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3                    WOMEN IN MOTION BANQUET
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5         CELEBRATING 20 YEARS AT THE AIR FORCE ACADEMY
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12                        SPEECH GIVEN BY
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14          THE HONORABLE JANET RENO, ATTORNEY GENERAL
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21                       September 1, 1996
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23                Sheraton Colorado Springs Hotel
24                    2886 South Circle Drive
25               Colorado Springs, Colorado  80906
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1                     P R O C E E D I N G S
2              MS. RENO:  Thank you, Sheila Widnall.  And it
3    is my real honor to serve with you and thank you,
4    General Stein.
5              As I told you yesterday, you hear and see
6    about something and you hear so much.  And when you
7    finally see it or feel it, you're disappointed.
8    Yesterday you took me to the chapel, to the honor
9    court, and drove me around the Air Force Academy.  And
10    I've never seen anything as magnificent and moving in
11    a very long time.  And it far exceeds what I thought
12    it would be and I thought it would be very special.
13              And then you make sure that I had a chance to
14    soar.  And Cadet Shannon Carrey enabled me to have a
15    beautiful experience and she was a wonderful teacher.
16    And I wanted to soar most of my adult life and it
17    couldn't match what it turned out to be.  I thank you,
18    Cadet Carrey, and all who made yesterday such a special
19    day for me at the Academy.
20              It is an extraordinary honor for me to be
21    here today to celebrate with you 20 years of women at
22    the Air Force Academy.  I congratulate the class of
23    1980 and the almost 1,900 graduates who have followed.
24              I do not congratulate you for being the first
25    and among the first.  I congratulate you for what you
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1    have done for this nation, for what you have done for
2    the Air Force, for your contributions to knowledge in
3    this land, to helping us to lead the way to space, for
4    showing young women throughout the world that you can
5    be almost anything you want to be if you try hard
6    enough and if it's the right thing to do.
7              I know how important that is because of some
8    of the women who blazed the trail for you, my Aunt
9    Winnie and Aunt Lucille Finley and so many of the WASPs
10    and the WASPs who are here tonight.
11              I was about six years old when they came home
12    from the war.  I thought that they were some of the
13    most wonderful, the bravest people that I had ever
14    imagined.  Some of them, as they were figuring out what
15    to do, came down to Miami.  It seemed a good place to
16    collect one's thoughts and figure out what your next
17    step was going to be.
18              And they were pretty wonderful.  They told
19    stories.  They told about -- I can still remember it so
20    vividly -- Aunt Winnie telling about how she flew a big
21    25 across the Donner Pass one night and how she was
22    going to let the plane down -- but the right engines
23    really caused her trouble in a great snowstorm -- and
24    to climb a tower and signal people.  The rest of the
25    WASPs told her how mistaken she was.  But I didn't
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1    think she was mistaken, I thought she was a heroine.
2              And they talked about targets and bombers and
3    Dot Lewis played the guitar and how they took me on my
4    first airplane flight.  And I still remember that Piper
5    Cub and everything that it has meant to me since.
6              They went on to get married.  Some had
7    children, one to be a doting aunt to now two
8    generations of nieces and nephews.  They taught school.
9    They contributed to their community.  They went to law
10    school.  They have contributed to their communities and
11    they have reached out to help others along the way.
12              When my mother told me I couldn't go to law
13    school because I was a woman, I looked at the WASPs and
14    quietly decided I wasn't going to pay any attention to
15    her.  They have blazed a trail for you and for me and
16    they have left a legacy of honor and of service and of
17    love.
18              But you and the other women who served with
19    you in the Air Force and in the military who served
20    with such distinction have done something equally
21    important for the WASPs.  You have proven them right.
22    You have proven that if you give them a chance, women
23    can fight for this country.
24              They can fly the most extraordinary machines.
25    They can contribute to this nation.  They can help lead
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1    the Air Force.  They can make a difference every step
2    of the way.  You have picked up their banner and flown
3    aircraft that they only dreamed of.  You have taken
4    their banner into space.  You are helping to lead this
5    nation.
6              I have been so touched in these three and a
7    half years to have men bring their daughters to visit
8    the Attorney General, nine- and ten-year-olds,
9    11-year-olds, or to walk down the street in Washington
10    or someplace else in the nation and have a young woman
11    come up to me and ask a little bit about being Attorney
12    General and wonder what they can be when they grow up.
13              Because of you, I can look them straight in
14    the face and say you can raise wonderful children, you
15    can fly into space, you can lead your nation, you can
16    make a difference.
17              They believe me when I tell them this because
18    of you.  But at the same time, you and I and others who
19    care so much have a sacred duty to these young women
20    and to their brothers throughout this nation.  And that
21    is to fight as hard as we can in whatever arena of
22    action we have chosen to maintain this nation as a
23    strong and free nation so that these children can
24    pursue the dreams that you have given them.
25              In that connection, I think in these next
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1    years we together, both in the military and the
2    Department of Justice, and throughout this country face
3    three important issues.  The first is the world is an
4    awful lot smaller today than it was even 50 years ago.
5    Problems that once were local or national in scope are
6    now international in consequence.
7              Those in the military and the defense
8    department have always faced consequences in the
9    international arena.  That is your arena.  But we see
10    now in today's world the international consequences of
11    economic actions taken halfway around the world felt
12    all the way around the world.
13              We see the international consequences of
14    migration across borders and across continents.  We see
15    the impact of environmental actions taken in one sector
16    of the world having direct and immediate impact around
17    the world.  And in crime, we watch the international
18    impact of drugs, of terrorism, and of computer crime,
19    just to name a few.
20              And so in today's society, the general and
21    the Attorney General and the ambassador and the
22    intelligence operative in a far-off land and the
23    businesswomen concerned about the devaluation of
24    foreign currency and the secretary of the treasury, all
25    of us, and colleagues I have not named, must work
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1    together.
2              We must work together as never before, but we
3    must do so while paying clear adherence to our
4    traditional role and not stepping across our role,
5    either for the Attorney General to tell the general
6    what to do, or the military to become involved, in
7    domestic law enforcement.
8              As we reach across our disciplines, we must
9    continue to adhere to the traditional roles that have
10    made this nation so strong.  But we can do that, we can
11    do it without interfering with each other's mission by
12    developing a better understanding of the mission of all
13    involved by sharing information appropriately in a way
14    that can be invaluable to the mission of all concerned,
15    by sharing equipment, and most of all, by sharing
16    know-how.
17              It has been my pleasure to work with the
18    military, to work with ambassadors on issues of drug
19    trafficking abroad, and to be so impressed with the
20    military's excellence, to be so impressed with the
21    military's ability to reach across disciplines in the
22    right way to achieve our common goals.
23              I have watched the military do extraordinary
24    things.  In the summer of 1994, we faced a crisis in
25    the straits of Florida.  I watched the Coast Guard take
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1    on rafters in an absolutely extraordinary undertaking.
2    I watched the Department of Defense respond at
3    Guantanamo to demagnify the exodus from Cuba.  I
4    watched them set up a community and do it in a way that
5    was in the best tradition of the military of the United
6    States.
7              They did it humanely, they did it
8    effectively, and it was just an extraordinary moment to
9    watch them working with the Immigration and
10    Naturalization Service, working with the Coast Guard,
11    working with the diplomats to achieve such a remarkable
12    resolution of a crisis.
13              And I have watched the military work with the
14    FBI in the tragedy at Elcabar.  I watched us deal
15    together on what would happen if we faced a crisis such
16    as was faced in the subways of Japan with the gas
17    attack.
18              I have seen the military in action and I am
19    here to say that I am impressed.  I am impressed with
20    the excellence.  I am impressed with the diversity of
21    interest and of knowledge.  I am impressed with the
22    effectiveness, and I think Secretary Widnall said it
23    best, I'm impressed with the teamwork and coherence of
24    those I have watched in the military.
25              We have much to do to work together to learn
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1    how we  can perform our respective  roles, how each  of us
2    can deal better with the international consequences
3    that we face in our particular missions, how the FBI
4    can work with the military representatives and the
5    ambassador and the intelligence community and the
6    international trade rep in an embassy abroad and best
7    represent the interests of the United States in
8    resolving the international issues that face us
9    throughout the world.
10              And I have some suggestions.  First of all,
11    we should do more training so that we understand the
12    roles of the different institutions better than we do
13    today.  We should do more in cross-designating people.
14              It has been such a pleasure for us to have
15    representatives in the military in the Department of
16    Justice, and we should do more in exchanging roles so
17    that people have a better understanding of the roles
18    involved.
19              Lawyers think they know it all.  But I
20    have found that lawyers are very limited.  They know
21    the rules and processes of the law, but they don't
22    understand all the military has to face.
23              They don't understand some of the diplomatic
24    niceties and they generally don't understand that much
25    about the history or the issues that we face abroad.
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1    But we're learning because I think that's one of the
2    high priorities of the Department of Justice.  I think
3    it is important for us all to better understand the
4    world.
5              I learned an awful lot about western
6    civilization in high school and college.  I learned a
7    lot about American history.  But it's been a long time
8    learning a lot about the rest of the world.  And in all
9    that we do, I think we've got to realize that there is
10    no area of this vast globe that will not have an impact
11    on all of us at some time during the life of those who
12    graduated in the class of 1980 and thereafter.
13              It is so important that we learn what the
14    history of a nation is and what sovereignty means to
15    them.  And what happens if we take one course that will
16    insult and embarrass them, but if we took another
17    course, we could resolve problems so very easily
18    without a great deal of fuss.
19              I think the State Department, the Department
20    of Defense, and the Department of Justice can do so
21    much if we learn together about what we will be dealing
22    with and become more effective as we do it.
23              Lawyers like to litigate a lot and the
24    Department of Defense appreciates our litigation some
25    of the time.  But they also think, as I do, that we
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1    litigate too much and that lawsuits are very costly
2    things that should be avoided at all cost.
3              But like you know, it's better to deal and to
4    negotiate from strength.  It is important that we
5    negotiate from strength, but that we learn how to
6    negotiate.  And I have tried to establish in the
7    Department of Justice a procedure for resolving
8    disputes without litigation.
9              I'm trying to teach lawyers how to negotiate,
10    and in so doing, I have undertaken some pro bono
11    service which is working with teachers in the D.C.
12    community to determine how we can best resolve
13    conflicts in schools without knives and guns and fists.
14    And I am so impressed with what people can be taught
15    about conflict resolution, whether it be at the
16    community level, the level of Washington, or around the
17    world.
18              And I think it is incumbent upon law schools,
19    it is incumbent upon the universities of this nation
20    and this Academy to do everything we can to teach
21    people in whatever undertaking they will pursue how to
22    resolve conflict, how to resolve disputes in the
23    simplest, fastest, best way.
24              This world is far too complicated now.  It is
25    fraught with far too many dangers to let us take up our
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1    time with needless dispute when, if we learn a little
2    bit about process, we can do it so much easier
3    up-front.  As we do this, we need to negotiate from
4    strength, which you provide with such magnificence
5    around the world, but we've got to stop being
6    pessimistic now.
7              When I came to Washington, somebody said,
8    "But you haven't dealt with that country before.  You
9    don't know all that it is.  It's just wishful
10    thinking."  And I said, "What's it going to hurt to
11    believe we might make some difference if we negotiate
12    and try to work out the problems."
13              This world is too complicated, and if we
14    don't work it out, we're going to be in a bigger mess.
15    We've got to believe that we can make a difference
16    while at the same time being prepared if we can't make
17    a difference and if we don't have somebody cooperate to
18    take effective action otherwise.
19              One of the most wonderful skills that anybody
20    can have as we deal with these international issues is
21    the skill of communication.  Sometimes you don't have
22    to speak the same language to communicate.  It's how
23    you shake a hand.  It's how you look somebody in the
24    eye.  It's how you remember people, even if you have to
25    have a translator explain that you want to know how
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1    their wife is and what they're doing and how their
2    child is and did they get to law school.
3              It is putting human and diplomatic relations
4    in a human context.  But it sure does help if you can
5    speak their language.  And one of the greatest single
6    needs we have in law enforcement, in business, and in
7    all that we are undertaking in this nation is the
8    ability to communicate with people around the world in
9    their language as well as understanding the nuances and
10    appreciating the direct contact that you can give it.
11              English is a remarkable language.  It is
12    becoming the universal language of this world.  But
13    whether it be in law enforcement in trying to
14    understand 26 dialects of one language as you undertake
15    electronic surveillance or if it's resolving a problem
16    you have with an extradition treaty, language can make
17    a difference.
18              What is clear, however, is that as this world
19    is so small, we can never ever turn inward again in
20    isolation.  We must always be willing to take our role
21    and assume our responsibility in the international
22    aspects of our respective missions.
23              The second issue that I think is of concern
24    to us all as we try to figure out how we can maintain
25    a strong and great nation for those 11-year-olds yet
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1    to come down the road as leaders and as generals and as
2    Attorneys General is to recognize the opportunities,
3    the marvelous opportunities, but the extraordinary
4    dangers that technology and science have presented us.
5              These opportunities, these challenges, and
6    these dangers stagger the imagination and convert
7    vanity to prayer.  We must address them together.  The
8    State Department and the Department of Defense have
9    worked so long and so well to address the issue of
10    atomic attack.
11              But at the same time, the Department of
12    Justice must gear up to work with you in deciding what
13    we do about people who smuggle radioactive material,
14    how we address that issue in a comprehensive,
15    thoughtful way on maintaining the integrity of our
16    respective missions.
17              We face today the prospect of attacks on our
18    information infrastructure that present real
19    challenges.  This information infrastructure gives us
20    an ability to communicate and to coordinate that we
21    never dreamed would be possible.
22              But when a hacker can sit in a kitchen in
23    St. Petersburg, Russia, and steal from a bank in
24    Chicago, think of what that hacker can do unless we are
25    vigilant with the information infrastructure that is so
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1    vital to our defense, so vital to our commerce, so
2    vital to this nation.
3              Again, the military has done so much in
4    leading the way, but it is something that we must all
5    work together to address.  And it will require an
6    unusual partnership between the Department of Defense,
7    the Department of Justice, State, the NSC, and, most
8    importantly, the private sector.  So much of the
9    strength of that effort will come from the Department
10    of Defense, but we must do more.
11              We are in an information era with an ability
12    to communicate that boggles the mind.  But as we can
13    communicate across cyberspace, so must we take steps to
14    ensure the privacy of that communication to ensure the
15    encryption in an appropriate way that will permit
16    business to use that information system to the best of
17    its advantage consistent with lawful objectives.
18              But as we do that, we have got to make sure
19    that we have the capacity in law enforcement to
20    appropriately, pursuant to court order, conduct a          surveillance when it
21    is right.  And by that, I mean, if somebody stole from
22    a company today and they did it just by taking papers
23    and I had probable cause to believe that their papers
24    were stored someplace by the person who had stolen the
25    papers, and that I could get a court order for a search
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1        warrant, I can go in to court, have all the
2    constitutional protections observed, get a search
3    warrant, and get those stolen papers and prove that a
4    crime has been committed.
5              But if instead the information was stolen by
6    technology on a computer and was stored in a computer,
7    which was encrypted, and I had no means of breaking
8    that code, we would see law enforcement severely
9    hampered.  What we want to try to do is keep up with
10    the technology, not expand the right or the authority
11    to surveil, and we want to do it consistent with court
12    order, consistent with the constitution.
13              It is going to require, as we see today, the
14    military working with all concerned, working with the
15    private sector, the Department of Justice, and other
16    agencies to achieve the goal of privacy as appropriate
17    and law enforcement authority as appropriate only under
18    the Constitution.
19              We see other challenges.  The Department of
20    Defense today is working hand in hand with the
21    Department of Justice to promote nonlethal technologies
22    that will enable police officers to control a situation
23    in a far better way than with guns that we use today.
24    And we see so much being done to address the issue of
25    chemical and biological attacks because departments are
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1    working together the right way.
2              What is clear, our challenge of the next five
3    years, is to make sure that we, the people, control
4    technology.  And we must do everything possible to
5    ensure that technology will never ever control the
6    people and erode our constitutional rights.
7              To do that, it seems to me, we must educate
8    all.  We must make sure that people are skilled and
9    understand the marvelous technology we have.  We must
10    be prepared to retrain as we develop new technology.
11              And that leads to my third challenge that I
12    think we face together.  And that is how can we give
13    our young people in this nation a future.  Not just a
14    few young people, but all the young people in America.
15              I see it from the perspective of the
16    prosecutor who used to pick up a three-sentence
17    investigation for a 17-year-old whom I had just
18    adjudicated for an armed robbery and see five points
19    along the way where we could have intervened to have
20    made a difference in that child's life and kept him out
21    of trouble.
22              I decided to start early.  And the doctors at
23    our public hospital taught me about child development,
24    how the first three years of life are so critical, how
25    50 percent of all learned human response was learned in
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1    the first year of life, and how the concept of reward
2    and punishment and a conscience was developed in those
3    first three years.
4              What good are all the prisons in America
5    going to be 18 years from now if we don't teach a child
6    the difference between right and wrong and develop a
7    conscience in those children today.  What good are all
8    the schools and all our abilities to teach skills going
9    to be if the child never gets the foundation of
10    learning in those first years.
11              We can do so much, but there are some that
12    say, "That's not my problem.  I'm not interested."  I
13    as a prosecutor will never be able to build enough
14    prisons unless we start now to give our children a
15    future.  The business community will not have people
16    with the skills necessary to fill the jobs to maintain
17    this nation as a first-rate nation unless we start now
18    for all our children.
19              The doctors and the future doctors that are
20    here tonight will not be able to keep up with the
21    demands placed on our health care institutions unless
22    we provide preventative medical care up-front.  We're
23    all in this together, as General Stein said.  What we
24    need is a well-trained Army, an Army with the skills to
25    match the challenges of technology and an Army and an
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1    Air Force and a Navy and a military that represents all
2    America so that all America can have a part in our
3    future.
4              How do we do this?  We have to look not just
5    to the child in the inner city.  We've got to look to
6    the children in suburbia, to children who find both
7    parents working, to children who come home at 3:30 in
8    the afternoon and face an afternoon and early evening
9    with little supervision and with little care on
10    weekends.
11              We have to make an investment in our children
12    making sure that we do everything we can to train their
13    parents to be strong, effective parents, to making sure
14    that they have health care, preventative medical care
15    that will give them the foundation for a strong and
16    healthy future, that they have child care in those
17    first formative years that will form the foundation for
18    an education that can prepare them for the 21st
19    century, that they have an educational system that can
20    truly teach them.
21              And one of the things we've got to do is to
22    examine the priorities of this nation.  Something is
23    wrong with a nation that pays its football players in
24    the six-digit figures and pays its schoolteachers what
25    they pay them.  We have got to change that.  But the
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1    schoolteachers' work will be for naught if that child
2    moves into the afternoon and the evening alone except
3    for television.
4              We have got to provide constructive
5    opportunities in the afternoons and in the evenings
6    recognizing that, as our work force has changed, so
7    must we change the structure of our days for our
8    children.
9              We've got to develop mentoring programs that
10    can provide the adult supervision that is so critical
11    and community police officers who reach out to keep
12    that kid out of trouble as much as to identify the gang
13    leader that gets them into trouble.
14              We've got to make sure that when we train, we
15    train for jobs.  It used to puzzle me as to why we have
16    so many requirements in high school, and yet we don't
17    have a requirement that you have a skill that can
18    enable you to earn a living wage by the time you
19    graduate.
20              Somebody says, "Well, I'll go to college."
21    How many of you know people who went to college, got a
22    B.A. in English Lit, and sat there for two years trying
23    to figure out what they were going to do.  Let us make
24    sure that we have a skill and that we have a capacity
25    in this nation to retrain people as that skill becomes
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1    obsolete.
2              That capacity to retrain should be as
3    automatically available as the capacity to educate from
4    K through 12 if we are to keep up with the changing
5    technology of this world and to make sure that all our
6    people are productive and can live to their fullest
7    potential.
8              But I feel encouraged because, as I told
9    cadets earlier this evening, I see across America
10    communities joining together with employers and the
11    business sector and schoolteachers reaching out to form
12    partnerships to reweave the fabric of community around
13    our children.  I see volunteers coming forth to become
14    mentors to make a difference.
15              Do you know that the cadets of this Academy
16    in the last year did 40,000 hours of service to their
17    community?  I think that is extraordinary.  Do you know
18    that some of the cadets of this Academy went to assist
19    at a soup kitchen, and as they kept coming back to
20    assist, they saw the same people there and they decided
21    that something was wrong.
22              And so instead of just going to assist, they
23    brought their computers, they brought their skills, and
24    they started teaching people how to do this or how to
25    do that or how to participate once again.  And step by
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1    step, they made a difference.
2              Do you realize that cadets of this Academy
3    have reached out to youngsters in high school and in
4    middle school to talk with them about what it means to
5    grow up, how to develop skills, how they might come to
6    the Academy because they care, because they want to
7    make a difference.
8              Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could get the
9    Department of Justice and the military organized around
10    this nation so that every single one of us reached out
11    and made the difference at least each year in the life
12    of one young person by being a mentor by providing a
13    scholarship, by teaching them a new language, by
14    helping them to grow up in a strong and positive way.
15              After talking to the cadets of this great
16    institution tonight, I think it's going to be possible.
17    I think they're going to leave this institution leading
18    the way to make that commitment.
19              Some people ask me if I'm pessimistic about
20    this nation, if I'm discouraged, and I just smile at
21    them and say, "Quite to the contrary."  In the three
22    and a half years I've been in Washington, I've had a
23    chance to travel across this land to talk to young
24    people and to the elderly, to talk to so many different
25    people.
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1              And never in all of my life have I felt so
2    encouraged about the future of this great nation.  The
3    officers and the enlisted men who are making a baseball
4    diamond for some kids in an inner-city community in San
5    Antonio, the cadets here tonight, youngsters make a
6    difference.  Schoolteachers working as hard as they
7    can, there is a strength and a braveness in this
8    country that is just wonderful.
9              And I think it's best to sum it up by the
10    experience that I've had since April the 19th of 1995.
11    On that Sunday, after the blast in Oklahoma, I went to
12    Oklahoma City and I've been back twice.  And victims
13    and survivors have sometimes come to visit me at the
14    Department of Justice.
15              In this time I watched the people of Oklahoma
16    City and this nation come together as one to speak out
17    against the violence that spawned that blast from hell,
18    to reach out to survivors and victims and help them
19    begin to heal, to support law enforcement to see that
20    the people responsible for that travesty were brought
21    to justice, and to speak out and stand for this nation
22    and for all this nation stands for.
23              I think that that experience, the bravery of
24    those people, the firefighters that I met in
25    Indianapolis who went to help, the police from
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1    Arlington who went to make a difference, countless
2    Americans reached out to help and to support and to
3    say, "We will not be beaten down."
4              This nation is on its way to making sure that
5    we give to all Americans the chance to be free, that we
6    give to our young Americans the chance to grow up, to
7    go to great academies such as this, to make a
8    difference in their lives and in the lives of all
9    Americans and indeed of the world.
10              To the class of 1980 and to those women that
11    have come after, you are part of a great nation and you
12    are making it greater.
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1                         C E R T I F I C A T E
2              I, CATHY E. LEAF, a Registered Merit
3    Reporter, do hereby certify that I was present at and
4    reported in stenotype the foregoing matter;
5              that I thereafter reduced my stenotype notes
6    to typewritten form, comprising the foregoing official
7    transcript;
8              further, that the foregoing transcript is, to
9    the best of my knowledge, a true and accurate record of
10    the foregoing matter on the date above set forth.
11              IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my
12    hand this 3rd day of September, 1996.
13                             ______________________________
14                             Cathy E. Leaf, RMR
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