>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. >> Teri Sierra: My name is Teri Sierra. I'm the Assistant Chief in Serials and Government Publications Division, the home of the Library's newspapers, current periodicals. Let's see. Government documents, international organization documents, comic books, and very importantly, the National Digital Newspaper Program which by this September will have, mm, more than 10 million pages of digitized newspapers from 38 different states. Today it is my great pleasure to introduce to you Professor Joseph Campbell who will be telling us about his new book, 1995, The Year That the Future Began . Professor Campbell teaches at American University. He teaches the History of Journalism which he knows pretty well because actually before he was a professor he was a reporter, going back to report for the Hartford Current , and the Cleveland Plain , and the Associated Press on all sorts of different national and international topics. He went to academe. He's had a very successful career there. His students love him, and I can tell you that because Professor Campbell comes to our Reading Room at least twice a year with whichever students he's teaching that semester and he knows his way around the Reading Room just as well as anybody else. He knows how to use the passkey microfilm readers, and he teaches his students how to use those. They have gotten better over the years, but he can use all of them. You can tell that he's devoted to his craft. He not only teaches but he -- this is his fifth book. Sixth? Oh, okay. I must have missed one somewhere in there. But I can tell you that all his books are very well reviewed. One of my favorites, and I'm going to read the title so I don't get it wrong, was described by the New Yorker Magazine as the indispensible Getting It Wrong, 10 of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism , which is a fabulous book if you haven't read it. But today he's going to talk to us about 1995 . Gosh, I don't know. Were you guys born in 1995? These guys over here. Some of our younger staff. Anyway, it's been called "The compulsively readable new book." So, help me welcome Professor Campbell to the podium this morning. [ Applause ] >> W. Joseph Campbell: Teri, thank you very much and good morning, or good afternoon, to everybody. It is a real pleasure to be back at what I refer to as my research home, the Library of Congress. I've been conducting research at the Library since January of 1999 when I met Georgia Higley and Mark Sweeney during a -- I think it was the American Historical Association's Conference or Convention in Washington, and Georgia and Mark had a presentation all set up for AHA Conference goers, and it was, I believe, a snowy January day, and I was the only one who showed up for this briefing, and I was so taken by what Georgia and Mark had to say that I've come back very frequently, very often, since then. This has indeed been a research home for me, and I have over the years introduced, as Teri suggested, generations of students to the Library of Congress to the exceptional resources of the Library, the only in Washington resources, and I figure if students, graduate and undergraduate, if they come to Washington to study, they should get to know, they should become acquainted with at least some of the resources of the Library of Congress, and they frankly know the newer microfilm readers far better than I do. I get training on them and then completely forget before my next visit. But my students take to it very quickly and they really love downloading the images from newspapers to their flash drives in PDF format. So the Library has been, as I say, my research home, and five of my six books have been researched heavily using Library resources. The only one was my first one which was the elaboration of my dissertation which was done at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and LOC resources weren't necessary tapped for that one. But every one since then, the five books since then, including my most recent book, 1995, the Year the Future Began . So let's take a look back at 1995 and, in fact, what do we recall about this year? Just 20 years ago, but it is in many respects a long time past. It was the start of a economic boom, the dot-com boom as it's called. It was catalyzed in 1995. The Dow breaks through the 4000 point barrier and through the 5000 point barrier. In fact, it set 36 new record highs in 1995, a performance that has been largely unmatched since then, although the Dow is what, over 17,000/18,000f? But the performance that year was exceptional. It was the year that Cal Ripken broke the iron man record in baseball, in professional major league baseball, a record held my Lou Gehrig for many years, and people thought it was unbreakable. But in September, 1995, in Baltimore, Cal Ripken breaks that record. It was also the year the Library introduced Thomas, inaugurated the Thomas Service in January, January 5, 1995. At first Thomas had available online copies of the texts of bills introduced in Congress, and then elaborated from that. But that was the rudimentary start of Thomas, January, 1995. The last original "Calvin and Hobbs," comic stripped appeared at the end of the year in 1995. Now, "Calvin and Hobbs," this wasn't the last original comic strip of "Calvin and Hobbs," but it was nonetheless emblematic of the mischievous character that young six-year-old Calvin was. In the exclusive company of Calvin, his stuffed toy animal became a six foot, strapping six foot wisecracking tiger, and the two of them had all kinds of great adventures. Looking back you could really tell that 1995 was an exceptional year because it was started -- the year, in fact, was bracketed by the final appearance of two well-know, much-respected, and I should say much-missed comics. January 1, 1995 marked the last original appearance of Gary Larson's the "Far Side." This quirky, yet imaginative and invariably funny comic about all kinds of things: talking pigs, dinosaurs who went extinct from smoking cigarettes, and all sorts of stuff like that. Gary Larson, quite an imaginative character. He ended his "Far Side" on January 1, 1995. I have another one that's been one of my favorites over the years. This was not the last original "Far Side, but nonetheless gives you a sense of the weird oddball humor [laughter] of Gary Larson. We miss both artists, Gary Larson, the "Far Side," Bill Watterson of "Calvin and Hobbs" quite a lot. So, as I say, you knew looking back that a year bracketed by the departure of the valedictory appearance of such memorable and important comic strips, that this is an exceptional year. It's exceptional for other reasons, too. There are five chapters in my book that discuss what I call five watershed moments in 1995. They included the Oklahoma City bombing in April of 1995, an attack that struck deep in the American heartland and killed 168 people. The "Trial of the Century" took place in 1995. It stretched from January, late January until early October, 1995. O.J. Simpson, a former professional football player and something of a movie actor and pitchman for Hertz Rental Car, was on trial for the slashing deaths, the stabbing death of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronal Goldman. It was the "Trial of the Century." Many newspapers characterize it as such. Nineteen-ninety-five also was the end that ended, that saw the U.S.-brokered Peace Talks in Dayton, Ohio, that had brought an end to the War in Bosnia, the brutal, vicious war in the Balkans. It was the year when Clinton met Lewinsky [laughter], setting in motion the events that led to the spectacle, the national spectacle, of the impeachment and trial of a sitting U.S. President, unprecedented in American history. There was one other impeachment, of course, but that was of a non-elected president, Andrew Johnson, who became President on Lincoln's assassination in 1865. It's also the year the Internet, the World Wide Web, enters the mainstream. It wasn't the year Al Gore invented the Internet, but it was the year in which it entered the mainstream consciousness in a big time way as we'll see a little bit later. Some of the mainstays of the Internet trace their origins, trace their derivations to 1995. So let's take a look at each of these five moments, these five decisive watershed occasions of 1995 starting with the Oklahoma City bombing. The target was the Federal Building, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. The bomber, Timothy McVey, put together a 7000 pound bomb made of ammonium nitrate and a racing fuel, and put them in 33 gallon barrels and arranged them inside a Ryder truck, a rented Ryder truck in such a way as it would have such powerful and destructive force that it would kill a lot of people. He intended to kill a lot of people that day, April 19, 1995. He parked the Ryder truck, a rented Rydal [sic] truck with the fuses burning from the cab into the cargo hold where the bomb had been assembled and had been prepared. He got out of the van, out of the truck, locked the door, closed the door, and walked away. A couple of minutes later, at 9:02 a.m. local time the bomb went off, and it was the worst, the deadliest case of domestic terrorism, domestic U.S. terrorism in this country's history. The site of the Oklahoma City bombing, the Murrah Building, is now called the Field of Empty Chairs, and these very elaborate and ornate and well-crafted chairs have been established there to honor each of the 168 victims, fatal victims, of the bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing. It's a very contemplative place in a heart of a city, a very friendly and appealing city, Oklahoma City. But it doesn't have any sign at all of Timothy McVey, the bomber. There is no hint that McVey was the guy who did this or where he parked the rental Ryder truck or anything like that. It's an intriguing place nonetheless. As I said, it was the deadliest case, act of domestic terrorism, in U.S. history, and the total number of fatal victims, 168, included 19 children, many of whom were in a daycare center on the second floor of the Murrah Building which had windows looking out on the street where McVey had parked the van. Nineteen children died in this attack. This bombing helped to introduce a series of measures aimed at preventing the prospect of domestic terrorism from happening again. It brought to bear a security-first mindset that we have seen develop over the years, in recent years, especially after the terrorist attacks of 911, to become more pronounced, more intrusive, and more obsessive over the years. One of the manifestations of this was the abrupt closure of a two-block section of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House about six weeks after the Oklahoma City bombing. On a Saturday morning the barricades went up and traffic was cut off from that section of Pennsylvania Avenue, and the intention was to prevent the prospect, the chance, that a truck bomb like Oklahoma City would be detonated in front of the White House. Local officials, the Washington Post , railed against this move, this arbitrary and sudden move to cut off Pennsylvania Avenue. The Washington Post said, "This is American's main street and it was never cut off, even when the British burned Washington in 1812. It was never cut off during World War II, and now, because of the prospect of a, the remote prospect even, of a terrorist attack, we're going to close this section of Pennsylvania Avenue?" It has remained closed in the 20 years since then despite the local uproar. So the capital as bunker. I think Oklahoma City has led to the uglification of Washington, D.C., a process that has become even more intense, of course, after the 911 terrorist attacks. The "Trial of the Century." As I said, it stretched like a stain, really, across the year, across 1995, beginning in late January, ending October 3, 1995. O.J. Simpson stood trial for the deaths of his former wife and her friend. It ended in Simpson's acquittal on October 3, 1995. The jury deliberated fewer than four hours even though the trial produced more than 1000 pieces of evidence, 45,000 pages of testimony, and had heard from dozens and dozens of witnesses. The jury deliberated just four hours. They said, "Look, we've been listening to this case for months. We don't need any more time than we need to render a verdict." It was a remarkable moment though, Simpson's acquittal. The verdicts were reached on October 2nd, on the afternoon of October 2, 1995. The judge presiding over the case in Los Angeles, Judge Lance Ito, decided that the verdicts would be announced the next day after the lawyers and the families and everyone associated with the case had a chance to get to Los Angeles, to get back into town, to get back to the courthouse. So at 10 a.m., Los Angeles time, on October 3, 1995, the verdicts would be announced. So everybody in the country knew that at this set hour the verdicts would be read in this highly-followed, widely-followed, highly-anticipated case. It had been broadcast live for months. The O.J. case gripped America in lots of ways. It touched many of the hot-button issues. There was race; there was sex; there was gender; there was domestic violence, accusations of. There was class; there was richness. O.J. used his millions to assemble a legal team that stood toe-to-toe with the best that the prosecution could muster, and in many cases, since his defense team dubbed the "Dream Team" by the U.S. news media, got the better of the prosecutors. So on this day, October 3, 1995, the country stood still. The country essentially shut down awaiting the verdict. People wouldn't get on airplanes because they wanted to know the outcome of the case. News conferences on Capitol Hill were postponed. Then Senator Joe Lieberman said, "Look, I'm postponing this news conference because not only would you not be there," he said to newsmen, "not only would you not be there, I wouldn't be there either." Trading on stock exchanges fell off markedly. Telephone call volume dropped off as well. Traffic ground to a near halt at Times Square. People just shut down waiting for the verdict. They gathered in front of TV's and radios, not so much the Internet. This is one of the last major stories in recent American history in which the Internet did not play a role in providing the news. The New York Times called this an "eerie moment of national communion," as everyone waited for the verdict, and they waited for the verdict. >> It is shortly before noon, Chicago time, and history is in the making. By the time you all see this, you will already know the O.J. verdict. But we, just like the rest of the country, are waiting to hear it live for the very first time. So you will be seeing this audience's reactions as the verdict is being read. So we wait. Are you nervous? >> Yeah. >> Yeah, [inaudible]. >> Who's nervous? Does anybody have [inaudible]. >> All right. Mrs. Robertson, would you -- do you have the envelope with the sealed verdict [inaudible]? >> I do. >> All right [inaudible]. >> He's still not quiet. >> All right. You got -- Mr. Simpson, would you please stand and face the jury? >> Mrs. Robertson. >> Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles. In the matter of the People of the State of California versus Orenthal James Simpson, Case Number 8A097211. We, the jury in the above-entitled action find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the [inaudible] of murder and -- [ Inaudible Speaker ] >> The Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles, in the matter of the People of the State of California versus Orenthal James Simpson. We the jury in the above-entitled action find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder and violation of Civil Code Section 987A, a felony, upon Ronald Lyle Goldman, a human being, as far as the Count Two of the information. >> What's the [inaudible]? >> We, along with the rest of the country, saw this verdict as you saw it, and the jury has spoken. Our audience has been here most of the morning waiting to see the verdict, and lots of people, as you saw, had some pretty strong reactions. Obviously you're very happy. >> Very happy for his family, for his children. I'm very happy. >> I'm also very happy. I think justice was served. [ Booing ] >> We finally have -- not everyone here is happy, however. Not everyone here is happy. I notice that you are not. >> No, I'm not happy. >> I think it's just unfair because they know -- I feel so bad for her. She's -- I just feel like she's rotting over in her grave, and she said if he ever did it he would get away with it. That's what she said. And he's not -- he's there [cheering]. >> We will be right back. [ Laughter ] >> W. Joseph Campbell: So, as we saw there, the reactions to the verdict were decidedly disparate. Many, but not all, whites were dismayed by the outcome. Many, but not all, African Americans rejoiced, were joyful. Many commentators suggested that this was indicative, the reaction to the O.J. verdicts was indicative of a racial divide, a yawning racial divide, in the United States. Polling data over the months and years after the case, though, suggested that the verdicts only briefly dented the broader overall not regular trajectory of gradually improving race relations in the United States, that this was not a moment in which race relations took a permanent hit. In fact, some of the data, some of the polling data, over the years are quite intriguing. In the mid-'90s, fewer than 50% of Americans endorsed the idea of inter-racial marriage. That percentage these days is closer to 90% approval. One example of how the reactions did not seriously indicate a long-lasting problem with race in terms of the O.J. outcome. The broader consequences of this case had to do with DNA evidence, forensic DNA evidence. The trial effectively settled disputes about the validity, about the value, about the accuracy of DNA evidence, and it also enhanced popular interest in DNA, in forensic DNA. It essentially told the outcome because the Los Angeles Police Department and their criminalists had so badly gathered, collected, processed, and analyzed the DNA evidence in the O.J. case. The defense team was able to punch holes in what was this best evidence that the prosecution had assembled. The prosecution had no murder weapon, had no witnesses to the crimes, had no confession from the killer. What it did have was a mountain of DNA evidence, and that DNA evidence clearly pointed to the guilt of O.J. Simpson. Simpson's defense team was able to poke holes in the way that this evidence was gathered, processed in the laboratory, interpreted, and, therefore, made this evidence essentially irrelevant, and allowed the defense to raise the specter, to raise the possibility that this evidence had been planted against O.J. Simpson by corrupt police in Los Angeles, a theory that few people outside the defense team endorsed. But, nonetheless, it allowed them, the DNA evidence did allow them to, and the way the DNA evidence was gathered, allowed them to make such a claim. In any event, it helped to raise doubt among the jurors and it effectively impugned the prosecution's best evidence against Simpson. Again, no eye witnesses, no murder weapon, no confession, and no DNA evidence. The acquittal of O.J. Simpson in the face of those impediments became uncontested and inevitable in my view. The trial and the importance that DNA evidence played in the trial anticipated popular interest in DNA, and particularly in CSI-type programming. It was not a -- just a few years later when -- Sorry. Just a few years later that CSI took to the air. >> I want to play for you the trailer. [ Inaudible Speaker ] [ Music ] [ Inaudible Speakers ] >> That the crime scene is the key to a killing. [Inaudible] to talk to a dead body. >> I let you talk to me actually. >> The defense is just [inaudible]. >> Properties of Jerry Bruckheimer, and now we get the Con Air as the big new prime-time series on CBS -- CSI . [ Inaudible Speaker ] >> Crime Scene Investigation. >> I know that [inaudible], but this is a time where we have to work together. [Inaudible] of forensic experts. >> And [inaudible] done and seeing out the back [inaudible] might occur. >> Bring [inaudible] back to life. I thought he was dead wearing restricted eyeglasses. . Jeffers picked the glasses up. >> It was off. >> Tell him I decided that they're eyeglasses. >> We have no idea. This could be of Las Vegas. >> [Inaudible] just open up. >> Doing the high rollers and the low-life's [inaudible]. It was in fact the opposite. >> Then he was murdered. >> Between the [inaudible]. >> I've got a [inaudible]. >> At the very [inaudible] concentrate on what cannot lie, the evidence. [Inaudible] the trail [inaudible] they prove [inaudible]. We may have our suicide note. >> I just can't do it anymore >> That's not my son [inaudible]. >> William Petersen, Marg Helgenberger, Gary Dourdan, George Eads, Jorja Fox, Paul Guilfoyle. >> I'm going to [inaudible] now. >> How'd you know about that? >> Your boyfriend told me. [ Music ] >> CSI . [ Music ] >> W. Joseph Campbell: So within five years of the O.J. trial, CSI was on the air and on its way to popularity. Primetime television changed an awful lot with the introduction of forensic DNA-type programming such as CSI . Now the O.J. trial probably wasn't the trial of the century. It was certainly the murder trial of the 1990s. One of O.J.'s defense lawyers did some research and found that there were at least 33 other cases in the 20th century in which the news media had described at one time or another as the trial of the century, going back to the trial of the assassin of William McKinley in 1901. President William McKinley shot to death in Buffalo in 1901 was the first trial of the century. Other trials of the century included the trial of the suspected kidnapper of the Lindbergh baby, the trial of the Rosenberg's in the 1950's, and some people even said the last trial of the century was Clinton's trial in the Senate on impeachment charges. But nonetheless, even if the trial of O.J. Simpson wasn't the trial of the century, the 20th century, it still remains, in a perverse way perhaps, a standard by which other murder trials are compared and, ultimately, found wanting. You can think of the Casey Anthony case of a few years ago often compared to the O.J. trial. Another one was the case in South Africa of the [fingersnap] Pistorius, the Pistorius trial. Again, sort of not found up to the, if you will, the O.J. standard. So it does remain in popular imagination as a trial, a high-profile murder trial, distinguished for its duration, media attention, and popular appeal. The peace accords of Dayton, Ohio, that ended the war halfway around the world in Bosnia was a success, a U.S. foreign policy success, arguably the first major foreign policy success of the Clinton Administration. The U.S. brought together the leaders of, and from left to right, Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, and kept them essentially in radio silence for three weeks at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside of Dayton, Ohio. Kept them there until they could reach an agreement that ended Europe's bloodiest and most vicious war since the end of World War II. The Bosnian War began in April of 1992 following the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. More than 100,000 people were killed during the two-and-a-half years of warfare in Bosnia, and tens of thousands of more were displaced. The war brought and entered into the lexicon such terminology as ethnic cleansing. It also brought the specter of Srebrenica, the massacre of 8000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica by Serb paramilitaries in 1995, one of the most atrocious acts, probably the most atrocious act, of an atrocious war. It was after Srebrenica that the Clinton Administration was moved to finally bring an end to this conflict, a negotiated end to the conflict. European efforts, begun in 1992, and tried periodically until 1995, had failed successively to bring an end to the conflict. The U.S. brought to bear its diplomatic muscle as well as armed forces. A bombing campaign against Serbian positions around Sarajevo also accompanied the reaction, the U.S. reaction to the Srebrenica massacre of July, 1995. Finally, all three sides agreed to meet in Dayton, Ohio. So halfway around the world and meet there until a peace treaty was hammered out. It took them three weeks. The talks often seemed to be on the verge of foundering, on the verge of collapse. But in the end, and almost to the last possible minute, the three sides got together, hammered together an agreement that has held up in the 20 years since then. It is not a perfect agreement. It has left Bosnia essentially divided into two mini-statelets, the Croatian Muslim Federation and the Serb Republic, and neither side gets along very well. It is a very creaky arrangement that has persisted since 1995. But it did have the effect of ending the war, of bringing the war to a close. The principle architect of the Dayton peace accords was a very colorful U.S. Assistant Secretary of State named Richard Holbrooke, an ambitious, out-spoken, often embracive, explosive, but at the same time could be very charming, Assistant Secretary of State who had ambitions. He wanted to become Secretary of State. He might have had Gore won the Electoral College vote in 2000, or if Hillary Clinton had become President in 2008, 2009. Holbrooke had ambitions but he never made it to Secretary of State. But his signal accomplishment was pulling together the Dayton peace accords, and it's largely through the weight of his personality that he kept the talks on track and kept them going until an agreement was reached. Richard Holbrooke. He died a few years ago of a torn aorta while he was the Obama Administration's representative to Afghanistan, trying to find a negotiated settlement to that conflict. Richard Holbrooke. This success, U.S. foreign policy success, really was the first major foreign policy accomplishment of the Clinton Administration and of the United States in a post-Cold War environment since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. It signaled a rise in a new muscularity in U.S. approach to foreign policy, that it would accompany military might with diplomatic pressure to bring an end, to reach foreign policy objectives. But it was willing to apply force to diplomatic ends. This gave rise to what some analysts have correctly called it my view a "hubris bubble" that the United States continued to seek out and to apply force in international affairs. In 1998 Clinton ordered the bombing of Iraq to degrade what he said were Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction capabilities. In 1999 the U.S. led a bombing campaign, a NATO bombing campaign of Serbia, to force the Serbian leadership to give up its control of the province of Kosovo, the breakaway province of Kosovo. This was emblematic of a tougher U.S. approach to foreign policy, to couple military might with tough-minded diplomacy. This hubris bubble kept expanding after 911 with the invasion of Afghanistan, until the bubble finally burst in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. In many ways we're still trying to sort through the collapse of this hubris bubble, of the post-Dayton hubris bubble. In many ways we're still dealing with the aftermath of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, too. They met, this happy couple, met in [laughter] November of 1995. The government shutdown of mid-November, 1995, was the reason they got together. >> Is it? >> W. Joseph Campbell: Was the reason they got together. If not for the shutdown, Lewinsky would have not had an opportunity to get close to Clinton. Oh, she had seen him at rope ceremonies, lawn ceremonies, at the White House during the summer of 1995. She came to Washington from Oregon as an unpaid intern and saw Clinton on a couple of occasions and said later that she developed a crush for the President. There's one famous photo of the two of them shaking hands at the rope line and Clinton's giving her the full Bill Clinton, looking her over very closely, and she responded in kind [laughter]. But this flirtation would not have gone any further had it not been for the government shutdown of mid-November, 1995, because the government shutdown furloughed 800,000 Federal employees in Washington and elsewhere. It shut down the Statue of Liberty. It closed the Grand Canyon, the government shutdown. It sent home almost all of the White House staff. The paid staff was furloughed. Into this breech stepped the unpaid White House interns, and Lewinsky had an assignment in the Chief of Staff's office down the hall, down the corridor from the Oval Office. As the shutdown preceded one thing led to another. She flipped her thong once at the President. He responded with an appreciative glance according to her biographer, and their affair began the night of the government shutdown in November, 1995. Now, principally blamed, and I think correctly so, for the shutdown, was not Clinton necessarily, but his nemesis, the Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. Gingrich told journalists the day the shutdown took place that one of the reasons that he played such hardball with Clinton and forced the government to shut down was because he was peeved at the way he was treated by Clinton and the White House staff aboard a flight to Tel Aviv and back to attend the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin who was slain in early November, 1995, the Prime Minister of Israel. Clinton, other former Presidents, the leaders of the House -- I mean, a huge U.S. delegation boarded Air Force One for this long trip over and back to Tel Aviv. Gingrich, who was then the House Speaker -- he'd become House Speaker in January, 1995, following the Republican landslide elections of November, 1994. Gingrich said he thought that he would have an opportunity to talk to Clinton about the pending government shutdown because this didn't come out of nowhere. There were -- had weeks of notice essentially. During that trip, though, Clinton did not speak with Gingrich, at least one-on-one, about the pending shutdown. Gingrich felt like he was mistreated. He also said upon arrival back in the U.S., when they landed at Andrews Air Force Base, that Clinton made him and Bob Dole, the Senate Majority Leader, get off the plane through the back exit [laughter]. Not up front; in the back. Gingrich says, "You know, it's petty but it's true. I mean, yeah, we have feelings, too, and that's one of the reasons I was playing really hardball. I sent up this legislation that we knew that Clinton was going to veto triggering the government shutdown." A remarkable set of public statements that he made explaining his role in the shutdown. The New York Daily News in one of the most inspired headlines of the 20th century called him "Cry Baby Newt." [ Laughter ] Cry Baby Newt. It's one of the best front pages of the 1990s. He closed down the government because Clinton made him sit at the back of a plane. That was kind of true, and the caricature stuck, and helped sort of turn public opinion against Gingrich and this really helped to, some people say, salvage Clinton's Presidency, that it made the White House look like the better of the two parties in a government dispute, the government shutdown, and signaled a way for Clinton to reclaim the upper hand in Washington because, for most of 1995, the upper hand had been wielded by the Republican-controlled Congress, especially Newt Gingrich. Cry Baby Newt signaled the start of the end of Gingrich's popularity. In fact, by the end of 1995 his popularity had reached Nixonian levels during Watergate in the 30% range [laughter]. Cry Baby Newt. The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal didn't burst into public view until January of 1998 when word leaked out that a Special Prosecutor, Independent Counsel, was investigating Clinton's conduct related to Lewinsky and other women, and that he was suspected of having committed perjury and obstruction of justice, particularly in a deposition that he answered in January of 1998 in a case brought by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee who claimed that while he was Governor, Clinton propositioned her in a hotel room. She claimed harassment, sexual harassment, and the Supreme Court in a unanimous decision allowed this case to go forward saying it's not likely that this case is going to be a major distraction for the President. Had the Supreme Court ruled the other way there would have been no Lewinsky scandal. But during the deposition Clinton was asked about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He was quite surprised that the lawyers for Paula Jones knew about this, and tried to finesse his way out of answering directly or answering affirmatively. It was during that deposition that prosecutors say that he committed perjury and then tried to cover this up with the obstruction of justice that followed. He was impeached on a perjury and an obstruction of justice count in December of 1998, tried by the U.S. Senate in January and February of 1999, and acquitted, as everybody thought he would be. It takes a two-thirds vote in the Senate to convict a president on impeachment counts. Neither count, neither perjury nor obstruction of justice, reached more than 50%. One of the counts died on a 50-50 vote. The other was 45-55. But the scandal remains something that's still vivid to this day, 20 years later. It has given us such moments as this one. >> I'm not [inaudible] into your home. [ Laughter ] >> This -- >> I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time, never. These allegations are false and I need to go back to work for the American people. [ Music ] >> W. Joseph Campbell: The finger-wagging moment of January, 1998, when Clinton denied, as you heard, sexual relations with that woman. Now this, the ordeal, the words of impeachment had the lasting effect, not only of introducing Monica Lewinsky to the popular consciousness, introducing such phrases as "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," did not only have the effect of introducing such phrases as "depends on the definition, what the definition of is is," Clinton's famous line from his Grand Jury testimony in August of 1998, but it had the lasting effect of deepening partisan cleavages in the United States' political scene. It's not the only reason we have such an embittered and divided political landscape these days. But it is a contributing factor, it is a contributing factor. The words of impeachment divided the country, they divided Republican versus Democrat, in ways that really haven't completely healed in the 20 years, the 15 years or so since the impeachment wars reached their conclusion. Finally, 1995 was the year of the Internet. Now, not everyone is online in 1995, but just about everyone has heard about the Internet, the World Wide Web, cyberspace, in 1995. >> Millions of Americans own their first computer. If you're one of them you can now glimpse the future with nothing more than a modem, a phone line, a few dollars a month. [ Music ] >> How would the thing work with the a that has a ring around it? >> Yes. >> [Inaudible] what I said. >> Mm-hmm. >> Kate said she thought it was a [inaudible]. >> Yeah. >> Oh. >> But I've never heard of -- [ Inaudible Speaker ] -- while I was at NBC. >> Just what is this main artery of impression super highway? >> Every business, no matter how large and no matter how small, will be on the Internet in the year 2000. It's a primary way of people will look at information. It will replace the Yellow Pages as we know it today. >> There are a lot of people just getting on to the Internet because they feel that they have to get onto the playing field so to speak. >> But it's very careful to be on the Internet right now. There is a [inaudible] @nbc.ge.com. I mean -- >> Well, with our decision now, what do you say to [inaudible]? >> The Internet is about [inaudible] computer I use, the one that's speaking really big now. [ Inaudible Speaker ] >> No. A lot of people use it to communicate. I guess they can communicate with NBC writers and [inaudible]. Allison, can you explain the Internet [inaudible]? >> They can't explain it in 10 seconds with us. >> Oh. >> I'm expected to find the stars are something like the Internet. >> You would really get hooked. >> I would get hooked and I would never spend time with my family. [ Laughter ] >> -- now. I bet everybody is just signing on and having these conversations [inaudible] to get our record together or whatever. Because when people that -- I mean, I don't know if I -- >> It is group therapy of the '90s. >> Well, I think as I mentioned I have no desire to be a part of the Internet because I feel like I'm so inundated with information all the time that I don't really -- I don't welcome more. Don't you really feel like it's a constant bombardment -- >> No. >> I just think -- >> [Inaudible] I would resent the -- you know, at least when you're home, if the phone rings, you have the option of not answering it. On the other hand, people can send you messages all day and you don't even want to hear from them. [ Laughter ] >> W. Joseph Campbell: True enough. It's interesting to look back and see how the news media were trying to introduce and explain this new fangled Internet, the World Wide Web, to readers, to audiences, to media audiences, keeping in mind that about 14% of the American population, adult population, was online in 1995. They had heard about it and they were trying to understand what this new thing was about. The news media used such phrases as, to explain the World Wide Web -- this is from the New York Times in January, 1995. "The World Wide Web is a section of the Internet overflowing with sights and sounds." Not wrong, not completely off target. Quaint maybe. But still more or less accurate. The World Wide Web, " -- a section of the Internet overflowing with sights and sounds." As I mentioned earlier, a number of mainstays, digital mainstays, traced their origins to 1995. Internet Explorer, Microsoft's Internet Explorer debuted in August of 1995. Yahoo was incorporated in March, 1995. Match.com, that same month got going. Internet dating, one of the first uses, commercial uses, of the digital world. EBay, the predecessor to eBay was launched in September of 1995. Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay claimed to have written the code for eBay on a Labor Day weekend from his home. Craigslist, the predecessor to Craigslist got going in 1995. Although Google did not get going until like 1997, the founders of Google met for the first time on the Stanford University campus and they didn't like each other at the start. They thought each other was pretty obnoxious, pretty disgusting. But they soon got over that and the rest, of course, is history. Amazon, perhaps the World Wide Web's most impressive commercial success story, got going in July of 1995. Nobody noticed. Almost nobody noticed. There were a few people out there buying books online, but it's interesting to look back just 20 years and think, gosh, nobody cared much about amazon.com then. But now it's become just such an integral part of daily life. It is the Web's most important commercial success story. More than 100,000 employees, with revenues close to $100 billion, and is diversified well beyond books and music, which were its two early and original products that it sold online. Now into cloud computing, Web hosting which is a major source of its revenues, as well as devices such as Kindles and eReaders. It was the year of the Internet, but connectivity to the online world was really, really pretty primitive back then. Who can forget? [ Music ] Anyone of a certain age will remember the digital handshake. [ Laughter ] That must have been a good connection. [ Laughter ] But you know it was -- the younger generation was -- recognized the importance of the Net even back in 1995 as this PSA suggests. >> Why? >> Hey, why should I be on the Internet? >> Why? >> [Inaudible] college the Internet will be your telephone -- >> Television -- >> Shopping Center -- >> And workplace. >> The [inaudible] than you can possibly imagine. >> And also now you can -- >> This is the [inaudible]. >> Take a [inaudible]. >> Do the research on the rainforest. >> Get soccer scores for a team in Italy. >> Tell a friend in Australia. >> And dial the founder of the [inaudible] cat food company. >> Isn't it as much our future as the [inaudible]? >> Shouldn't everybody be on the Internet? >> Yes. [ Music ] >> W. Joseph Campbell: This fifth-grade class in Montana put together this PSA. Very prophetic, very prophetic. They must be now 30 years old, these kids. So, to recap about 1995. It's the year the Internet and the World Wide Web enter mainstream consciousness. It's the year that terrorism reaches deep into the American heartland with such devastating effect. It was the year of the trial of the century that enthralled and repelled at the same time the country at large. It was the year the U.S.-brokered peace agreement that ended Europe's deadliest and most vicious war since World War II, and it was the year that Clinton and Lewinsky began their sexual dalliance leading to his impeachment in 1998. I'd like to say a few words in closing about the challenges, if you will, about researching the recent past. Twenty years is not that long ago. One of those challenges is the past that historians must ask themselves, "Is the past different enough from today? Has there been adequate critical distance developed? Has there been adequate temporal difference developed?" Important questions in terms of researching the recent past. Another question is source material ample, accessible, available, revealing? Fortunately much of it is. There's in fact -- I found an overwhelming amount of material available about 1995, about the mid-'90s. Another question that historians of the recent past have to ask themselves, is the researcher sufficiently detached from the period that he or she is studying? Again, 20 years is not that long ago. There was a relevant question as far as I was concerned in dealing with the chapter about O.J. Simpson, and I have to tell you that my original proposal on this book was to treat the O.J. trial not as a separate chapter but as a lengthy discussion in the introduction, because I had found the trial, remembered the trial as being so off-putting and so dismaying in some respects that I thought I don't want to spend a whole lot of time working on this as a whole chapter. I'm going to treat it in the Introduction. The Acquisitions Editor said, "Are you nuts? You can't write a book about 1995 and not devote a chapter to the O.J. trial." He was right. He was right. I found it was a -- it turned out to be a very fascinating case study. Not only the trial itself and how O.J. injected himself frequently without ever having taken the stand. But he injected himself in a prominent way in the trial. In particular, the gloves episode in June of 1995 when the prosecution suddenly asked him to try on the evidence gloves, gloves that the prosecution believed the killer had used on the night that Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were killed. Simpson tries on the gloves. He has to wear latex gloves beneath them, and he tries on the gloves, struggles mightily, stands in front of the jury in a famous photo, and tells the jury in a sense too tight, they don't fit. Essentially O.J. testifies without ever having to take the stand, without ever having to face withering cross-examination by the prosecution. It was a blunder of the first degree, and it helped turn the case to the defense. So it was an intriguing case. The more I got into it the more I recognized that this was certainly worth a chapter. So is the researcher sufficiently detached, is an important question to ask in researching the recent past. I would add, is the critic sufficiently detached? I mean, does he or she remember so much about the recent past of 1995 that he or she has her or his own impressions about the year that may color their review? It does seem that everyone has opinion about these events about so long ago. Also, there has to be a connecting thread. It just can't be a rehash of an interesting year. There's got to be some connective tissue that makes it important, that identifies the significance, the lasting significance. Again, the more I looked at 1995, I found that this was a year of multiple watersheds, a year of watersheds in new media, in domestic terrorism, in crime and justice, in international diplomacy, and in political scandal. A year of multiple watersheds. I would argue that many of the features and realities of contemporary life were shaped in some respects by 1995, that the fingerprints of that year are all over the present. I encourage you to read more about 1995. The handout that Georgia Higley distributed here from Reason Magazine is one of those handouts that you can read more about it. You're welcome to take a look at my 1995 blog or tweet at -- or follow me on Twitter @wjosephcampbell. Thank you very much for being such a fine and attentive audience. I'd be happy to field any questions that you may have about the year 1995 or about researching at the Library of Congress if you're interested in questions along those lines. I'd be happy to sing the praises of this fine institution. Thank you. [ Applause ] Yes, ma'am. >> I have a question about while you were coming up to the [inaudible] there must have been a few that you sort of discarded. Can you name a couple that you thought about including for 1995 and decided they're not as important? >> W. Joseph Campbell: That's a very good question. The question is, were there topics that were discarded as subjects for chapters in the book? One of them -- I did originally, an early proposal, identified as a sixth chapter. The discovery, the confirmed discovery of the first exoplanet, which happened in 1995. An exoplanet you may ask? What the heck is an exoplanet? An exoplanet is a object, a planet-like object revolving around a sun-like star outside the Earth's solar system. These exoplanets had been long theorized but had never been confirmed. Their existence had never been confirmed until October, 1995, when two Swiss astronomers, astrophysicists, announced at a conference in Florence, Italy, that they had discovered through a technique using spectral -- I don't know. It was a complicated scientific technique in which they could detect the wobbling of a particular star influenced by the circulation or the rotation of a nearby object, i.e., a planet. They announced that in the Constellation Pegasus, the star Pegasus 51 had an exoplanet around it, and it was soon confirmed by other astronomers. The importance of exoplanets, of course, is that it takes us a step closer to the long, long odds of discovering life outside the Earth, beyond the Earth. To have an exoplanet is an essential to find life outside of Earth, if that ever happens. This was the moment. In 1995 was the moment in which an exoplanet was discovered and confirmed. The publisher was lukewarm about this and I think the Review Board -- the publisher is the University of California Press. The Review Board also was kind of lukewarm about it and suggested that it be folded into the Introduction and not be made a standalone chapter. But I did have serious thoughts about making this a standalone chapter. Since 1995, in the 20 years since then, there have been thousands of other exoplanets discovered and some of them exist in what the astronomers call the Goldilocks Zone. In other words, they revolve around a sun-like star in an area that's not too close to the plant nor not -- to the sun-star, or not too far away from the star; i.e., in just the right not too hot, not too cold Goldilocks Zone. Those exoplanets are of particular interest as they may be the places where life in some form exists. But again, it's a long, long, long odds game of trying to determine if and where life exists outside of Earth. But if it does, it's going to be on an exoplanet somewhere, and the first step to that was in 1995. So I thought it sounded pretty good, but the publisher advised a more modest treatment. That's a good question. Are there other questions? >> Where did you do most of your research? >> W. Joseph Campbell: In a number of places. The library's, the newspaper and current periodical reading room is an essential place to do a lot of the research. Cranking microfilm there is essential. Some work was done poking through the Manuscripts Collection in the Manuscripts Reading Room. There wasn't a lot, but what was available I certainly combed through some of the collections there. Danial Patrick Moynihan's papers, for example, had a few things related to the Internet in 1995 that I found to be useful. I also took my research to places where these events happened. L.A., for example, for the Simpson trial. The courtroom where the trial took place in 1995. It's like it's -- stepping into that courtroom was like sort of stepping back into a time warp. It looks just as it did on television 20 years ago. It is no longer in use. It's no longer the place for trials. But it's nonetheless a sort of relic of 1995. I spent some time, paid a couple of research visits to the Oklahoma National Monument and Museum which has a substantial collection of oral histories and other material and artifacts related to the Oklahoma City bombing, and that was very, very important, too. Interviews were vital as well. I interviewed people such as Mike McCurry, Clinton's former press secretary, who has actually some critical things to say about the former President's conduct in the Lewinsky scandal, as well as other people related to the O.J. trial, the Dayton piece, of course. I visited Dayton, Ohio, and the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to get a sense of place. So I travelled a fair amount on researching this topic. Some people wouldn't speak to me. Jeff Bezos wouldn't talk to me. He doesn't talk to the press unless he has something to say like he's announcing drone delivery of books or something [laughter], but he said no. I made a stab at talking to Marc Andreessen who was the founder of the Netscape browser that really was a catalyst as well for the dot-com boom of the late '90s. but Andreessen declined, so. So, there's always those drawbacks, too. But I found there was an enormous amount of material just to wade through. >> Did you go to the [inaudible] machine or? >> W. Joseph Campbell: Some of that. Some online sources were very important. Obviously, from the presentation today, some of those clips do date to 1995 and remain amusing to this day. Great. Yes, sir? [ Inaudible Speaker ] I think it was in a budget -- budget cutbacks. They decided they would no longer make use of that courtroom, and Lance Ito, the judge who had been assigned the courtroom, is now has senior status; i.e., he's sort of advancing into semi-retirement. But there's like a cover of Newsweek on the back wall from 1995. As I say, it's like stepping back into a time warp, back to the courtroom. It looks the same. The same blue chairs, blue-covered chairs and -- actually, it's smaller than it looks on -- I remember looking on television where it was right on top of everybody. >> And why did they choose chairs for the Oklahoma [inaudible]? >> W. Joseph Campbell: There was a contest, a competition, to determine how best to memorialize the site of the Oklahoma City bombing. The Murrah Building, the Federal building that was attacked was torn down within a month of the bombing, and in that place they had a competition to come up with the best way to remember the victims. These chairs -- and the area is now called the Field of Empty Chairs -- were the best way people thought to memorialize the victims and to send a message of enduring loss and I think it's very effective, especially at night when these chairs are illuminated from the inside. It's a very moving sight at night to visit the Field of Empty Chairs. The bombing is commemorated every year in Oklahoma City on the day of the bombing, the anniversary, and this year was -- just last month was the 20th anniversary, and the chairs are festooned with flowers and other mementoes of the victims. The victims' families still do make visits to the site. It's a very moving ceremony and a very moving venue. But my criticism is that there -- a visitor there would have no sense of where McVey parked the Ryder rental truck and brought so much damage and havoc and devastation to that site 20 years ago. In fact, it's one of the questions that the Park Rangers there are frequently asked. Okay, where did he park the Ryder rental van, the truck? >> Do they answer that question? >> W. Joseph Campbell: They do. They do answer it, but they won't volunteer. There's no placard or anything that says this is where the truck was parked. They say they don't want to give attention to the attackers. They want to give attention to the survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing, and how -- the city did recover. As I said earlier, it's a very appealing, it's a very friendly city. I enjoyed my visits there and look forward to going back later this year sometime. You can really develop an affection for the place very quickly and not out of pity for what happened in 1995, but just because the genuine warmth of this small town in Middle America. Yes, ma'am. >> I just have a comment. Before the Web went into graphics and it's just putting in [inaudible] and not [inaudible] or whatever, and it was all text. >> W. Joseph Campbell: Right. >> I was trying to explain to people because my [inaudible] can only [inaudible]. I was trying to explain they don't [inaudible]. Suddenly they had a way of relating and my [inaudible] somewhere else [inaudible]. A lot of people suddenly were on board [inaudible]. >> W. Joseph Campbell: That's right. >> There was a big explosion of [inaudible]. >> W. Joseph Campbell: The first web browsers -- Mosaic was probably the first point and click graphical browser. It was developed by Marc Andreessen while he was a student at the University of Illinois. That really began to revolutionize access to the Web. It wasn't an instantaneous thing, but it provided people, just as you say, with the graphical interface to the online world and made it appealing and made it easily navigated. Before that it was very difficult. You had to know a fair amount of like FTP and some code and everything to find your way around, to use the Web and the Internet. But it wasn't until the first popular web browser, Mosaic, which was developed in 1993, and then Netscape which took off in 1994, and then became the dominant browser in 1995. Again, Marc Andreessen was the one who helped develop that and Netscape Communications was really, in many respects, the swaggering embodiment of what was possible, what was seen as possible in the online world in the mid-'90s. Of course, the trajectory of Netscape was very, very quick. It exploded into great popularity and then lost a war with Microsoft, what was called the browser war, and by 1999 Netscape had been absorbed by AOL.com and was sort of a forgotten outpost of AOL. So the five-year trajectory really helped to define Internet time, how the Internet kind of speeded everything up, and Netscape was emblematic of that trend. It's a great company. That was my introduction to the Web. It was through Netscape, Netscape's browser. >> I'm curious why -- because Dayton, Ohio, it shows -- >> W. Joseph Campbell: That is an excellent -- >> -- so that [inaudible]. >> W. Joseph Campbell: Great question. I wish I had -- I should have mentioned that. It was -- in the United States they didn't want to hold these talks in Europe because Holbrooke and other American diplomats were leading the effort to find a negotiated settlement, so it had to be in the United States. They did not want to have it at Camp David because of the -- it was too close to Washington, and it did have that Egypt-Israeli Peace Accord aura about it, too. So they didn't want to be compared necessarily to that talk, to those sets of talks. Although that is an immediate antecedent to what happened in Dayton. They wanted to find a place that was far enough away from Washington so there wasn't going to be constant meddling by Washington officials, but yet it was close enough that if they needed to get there, Washington officials, i.e., the Secretary of State needed to get there, he could get there by plane in an hour. So Dayton was an ideal sight. The Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is this huge place, and it just bristles with reminders of American military might, and that sent an implicit subtle, maybe not so subtle, message to the negotiators that, hey, you better get your act together because you don't know what might happen if these talks fail. There was no overt threat of renewed military attacks, aerial attacks, by the United States, but still the message was implicit, perhaps. Also, the layout of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was such that they could keep the talks, negotiation and the negotiating teams, in a fairly confined area. There were a series of four or five brick buildings, low brick buildings called the Visiting Officer Barracks or Quarters, and they sort of faced each other, and opened onto a courtyard, and then there was one not far away from that. So these became the homes for the respective delegations: for the Serbs, for the Croats, for the Bosnians, and for the United States. Then the Europeans have their own building a short ways away. That lent -- allowed for a lot of interchange, informal interchange, that proved pretty vital and pretty important in these talks. So Dayton just had it all. It was close enough to Washington yet far removed from Washington. It was a place where it could be kept secure. The press could be kept away from the gates of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It sent a reminder of U.S. military might and also had physical layout, the physical structure that allowed for these talks to proceed with some intimacy and without being interrupted, so Dayton was an ideal location as it turned out. But that is a great question. Yeah, why Dayton? Well, thank you very much. >> Questions? >> W. Joseph Campbell: I'd be happy to, yes, indeed. Thanks, everybody. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.