship, a true friendship, even though they were perhaps 20 years apart in age. I would watch Rabin as he talked to the president. He had great respect for the president, which developed over the years. And so, of course, his assassination and the president's trip to the funeral were one of the sadder moments of the last eight years. I remember seeing a picture of the president at the funeral. He had sunglasses on. You say he was personally quite moved by it. . . . This was the death of a man that he admired greatly, who, in my judgment, was one of the great men of our time. He also understood that it would have consequences beyond the human and personal . . . for the peace process. The US Rangers were ambushed in Mogadishu, also in 1993. How was Bill Clinton told, and how did he react? It was certainly one of the darkest days of the last eight years. We got called in the middle of the night. I think Tony Lake, who was the national security advisor, called the president. It was a Sunday morning, October 5, 1993. We came into the White House. The beginning of any of these episodes always has conflicting facts, and the facts change -- how many people are killed, and is there still something going on? Initial facts are always false -- that's the premise that I inculcate in my staff -- don't jump to any conclusions based on the press wire story. But, obviously, as we learned more about this, it was clear that we'd suffered a terrible loss. It was a very, very difficult day. Did Bill Clinton get personally angry about it? Could you tell that he was quite upset? He was certainly upset at a human level. He subsequently met with many of the families of those 17 soldiers. Those were difficult meetings; poignant, and in some cases, hard. We were not aware that this raid was going to take place before it did, so I think he had a lot of questions about what had happened. Some people have described him as being visibly angered when he saw the pictures of the American servicemen being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. Absolutely, absolutely. Yes. He was revolted and furious, both at the Aidid forces for having perpetrated this on the United States, and in trying to determine how had this happened and what had gone wrong. In the following days, there was quite a firestorm in Congress, with a very substantial number of members saying that we need to pull out immediately. And even though we were on the glad path to leave Somalia, I think the president felt that picking up and running, even in the face of this kind of a horrible tragedy, would not be good for the United States. He stood his ground with the Congress in a very, very tense meeting with some of the members of the Senate and the House. He said that the United States didn't turn tail and run even when terrible things like this happened. He was able to succeed in convincing the Congress that we should leave in a more orderly way, and turn this over to the United Nations. Tony Lake told us that he considered Somalia the low point of the American foreign policy team during his tenure. Would you concur with that assessment? Yes. I would extend it to my tenure and this tenure. Over the last eight years, that day, October 5, 1993, is certainly is the low point. In addition to Somalia and Russia, in the fall of 1993, you have to deal with the Haitian crisis. You've got refugees coming in, and the famous incident where the Harlan County is off Port-au-Prince, and there's a mob on the wharf there. And the picture that Americans see on their television is the Harlan County retreating, turning tail. What was that like from your vantage point? I have to put this in context a bit. We had reached an agreement in 1993 with the military leaders who had overthrown the Cedras-Francois regime to turn power over, peacefully, to a new government over a period of time. As part of that process, called the Governors Island process, we said that, at some point, we'd send Seabees down to Haiti to help in civil projects, and to work with the Haitian military in a cooperative way; and the government agreed to that. When the Harlan County arrived, it was not there to invade Haiti -- it was there to drop some Seabees off. That crowd at the dock was a statement by the military leaders that they were abrogating their commitment to Governors Island. Looking back on it, I would have done it differently. Three days after we pulled the Harlan County out, we took six warships and put out them around Haiti, and said, "We're going to enforce this embargo 100 percent." And I've often thought if we'd put the six warships around Haiti on day one, the Harlan County could have left on day five, and no one would have paid any attention. There's a good example; symbols do matter. I think the way we handled it was a tactical mistake, but it was certainly not appropriate for Harlan County, a bunch of guys who were basically engineers, to try to fight their way into Haiti. That was not the purpose of it. Symbols do matter, and these things are always viewed in a political context as well. Given the problems that Bill Clinton had in foreign policy up to this point, was seeing the public reaction to that symbol personally a setback for him? Yes. Certainly, the way that was handled was a mistake. He ultimately bears responsibility for everything, but I'm not sure that he was the person who decided to pull the Harlan County out that quickly. It would have been far better had we made a statement of strength before we then got the Seabees out of town. It was a failure to think this through carefully -- a mistake that I hope we would not subsequently make. . . . President Carter and Colin Powell and Sam Nunn are brokering an agreement with the Cedras government to leave at the same time that the United States is mounting a preparation to invade the island. What was the president's decision-making process? It was a very dramatic time. The president had decided when we imposed strict sanctions to try to force Francois and Cedras out that he would have to use military force if the sanctions did not work. So in a sense that decision had been made earlier. We got the United Nations behind us. Actually, Carter, Powell and Nunn went pretty much on their own, as we were on the verge of sending this force in to try to negotiate an arrangement with Francois and Cedras. I remember standing in the Oval Office with the vice president, the secretary of state, Tony Lake and others. We knew that, at four o'clock, our forces were taking off, and the president had said to President Carter, "You go ahead and do this. You try this, but you've got to be out of there at twelve o'clock." And he said it a hundred times to President Carter. Well, it got to be about 12 o'clock when President Carter called up the Oval Office and said, "They've agreed to leave." And the president said, "When?" And he said, "Well, they haven't said when. They just agreed to leave." Of course, they'd agreed to leave four times previous. And the president said, "That's not good enough. We need a date -- 30 days." That was a critical decision for the president. It would have been a lot easier at that point to simply say, "Okay. We'll accept some indefinite promise." And I really I believe that the imminent departure of our multinational force several hours later caused the Haitian military leaders to decide that they'd better give us a date. In April, 1995, there's Srebrenica. There were numerous press reports early in the administration. There is a sense that foreign policy takes a back burner in this administration. . . . What's your characterization of that time? Was foreign policy relegated to the back seat? No. I think that's just wrong. I've actually looked at how much time this president has spent on foreign policy in the first term and the second term compared with his predecessors, and he spent more time on it than his predecessors, at least since the post-war period. Whether that's been enlarging NATO, or peacemaking, or trying to deal with the international economy, or fighting terrorism. He ran on a fundamentally domestic agenda, to get the economy back on track. And the fact that he was able to do that has been the greatest asset that the United States has had in the world that you can imagine. The fact that we're the strongest economy in the world makes us the strongest power in the world. But I looked at the records for this president. For example, the president has spoken to Prime Minister Barak 72 times between May, 1999, and November-December of 2000. Seventy-two times. So it's not been neglected. . . . Well, did it change? Was foreign policy more on the back burner early in the administration, compared to the second term? I'm not sure that I would say that. I think what happened from the first term to the second term is that we've been able to go from the inherited agenda to our own agenda -- enlarging NATO and embracing new democracies, peace in Northern Ireland, the peace process in the Middle East, trying to build up a stronger relationship with China based on openness, and trying to work with Russia. So in some ways, as time went on, the agenda shifted from what we inherited in this post-Cold War period to what we were building. In April, 1995, you had the terrible attack in Srebrenica. You had respected people at the State Department resigning in protest. What kind of pressure was Bill Clinton under at this point? You had Elie Wiesel at the Holocaust Museum, pointing to the president in a very sort of poignant moment. The president seemed to be under a lot of pressure. He was both frustrated and angry - frustrated because, in fact we were trying to move more forcefully, and angry that there was such resistance coming from our allies. But when Srebrenica happened, I remember Jacques Chirac called the president and said, "We must act," and it was a welcome statement. That provided the catalyst for getting NATO engaged, and using air power. With what was happening on the ground at that point, with the Croatians beginning to win back some territory they lost, that led to Milosevic agreeing to go to Dayton and negotiate a peace. After Dayton, the president is also faced with the prospect of sending troops, just as he's getting ready for an election year. Was that a difficult thing to do for him? . . . Whenever you deploy troops in any situation, there is risk. There also was a mixed reaction on the Hill. It took a lot of persuasion by the president to convince Congress, that having made the peace, having ended the war, having created the peace, we now had an obligation to participate as the leader of NATO in securing the peace. I think, with the recent fall of Milosevic, you now have a democracy having reclaimed all of the Balkans for the first time, and the opportunity to realize a vision that the president first articulated in Brussels in 1994 -- which is a Europe that is peaceful, democratic and undivided, for the first time in its history. We're on the edge of that now, as a result of a number of things that this president has done over the last eight years.