Bill Clinton: “When I asked President Jiang about that, you know, the question about was the Chinese Government involved, which was a…”

“When I asked President Jiang about that, you know, the question about was the Chinese Government involved, which was a question that was raised, he emphatically denied to me personally that their government had tried to do anything to influence the outcome of this election. And he said that he would cooperate with that. Of course, I have encouraged everybody to cooperate with the investigators. I think everyone should. So that's my position for those gentlemen and for everybody else. I think we ought to get to the bottom of it. But let met say, one thing that Senator Fred Thompson said that I really agree with, is that he said he hoped that his hearings, before he shut them down, would lead to reforming the system. And you know, before you had this job, you used to work for people who were elected officials, and I think that you will at least acknowledge there's something to the point that people don't go out and raise money because they want to, and then they find things to throw the money at. People raise money because they think they have to raise the money to buy access to communications with the public, and the cost of campaigns has been going up. Now, what I favor is the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, trying to control the amount of contributions and limit expenditures. And then I think we have to have access in the media to either free or reduced air time to people who observe these limits. I think we've got to have both if we're going to have real campaign finance reform. Mr. Russert. The other complaint, raised by Common Cause, particularly, and others, is that you received $75 million in public funding for the Presidential race but then went out and raised $50 million in so-called soft money, largely corporate money, and bought TV ads all across the country, which brought your popularity ratings up considerably. And people said, that's inappropriate, you really did push through a huge loophole and use big corporate money to pay for TV ads designed and controlled by you, in effect, and that's what helped get you elected.”