THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release September 15, 2000 PRESS BRIEFING BY JOE LOCKHART The James S. Brady Briefing Room 1:00 P.M. EDT Q Joe, does the White House take issue with the characterization of the President's remarks yesterday on the Wen Ho Lee case as a rebuke of the Attorney General, of the Justice Department, of federal investigators? MR. LOCKHART: I think I said yesterday it was not a rebuke of any particular person. I think the President made clear today that it was not -- that he did not view his remarks as directed toward the Attorney General. The President believes very strongly in her, the job she's done and in her abilities. There are questions, though, as he said, that should be answered, and we hope they will be. ... Q Joe, on Wen Ho Lee, what sort of follow up review is the White House considering? MR. LOCKHART: Well, there were some discussions yesterday between the White House staff and the Justice Department. I think as the President -- get it today, he will take an opportunity at some point to talk to the Attorney General. I don't know what form it will take, but I think we're looking for some sort of process that can look at the narrow question that the President posed about holding someone pretrial, you know, without the possibility of bail. I think he put into perspective today many of the important issues about what is crucial here is finding out what happened to the tapes, looking at a very serious national security violation by the gentleman in question. But there are questions about the legal issues surrounding the pretrial bail, and the timing of the bail hearing versus the arguments made in the bail hearing and the arguments made subsequently in the plea bargain. That needs some examination. I think he was fairly clear on that. Q Is he considering, though, appointing some sort of outside person? MR. LOCKHART: The conversations haven't gone that far. I know that there was some very helpful advice provided on editorial pages about how we should do this -- the very same pages that provided exactly the opposite advice some months ago. But I think we'll ignore the editorials and rely on our own counsel. Q Joe, do you think -- the President said he doesn't think racial bias was a factor here. Do you think that just an atmosphere of hysteria may have been a factor in -- MR. LOCKHART: I'll tell you, we take these kinds of issues very seriously. And I think when there are troubling questions, we think there should be answers. And I think the President was very clear on what the American people deserve. And it's certainly our hope, although it is not a hope that we genuinely believe anything will be done about, that others will take some time and do some examination. I think there was a climate of -- a very difficult climate that was generated in this town when this story came out, a climate generated by some very explosive and near-hysterical investigative reporting, a climate that was fueled by explosive comments from political leaders, including members of Congress. And I hope everybody takes a moment, looks at how they handled this situation, and looks to see if in the future they can do better -- just as I think the executive branch will do. Q Joe, do you believe that the media reporting and the explosive atmosphere that you've described affected the prosector's decisions on which charges to bring and how this case was -- MR. LOCKHART: That would be a question you would have to put to the prosecutors, and they will stand up, I'm certain, and answer their questions. It's certainly my hope that those who wrote the stories will also be willing to stand up and talk about their motivations and whether there is anything they can learn in the aftermath of their reporting. Q What about the question of an apology? The judge raised the fact that he could not apologize for the executive branch, but he could apologize for what he thought had happened in his courtroom. Is there any thought being given to contacting Mr. Lee and making any kind of formal apology? MR. LOCKHART: I think given the limited and the proper role, and hands-off role that was played here by the White House, there is no discussion of that. I think the President's obligation, as he addressed directly yesterday and then again this morning, was when questions are raised, when they are legitimate questions, when people are troubled by things -- and he, indeed, is troubled, himself, by some of these questions -- we should look at it. We should look at it and see what it is we can learn from this experience and see if anything needs to be done to improve in the future. Q So who should apologize in this case here? Is Mr. Lee due an apology? MR. LOCKHART: I'm in no position to make a judgment on that. Q Joe, can you clarify something I think you said this morning? The President, when he had the opportunity, I guess, to talk about this earlier but chose not to talk about it until yesterday, you suggested that the press would have jumped on him if he had made a statement earlier -- MR. LOCKHART: No. I think, quite rightly, the President -- again, we're looking at a very narrow band of issues here in this case, and we shouldn't loose sight of that. But there were -- he had an understanding of the reasons for holding this gentleman without bail, and within the last week or so -- and I think, as he said this morning, it is a very high standard in this country, as it should be. I think he said that we often lean in the other direction on this, for good reason. The questions are generated, the specific questions are generated from the fact that between a bail hearing on one day and three or four days later, those reasons seem to have dissipated in a plea agreement, as far as the risk of -- posed by allowing the gentleman before a trial out of prison. So I think he has a general, as I think most Americans do, high standard, and always a sense of unease when someone is being held without the possibility for bail. And in this question -- the questions are generated and derived from, just in the last week, you know, the difference between where they were from the bail hearing and where they were in the trial, or the plea agreement. Q But it wasn't a fear of an adverse press reaction that kept him from speaking out earlier? MR. LOCKHART: No, I think the -- I think what I was referring to yesterday, and I think he touched on a little bit this morning is, that there were certainly -- and the little that he knew about this -- there was a case made for why they had to go in this direction. And I think that you would all understand, and would have, I think, had a field day reporting, if somehow he tried to intervene in this case, as somehow being politically motivated. Q Could the President -- does the President think he could have done anything to sort of calm the hysteria you described earlier? MR. LOCKHART: Well, let me tell you something, because I happened to be around here during that period, and I think most of you who talked to me on a variety of bases, heard a pretty clear and consistent message, which is -- and particularly with some news organizations -- that we believe that you were out ahead of yourself. There were a lot of people jumping to a lot of conclusions, and we ought to sit back and make suer that we know all the facts. So I don't think that in this particular case that, at least from this particular podium in this particular building, we'll take the blame for creating whatever sort of environment we were in, in this case. And I would suggest that those of you who didn't talk to me during that period talk to your colleagues who did. END 1:25 P.M. EDT