07/03/2026 11:06

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In the week after Christmas I signed a few more bills and appointed Roger Gregory to be the first African-American judge on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A reporter asked if it embarrassed me or the country to have such questions asked on a foreign trip. Just a week earlier, I had signed the anti-terrorism legislation that the Congress had finally passed, a full year after Oklahoma City. By April 1998, the United Nations had imposed an arms embargo, and the United States and its allies had imposed ec

Originally, I had hoped to make Vernon Jordan attorney general. I sent Dick Holbrooke back to see him one last time, but even Dick couldn’t budge him. “The whole world will be watching, and the handshake is what they will be looking for. We had already reduced toxic air pollution from chemical plants by 90 percent, and had set tough standards to reduce smog and soot that would prevent millions of cases of childhood asthma.