Documents / Official release
This release contains White House Exchange Mail records dated January 1998 to October 1999. Most of it is a transcript of a January 29, 1998 press briefing by Press Secretary Mike McCurry covering Iraq, Iran, the budget and the Lewinsky inquiry, plus a 1998 presidential speech. An October 19, 1999 email among Transnational Threats staff forwards a Florida Today article on how scientists expect alien contact would spark a media frenzy rather than a cover-up, describing the 1989 SETI detection protocol.
“Harder”1 page
34FE6299.FIN Page 11 of 14 http://classified/email/data_source/exchange/record/cd008/febl998/34fe6299.html 1/5/2010 this could too easily become a subject for political cross-fire and that w< would end up setting the clock back. Q Gene, did you have any misgivings about doing these regional forumi under the imprimatur of the AARP? In the past they've been the ones vigorously opposed to entitlement reform. And although they say this time they're willing to entertain the idea, it may be that they're going to be opposed to the more aggressi attempts at reform that may be necessary. Certainly if a situation created itself earlier, if people came together we certainly would not be opposed to that. We're simply making our best judgment as to what the best chances for getting that done. And I can say that it is a judgment shared by groups across the political spectrum. So I understand that anytime you go out and you make a bold, specific proposal on any area you get nice feedback for a day or a week, but that wasn't th question. The question is how can we actually get long-term Social Sect reform. And it is our judgment that trying to elevate this debate and tryii keep it bipartisan and trying to create an imperative for action and trying keep that atmosphere during the period prior to the election creates the I possibility that after the election there could be a chance for bipartisan a long-term Social Security reform. So instead of one political party or the other putting on one of these fon. in which either people would be suspect that it was being tilted towards a particular agenda or that it was too difficult to confront any of the serioi issues because it would be seen as being read as indicating a position fo against an issue - that if you put this in the hands of two groups that tog people would view as balanced, that it would give people on both sides the aisle and of different views the confidence that these would be balanced fair and someplace they could go talk to. MR. SPERLING: Well, the thing you need to understand is that it's beir done jointly under the AARP and the Concord Coalition. So it is being done jointly under them. And what we were trying to do is to have two organization' I think are familiar to all of you that would be responsible for ensuring th there is a sense of balance there.
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Official release, from the nara collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 88 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.