Bad News for the Veep: Y2K Will Be ‘Al’s Mess’

(Washington, D.C.): Today’s Washington Post addresses a question raised
repeatedly in recent
months by the William J. Casey Institute of the Center for Security Policy: Where’s Vice
President Al Gore on the Year 2000 (Y2K) crisis? Under a headline “For Gore, Low
Profile
on a High-Tech Headache; Vice President is Silent on Year 2000 Computer Glitch That Could
Haunt His Campaign,” the Post quotes Gore intimates, among others, offering
various
explanations for the Administration’s computer point-man being AWOL on the Y2K
problem:

Excuses, Excuses

• The Veep’s On the Case — Just Not Visibly So: First, there
  is the explanation offered by the
  Vice President’s spokesman, Lawrence Haas: “He’s not avoiding the issue …. We have the
  right people in place, we have the right process in place and we do not expect major
  problems.” The Post reports that Haas said the “Vice President receives
  regular briefings on
  the government’s progress in fixing Year 2000 computer problems, has personally directed the
  Cabinet to make the fixes a high priority and has spoken about the potential crisis to the
  President’s Management Council, a group of senior political appointees.”

Evidently unpersuaded by this litany of inside-baseball activities, the Post
pressed Haas
about what efforts, if any, the Vice President had made to share his concerns with the
American people: ” Asked to point out speeches in which Gore has talked about the
so-called millennium bug, Haas could not identify one.”

• The Veep Doesn’t Want to Get People’s Hopes Up: Another explanation
  comes from
  Gore’s former chief domestic policy adviser, Greg Simon, who told the Post that
  “public
  speeches by the vice president could ‘give out the impression that he’s promising to fix
  everyone’s [Year 2000] problem.'”
• The Time’s Not Right: Clinton Y2K Czar John Koskinen repeated for
  the Post‘s benefit an
  argument he provided to a recent Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association
  audience⁽¹⁾: Everything necessary is being done; public
  speeches aren’t required just now: The
  Vice President has “provided the support and leadership that we need at this stage.
  It
  doesn’t do us a lot of good just to have people talking. My sense is to try to
  figure out the
  points of leverage, what are the issues that need to be raised and at what time.”
• It’s Politics: The most convincing explanation of all, however, comes
  from Andrew L.
  Shapiro, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University — Al
  Gore’s alma mater and an institution not generally associated with Republican partisan
  sentiments: “It’s very much a factor in his positioning for the 2000 race. Al doesn’t want
  it to be Al’s mess.”⁽²⁾

The Bottom Line

Whether Al Gore likes it or not, the Year 2000 problem is going to be seen by the
American
people as “Al’s mess.” After all, for the past five-and-a-half years, the Vice President
has
portrayed himself — in the words of Rep. Stephen Horn (R-CA), who has since
April 1996 been
trying to goad the Clinton-Gore Administration into action on the Y2K crisis — as “the expert on
all the good things in the 21st century — telecommunications, computers, technology.” The fact
that Mr. Gore has not given a single public speech or otherwise used what Rep. Connie Morella
(R-MD), another congressional leader on the issue, has called “the bully pulpit to educate the
public about possible economic consequences or inconveniences,” the Veep has
materially
contributed to a crisis that could have been largely, if not entirely, avoided if only the
public and private sectors had been spurred to take corrective action years ago.

The Vice President’s only hope — and that of the American people and economy — is
that
he and the President begin at once and in forthright terms to address the impending
national disaster likely to accompany the start of successive governmental and corporate
fiscal
years and then the change-over to calendar year 2000.⁽³⁾ By
so doing, they may be able even at
this late date, to spare some businesses and the public the full brunt of what may otherwise
become a Y2K-induced societal melt-down.⁽⁴⁾

At the very least, the Clinton-Gore Administration must immediately charge its newly
designated
National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and
Counterterrorism,
Richard Clark,⁽⁵⁾ with the arduous task of contingency
planning needed to mitigate the effects of
what may be one of the most devastating “cyberattacks” imaginable — the Year 2000 crisis.

– 30 –

1. See Forbes Urges Congress to Fill ‘Leadership
Vacuum’ on Year 2000 ‘Bug’; Y2K ‘Czar’
Tries to Shift Blame for Coming Crisis (No. 98-C
85, 16 May 1998).

2. This statement answers in the affirmative a question put to
Members of Congress and
conservative leaders in a memo circulated on 15 May 1997 by Steve Forbes: “Are they trying to
limit public concern until after the mid-term elections? The stakes are too high for such partisan
political games.”

3. For more on the implications of this disaster, see the following
Casey Institute Perspectives:
Galaxy 4 Meltdown: A Small Foretaste of the Millennium Bug; Where’s
Al? (No. 98-C 88, 21
May 1998); Where’s Al? The Veep Is Missing In Action on the ‘Y2K’
Crisis (No. 98-C 76, 1
May 1998); and Will the ‘Millennium Bug’ Have as Devastating an Effect on ‘Gore
2000′ as it
Threatens to Have on the Rest of Us? (No. 98-C 60,
3 April 1998).

4. Some experts estimate that as many as 10,000
small-to-medium-sized American companies
could be ruined with each passing day that they fail to come to grips with the Millennium Bug.

5. See yesterday’s Decision Brief entitled
One Step Forward, Two Back on U.S. Vulnerability:
Clinton Announces Defenses, Limits Their Effect — Perhaps Fatally ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_91″>No. 98-D 91, 27 May
1998).