The White House Briefing Room
August 13, 1998
PRESS BRIEFING BY MIKE MCCURRY AND COLONEL P.J. CROWLEY
THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ______________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release August 13, 1998 PRESS BRIEFING BY MIKE MCCURRY AND COLONEL P.J. CROWLEY The Briefing Room 2:12 P.M. EDT MR. MCCURRY: Since, as you'll quickly see, I have nothing on anything, P.J. -- Colonel Crowley, who, in my absence the last week, I think has done a masterful job in talking about the events in East Africa -- he went out to Andrews with the President today, and if anyone wants to start at that point, Colonel Crowley is here. COLONEL CROWLEY: I think, just to show you how I can date myself, I feel like Arnold Zanker (sp) about to give the podium back to Walter Cronkite after the -- how many years ago was that? A few. (Laughter.) Q Who's Walter Cronkite? (Laughter.) COLONEL CROWLEY: Touche. Q That was 1967. COLONEL CROWLEY: We were all younger. Q The President of the local -- COLONEL CROWLEY: Very good. You, of course, were observing the very moving tribute to the 12 Americans, 10 of whom came home this morning out at Andrews Air Force Base. For about an hour prior to the ceremony the President and First Lady met with the families in an area adjacent to the ceremony site. They were escorted through the room -- each family was situated at a separate table -- by Under Secretary Tom Pickering who was kind of overseeing the support that the State Department and the other agencies have provided to the families as they've either come to Washington or returning to the United States. The President and the First Lady spent about five minutes or so -- some families were a little larger, some smaller -- with each. I think you could feel in the room a tremendous sense of loss, of course, but also an enormous sense of pride that these families had in the service that their sons or daughters, husbands or wives, sisters or brothers performed in service of the country. During the course of the hour, Secretary Cohen, Secretary Albright, after she landed with the C-17 -- also Secretary Shalala and Surgeon General Satcher also were in and out moving and greeting the families as well. A couple of things that struck the President -- I think each of the families, in way or another, had a history of service to the country. Many had served in the military or other ways of serving the country. So I think in a sense they understood the dedication that these people manifested and also the risks that were involved in the career choices that they had made. The President afterwards, on the helicopter back, said how fortunate we are as a country to have people like this serving in the foreign service or serving in the military. And I think he was also struck by the strength of the families. They obviously had enormous pride in the accomplishments of their loved ones even through the loss that they are suffering. There were many smiles in the room. They were telling the President stories and the First Lady stories that brought these great Americans alive for the benefit of the First Family. And a couple of families had some just practical requests of the President that the staff is already working just in terms of how they are coping with the immediate aftermath of this tragedy. One family, for example, who has a nephew in the service wanted to be sure that the nephew would be able to return home in time for a funeral. So that gives you a sense of the ceremony that you saw, or of the family meeting beforehand. But I think the President was struck by the extraordinary strength that these families have manifested throughout this tragedy. Q P.J., did any of the families express concerns that security had not been up to standard at the embassy in Nairobi? COLONEL CROWLEY: The President specifically -- we asked him that afterwards, and he said no. Q P.J., can you say -- can you give us some idea of how high a priority it has been for the administration to push for funding for security improvements? COLONEL CROWLEY: I think as we explained yesterday, this will be a high priority. The President gave clear instructions to the State Department and OMB to come back with a prioritized list of additional security measures that can be taken at various embassies around the world. And we expect that list in a couple of days, and we would expect to consult with Congress about an emergency supplemental. Q I know it's something that you're concerned about now. The real question is, what about before the embassy attacks? And obviously, it's been 13 years since an attack; is it something that both the administration and Congress just didn't seem to be quite that concerned about? COLONEL CROWLEY: Jim, actually quite the opposite. There was a detailed briefing last evening at the State Department which clearly showed the priority that we have placed on security at our embassies around the world. This was an embassy, for example, in Nairobi, that had undergone a series of security reviews. In each case, once there was a review there were practical implementations made that improved the security measurably at the embassy. The one thing that was agreed to by the State Department was that this was an embassy that did not meet the Inman standards, and it was not something that could be done in the time that Ambassador Bushnell surfaced it with the Department. Hey, she said, we need a new building; the Department agreed. But it would have been four years at a minimum before we could have reconstruction at Nairobi, so that would not have changed the outcome. Q You acknowledged yesterday there was a shortfall of funds. What I'm trying to get a sense of is whether or not you think that is because Congress has not been sensitive enough to this, or that the administration perhaps, having had 13 years of no attacks, wasn't quite as concerned about it. I mean, why have we had a shortfall for what you think -- where you should have had more money? COLONEL CROWLEY: I don't think that there is an ambassador or a commander or anyone who would say I'm always going to have everything that I need. These requirements have been clearly identified. The State Department is working through these requirements in a systematic way, making measurable security improvements as the process goes along. But as was explained yesterday at the State Department, there's a great deal of competition around the world for new construction, for example. That's something that is prioritized at the State Department based on the construction needs around the world -- for example, if there's a new country that pops up, there's a new embassy requirement. If a country decides to move a capital, then there's a construction requirement there as well. They had made a prudent judgment based on their risk evaluation of this embassy that, relative to other posts, this was not as high a priority as other locations for new construction. Q Is it clear, P.J., why -- the Ambassador seemed to feel fairly strongly about the risk. Is it clear why the Secretary of State, even if it wouldn't have changed the outcome now, why the decision wasn't made to either ask for funds to go ahead with a new embassy or -- COLONEL CROWLEY: I think what was clear from the briefing you received yesterday at the State Department was that every time there was a security issue raised at that embassy, just as there are in others, reviews were undertaken and measurable improvements were made. The one thing that could not be done was the construction of a new embassy. Q Why couldn't -- because there were no funds for it? COLONEL CROWLEY: It's a management of risk that is reviewed by a board over at the State Department, and they set the construction priorities overseas, based on the funds that were available. Q How concerned is the President that on two or three occasions, Ambassador Bushnell asked for help, and it was ignored? COLONEL CROWLEY: Wolf, I take exception to that. Her request for assistance was not ignored. She raised her concerns; reviews were done even as earlier as this year; funds were appropriated for additional improvements that, it turns out, probably were not made at the time of the blast, but had been programmed to be done. So all of the concerns that she raised, all of the concerns, likewise, that Central Command raised, were clearly addressed and action was being taken. Q Some of the critics say the tragedy is it takes a tragedy like this to get the administration and Congress to appropriate the funds to protect U.S. diplomats abroad. COLONEL CROWLEY: Wolf, security has been a clear priority for the State Department, for the administration. As we've seen that terrorism has been an emerging threat for us in the last decade or so, both the State Department, Defense Department, all agencies that have employees serving overseas have taken measurable steps to improve security. In fact, the Defense Department said a couple of days ago that actually instances of threats against Americans and attacks against Americans have actually been diminishing as a result of some of the steps that have been taken to improve security around the world. Q Did any of the families complain to the President about anything, either the security issues beforehand or the treatment and timing of what's happened in the aftermath of the bombing? COLONEL CROWLEY: No. Not that they expressed to the President. Q Do you have any developments to report in terms of the investigation -- any developments you can report in the investigation of the bombing? COLONEL CROWLEY: Actually, I think there has been a briefing today in Africa by Kenya officials and FBI officials, and I will defer to that briefing. Q The reasons why she kept asking for money to enhance or beef up security -- were there specific threats against this embassy? COLONEL CROWLEY: Again, Helen, on the aspect of threats and actions taken, other than the systematic reviews that we had done at this embassy and others, other warnings that were in the system at the time, I think we'll refer to the investigation. Q What improvements were planned for the Nairobi embassy and why were they held up? COLONEL CROWLEY: I think I'll defer to the State Department on the specifics. Pat Kennedy gave a detailed briefing on that yesterday. I don't know the specifics. Q P.J., on the review that the President has ordered, is it strictly applying to embassies? What I'm saying is, what about U.S. installations. worldwide? Why wouldn't they be at risk? COLONEL CROWLEY: To the extent that -- I'll check on that. But it was a direction to the Secretary of State. I will check and see to the extent that there may be some concerns within Defense Department or other agencies. Absolutely, if there are needs that need to be met around the world, we'll do it. Q P.J., there were reports this morning that the President's going to ask Congress for a billion dollars, approximately, for work on embassies. Is that accurate? COLONEL CROWLEY: I think there's no final figure until we receive a report back from the State Department and OMB in terms of what they think the priorities are. Q Did Clinton have any reaction after he met with the families other than what he said in his public remarks? COLONEL CROWLEY: I mean, he was clearly struck, he was clearly moved by the event and by both the distinguished service that is obvious when you read the bios of these 12 Americans. But also, you could see palpably in the room how the families that have so well supported these great Americans -- you could feel that, you could see that in the way that they reacted when the President and First Lady came over to them. The mood started out, it was a very solid group of people, very proud of what their loved ones have accomplished. I think it became a little more poignant towards the tail end of the reception as they realized that the plane had landed with their loved ones on board. But it's what you would expect on an occasion like this -- pride, sorrow, joy, sadness all mixed in, and the First Family felt that the same way. Q P.J., in that connection, did you notice any tears in the President's eyes during this meeting? COLONEL CROWLEY: You could tell he and the First Lady were both deeply moved. They spent a lot of time with each individual family member. In particular, the President spent a lot of time -- two or three of the families had very young children, bent down a couple of times to talk to the young children and make sure that they were taken care of during the course of the event. Again, what he said on the helicopter was how lucky we are to have both these Americans who have served us so well and the families who are so strong and have supported them so well. Q P.J., is there a sense that there is a new threat environment now as a result of these two attacks? I mean, we're looking for a lot of extra money to do medium- and short-term security improvements, things that you might have pursued before these attacks. So is there a sense that you have a new level of threat that you must now respond to? COLONEL CROWLEY: Jim, I think if you look back to the start of the administration, the President has been at the forefront in this post-Cold War environment of viewing where the new threats were going to come from, both from terrorism, from cyber-terrorism, from counternarcotics, from international crime -- that's something that he spoke about back in May. So this has been something that we have -- we have seen attacks on Americans growing through the years. We have anticipated in the post-Cold War environment that this would be something that we'd be confronting more and more. We've taken concrete steps to both improve security, improve the way the federal government anticipates these kinds of threats, combats terrorism in improved cooperation with our allies and partners around the world; have reorganized the government and reorganized the office of the President to be able to respond more aggressively to these kinds of emerging threats. So this has been something that I don't think we're surprised -- regrettably, we're not surprised by what has happened, but it is clearly something we anticipate as being the emergent threat for today and one we'll face into the next century. Q But you're asking for additional emergency money now that you didn't ask for a month ago, so clearly, something has changed. COLONEL CROWLEY: Well, clearly, we had a very coordinated bombing against two embassies last Friday. We are assessing the implications of that, and to the extent that there are specific steps we can take in light of that, we're prepared to take them. Q Did either the President or the family members mention in any way the possibility of retaliation or the desirability of that? COLONEL CROWLEY: I think the President, as did the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, spoke clearly about our determination to see that the perpetrators of this crime see justice. Q P.J., any progress in finding those responsible? COLONEL CROWLEY: The investigation, Wolf, continues. Q P.J., is there anything on Iraq? What's the U.S. -- COLONEL CROWLEY: Before we leave this, you guys gave me a little bit of homework yesterday to follow up on. There were questions yesterday about the United States policy towards assassinations. I want to report back that Executive Order 12333 prohibits assassination by the United States government. It states, quote -- that's true of spokesmen as well as other government officials -- (laughter) -- "no person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States government shall engage in or conspire to engage in assassination." And while we repeat our objective to bring the perpetrators of these terrorist attacks to justice, I'm not aware of any plans to change this directive. Q Well, that was the question, P.J. We knew the policy. The question was whether the President thought a new law or change of policy might now be necessary. COLONEL CROWLEY: We contemplate no change in that directive. Q What year was that executive order? COLONEL CROWLEY: It was 1974. Q So that would have been Ford? COLONEL CROWLEY: Ford. ..................... Q Before you leave, along the lines of the assassination report you gave us, is there a presidential executive order or directive on the subject of extraterritorial arrests that you might be in a position to share with us? COLONEL CROWLEY: On that issue, I think I'd probably refer you to Justice on exactly -- we have extradition treaties with a number of countries, and that is you work through law enforcement channels. Q There is a policy in place now which allows that as far as our government is concerned. COLONEL CROWLEY: Again, I defer to Justice on those kinds of legal questions. Q P.J., on that executive order, would that also bar action like shooting up a terrorist's safe house or dropping a bomb on a terrorist's home? COLONEL CROWLEY: I don't think it's appropriate to get into a legal seminar here. There's a very clear declaration of policy there in that statement and we have no plans to change it. Q What does that definition mean? COLONEL CROWLEY: It says we do not engage in assassination, period. Q Does it define assassination -- so that's up to an interpretation? Q The killing of somebody without the color of law. ................... MR. MCCURRY: I think President Clinton has participated both at Dover, and I believe at Andrews as well, and, unfortunately, has had too many occasions like that to celebrate. Let me underscore two things that P.J. said first. The briefing that Assistant Secretary for State for Administration Patrick Kennedy gave last night at the State Department, which was both informative and heartfelt, covered a lot of the same questions that you've posed. So if you have not seen that transcript from State Department, you should get that. The second point I would make is for six years this administration has been trying to make clear the case both to Congress and the American people that we don't spend all that it takes to assert America's presence overseas in the way sometimes we would like. The Function 150 account in our federal government represents something like 1 percent of what we spend as a government. If you ask most Americans, they think it's much higher than that. And one of the arguments we've made is that chiefs of mission, as they try to carry out the work of U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy abroad, have to balance out risk assessment with performance of mission. And sometimes it requires difficult choices when resources are scarce. I think this is another argument that to do what we expect of the United States of America in the world requires the kind of support and funding that this administration has sought. Q But, Mike, you're saying you believe the administration pushed as hard as it should have or -- MR. MCCURRY: I know that we have pushed very, very hard over the last six years to get the kind of funding for the U.S. presence overseas that this administration believes is warranted in the post-Cold War era. And from that account comes the resources that are available to an ambassador both to protect the mission, but also to perform the mission, to carry out the kind of work that these brave U.S. personnel carried out and that others every day carry out. Q But on the matter of U.S. embassies abroad and construction and security, hasn't Congress increased the funding over what the administration asked for? MR. MCCURRY: There have been some increases if you look at specific programs. And remember, too, that the military has done some assessments, particularly in the wake of the Khobar bombings, on other U.S. installations. So there's different pots of money for different types of programs. But it generally comes out of the 150 account, which is the account that we use to support our overseas presence, and as this administration has argued, has been under-funded given the challenges that we face. Q Mike, are you saying Congress shares the blame here for what happened? MR. MCCURRY: No, this is not a question of blame; it's a question of making a positive case for support for the kind of work these diplomats were doing and hundreds of thousands of other diplomats do around the world every single day. And to acknowledge that when you have scarce resources, you have to set priorities -- and Pat Kennedy described very clearly last night that the question of a new embassy in Nairobi ranked less in priority than others. And I think in a very heartfelt way, he said that choice -- in hindsight, of course -- is a tragic one, but it's the reality of what American administrations have been doing for quite some time now. Q Mike, can I just follow up on that one point -- ............... Q Getting back to the security of U.S. embassies abroad, since it's a matter of money, limited number of dollars available, that you have to go through priorities -- MR. MCCURRY: And an assessment of the threat and reassessments of the threats when you have tragedies like the ones that have been experienced. Q Would the President be willing to make an exception of the budget surplus for Social Security in order to protect the U.S. embassies abroad? MR. MCCURRY: Requests for emergency funding by the Budget Act fall outside the calculations that are made for long-term surpluses -- I think is right. When you make an emergency supplemental request, it doesn't count against what the overall numbers are. For exactly that reason -- if you need to do it, you don't have to calculate it as part of the surplus. Q What if the President said, let's just use some of the budget surplus to build new embassies? MR. MCCURRY: The point is you don't have to use "the surplus" because emergency supplemental requests are considered differently by federal law. Q Do you think the billion-dollar figure is about right for the supplemental? MR. MCCURRY: I don't know. Q Two years ago when Senator Phil Gramm was chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that was over the State Department, he accused them of building marble palaces, in reference to the embassies. And there was a great deal of hostile rhetoric toward the State Department budget at the time. Can you talk about that and the kind of politics that's been involved with the State Department? MR. MCCURRY: Well, there have been -- I mean, when there has been debate about the State Department budget, it's been good that there has at least been a debate. I think the problem has been more one of lack of engagement. People are not -- you frequently here the argument, why are we spending all that money overseas? The answer is because we're doing very important work overseas and we need places to do it and those places need to be secure and they need to be adequately funded. My point -- the larger debate has been a more interesting one, which is that most Americans don't know how much we spend overseas. It's far less than they think. You ask them, how much do you think we spend on our presence overseas, and they say, 10, 15 percent. And they think it's too much. Then they say, well, what do you think is about right? And they say 5 to 7 percent. And then when you tell them it's really only 1 percent, they are usually quite surprised by that. So I think it's a question of helping people understand what our commitments are in the world, helping them understand what it takes to get the job done, and hopefully doing it in an environment where we don't need a tragedy to underscore the reality. ..................... Q The request for upgrading the Nairobi embassy was made only recently, so there is no indication that if Congress had been appropriating the amount of money that the administration says it has wanted, that it would have changed this specific situation, is there? MR. MCCURRY: As made clear by Pat Kennedy last night, correct. ............. THE PRESS: Thank you. END 2:58 P.M. EDT #528-08/13