‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Sept. 30, 2007

MR. TIM RUSSERT: Our issues this Sunday: In his third annual Global Initiative conference, former President Bill Clinton convenes leaders and some very recognizable personalities from around the world to discuss poverty, religion, the environment and more; all the while, continuing his role as supporter in chief for his wife’s presidential campaign. Policy and politics through the eyes of our guest, the 42^nd president of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton.

Then, the three leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination refuse to pledge a withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq by January of 2013. The four leading Republican candidates for president skip a debate on minority issues. Insights from reporters Dan Balz of The Washington Post and David Gregory of NBC News; and analysis from Pat Buchanan of MSNBC and Tavis Smiley of PBS.

But first, on Friday I sat down with President Clinton, talked about his Global Initiative conference and his wife’s presidential campaign.

Mr. President, welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.

FMR. PRES. BILL CLINTON: Thank you, Tim.

MR. RUSSERT: Third Clinton Global Initiative, what did you achieve?

MR. CLINTON: Well, we had more commitments for more money than ever before, but the more interesting thing to me was we had two new breakthroughs. We had more of our really interesting commitments involve larger and larger numbers of people working together, which is what I wanted to have. I wanted to bring people together, have them work together. And I’ll give you some examples of that. The second thing is we have really democratized this now. We—it looks like we’re going to have over half million people following this over the Internet. We’ve had thousands of people visit our Web site, mycommitment.org, to create a community of small givers and—so they can learn from each other and work. And it’ll be like a continuous CGI all year long on this Web site for small donors. So those are the two new things.

But, an example, we had two utilities commit over $5 million in expenses to a new form of solar energy which will be much more effective and which will take a lot of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and create new jobs. We had a very interesting small business opportunity in poor countries I never thought of, involving reading glasses, where it turns out that only—in very poor countries, only 5 percent of the people who can read but need reading glasses to do it have them. So a guy raised a bunch of money to set up hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of small businesses to help hundreds of thousands of people read in a way that will—you know, these are things that I would never have known anything about, where just when they get together and start talking, they come up with these ideas. And there are lots of other things that have happened in health care and education and the economy for America and for the world. But the, the two big new things are that we have more people working together, which is what I wanted to do, across all these geographic and other lines, and we’ve got a whole new world out there, a virtual world where everybody’s participating.

MR. RUSSERT: When you say money raised, our viewers, I think, would be interested in this. The money doesn’t go to you or to a foundation.

MR. CLINTON: No, no, I don’t touch any of it.

MR. RUSSERT: You broker people, in effect.

MR. CLINTON: Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT: You take someone with money, identify a problem and put them together in a partnership.

MR. CLINTON: Yeah. Once in a while I go into one, if asked. For example, I’m part of a commitment this year by mostly Canadian mining companies to start to, to organize a global effort beginning in Latin America and Africa in mining communities for the mining companies can put something back into those communities and give people a sustainable income, repair the environment, and make sure they’ve got a way to make a living when the mines play out. This is a huge deal because, with the global population going up, that means all mining will go up in value all across the world. People extract more things because more people needs greater use of them. So now we’ve got these miners that want to raise up to a billion dollars to build up these mining communities. It’s a huge deal. I’m going to help them in the way we do our AIDS program, in the way we do our development program with Tom Hunter in Africa. But almost 100 percent of these programs, I never touch any of this money, don’t try to raise any money. I’m trying to get other people to help and work with each other.

MR. RUSSERT: Global warming. Many of folks in China will say, “You know, United States, you had your chance. You became this great industrial democracy. That’s what we’re going through now, and you want to clamp these standards on us. Don’t do that to us.”

MR. CLINTON: Well, you know, I’ve actually changed my view on this a little bit. Because even though Al Gore and I did help to develop the Kyoto Protocol, and I strongly supported it, I said at the time I thought India and China should be a part of it at a more graduated level. I still think they should do it, and they should do it for themselves. If you look at the air quality in Beijing, you look at the challenge they’re facing with the Olympics coming up. If you look at the horrible health problems afflicting India, where they—in the capital, New Delhi, we had a kid fall into the river south of New Delhi in the last 12 months, and they got him out in time to avoid drowning, but he ingested so much poison stuff that he die, four-year-old child.

So the truth is that, if you develop in the old-fashioned way, there are enormous costs. And while I don’t—I believe that America should go on and adopt a cap and trade system and join with the Europeans and Japanese—because I think it’s a big economic boon to America—I think that if we don’t get the Chinese and the Indians in the system, we can’t stop global warming. And I think what we have to do is to prove to them by our example that they can make money and develop without putting as many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, without burning as much coal that’s not clean, and doing all the things we did. We have to show them and then work with them to have an economical way for them to be responsible citizens without giving up growth.

Can it be done? I’m convinced it can be done, but I think we’re going to have to demonstrate it. We can’t just tell them, you know, as if they’re in the same position we are, “We’ll jump off this cliff together.” That’s not the way it works. We got to do it for our own benefit, and then show them it’ll benefit them.

MR. RUSSERT: I want to talk some politics with you. The other night, the Democratic debate in New Hampshire, I read a statement...

MR. CLINTON: Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT: ...of our conversation from last year.

MR. CLINTON: I remember that very well.

(Videotape, September 24, 2006)

MR. CLINTON: Every one of us can imagine the following scenario: We get lucky, we get the number three guy in al-Qaeda, and we know there’s a big bomb going off in America in three days, and we know this guy knows where it is, know we have the right and the responsibility to beat it out of him.

They could set up a law where the president could make a finding or could guarantee a pardon or could guarantee the submission of that sort of thing post-facto to the intelligence court just like we do now with the wiretaps.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Now, I didn’t tell Senator Clinton, who had made that comment to me. This was her answer. Let’s watch.

(Videotape)

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY): As a matter of policy, it cannot be American policy period.

Now, there are a lot of other things that we need to be doing that I wish we were: better intelligence, making our, you know, our country better respected around the world working to have more allies. But these hypotheticals are very dangerous, because they open a great big hole in what should be an attitude that our country and our president takes toward the appropriate treatment of everyone. And I think it’s dangerous to go down this path.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Doesn’t seem as if she’s for the exception that you were outlining.

MR. CLINTON: She was great, though. I thought—and I thought the next part of it, where she said...

MR. RUSSERT: We’re going to get to that!

MR. CLINTON: Yeah. You know, I, I went back and read the whole transcript, and, as general point, I think she’s right. That is I think America’s policy should be to oppose torture, to honor the Geneva Conventions for several reasons. One is, it’s almost always counterproductive. If you beat somebody up, they’ll tell you what they want to hear. Two is, it, it really hurts us in the rest of the world and helps to recruit other terrorists. And thirdly, it makes our own people vulnerable to torture.

You know, there’s a one in a million chance that you might be alone somewhere, and you’re Jack Bauer on “24.” That’s the Jack Bauer example, right? It happens every season with Jack Bauer, but to—in the real world it doesn’t happen very much. If you have a policy which legitimizes this, it’s a slippery slope and you get in the kind of trouble we’ve been in here with Abu Ghraib, with Guantanamo, with lots of other examples.

And I’m not even sure what I said is right now. I think what happens is the honest truth is that Tim Russert, Bill Clinton, people filming this show, if we were the Jack Bauer person and it was six hours to the bomb or whatever, you don’t know what you would do, and you have to—but I think what our policy ought to be is to be uncompromisingly opposed to terror—I mean to torture, and that if you’re the Jack Bauer person, you’ll do whatever you do and you should be prepared to take the consequences. And I think the consequences will be imposed based on what turns out to be the truth. I think there are a lot of areas in life where you don’t. But I, I loved how she handled this whole thing. I guess you want to show the rest now.

MR. RUSSERT: But, but not heavy formal exception.

MR. CLINTON: Yeah, I don’t think you should now. The more I think about it, and the more I have seen that, if you have any kind of formal exception, people just drive a truck through it, and they’ll say “Well, I thought it was covered by the exception.” I think, I think it’s better not to have one. And if you happen to be the actor in that moment which, as far as I know, has not occurred in my experience or President Bush’s experience since we’ve been really dealing with this terror, but I—you actually had the Jack Bauer moment, we call it, I think you should be prepared to live with the consequences. And yet, ironically, if you look at the show, every time they get the president to approve something, the president gets in trouble, the country gets in trouble. And when Bauer goes out there on his own and is prepared to live with the consequences, it always seems to work better.

MR. RUSSERT: I then...

MR. CLINTON: So Hillary’s probably right about this.

MR. RUSSERT: I then asked—told Senator Clinton my source, and let’s watch.

(Videotape)

RUSSERT: The guest who laid out this scenario for me with that proposed solution was William Jefferson Clinton last year.

SEN. CLINTON: Well...

MR. RUSSERT: So he disagrees with you.

SEN. CLINTON: Well, he’s not standing here right now.

MR. RUSSERT: So there is a disagreement.

SEN. CLINTON: Well, I’ll talk to him later.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Tell me about—you’ve seen that look before?

MR. CLINTON: I have. Several times over the last 35 years. I loved it.

MR. RUSSERT: How was that conversation? Did you talk about it?

MORE FROM MEET THE PRESS

Meet the Press Section Front

Nov. 8: Casey, Barbour, Rendell, roundtable, Brokaw Nov. 1: Tim Geithner, David Plouffe, roundtable Oct. 25: Cornyn, Schumer, Burnett, Sorkin, roundtable Oct. 18: Jarrett, Dodd, Kyl, Shriver, Podesta Oct. 11: Levin, Graham, McCaffrey, Myers, roundtable Oct. 4: Ambassador Susan Rice, roundtable Sept. 27: Bill Clinton, Paterson, Kyl, Webb Sept. 20: President Obama, Sen. Graham, Rep. Boehner, roundtable Sept. 13: Durbin, Cornyn, Dean, Gingrich, roundtable Sept. 6: Axelrod, roundtable Meet the Press Section Front   Add Meet the Press headlines to your news reader: