Democracy Now! Exclusive Interview with President Bill Clinton
When President Clinton called Pacifica’s WBAI yesterday on election day morning to shore up the vote for Vice President Al Gore and First Lady Hillary Clinton, he did not expect to spend 30 minutes defending his administration’s record on the death penalty, the Middle East and racial profiling, among other issues. But that is exactly what happened when he encountered Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and Gonzalo Aburto, host of WBAI’s Alternativa Latina.
From Clinton’s decision to fly back to Arkansas to execute mentally retarded prisoner Ricky Ray Rector during the 1992 campaign, to whether he will grant executive clemency to Native American activist Leonard Peltier, to his administration’s policies in the Middle East and Latin America, Goodman and Aburto fired off questions that at one point made the President lose his cool and complain that Goodman’s questions were “hostile” and “combative”.
For the first time, Clinton addressed the Peltier issue publicly, saying that he would review the case and make a decision on whether to issue executive clemency before he leaves office in January. In response to a question on whether he would issue an executive order banning racial profiling, he said that he believed it was wrong and added that two of his own staff had recently been arrested and handcuffed for no reason.
