Bill Clinton: “No. The Secretary of Defense had the list, and he made the decisions. The only thing I asked him to do was to make sure…”

“No. The Secretary of Defense had the list, and he made the decisions. The only thing I asked him to do was to make sure that he had really evaluated the economic impacts of it all. And he said that he would do that. The only--he made a point to me that under the law, the Defense Department is required to do that, and it really couldn't be done by the services because they made their recommendations based on their needs within their services. So the Air Force and the Army and the Navy couldn't have foreseen the cumulative impact on any given State of what they recommended. And that's why the Secretary of Defense went through the process he did. But he did it. I think it's very important that we leave the process in that way. And so that's what we did.”