In the spring of 1996, China decided to test fire missiles over Taiwan, and we responded by sending a carrier. How tense a time was this? Was this a more precarious moment than many of us realized at the time? It was a tense moment. The preceding several months had been a period of great tension in US/China relations. President Lee of Taiwan had come to the United States. We had granted him a visa to speak at Cornell. That was very controversial. One can argue whether that was a good thing to do or the wrong thing to do. But it certainly led to a serious deterioration in our relationship with China, and I think was not unrelated to their provocation against Taiwan. I remember a breakfast meeting at the Pentagon with Secretary Perry, Secretary Christopher, Tony Lake and myself. Secretary Perry proposed that we move two carriers in closer to Taiwan as a strong signal to the Chinese that we believed anything involving the future of Taiwan had to be resolved peacefully. It was a move not without risk, but I think it turned out to be the right move. Was the United States prepared at that time to use military force if China had been aggressive toward Taiwan? What we did turned out to be the appropriate act. We've always taken the position that this needs to be resolved peacefully. We made that point again to the Chinese after this recent election in Taiwan, in another period of tension between Taiwan and China. And I think our posture was appropriate there. Did Bill Clinton think the Chinese were essentially bluffing on this? He felt it was important that we make clear that we believe that stability across the straits was important. In January, 1998, the Lewinsky story breaks. Clinton has a cabinet meeting on January 23. Were you at that meeting? Yes. After that meeting Secretaries Albright and Shalala, come out and say that they believe the allegations are false. What was going through your mind at that moment? I think that all of us wanted to believe the president at that moment. Later, when you found out the president wasn't telling the truth, what was your reaction? I was, obviously, disappointed in my president and my friend. In 1998, while the scandal is going on, the president makes a number of high-profile trips, including Africa and China. How did he deal with that at the same time you had this raging scandal going on back in Washington? We've always tried to keep foreign policy, national security policy, separated from not only whatever domestic controversy might be going on, but certainly also political cross-currents. And so it was a strange period. We tried to conduct American foreign policy based on what was in the national interest. That trip to Africa was an extraordinarily important trip. But I often went home at night and called my daughter, who works for one of your competing networks, to find out what had happened that day on the scandal front. We really did try to keep a separation between that and foreign policy. It was very important to the president, and it was very important to me to be able to say to the Congress and the American people that any action we took, we took on the basis of the national interest. You're trying to conduct foreign policy in the interest of the country; at the same time, you, like everyone else, is in a certain sense obsessed with what's going on in terms of politics and the scandal in Washington. As a practical matter, what's it like to operate in that kind of a condition? I had a job, which was to take that Africa trip. It's the longest trip that any president ever made to Africa. It was the first time an American president had said to this continent of 700 million people, "We care about our future with Africa. We believe there are important things happening here. We have a stake in what goes on here." There was an enormous amount to do on that trip, and my job was not to be the president's lawyer in that situation or his press secretary. My job was to be his national security advisor, and to make sure that our work in the world went on without interference. It's one of the strengths of the United States that we have a tradition of keeping foreign policy basically separate from other controversies or partisan politics. Did you talk to the president about the scandal at that time? Or was it understood that that wasn't something for you to talk to him about? No, I did not talk to him frequently about it. On August 17, the morning of the president's grand jury testimony, the White House released a photo of you, Erskine Bowles and the president. We now know that discussions were going on at that time about the Osama bin Laden attack that was going to come a little bit later. The president is looking particularly weary in this photograph. It's a difficult time for him. There are these great big bags under his eyes. Do you remember that morning? Yes. Again, to put this in a little context for your viewers, in August, two of our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya had been bombed with over 200 killed, and 20 or more Americans. We had gone out to Andrews Air Force base as those bodies came home. The president met with every one of their families, as only he was able to do in situations like that, and to provide some sense that their nation cared. In the meantime, we were very intensely engaged in trying to determine who was responsible. And we were able to do that relatively quickly. Sometimes these things take a while, and sometimes the pieces of the puzzle come together quite quickly. So within a month we knew, very clearly, without any doubt, that this had been perpetrated by Osama bin Laden and his network. We proposed to the president a retaliatory strike, both in Afghanistan, and in connection with a chemical weapons-related facility in Sudan that was related to him. Of course, secrecy was extremely important to this exercise, and the president was going to Martha's Vineyard for a few days off. We were able to get him off to Martha's Vineyard without any of your colleagues knowing what was about to happen. And then once we launched the missiles, the president then came out to speak to the American people. Was it a concern at the moment that Bill Clinton's motives would be questioned -- because he was launching this strike in the midst of a critical moment in the scandal that was also going on? Certainly I think we're aware that some people would raise this. But it's a situation where you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't, so you might as well do what you think is the right thing to do. If we didn't act because some people might think that it was to change the subject, that would be indefensible, and we'd be roundly and properly criticized. If we did act, some people would say it was to change the subject, and we'd be roundly and sharply criticized. And I think in that situation I remember the president saying, "Let's just do what we think is the right thing to do. We'll probably get it either way." And I think the right thing to do was to respond, and we did. Going back to August 17, 1998, the president has his grand jury testimony. Discussions are going on about Osama bin Laden. That night the president not only had to address the nation about Monica Lewinsky, he was also having national security briefings with you. What was that like? The president is tough-minded. I don't know what was going on in his stomach. I assume it was churning. But he dealt with the crisis that we were facing with bin Laden calmly, clearly, and I think without, in my judgment, a sense of being distracted by other matters. He's obviously a man of great intelligence, and is able to focus and concentrate on what he has to do, and then clearly there were other things that were going on that day. Was he particularly anguished about this? No. He was anguished by the loss of lives at that embassy and by our vulnerability there, and what needed to be done to increase security at our embassies in a new era in which terrorism is a bigger factor. Let me say this: we spent a fair amount of time on what the targets were, about collateral damage. Any time the president has used military force, he's been concerned about minimizing damage to civilians, if that's possible, consistent with the military mission. So we went over the targets carefully. But I don't think there was any real hesitation in his mind about what the right thing to do was. In December, 1998, after Iraq fails to let the inspectors in, there's another decision to use force. John Podesta told us that when he told senior members on the Hill that the US was considering this response, he basically got an earful. It was like, "Are you out of your minds to be doing this at a time when the impeachment process is going on?" What was that like from your perspective? I have separated myself from those issues, and to the extent I can, from the politics of the office. Not to say I'm not interested in it, but I'm trying to remain separate from it, so I didn't get as much of that. As you recall, we were ready to go. Once Saddam appeared to capitulate, we called off the bombing. It was at a later time, when it was clear that he was not going to capitulate, that we went forward with it. Again, during this period, you have to decide what you thought the right thing to do for the country was, because you're going to be criticized either way. Did this make it much harder for you? There was a raging scandal going on, the House is considering the impeachment of the United States president, and you've got to make decisions about using military . . . I've got to say that there is nothing that that we did that we would not have done otherwise, or nothing we didn't do that we would have done otherwise. It was most difficult as we traveled abroad during this period. The president would stand up at a press conference in Moscow or in the Caribbean or in some other country, and of course, the press wasn't terribly interested in what was going on in his meeting with Yeltsin or his meeting with the CARACOM leaders. So the questioning would be very much focused on the scandals here, on the impeachment issue here. That was kind of puzzling to a lot of our foreign friends, and somewhat disconcerting. But in terms of fundamental decisions, I can honestly say that I don't believe anything was done differently. About a month after the acquittal of the president in the Senate, the president and your team decide to go ahead with the air strikes in Kosovo. What was the breaking point there? How was that decision reached? We have this history with Milosevic, and the legacy of it having taken so long in Bosnia -- two years -- to actually act. Therefore, it's taken a long time for Bosnia to come back, even after the peace. So I think we have an acute sense that we needed to act at the outset of this crisis. We tried to negotiate with Milosevic. He withdrew some of his forces. He went to Rambouillet in a peace conference, or his people did, and said no. And at the same time that he begins to amass 40,000 troops on the Kosovo border, the killings in Kosovo increase. And the president was continually on the phone to other NATO leaders, saying, "It's time for us to act. We must act together." At this time, he convinced his NATO colleagues, many of whom were as committed as he was that we had to go forward. We sent Ambassador Holbrooke on one last mission for Milosevic to agree to leave Serbia, and Milosevic said no. We went to NATO and got the order to proceed with the air strikes, which then went on for what is probably 78 of the most intense days of the president's period in office. Intense in what way? We're engaged in a war. Whatever you want to call it, it certainly felt like a war. We had to simultaneously hold our domestic support, we had to hold the alliance together, and we had to continue on this campaign. Don't forget -- this is the first time in NATO's 50 years, other than three or four days in Bosnia, that it had ever been engaged in a sustained military action. And so we also had to get NATO to work more effectively. Their ramp-up period in terms of the air strikes were slower than we would have liked, simply because this machine had never been taken out of the garage before The really critical moment came in April, when it so happened that NATO was meeting here in Washington for the fiftieth anniversary. This was a month into the air campaign. And Milosevic's strategy was always, "Break the unity of NATO." NATO operates by consensus. If the Italians or the Greeks or others who are more sympathetic to the Serbs would split away, the NATO alliance would fall apart. We had a meeting with Prime Minister Blair and the president up in the residence the night before this NATO meeting began. Secretary Albright was there and myself. And the president said to Prime Minister Blair, "We cannot lose." And Prime Minister Blair was of the same view. They went into that NATO meeting the next day. The 19 leaders, now joined by the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland -- three countries who had come in as new democracies -- the 19 leaders essentially looked each other in the eye, and said, "We will not lose." It was in that moment, in my judgment, that Milosevic lost the war. It took another 60 days of bombing, but he could not crack the unity of NATO. As the bombing campaign goes on longer and longer, the criticism starts to mount, in the United States and elsewhere, that you're relying too much on the air war. The front page of the Washington Post suggests that even some of the joint chiefs are second-guessing your strategy. Your own senior military officials are questioning the soundness of your policy. How did that add pressure to you and the president? Certainly General Shelton and Secretary Cohen were strongly supportive of the process, of the strategy, and in many ways, they were architects of it. We believed the air campaign would win, and we had one fairly useful piece of data to show that's correct: we did win. We lost no Americans. There were times when I thought there were probably 15 people, not related to me personally, who believed we could prevail: including the president, secretary of state, and the secretary of defense. And there did come a point, as we got into the summer, when we were beginning to face a crossroads. Had we not begun to plan a land campaign at that point, we would have ultimately faced a winter in which a lot of people would have frozen. I always believed that a debate early on about a land war would have so split the alliance, and split this country, that we would not have been able to go forward. But as we got into June, it became clear that we were facing that moment of truth. I remember staying up most of the night in my office in the White House. I was one of the few people there, writing a memo to the president. I said that within the next week we would have to decide between a lot of very unpalatable options, including a land ground invasion involving maybe 100,000 to 200,000 Americans, but that we had very little choice. Simultaneously, we have an initiative to try to get Milosevic to capitulate, between the president of Finland, Mr. Ahtisaari, and Victor Chernomyrdin, the prime minister of Russia in a meeting with Milosevic. Actually, before my memo was typed and sent to the president saying, "We now really have to seriously be ready to go in a ground campaign," Milosevic capitulated. When the president addressed the American people early on in the air war, he ruled out ground forces. Was that a mistake, in retrospect? No, I don't think it was a mistake. He said something like, "I have no intention," or "do not intend to." So it was not "I never will." It was a sentence inserted deliberately, and I guess I take a responsibility for it. Had we had a great debate back then about whether we should have a ground invasion of Kosovo, even though that was not our intention, we never would have got off the ground. We would have had a huge debate here. We would have had a huge debate in NATO, and we never would have acted. As we got deeper into this and it became clear that you might have to have that option, the president said, "Nothing is off the table. Put it back on the table." But I believe had we provoked that debate in the beginning, when that was not our strategy and that was not our intention, that we never would have acted. Was it difficult when you were getting criticism even from people like General Clark, who felt that you had to ramp up earlier for a ground war? At that same meeting that I discussed earlier with Gore and Clinton in April during the NATO meeting, they agreed that we should quietly encourage planning within NATO for a possible ground campaign if that became necessary. And so General Clark had developed a plan. He knew what needed to be done. The issue really came to the forefront as we got deep into May, early into June, given the lead times. You had 200,000 people in Kosovo who, if had you gone into a winter, might have died if you couldn't either end the war or somehow get in there. I think we were moving towards a decision concerning ground forces while we were simultaneously increasing the pressure on Milosevic to the point where he put up the white flag. When you look at the president's decision making in foreign affairs, how do you compare the president, let's say, back in Haiti, with his decision making in Kosovo? What change did you see over that period of time? Nothing prepares someone to make a decision to send American men and women into combat or into harm's way. And so I would say that in the early days -- and Haiti is a good example -- that we deliberated, and deliberated and deliberated. We turned the issue upside down and left to right. . . . You were not as decisive as you might have been? We left no stone unturned. Obviously, we were very concerned about making sure that every, every element of this had been considered. I think when you get to Kosovo, you fast forward. The president made a fundamental decision that the United States and NATO could not stand in the last year of the twentieth century -- the bloodiest century in history -- and see that century end with the vindication of ethnic cleansing and with a wider war in Europe. And so he made a decision that we had to act. And from that point on, he was actually unshakable, and didn't second guess. He, obviously, was concerned every day with what was happening. There were decisions that had to be made along the way. But he was an absolute rock during all of that period, both with respect to the alliance, and with respect to his administration. As you indicated before, people were saying is that this the right strategy. And he inevitably became a stronger and more confident leader as time went on. So if you were going to characterize that change in the president, he became more decisive and more comfortable with his own instincts? I would say more that he sized his engagement more carefully to the magnitude of the problem. In other words, he was not the vice chief of staff of the army, he was the commander in chief. It was not his job to look at the details. His job was to make the fundamental decision to rally the world and his country behind it, to keep his administration on course; to make sure that his team had the right direction, but to let his team then run the operation. When Milosevic falls a couple of weeks ago, what do you remember about that day and your conversations with the president? Demonstrations were scheduled that morning, and they start spiraling throughout the day. Did you talk to the president? Oh, yes. And it was an extraordinary day. Think about this. Milosevic started his rampage in 1991, before we arrived, and had preoccupied us in many ways for most of our administration. We supported the opposition very strongly in ways that were appropriate during that election to oust Milosevic. And so when you saw Milosevic toppled and fall like a ship that sinks, it was a great sense of power of the people, the power of democracy, and vindication for having stuck with it for as long as we did. But there's one thing about leading and being engaged in these kinds of things -- you don't get to enjoy your victories very long. The next day, things began to unravel in the Middle East. And so, notwithstanding the fact that in a single week we had signed a bill to let China into the WTO, Milosevic had fallen, and a number of other positive things that happened, we got to savor that for maybe 24 hours, and then we turn and throw ourselves into a crisis in the Middle East. In July, at Camp David, the president is trying to broker some kind of understanding on the Middle East, and it falls apart. He's shuttling between the delegations late at night. Ultimately, it fails. Why did the president think he could accomplish something of that magnitude? The parties themselves, Barak and Arafat, had set September 13 as the deadline for completing the final status negotiations. It was quite clear that had nothing happened by then, we were headed for a terrible confrontation. And in fact things were deteriorating. There were demonstrations and riots in May, which I think began to foreshadow the frustration and anger there. The situation was deteriorating on the ground. But having spent a fair amount of time talking to both parties, some sensed that they were not as completely apart as they might appear, and they were totally unable to deal with it themselves. They were totally unable to make any more progress themselves. Prime Minister Barak felt very, very strongly that the only way in which this could be potentially resolved would be to bring the leaders together in an isolated environment, where compromises could be made without every single position being scrutinized by the public and the press, and you can come together with a package. And I think we made quite extraordinary progress. I don't know anybody who could have done what the president did in those negotiations or what he did in the Wye negotiations or many other circumstances. He is able to help bridge differences, and help to close gaps through a combination of intellectual power, a sympathetic ear, listening to others, with respect from and for both sides. And we got actually far closer at Camp David than ever before, but not, unfortunately, to total closure. . . . There was a news blackout there. During this period, all the public saw were these still pictures of the president late at night shuttling back and forth through the different sides. Was the president relying too much on his own political skill, his own charm? Was there some hubris in suggesting that he might be able to make an agreement here, given how far apart Barak and Arafat . . . No, I don't think so at all. First of all, this was something that Prime Minister Barak had been insisting upon for over a month. Chairman Arafat also wanted a summit. He wanted to put it closer to the September 13 deadline, which he thought would give him more leverage. We thought a little bit of distance from that deadline would create a little more space. But I don't think that the president felt that, through some magical power, you can breach differences that have existed for, in some cases, centuries; in same cases, 50 years; and in some cases, since the Oslo process. These are very hard issues of how you make peace in the Middle East, and they have not been solved up until now, and I hope they will be solved. Some progress was made at Camp David. I think both parties felt there was. But sometimes you have to try in a situation where you know that the consequences of not trying are certain. The consequences of our not having gone to Camp David would have been turmoil breaking out. Now, as it turned out, we made progress, but by virtue of subsequent events, we've had a very, very difficult patch. At the end of that process, the president came out, and he praised Barak, and specifically left Arafat out of that compliment. Was the president miffed? Was he upset with Arafat at Camp David? He was trying to describe the situation in a fairly factual way; that Prime Minister Barak did show more flexibility on more of the hard issues than Chairman Arafat did. . . . Did the president feel personally let down by that? I don't think anybody went into Camp David with an unrealistic expectation that this was easy. Everybody believed it was very difficult, but I think they believed also that the parties wanted this to happen, that they wanted to try to do this, and that the consequences of not trying were quite clear. Now that the process is in deep trouble, does the president believe that something he had hoped to leave as part of his legacy -- the peace process -- has failed? It's the parties that determine the future of the Middle East, not the United States. Some things are better. We have peace between Jordan and Israel as a result of the efforts of this administration. Obviously, it would be far better if there were some kind of a negotiated resolution of the situation between Israelis and Palestinians, but that's not been possible for the last 52 years. I hope it will not take 52 years to be able to make it happen. Clinton had invested so much in the Middle East through the various Camp David agreements. He met with Arafat more than any other foreign leader, and there was an enormous personal contribution here. What was the president's personal reaction when it fell apart in the fall of 2000? He thinks this is a tragedy. This is two peoples who are side by side. That fact is not going to change. And either they will descend into conflict, which has the potential for engaging the broader region, or they will find a way back into some kind of negotiating process. But as we sit here now, the most important objective is to try to break this cycle of violence. It's in everyone's interest to try to do that. You had to make the phone call to the president the morning that USS Cole had been bombed in Yemen and also the same day that the Israeli soldiers were murdered. What was that phone call like? We've gotten used to these calls. He's probably more civil on the phone at three o'clock in the morning than I am when I get the phone calls from the Situation Room. In most of these cases, the president has just wanted facts. He's wanted to know what do we know, what's happened, what do you recommend that we do next with what is going on, what's in process? At three o'clock in the morning, you're perhaps more professional than you are reflective. Here you had two incredible bits of news. Can you tell us more about that particular call? The first information is usually wrong and often quite fragmentary. So all that we knew when I called the president was that there had been some kind of attack on the Cole. The casualty number that I had was initially much different -- it was much smaller, one or two Americans killed. Not that that's not important, but it's obviously a different order of magnitude than 17 killed. He asked me a lot of factual questions. . . . After the Cole was attacked, did the president make it clear that the United States would respond once it found out who was responsible? Yes, absolutely. We have intensified our efforts and posture very substantially, and tripled the amount of money we're spending for it during this administration. We finally found the perpetrators of the World Trade Center bombing. We've brought Mr. Kasi back from the Philippines, who had done that terrible shooting at the CIA. We have suspects in Khobar [Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia] that are in prison in Saudi Arabia. We reacted against the Iraqis, we reacted against Osama bin Laden. The United States has to understand that there is a new war going on here. We have to be equally aggressive and strong, both in trying to prevent, and trying to protect, and trying to increase deterrence by making sure that we respond when we have certain information about who's responsible. One of the president's last trips in office will be to Vietnam. Why did the president decide that that was important, and why did he wait so long in his administration to do that? We've spent eight years very carefully moving towards normalization with Vietnam. And we've kept one issue at the forefront of that process, and that has been accountability for POWs and MIAs. When we started this process back in 1993 and 1994, the Vietnamese were not cooperating with us very much at all. And over the years, each step that we've taken along the process of normalization has been as a result of their opening up their files, of their agreeing to joint excavation, of their agreeing essentially to be partners with us in trying to account for our missing. And so only when we were satisfied that we really were getting cooperation did we move to normalization. The next step was to enter into an economic agreement with Vietnam. And so it's now really right for the president to go. This will be an important trip, both in the sense that it will end a chapter of American history -- or at least, if not end it, write another closing chapter, as well as turning towards the future of our relations in Southeast Asia and our relations with Vietnam. Relations in Asia also appear to be warming with North Korea, where Secretary Albright . . . Has the president talked about going to North Korea himself? We have discussed the possibility when Secretary Albright returned, but we have not made any decisions. Something significant is happening in North Korea. The secretary had a good visit there. We have an interest in encouraging the process of reconciliation between North and South, which so boldly has been pursued by the South Korean president, Kim Dae-jung. And I understand America's interest to foster that process if we can do so in a way that is careful, and cautious, serves our national interests, and has no illusions about the nature of the regime in North Korea or the capability they still have to cause trouble. We'll make a decision about that over the next several weeks, depending on where we are in answering those questions. It's too early for history to have been written. But how do you see the Clinton legacy in foreign policy, both for good and bad? This president will be seen as a president who began to define America's role in a new global age. We spent 50 years defining America during the period of the Cold War in terms of what we were against, and then maybe a decade in terms of what collapsed post-Cold War. We came into office at a time when we really needed to build America's role, a time of great strength in terms of what our interests were. We tried to do that by expanding and modernizing our alliances, trying to make peace around the world, by being a peacemaker, by trying to deal with the new threats like the terrorism that I spoke of, by trying to bring old adversaries like Russia and China into the global system, and by recognizing that an open global economy is one that is in America's interests. So I think that the president will get high grades. The accomplishments of this president in foreign policy range from peace in Northern Ireland, to expanding NATO, from bringing China into the global system, to opening to Africa, to putting AIDS on the international agenda, and other issues like climate change. I think that, across a wide range of issues, he'll be seen as the beginning of defining America's role in the global age. If you could list one regret that Bill Clinton has about the way he conducted foreign policy, what would that be? There have certainly been terrible setbacks along the way. We've talked about Somalia, and other events that did not go as we would liked. I suspect that he would say that he had hoped that we would have ended this administration with a more secure peace in the Middle East than appears will be the case. You talked about the president changing in a couple of ways in foreign policy. You suggested he became more decisive, and that he began to focus on the bigger picture instead of the details. Is there one particular moment that stands out, where you noticed that the president had made kind of a fundamental shift in the way that he handled these crises? Was there one particular moment in terms of how the president handled foreign policy where you looked at him and thought, "This man has really grown?" It's an evolutionary process for any president, but I'll give you an example in 1996. Mexico faced a terrible financial crisis. The president had called the congressional leaders down to the White House. He said, "We've got to deal with this. If Mexico collapses next door, the consequences for Latin America and for the United States will be really severe." After several weeks of trying to get congressional support for us to legislatively act together, it was clear that there was no congressional support. Eighty percent of the American people were against this. I remember the night that Bob Rubin and Larry Sommers came into the White House, and they had concluded that we had about 48 hours, and Mexico was really going to go collapse. We went into the Oval Office. Secretary Rubin laid out this problem. The president hesitated for half a second, and he said, "We have to do it. It's the right thing for us, and it's the right thing for Mexico." I felt compelled to tell him all the downsides, to make sure he was aware of the risks. So I said, "This could happen: Congress could take away our authority to act here. Eighty percent of the American people . . ." . . . are against it." And he had already processed all that. He clearly didn't need my recitation, although I thought I had an obligation to do so. He just did what he thought was right. And I saw that increasingly, as time went on. His leadership in Kosovo, in the world, the alliance, his own country and his own government, was really quite superb.