News

10 April 1998

[EXCERPTS] TRANSCRIPT: WHITE HOUSE DAILY BRIEFING, APRIL 10, 1998


White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry briefed.
Following is the White House transcript:

(begin transcript)

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
April 10, 1998
PRESS BRIEFING BY MIKE MCCURRY
The Briefing Room



MCCURRY: All the news of the day having been made, the press secretary
arrives to shed no light on anything.

..............



Q: Is there a readout of the genetic engineering and biological
weapons roundtable?


MCCURRY: The readout is very consistent with what I told most of you
the session would be about this morning. The President had an
excellent review of current capacity with respect to biological
weapons, what the threat is and could be of use of biological weapons
by either a foreign adversary or here at home. They reviewed
procedures that are in place to protect U.S. troops abroad from the
threat of biological weapons and also what we can do here if we ever
faced any terrorist use of biological weapons.


The President heard from a collection of the government's leading
experts on the subject and was grateful to have their wisdom about a
subject that he has addressed publicly on numerous occasions. It was a
good session and will lead to further consideration of the issue.
Although this was not designed to be any decisionmaking meeting or
implement any specific plan, it clearly reflects the President's
desire to keep this issue front and center as we assess threats to our
national security in the post-Cold War environment.


Q: Though it wasn't designed for decisionmaking, did the President
come up with anything that might lead to something specific down the
road?


MCCURRY: Not necessarily. I mean, just to continue the work that we're
doing to both understand the threat, to assess the risk, and then to
identify counter-measures that are suggested. And there's a lot of
good discussion of that and that will lead to further thinking and
further review and work by the interagency group that was represented
around the Cabinet table. But I don't want to suggest there's any
specific plan that arose from this meeting.


I think there's further work to be done on that and the President
intends to keep it very high up in the thinking of the National
Security Council and the other agencies that were represented.

............

(end transcript)