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The Ministry of Information of  Cookeville and Putnam County, Tennessee The Putnam Pit [No bull] ON ELECTION DAY, PACIFICA RADIO'S DEMOCRACY NOW! AND WBAI ASK CLINTON THE HARD QUESTIONS

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President Clinton's temper flares when asked questions
on Ralph Nader, death penalty, Middle East

New York City - When President Clinton called Pacifica Radio's
WBAI 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
Amy Goodman, host of Pacifica's flagship newsmagazine
Democracy Now! and Gonzalo Aburto, host of WBAI's Alternativa
Latina.

The journalists confronted Clinton for flying back to Arkansas in
1992 during the presidential campaign to execute Ricky Ray
Rector, a mentally impaired man, questioned his administration's
support of sanctions against Iraq, killing thousands of children
every month, and asked him whether he would grant executive
clemency to Native American activist Leonard Peltier, who is
serving life sentence for murder at Leavenworth Penitentiary in
Kansas. This was the first time that Clinton has addressed the
Peltier case publicly.

The interview began with Goodman asking the President: "You are
calling radio stations telling people to vote. What do you say to
people who feel the two parties are bought by corporations and that
at this point their vote doesn't make a difference?" Clinton
responded that "there is not a shred of evidence to support that."

Clinton provided lengthy answers to Goodman's and Aburto's
questions, but got increasingly angry at their critical nature. At one
point he showed his famous temper, raising his voice at Goodman:
"You have asked questions in a hostile, combative and even
disrespectful tone." He agreed with Goodman's assertion that the
US "has the largest number of prisoners in the industrialized world"
(2 million by the latest counts), dodged a question on whether he
would issue an executive order banning racial profiling, saying "we
are trying to find a way to issue orders and rules and reservations
that end racial profiling" and finally lost his temper when Goodman
suggested that he was partly responsible for Green Party
candidate Ralph Nader's popularity "for having driven the
Democratic Party to the right."

"Now you listen to this, the other thing that Ralph Nader says is
that he is as pure as Ceasar's wife on the environment," Clinton
fumed, proceeding to rattle off the administration's
accomplishments. Goodman then countered with questions on the
death penalty and the administration's passage of NAFTA and
other free trade agreements, to which Clinton answered that "two
thirds of the American people support that."

Democracy Now!, Pacifica Radio's daily national grassroots
newsmagazine, airs Monday through Friday on community radio
stations around the country. Tomorrow's two-hour "Election 2000:
The Morning After" special will include the interview in full. Check
local listings. In the New York area, the election special will air on
November 8 on WBAI-FM 99.5 (8-10 am).

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