Bill Clinton: “First of all, the decision that was made to close those facilities was made, as you know, in the previous…”

“First of all, the decision that was made to close those facilities was made, as you know, in the previous administration, not under my administration. Secondly, it's just not true that there were five finalists picked. I mean, at least I couldn't find it. I asked the Defense Department to tell me where we were on this issue when I became President, and they said, here are the 20 finalists. And I said, has the decision been completed? They said, no, we're still at the 20 finalists. And I said, what are the criteria? And we talked about it. And interestingly enough, the only thing I said about it was that I felt very strongly that one of the criteria should be how badly a community or a State had been hurt by other defense cutbacks, because I was worried that those States or communities that had been hurt more by defense cutbacks might have less ability, in effect, to put up their own financial incentives to get the financial accounting centers there. That is, I didn't think that we ought to reward people who could, in effect, buy the Senators by putting up a whole lot of money up front or who couldn't afford to compete because they had lost a lot of defense jobs. And I didn't even ask them to go back and start the whole thing all over again. I just said I'd like that factored in, that I thought that was something the American people would want us to do--would want us to take account of where all these defense cuts had hurt people the worst. And so they said they would work up that, and go back and do it. And my own impression is that the finalists from the first round are still in very, very good shape. That's at least the indication I have and that the Defense Department will be ready to make a recommendation to me pretty soon. But I did want to say that's the only role I had in it, was I was assured that there was no decision made. They were still at 20 finalists. I asked only that the burden those communities and States had borne in the defense cutbacks since 1987 should be able to be a factor to be taken into consideration. And that was it.”