 Good evening. Be seated. I have an important announcement. In two weeks, I will send Vice President Bush to Geneva to present to the Forty Nation Conference on Disarmament a bold American initiative for a comprehensive worldwide ban on chemical weapons. Our proposal would prohibit the production, possession, and use of chemical weapons. The shortcomings of early chemical weapons treaties have been made tragically clear in recent years. Chemical weapons have been used against defenseless peoples in Afghanistan and Southeast Asia and in the conflict between Iran and Iraq. The use of these terrible weapons also has serious implications for our own security. The Soviet Union's extensive arsenal of chemical weapons threatens US forces. It requires the United States to maintain a limited retaliatory capability of its own until we achieve an effective ban. We must be able to deter a chemical attack against us or our allies. And without a modern and credible deterrent, the prospects for achieving a comprehensive ban would be nil. Our comprehensive treaty proposal can bring the day closer when the world will prohibit all chemical weapons. But verification of a chemical weapons ban won't be easy. Only an effective monitoring and enforcement package can ensure international confidence in such an agreement. The United States is, therefore, developing bold and sound verification procedures. This latest initiative reflects my continuing strong commitment to arms control. Our administration seeks to move forward in several areas. I'm pleased, for example, that the United States is also participating in a promising new multilateral negotiation dealing with confidence-building measures in Europe and in the recently resumed East-West talks on reducing conventional forces in Europe. We're working closely with our NATO allies to try to make progress in all these areas. I can't report these promising developments, however, without expressing my deep personal regret that the Soviet Union still has not returned to the two negotiations on nuclear arms reductions, the start and the INF talks, which it walked away from late last year. The United States and many other countries have urged repeatedly that the Soviets return to these talks. So far, they have ignored the will of the world. I hope that the Soviet leadership will respond to our new initiatives, not only by negotiating seriously on chemical weapons, but also by joining us in the urgent task of achieving real reductions in nuclear arms. And the Vice President's mission is a vital one, and we wish him Godspeed. And now, Helen. Secretary of State Gert Schultz is advocating a wider, greater use of military force, a show of force around the world, and also preemptive strikes against potential terrorists. And this week, you slammed the door on negotiations for killer satellites, which could lead to an arms race in space. My question is, how do these moves serve the cause of peace? And do you think that the country is really ready for wider involvement, military involvement around the world? I don't think that George meant to imply anything of that kind, or that we're going to get more militant or anything. I think he was trying to express to those people that have been so concerned about arms and whether there's an arms race, and that is that your military strength is a definite part of diplomacy. And I think this is what he was trying to explain. With regard to the space weapons, this is a situation in which the Soviet Union is ahead of us and already has in place such a weapon. We are still in the stage of studying such a thing. The great problem that we have, and we're very willing to enter into a treaty with regard to outlawing such weapons, except that it so far seems almost impossible to verify such a weapon, if not actually impossible. And if that's true, then we again must have a deterrent. Mr. President, you're one who always says nothing is impossible, and you're going to try on chemical weapons. Why don't you on the killer satellite? Well, in both of them we're trying, but we, as we say, we have to face the reality that before you can place any confidence in such a treaty, you must be confident that you have the one thing that the Soviets have been the most reluctant to give in any treaties that we've ever had, or that we have with them. And that is verification procedures. Mr. President, more than a dozen members of your administration have left under some sort of a cloud, and this is what the Democrats are calling the sleaze factor, are you concerned that voters might think there's a lack of integrity in the people that you've hired? And how are you going to deal with this as a campaign issue? Well, in the first place I reject the use of the word sleaze, and I don't think that it fits any of the situation that we have here. I'll repeat what I have said many times before in over a period of years. I believe the halls of government are as sacred as our temples of worship, and nothing but the highest integrity is required of those who serve in government. But at the same time I also respect very much something that is very typically American, and that is you are innocent until proven guilty, and we're having an awful lot and have for the past several years of guilt by accusation. And I intend to protect that particular American tradition, and I would think that you would all feel a shared responsibility in doing the same thing, that you're not guilty simply because you've been accused. Now, I will be the first to remove anyone in the administration that does not have the highest integrity, and I adhere to that at the same time, however, I'm not going to take any action that is based on accusation without proof, and I'm not going to take any action in any case for political expediency. Oh, is this all politics that's behind this, and if that's the case, why have you let some of these people leave? Well, some of these people have simply, they have left on their own, and they have left simply because they recognize that while they remain a part of the administration, the accusations and the charges will continue. Now others have not felt that way, and a great many have been cleared, but it's a strange thing that their names keep popping up again by the same ones who were the first to throw the accusations out. Mr. President, with regard to your proposal to ban chemical weapons, isn't this a proposal another way to get Congress what they have failed to do for the last three years, which is appropriate money for chemical weapons, and what do we say if our adversaries accuse us of talking peace but preparing for war? Well, I don't think the accusation would stand up if they said that. The situation is that we haven't produced any such weapons for 15 years. The Soviet Union has a massive arsenal and is ahead of us in many areas having to do with chemical warfare. Now if there is ever one example or one place where there is an example of the power of a deterrent force, it is in the field of chemical weapons, and I hand you World War II, when all the nations had them and no one used them, even in the most desperate moments when defeat was staring at them because they knew that the others had them and could use them in return. The second thing is if we're going to have a chemical warfare ban or a treaty banning them, you've got to have something to bargain with, and therefore it's just the same as it is with the other weapons. They must know that the alternative to banning them is to then face the fact that we are going to build a deterrent. The Congressional Budget Office has just released a study on the impact of your budget and tax cuts. The budget and tax cuts have been enacted since you took office, and it found that the poorest families lost the most and the richest families gained the most. For instance, families earning under $10,000 a year lost almost $400, and families earning over $80,000 a year gained more than $8,000. Is that fair? It not only wouldn't be fair, but I don't think it's true. You know, as Disraeli once said, there are lies, blankety-blank lies, and statistics. We have a tax program that was a 25% cut across the board. Now that's 25% reduction in the tax burden of everyone. If you have someone whose tax burden is $20, that cut means that they say $5, and they still owe $15. But someone who owns 100 times as much, who pays 100 times as much tax, $2,000, gets $500, but still owes $1,500. In other words, the progressivity of the tax program stays the same. So there is no way that the tax program could have benefited someone at one end of the scale and not the other. It's based on proportions. The other thing is that makes me doubtful of those figures is what we have done for everyone with regard to inflation, and here you do benefit the people at the lower end of the scale more than you do at the top. Now the fact of that is someone at the beginning of 1979 with an $8,000 income, they were about $500 or so above the poverty level income. By the end of 1982 years later, with that same income, they were some $500 below the poverty level income in purchasing power. The figures all, maybe some of the things they were talking about is that in our program, and it wasn't an executive order, it was passed by Congress and signed by me, with regard to some cuts, for example, in the Aid for Dependent Children program. Now every protection was made for all of those totally depended on welfare. There's some 3 million of them still there. There were 943,000 families that were removed, but they were families that had considerable outside earnings plus their welfare grants. Now we were told when we did this that all these people would quit their jobs just to take the security of being on welfare. Well only a very few did, and two-thirds of the people that did not, then sizably increased their actual earnings and became independent of welfare. Mr. President, just to follow up, whatever the interpretation of this particular report, are you concerned that the perception that your administration has been a friend of the wealthy and at the expense of the poor is going to be a political problem for you this year? Well, I'm concerned about it. It's a political problem if people believe it, but there is absolutely no truth in it. It's probably the most glaring example of political demagoguery that our friends have been engaging in. Yes, sir. Mr. President, last October you said the presence of U.S. Marines in Lebanon was central to our credibility on a global scale. Now you've withdrawn them and terminated our presence in the MNF. So to what extent have we lost credibility? We may have lost some with some people, but situations changed, Sam. It was true when I said that, but I can, I think, explain, and I'll try to make it as brief as I can, what the situation or what the change was. We and three of our allies, our four governments, decided that in an effort to straighten out the situation that was so out of control in Lebanon that we would send in a combination force, a multiple force, not to participate in a war, but to be on hand to help provide stability while the Lebanese were allowed then to create a government. You remember, civil war had been going on there for about 10 years. And at the time this was decided, the Israelis were at the border of Beirut. The PLO, 10 to 15,000 of them were fighting from within the heart of Beirut. The Syrians were also involved. The idea was that if a government could be created in Lebanon and then we could help them recreate their military and the foreign forces withdraw, then as their military moved out into the areas previously occupied by the foreign powers to hopefully pacify some of the international fighting groups, the militias that were fighting each other as well as the official forces of Lebanon, that the multinational force would be a kind of a stable peacekeeping force behind keeping order while they went out to do that job because they wouldn't have the manpower to do both. Now this was the task. The first success was the leaving Lebanon of some 10 to 15,000 PLO who up until then were unwilling to surrender even though they faced defeat because they feared a massacre at the hands of those that were fighting them. So with the multinational force there to guarantee against that, they were ushered out. Now the government was formed of Lebanon, the same government that today is negotiating and has been holding meetings in Geneva and elsewhere to bring about a peaceful settlement. We did train and there was no attention paid to this. Our army had a unit in their training, the Lebanese military, and equipping them and made a very capable military. What did happen, the deterioration when Syria insisted on staying in and backing some of the rebel radical forces there, was that with religious and ethnic differences some units of the army refused to take up arms against some of their same ethnic background or religious background. Now the government of Lebanon went forward then on trying to bring together the kind of a consensus government of the radical elements and all and take them into a broad and base government. In the meantime, because the multinational force had been successful, to that extent it was determined by those who don't want that kind of a solution in Lebanon that they had to put the pressure on to get our forces and the others out. And with the terrorist attacks that brought such tragedy, our forces dug in, but once dug in while this was offering security to them from the kind of attacks they'd been subjected to, they were no longer visible as the kind of force they were supposed to be. And so with agreement with our allies we redeployed, some of them redeployed to other areas, but then as these efforts went forward on their own for peace was agreed that there was no longer any point in the four governments keeping their forces there and we withdrew. We are still engaged diplomatically with anything that we can do to help and there are those in the area who say that they doubt that there can be any solution or peace without our help. And so we'll do that. If I may, you began your answer by saying we lost some credibility. Are you to blame for that or like Secretary Schultz, do you blame Congress? I have to say this, Sam, and then I'll move on another subject. I have to say that this was one of the things and they must take a responsibility. When you're engaged in this kind of a diplomatic attempt and you have forces there and there is an effort made to oust them, a debate as public as was conducted here, raging with the Congress demanding, oh, take our, bring our men home, take them away, all this can do is stimulate the terrorists and urge them on to further attacks because they see a possibility of success in getting the force out, which is keeping them from having their way. And it should come to the, it should be understood by everyone in government that once this is committed, you are, you have rendered them ineffective when you conduct that kind of a debate in public. Mr. President, the Senate today unanimously adopted a proposal to withdraw U.S. military aid from El Salvador. If the government there is overthrown by a military coup, some people have suggested that that might happen if Mr. Duarte is elected. Do you support the proposal that passed the Senate today and would you veto it if it came to your desk? Well, I'm not going to talk about whether to veto or not, but I think here, again, this is not helpful in what we're trying to, trying to accomplish. And I think it's something that I just don't think they should be doing it at this time. Chris? You don't support it, sir? No. Chris? I'd like to follow up on Sam's question if I could, Mr. President. Secretary of State Schultz says one of the problems in Lebanon is the War Powers Act, and that Congress is always meddling in foreign policy that neither our foes nor our friends know who's in charge. How much of a problem do you have with the War Powers Act, and would you like to see a Supreme Court test of whether or not it's constitutional? Well, there's been no talk of such a test or doing anything of that kind, but, Chris, I do have to say this. In the last 10 years, the Congress has imposed about 150 restrictions on the President's power in international diplomacy. And I think that the Constitution made it pretty plain, way back in the beginning, as to how diplomacy was to be conducted. And I just don't think that a committee of 535 individuals, no matter how well-intentioned, can offer what is needed in actions of this kind or where there is a necessity. Do you know that prior to the Vietnamese War, while this country had only had four declared wars, presidents of this country had found it necessary to use military forces 125 times in our history? If I could follow up on that, people do cite Vietnam, where presidents waged an undeclared war for years, and they say, without the War Powers Act, that's going to continue. Well, take it, Chris. This is a time for me to say I told you so. For a long time, and even before I became governor, I was saying that the war in Vietnam had reached a position or a state in which we should have asked for a declaration of war and called it a war. Yes, I'll get to you, Luke. Mr. President, while you were lobbying for the school prayer amendment recently, the gist of one of your arguments was that Congress should pass it, because polls showed the American people were overwhelmingly in favor of it. Public opinion polls also show that Americans favor stricter control of handgun sales and an immediate verifiable US-Soviet nuclear freeze. In light of that and in light of your argument, do you see any change in your position on these two issues? No, I don't. And I think that calling attention to the fact that the overwhelming majority of the people favored prayer being permitted in schools was a logical thing to say to the members of Congress when I was trying to get that amendment passed. My only regret is that the debate was never on the real issue. I don't know how to explain it, but for them to sit there and debate hour after hour as they did, that somehow we were asking for prayer to be mandated on schools. We were asking nothing of the kind. Quite the contrary, we were asking that the Constitution be restored to neutrality with regard to religion. The government is to neither be an advocate of nor a controller of or preventer of the practice of religion. All the amendment would do is say if someone wants to pray in schools they can under the Constitution, and then we did add some provisions that no one could mandate, no one could write or prepare any prayer for them. And they didn't debate that at all. They debated openly all the time, in spite of a few people trying to bring them back on track, that no, this would be a government mandate that the schools the very next day would have to wake up and say, all right, how are we going to plan the prayers? Well, I was in, I've told many of the congressmen, I was in more elementary schools than most people. My father moved around a great deal. I was in five of them before I got out of eighth grade. And I don't recall there ever being a mandatory or a prayer session in any of the schools, but we all knew the prayer was not denied in schools. Sir, if I could just follow up, I understand your disappointment in the Senate debate and the vote, but I guess what I'm trying to ask you is, why are the public opinion polls a valid argument for the school prayer amendment, which you do favor, and not a valid argument for the handgun control and the nuclear freeze issues, which you do not? Well, there are methods of handling it. I have always preferred a different method with regard to handguns and one that we used in California. In California, knowing that the wrong people would probably never have any problem getting a gun and the law abiding citizen would be denied the right to have one, we simply passed a law that said that anyone who commits a crime is convicted of a crime and had in his or her possession a gun at the time of the commission of the crime, whether they used it or not, add five to 15 years to the sentence by virtue of their having carried or carried a gun in the commission of a crime. You'd be surprised how effective it became. Mr. President, recently the U.S.-backed opponents of the San Anista regime have gone beyond their warfare on land to mining ports off the Nicaraguan coast. Are you concerned that these mines there, which neutral freighters or others could hit, run a risk of widening the war in Central America? And do you think that there's any point in which we ought to try to call a halt to the activity of the Contras? No, our interest in Nicaragua, I'm not going to comment on that one way or the other, or the tactics that are used in a war of that kind, our interest in Nicaragua is one and one only. The present government of Nicaragua is exporting revolution to El Salvador, its neighbor, and is helping, supporting, and arming and training the guerrillas that are trying to overthrow a duly elected government. And as long as they do that, we're going to try and inconvenience that government of Nicaragua until they quit that kind of action. If I could follow up, sir, we are training troops down there in Honduras. Do you see from your perspective a danger of a wider war in Central America at this point? No, I think these maneuvers are something we've done before. They're not something unusual or aimed at anyone down there. They are combined exercises that we hold with our own units. And when one unit goes through some of these and gets the training, we send another one down to do the same thing. And that's all they are, war games. Change in strategy, it's just talking frankly about what's going on. It's like any government with its various interests and its bureaucracies and so forth, we're not making as much progress as we would like to make with regard to the things that I had discussed in Japan with Prime Minister Nakasone and here at the Williamsburg Summit. I know where he stands and I know that he sincerely and honestly wants better trade relations and some of the obstacles removed that are impairing free and fair trade between us. But then there are other elements and they're subject to political pressure and public opinion pressure the same as we are in our own country. And I think what you've been hearing is some complaints about those who are trying to negotiate these things. Jerry? You mentioned the public pressure. Is there any difference between your position on these trade disputes and the position of the Democratic presidential candidates? Well, I'm not going to comment on them other than to say that I think there's a difference with them on almost everything. Jerry? Mr. President, some people might say that you're a man who's approaching the golden years and I'd like to know what your reaction is to Governor Lam of Colorado who said that some elderly people have a duty to die and get out of the way and fall like leaves to provide humus for the younger generation. What is your reaction to that statement? Well, I think I was as shocked as anyone was to hear such a statement. I since, however, have seen reports that that was not exactly the way it was said and that he was referring to outright terminal cases of the kind that had been under so much discussion over recent years of someone who had a very limited time and was, for example, in a coma and simply being artificially kept alive that this is what he was talking about. I don't know. All I know is the way the stories were carried I have not had any one fill me in on the actual case and how he said it and having been interpreted incorrectly myself sometimes I'm going to I'm not going to speak out until I know. Mr. President, you've been saying recently that you're trying to encourage moderate Arab leaders to join the Middle East peace process yet King Hussain, Hussain, the key moderate Arab seems to have shut the door rather firmly. In view of that, what is your future course regarding your 82 peace plan and how do you intend to try to remove the obstacles on that course? That continues to be our plan and I believe that King Hussain still feels and believes that he would have to be an important part being the next door neighbor to Israel in bringing about such negotiations and I continue to believe in this. This is the answer. It's what started this from the very beginning in the Middle East to continue the Camp David process to persuade other nations to do what Egypt did in making that peace. At the present moment you have a group of Arab nations who still are of that have never have never retreated from their position that Israel does not have a right to exist as a nation and we're trying to persuade them and that we can be even-handed and that we're not trying to dictate any peace of any kind, that we simply want to be of help if we can and intermediary in bringing about a negotiation that will erase the issues and the problems that have kept them apart so that they can settle back and live in peace together and we're going to continue to try to do that. Dean, I'll take you. Mr. President, the Soviet Union is currently engaged in perhaps its largest military exercise ever in the Atlantic Ocean, an exercise that involves some 40 vessels including submarines, destroyers and a nuclear-powered battle cruiser. I wonder if you could tell us what you think the Soviet Union is up to in all of this. I think it's spring in Russia as well as in the United States and that's when you have war games and maneuvers. We've been having some of our own. We always tell them when we're going to have them. We wish they'd tell us but I think this is nothing more than that. Your war games are actually whoever's conducting them based on your own thoughts as to what contingencies could arise that would find you in an emergency situation and so you set out to train or practice for that. Some 40 ships I know sounds like an awful lot but when you stop to think that we're talking about a navy of almost a thousand ships, it kind of comes down in size a little bit. No, I think these are regular and routine maneuvers that usually begin in the spring of the year for most of us. So you don't think that the Soviet Union is trying to send us any particular signal? No, I really don't. Nor are we trying to send them a signal with our own war games. President, getting back to your earlier statement that you felt for some time that we should have declared war during the Vietnam period against whom would we have declared war and if we had done so wouldn't that have widened the war and gotten us stuck into an even greater quagmire? Well, I could only say with regard to that I said that at a time when it was going on because of what was going on here in our own country and which none of the rules of warfare could apply with regard to lending comfort and aid to the enemy. Who we would have declared war against would have been a country North Vietnam. The settlement of French Indochina created two nations, South Vietnam and North Vietnam. They were two separate nations. In fact, back through history they had pretty much been separate countries before. You say that because of the situation at the time, whether I would still feel the same way or not, I know that there was great concern about the possibility of a war widening just as there was in Korea that prevented us from allowing General MacArthur to lead us to a victory in Korea. Everyone thought that you have to fight a war without winning it or you might find yourself in a bigger war. Well, maybe General MacArthur was right. There is no substitute for victory. Our people, Sam, just found us, got tired of seeing me in the old set.