My Life, page 76
On the day after the Senate passed the budget, I ordered the military into action for the first time, firing twenty-three Tomahawk missiles into Iraq’s intelligence headquarters, in retaliation for a plot to assassinate President George H. W. Bush during a trip he had made to Kuwait. More than a dozen people involved in the plot had been arrested in Kuwait on April 13, one day before the former President had been scheduled to arrive. The materials in their possession were conclusively traced to Iraqi intelligence, and on May 19 one of the arrested Iraqis confirmed to the FBI that the Iraqi intelligence service was behind the plot. I asked the Pentagon to recommend a course of action, and General Powell came to me with the missile attack on the intelligence headquarters as both a proportionate response and an effective deterrent. I felt we would have been justified in hitting Iraq harder, but Powell made a persuasive case that the attack would deter further Iraqi terrorism, and that dropping bombs on more targets, including presidential palaces, would have been unlikely to kill Saddam Hussein and almost certain to kill more innocent people. Most of the Tomahawks hit the target, but four of them overshot, three landing in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood and killing eight civilians. It was a stark reminder that no matter how careful the planning and how accurate the weapons, when that kind of firepower is unleashed, there are usually unintended consequences.
On July 6, I was in Tokyo for my first international meeting, the sixteenth annual G-7 summit. Historically, these meetings had been talkfests, with few meaningful policy commitments and little follow-up coming out of them. We didn’t have the luxury of another meeting where nothing happened. The world economy was dragging, with growth in Europe the slowest in more than a decade, and in Japan the slowest in nearly two decades. We were making some headway on the economic front; in the last five months, over 950,000 more Americans had found work, about as many new jobs as the economy had produced in the previous three years.
I went to Japan with an agenda: to get the agreement of European and Japanese leaders to coordinate their internal economic policies with ours, in order to raise the level of global growth; convince Europe and Japan to drop tariffs on manufacturing goods, which would create jobs in all our countries and increase the chances of finishing the seven-year-old Uruguay Round of world trade talks by the December 15 deadline; and send a clear, unified signal of financial and political support for Yeltsin and Russian democracy.
The odds of success on any of these items, much less all three, were not great, in part because none of the leaders were particularly strong coming into the meeting. Between the tough medicine in my economic plan and the bad press over problems, both real and imagined, my public approval had dropped steeply since the inauguration. John Major was hanging on in England, but was hurt by constant unfavorable comparison to his predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, something the Iron Lady did nothing to discourage. François Mitterrand was a fascinating, brilliant man, a Socialist in his second seven-year term, who was limited in what he could deliver by the fact that the French prime minister and his governing coalition, who controlled economic policy, were from opposing political parties. Carlo Ciampi, the Italian prime minister, was a former governor of the Italian Central Bank and a modest man who was known for riding his bicycle to work. Despite his intelligence and appeal, he was hampered by the fractured and inherently unstable Italian political environment. Kim Campbell, Canada’s first female prime minister, was an impressive, clearly dedicated person who had just taken office after the resignation of Brian Mulroney. She was essentially finishing Mulroney’s long run at the helm, with the polls showing a rising tide of support for the opposition leader, Jean Chrétien. Our host, Kiichi Miyazawa, was widely regarded as a lame duck in a Japanese political system in which the long monopoly of the Liberal Democratic Party was coming to an end. Miyazawa may have been a lame duck, but he was an impressive one, with sophisticated understanding of the world. He spoke colloquial English about as well as I did. And he was also a patriot who wanted the G-7 meeting to reflect well on his country.
The conventional wisdom held that Helmut Kohl, the long-serving German chancellor, was also in trouble, because his poll numbers were down and his Christian Democratic Party had suffered some recent losses in local elections, but I thought Kohl still had plenty of life in his leadership. He was a huge man, about my height and weighing well over three hundred pounds. He spoke with great conviction in a direct, often brusque manner, and he was a world-class storyteller with a good sense of humor. And in more than size he was the largest figure on the European continent in decades. He had reunified Germany, funneling massive sums of money from West to East Germany to lift the incomes of those who had made far less under communism. Kohl’s Germany had become the largest financial supporter of Russian democracy. He was also the leading force behind the emerging European Union, and he was in favor of admitting Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into both the EU and the NATO alliance. Finally, Kohl was deeply troubled by Europe’s passivity in Bosnia and thought, as I did, that the United Nations should lift the arms embargo because it was unfair to the Bosnian Muslims. On all the great questions facing Europe, he was on the right side, and pushing hard for his point of view. He felt if he got the big things right, the polls would follow. I liked Helmut Kohl a lot. Over the next several years, through many meals, visits, and phone calls, we would forge a political and personal bond that would bear great fruit for Europeans and Americans alike.
I was optimistic about the prospects for the G-7 because I was bringing a strong agenda to the meeting and because I believed all the other leaders were smart enough to know that the best way to get out of trouble at home was to do something meaningful in Tokyo. Just as the conference opened, we crossed one threshold, when our trade ministers agreed that all of us would lower tariffs to zero on ten different manufacturing sectors, opening markets for hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of trade. It was Mickey Kantor’s first victory as our trade ambassador. He had proved to be a tough, effective negotiator, with skills that eventually would produce more than two hundred agreements, sparking an expansion of trade that would account for almost 30 percent of our economic growth over the next eight years. After we agreed on a generous aid package, the G-7 meeting also left no doubt that the rich nations were all committed to helping Russia. On the matter of coordinating our economic policies, the results were more ambiguous. I was working to bring the deficit down, and Germany’s central bank had just lowered interest rates, but Japan’s willingness to stimulate its economy and open its borders to more foreign trade and com-petition remained unclear. That was progress I’d have to achieve in our bilateral talks with the Japanese, which began right after the G-7 meeting.
In 1993, because Japan was dealing with economic stagnation and political uncertainty, I knew it would be hard to get changes in trade policy, but I had to try. Clearly our large trade deficit with Japan was due in part to protectionism. For example, they wouldn’t buy our skis, saying they weren’t the right width. I had to find a way to push open Japanese markets without damaging our important security partnership, which was essential to building a stable future for Asia. While I was making these points in a speech to Japanese students at Waseda University, Hillary went on her own charm offensive in Japan, finding an especially warm reception among the increasingly large number of young, well-educated working women.
Prime Minister Miyazawa agreed in principle to my suggestion that we achieve a framework agreement committing ourselves to specific measurable steps to improve our trade relationship. So did the Japanese Foreign Ministry, whose senior civil servant, the father of Japan’s new crown princess, was determined to reach an agreement. The big obstacle was the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), whose leaders felt that their policies had made Japan a great power and saw no reason to change. Late one night, after we finished our talks, representatives of the two ministries were literally screaming their arguments at each other in the lobby of the Hotel Okura. Our staffs got as close as they could to an agreement, with Mickey Kantor’s deputy, Charlene Barshefsky, driving such a hard bargain the Japanese called her “Stonewall.” Then Miyazawa and I got together over a traditional Japanese meal at the Hotel Okura to see if we could resolve the remaining differences. We did, in what was later called the “Sushi Summit,” though Miyazawa always joked that the sake we drank contributed more than the sushi to the final outcome.
The framework agreement committed America to reduce its budget deficit and Japan to take steps over the next year to open its markets in automobile and auto parts, computers, telecommunications, satellites, medical equipment, financial services, and insurance, with objective standards for measuring success on specific timetables. I was convinced that the agreement would be economically beneficial to both the United States and Japan and that it would help Japanese reformers succeed in leading their remarkable nation to its next era of greatness. Like most such agreements, it didn’t produce all one could hope for in either country, but it was still a very good thing.
As I left Japan for Korea, the press reports back home said that my first G-7 meeting was a triumph for my personal diplomacy with the other leaders and my outreach to the Japanese people. It was nice to get some positive press coverage, and even better to have met the objectives we set for the G-7 and the Japanese negotiations. I had enjoyed getting to know and work with the other leaders. And after the G-7, I felt more confident in my ability to advance America’s interests in the world and understood why so many Presidents preferred foreign policy to the frustrations they faced on the home front. In South Korea, I visited our troops along the DMZ, which had divided North and South Korea since the armistice ending the Korean War was signed. I walked out onto the Bridge of No Return, stopping about ten feet from the stripe of white paint dividing the two countries and staring at the young North Korean soldier guarding his side in the last lonely outpost of the Cold War. In Seoul, Hillary and I were the guests of President Kim Yong-Sam in the official guest residence, which had an indoor swimming pool. When I went for a dip, music suddenly filled the air. I found myself swimming to many of my favorite tunes, from Elvis to jazz, a nice example of Korea’s famous hospitality. After a meeting with the president and a speech to the parliament, I left South Korea grateful for our long alliance and determined to maintain it.
THIRTY-FOUR
I returned to the rigors of Washington. In the third week of July, on the recommendation of Janet Reno, I dismissed the director of the FBI, William Sessions, after he refused to resign despite numerous problems within the agency. We had to find a replacement. Bernie Nussbaum urged me to choose Louis Freeh, a former FBI agent whom President Bush had appointed to the federal bench in New York after a stellar career as a federal prosecutor. When I met with Freeh, I asked him what he thought about the FBI’s assertion at Waco that they had proceeded with the raid because it was wrong to keep so many of their resources tied down in one place for so long. Without knowing what I thought, he said forthrightly that he disagreed: “They get paid to wait.” That impressed me. I knew Freeh was a Republican, but Nussbaum assured me that he was a professional and a stand-up guy who would not use the FBI for political purposes. We scheduled the announcement for the twentieth. The day before, when word got out about the appointment, a retired FBI agent who was a friend of mine called Nancy Heinrich, who ran the Oval Office operations, to tell me not to do it. He said Freeh was too political and self-serving for the current climate. It gave me pause, but I sent word back that it was too late; the offer had been extended and accepted. I would just have to trust Bernie Nussbaum’s judgment.
When we announced Freeh’s appointment in a morning ceremony in the Rose Garden, I noticed Vince Foster standing at the back, near one of the grand old magnolia trees planted by Andrew Jackson. Vince had a smile on his face, and I remember thinking he must be relieved that he and the counsel’s office were working on things like Supreme Court and FBI appointments, instead of answering endless questions about the Travel Office. The whole ceremony seemed perfect, almost too good to be true. It was, in more ways than one.
That night I appeared on Larry King’s show from the library on the ground floor of the White House to talk about my battle for the budget and whatever else was on his and his callers’ minds. Like everyone else, I liked Larry King. He has a good sense of humor and a human touch, even when he’s asking tough questions. About forty-five minutes into the program, things were going so well that Larry asked me if I’d do an extra thirty minutes, so that we could take more questions from viewers. I agreed immediately and was looking forward to it, but at the next break Mack McLarty showed up and said we had to end the interview after an hour. At first I was irritated, thinking my staff was worried that I might make a mistake if I kept going, but the look in Mack’s eyes told me something else was going on. After Larry and I wrapped up the interview and I shook hands with his crew, Mack walked me upstairs to the residence. Holding back tears, he told me Vince Foster was dead. Vince had left the Rose Garden after the ceremony for Louis Freeh, driven out to Fort Marcy Park, and shot himself with an old revolver that was a family heirloom. We had been friends virtually all our lives. Our backyards had touched when I lived with my grandparents in Hope. We had played together even before Mack and I started kindergarten. I knew Vince had been upset by the Travel Office controversy and held himself responsible for the criticism directed at the counsel’s office. He had also been wounded by questions raised about his competence and integrity in several Wall Street Journal editorials. Just the night before, I had called Vince to invite him to watch a movie with me. I was hoping to give him some encouragement, but he had already gone home for the night and said he needed to spend some time with his wife, Lisa. I did my best in our phone conversation to persuade him to shrug off the Journal editorials. The Journal was a fine paper, but not that many people read its editorials; most of those who did were, like the editorial writers, conservatives who were lost to us anyway. Vince listened, but I could tell I hadn’t convinced him. He had never been subject to public criticism before and, like so many people when they’re pounded in the press for the first time, he seemed to think that everyone had read the negative things said about him and believed them.
After Mack told me what had happened, Hillary called me from Little Rock. She already knew and was crying. Vince had been her closest friend at the Rose firm. She was frantically searching for an answer we would never completely find—why this had happened. I did my best to convince her there was nothing she could have done, all the while wondering what I could have done. Then Mack and I went over to Vince’s house to be with the family. Webb and Suzy Hubbell were there, as were several of Vince’s friends from Arkansas and the White House. I tried to console everyone, but I was hurting too, and feeling, as I had when Frank Aller killed himself, angry at Vince for doing it and angry at myself for not seeing it coming and doing something, anything, to try to stop it. I was also sad for all my friends from Arkansas who had come to Washington wanting nothing more than to serve and do good, only to find their every move second-guessed. Now Vince, the tall, handsome, strong, and self-assured person they felt was the most stable of them all, was gone.
For whatever reason, Vince came to the end of his rope. In his briefcase, Bernie Nussbaum found a note that had been torn into little pieces. When put back together, it said, “I was not meant for the job in the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here ruining people is considered sport…. The public will never believe the innocence of the Clintons and their loyal staff.” Vince was overwhelmed, exhausted, and vulnerable to attacks by people who didn’t play by the same rules he did. He was rooted in the values of honor and respect, and uprooted by those who valued power and personal assault more. And his untreated depression stripped him of the defenses that allowed the rest of us to survive. The next day I spoke to the staff, telling them that there are things in life we can’t control and mysteries we can’t understand; that I wanted them to take more care with themselves, their friends, and their families; and that we couldn’t “deaden our sensitivities by working too hard.” That last bit of advice had always been easier for me to give than to take.
We all went to Little Rock for Vince’s funeral at St. Andrew’s Catholic Cathedral, then drove home to Hope, to lay Vince to rest in the cemetery where my grandparents and father were buried. Many people with whom we’d gone to kindergarten and grade school were there. By then, I had given up trying to understand Vince’s depression and suicide in favor of accepting them and being grateful for his life. In my eulogy at the funeral, I tried to capture all of Vince’s wonderful qualities, what he meant to all of us, how much good he’d done at the White House, and how profoundly honorable he was. I quoted from Leon Russell’s moving “A Song for You”: “I love you in a place where there’s no space or time. I love you for in my life you are a friend of mine.”
It was summertime, and the watermelon crop had begun to come in. Before I left town, I stopped at Carter Russell’s place and sampled both the red-and yellow-meated ones. Then I discussed the finer points of Hope’s main product with the traveling press, who knew I needed a respite from the pain and were uncommonly kind to me that day. I flew back to Washington thinking Vince was home, where he belonged, and thanking God that so many people cared about him.
