William Jefferson Clinton

“ People should not be able to violate the law and then say if Federal law enforcement officials come on my land to arrest me for violating the law or because I'm suspected of a crime, I have the right to kill them and then turn around and kill the people who live there. I cannot believe that any serious patriotic American believes that the conduct of those people at Waco justifies the kind of outrageous behavior we've seen here at Oklahoma City or the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that we're hearing all across this country today. ”

“ Well, they have a right to believe whatever they want. They have a right to say whatever they want. They have a right to keep and bear arms. They have a right to put on uniforms and go out on the weekends. They do not have the right to kill innocent Americans. They do not have the right to violate the law. And they do not have the right to take the position that if somebody comes to arrest them for violating the law, they're perfectly justified in killing them. ”

“ But when a movie--when movie after movie after movie after movie sort of romanticizes violence and killing and you don't see the human consequences, you don't see the faces of the mothers and the children that I saw today, the husbands and the wives, then I think too much of it can deaden the senses of a lot of Americans. ”

“ There is no such thing as a self-satisfying blow against the system. These are human beings, and there are consequences to this kind of behavior.
The other thing I think we could do, in addition to showing those people, is to ask the American people who are out there just trying to keep everybody torn up and upset all the time, purveying hate and implying at least with words that violence is all right, to consider the implications of their words and to call them on it. ”

“ Just as I cautioned the American people earlier not to stereotype any people from other countries or of different ethnic groups as being potentially responsible for this, I don't want to castigate or categorize any groups here in America and accuse them of doing something that we don't have any evidence that they have done. ”

“ President, no longer does terrorism have to be state-supported. There's terror on the cheap now. It cost the World Trade Center bomber, we understand, conceivably $3,000, $4,000 for all of what was involved, including the rental of the van. And today, I learned, that it's about $1,000 worth for the explosives and the van and so forth in the Oklahoma City bombing. What do you do about terror on the cheap?
The President. Well, you're right about that. ”

“ And when people are irresponsible with their liberties, they ought to be called up short, and they ought to be talked down by other Americans. And we need to expose these people for what they're doing. ”

“ President, there are tens, maybe more--tens of thousands of men and women dressing up on weekends in military garb going off for training because they're upset about Waco. Just what-- despite what you say, we're talking about thousands and thousands of people in this country who are furious at the Federal Government for what you say is irrational, but they believe it. ”

“ Great Britain, for example, has placed some controls over the concentrations of certain chemicals and explosives in fertilizer, for example. Are there things that can be done to eliminate availability and the accessibility of ingredients that can turn deadly? ”

“ We're going to have to be very, very tough and firm in dealing with this. We cannot allow our country to be subject to the kinds of things these poor people in Oklahoma City have been through in the last few days. ”

“ We have been working hard to try to get the legal support we need to move against terrorism, to try to make sure that we can find out who's doing these kind of things before they strike. But I do think there are some other things that we can do. ”

“ We'll unravel it. But it is true that in a free society that is very open, where technological changes bring great opportunity, they also make it possible to do destructive things on the cheap--to use your phrase. ”

“ Members of Congress have various ideas and have made suggestions. Law enforcement people and other concerned folks around the country have. They're going to gather up the best ideas and make these recommendations to me in fairly short order.
Mr. Bradley. Mr. President, do you think that what happened in Oklahoma City is an isolated incident carried out by a handful of people or is part of a larger, more coordinated effort involving a larger network of these groups? ”

“ There may be some things that we can do both to eliminate them or to make it more difficult to aggregate them or to make sure that the elements will be identified in some way if they're ever used in a bomb so people know they're far more likely to get caught. ”