1995 Read online

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the General Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation.

  1995

  ALSO BY W. JOSEPH CAMPBELL

  Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism

  The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms

  Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies

  The Spanish-American War: American Wars and the Media in Primary Documents

  The Emergent Independent Press in Benin and Côte d’Ivoire: From Voice of the State to Advocate of Democracy

  1995

  The Year the Future Began

  W. Joseph Campbell

  UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

  University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

  University of California Press

  Oakland, California

  © 2015 by W. Joseph Campbell

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Campbell, W. Joseph.

  1995 : the year the future began / W. Joseph Campbell.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-520-27399-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-520-95971-2 (e-book)

  1. United States—Politics and government—1993–2001. 2. United States—Social conditions—20th century. 3. Nineteen ninety-five, A.D. I. Title.

  E885.C36 2015

  973.92—dc232014010239

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Natures Natural, a fiber that contains 30% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

  To Ann-Marie

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Preface

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction to an Improbable Year

  1The Year of the Internet

  2Terror in the Heartland, and a Wary America

  3O.J., DNA, and the “Trial of the Century”

  4Peace at Dayton and the “Hubris Bubble”

  5Clinton Meets Lewinsky

  Conclusion: The Long Reach of 1995

  The Timeline of a Watershed Year: 1995

  Notes

  Select Bibliography

  Index

  Illustrations

  1. Swiss astronomer Michel Mayor

  2. Barbara Holland, author of Endangered Pleasures

  3. Newspaper headline about launch of Windows 95 operating software

  4. Graph showing growth in Internet use in America, 1995–2013

  5. Newspaper headline encouraging readers to learn about the Internet

  6. Newspaper headline describing growth of the Internet in 1995

  7. Marc Andreessen, cofounder of Netscape Communications

  8. Jeff Bezos, founder-CEO of Amazon.com

  9. The bomb-devastated Murrah Building in Oklahoma City

  10. Firefighter cradling child killed in Oklahoma City bombing

  11. Herb Block cartoon lampooning security measures in Washington, D.C.

  12. The Field of Empty Chairs, Oklahoma City

  13. Newspaper headline about O. J. Simpson’s acquittal

  14. O. J. Simpson and the gloves that didn’t fit

  15. Graph showing survey results about race relations in the United States

  16. Graph showing survey results about interracial marriage

  17. Richard C. Holbrooke, architect of the Dayton peace accords

  18. Balkan leaders initial the Dayton peace accords

  19. Newspaper caricature of Newt Gingrich after his complaint of mistreatment on Air Force One

  20. Bill Clinton with White House intern Monica Lewinsky

  Preface

  The magnitude of some watershed years is immediately obvious, becoming clear before the year has closed that it was extraordinary and memorable. Dramatic upheaval around the world made 1968 such a year, for example. Even then, one sensed that 1968 would long be recalled as pivotal.

  For other watershed years, significance may emerge less dramatically, crystallizing in retrospect, with the passage of time.1 The rise of militant Islam and the emergent challenges to Communist rule in Eastern Europe made 1979 such a year. Its watershed qualities have become evident only in recent years.2

  Then there are rare watershed years that embrace both typologies: their exceptionality is immediately apparent and rounds into sharper focus with time. Nineteen ninety-five was such a year. The bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City and the acquittal of O. J. Simpson in the “Trial of the Century” immediately lent 1995 the cast of exceptionality. The implications of other developments of the year—the rise of the Internet, the peace agreement reached in Dayton, Ohio, to end the Bosnia war, and the tawdry liaison between President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky—revealed themselves more gradually in the months and years that followed 1995. Indeed, the five major events of 1995 still project their implications. To this day, they reverberate in American life.

  The extraordinary year of 1995 and its five watershed moments are the subjects of this study. It offers an intimate and detail-rich portrait of a pivotal year, arguing that the emergence of the Internet into mainstream American life, the terrorist bombing at Oklahoma City, the months-long double-murder trial of O. J. Simpson, the accords reached at Dayton, and the incipient Clinton-Lewinsky sex-and-lies scandal all rendered 1995 a moment of surpassing exceptionality. This work turns a fresh lens on each of those cases and examines how each of them has projected lasting significance. Each was a watershed moment of a watershed year.

  It is important and appropriate to describe what this work is not: It is not a diary, not an almanac, not an exhaustive catalog or chronicle of the year. It does not seek to return to the fads of the time or revisit developments in sport and popular culture of 1995. It makes no glib or expansive claims that 1995 was a year that changed everything.3 It is mindful of the hazards of thematic overreach, of claiming too much significance for a moment in time. It is tempting, for example, to identify 1995 as the starting point in Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency; it was, after all, the year when his memoir, Dreams from My Father, was published—to little immediate critical notice.4 To make such a claim would be mistaken; a far more compelling case can be made for the following year, when Obama won election to the Illinois state senate, beginning a run that culminated in 2009 with his inauguration as president.

  Historians of the recent past are known to agonize about a dearth of relevant and accessible archival material.5 Such a limitation did not impede or impair this study. It did not emerge as a serious constraint in researching 1995. This work taps a rich variety of sources, including exhibits in the Justice Department’s antitrust case that was set in motion by the “browser war” between Microsoft Corporation and Netscape Communications; oral histories and archival holdings of the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum; documents and memoranda related to Bosnia and the Dayton peace talks in a collection of post–Cold War materials at the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C.; supplemental materials submitted by the Office of the Independent Counsel in its referral to Congress that identified prospective grounds for impeaching President
Clinton; and archival collections and subject files of the Newseum, the museum of news in Washington, D.C. The extensive and unmatched collections of U.S. newspapers on microfilm at the Library of Congress were vital to this study; newspaper content of 1995 offered a sense of the moment and a sense of verisimilitude. That content also points up flaws and shortcomings that were apparent in the news coverage of nearly every decisive turn in 1995.

  I conducted interviews with several figures associated with the watershed moments of 1995, and I paid visits to venues important to the year. These included the site of the federal building in Oklahoma City, destroyed in an unprecedented spasm of domestic terror; the ninth-floor courtroom of the Los Angeles criminal justice center, the theater of Simpson’s trial; and the sprawling Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, where the Bosnia peace accords were reached.

  This work has been written with an eye toward revealing anecdotes and personal narratives that help capture the vigor, spirit, suspicions, and novelty of 1995. It opens with an eclectic introduction to the year and its improbable moments. The rise of the Internet and the World Wide Web is treated in Chapter 1. The narrative proceeds chronologically from there. Chapter 2 considers the Oklahoma City bombing and the subsequent deployment of security-oriented restrictions in American life. Chapter 3 takes up the Simpson trial and identifies as its most important lasting contribution the introduction of forensic DNA evidence into the public consciousness. Chapter 4 examines the making of the Dayton accords, the success of which initiated a period of muscular American diplomacy, undergirded by resurgent “American Exceptionalism.” Chapter 5 revisits the partial shutdowns of the federal government, which created the conditions in which Clinton and Lewinsky began their dalliance at the White House, a liaison that led to the extraordinary spectacle of a president’s impeachment.

  So, critical readers may ask, what should we take away from this examination of 1995? What flows from a recognition of the year’s exceptionality? The best and most candid response is that the year and its watershed moments live on—that the present, as we know it, began to take shape during those consequential twelve months. The separate watersheds of 1995, when pulled together and examined with the detachment granted by the passing of twenty years, reveal a time of remarkable intensity and of enduring consequence.

  W. Joseph Campbell

  Kensington, Maryland

  Acknowledgments

  This examination of 1995 might have remained unwritten were it not for the encouragement and enthusiasm of Reed Malcolm, senior acquisition editor at the University of California Press. From the time in 2010 when I first spoke with him about such a project, Reed very much liked the idea. His suggestions were invaluable, and his patience and advice helped keep the project focused and streamlined.

  Reed’s colleagues at the press likewise offered vital support, especially so Stacy Eisenstark, whose good humor and ready laugh were always welcome. Dore Brown, an outstanding project editor, kept production on track, and Julia Zafferano, whom the press hired to copyedit the manuscript, did some terrific work.

  My colleagues at American University—including Phyllis Peres, Jeff Rutenbeck, Kathryn Montgomery, Larry Kirkman, John Watson, Frank Fitzmaurice, and Donna Femenella—were generous in their support and encouragement. Alyah Khan was outstanding as a graduate research assistant on this project. Other graduate assistants—including Stephanie Foul, Odna Nb, Erin Powell, and Jeremiah Patterson—made important research contributions over the years as well. I am indebted to Ruxandra Giura for her help and expertise, especially on the photographs and tables that appear in this book.

  The recollections of Peter Arenella, Ward Cunningham, Sue Hale, Jeff Hall, Shel Kaphan, Donald Kerrick, Michel Mayor, and Mike McCurry enriched the book. A good deal of research on this project was conducted at the Library of Congress, where Georgia Higley, Jeff Flannery, and their colleagues were unfailingly generous with their assistance. I am grateful to Paul Sparrow, Cathy Trost, and Rick Mastroiani for allowing me access to 1995-related archival material at the Newseum, the museum of news in Washington, D.C.

  Mary Curry was most helpful in identifying and making available relevant holdings of the National Security Archive in Washington. Helen Stiefmiller and Pam Bell showed me much courtesy during visits to the archives of the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum. John W. McCance was generous with his time in showing me around the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside of Dayton.

  My very good friend, Hugh D. Pace, was an unstinting source of encouragement, and his daughter, Alexis Pace, was most welcoming during a research trip I made to Los Angeles. My thanks to Keith Sanders, executive director of Kappa Tau Alpha, for the research grant that supported the Los Angeles trip.

  Media historians Michael Sweeney and Dale Cressman deserve special mention for their thoughtful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. Fred Blevens also offered helpful suggestions at an important stage of the project. Don Ross, Karen Davison, and Jessica Ling offered important editing suggestions on the manuscript. The book, moreover, draws upon and benefitted from the work and observations of other authors, including Peter Beinart, Derek Chollet, John F. Harris, Dan Herbeck, Lou Michel, Andrew Morton, Robert H. Reid, and Jeffrey Toobin.

  Special thanks go to my wife, Ann-Marie C. Regan, for her patience and interest; never did she seem to tire of hearing about 1995.

  Introduction to an Improbable Year

  Nineteen ninety-five was the inaugural year of the twenty-first century, a clear starting point for contemporary life.

  It was “the year of the Internet,” when the World Wide Web entered mainstream consciousness, when now-familiar mainstays of the digital world such as Amazon.com, eBay, Craigslist, and Match.com established their presence online. It was, proclaimed an exuberant newspaper columnist at the time, “the year the Web started changing lives.”1

  Nineteen ninety-five was marked by a deepening national preoccupation with terrorism. The massive bombing in Oklahoma City killed 168 people, the deadliest act of domestic terror in U.S. history. Within weeks of the bombing, a portion of Pennsylvania Avenue—the “Main Street” of America—was closed to vehicular traffic near the White House, signaling the rise of security-related restrictions intended to thwart the terrorist threat—restrictions that have since become more common, more intrusive, more stringent, and perhaps even more accepted.

  Nineteen ninety-five was the year of the sensational and absorbing “Trial of the Century,” when O. J. Simpson, the popular former football star, answered to charges that he had slashed to death his former wife and her friend. The trial stretched across much of the year, not unlike an indelible stain, ending in Simpson’s acquittal but not in the redemption of his public persona. Ironically, the trial’s most tedious stretches produced its most lasting contribution: the Simpson case introduced into popular consciousness the decisive potential of forensic DNA evidence in criminal investigations and legal proceedings.

  Nineteen ninety-five brought an unmistakable though belated assertion of muscular U.S. diplomacy, ending the vicious war in Bosnia, Europe’s deadliest and most appalling conflict in forty years. Crafting a fragile peace in the Balkans gave rise to a sense of American hubris that was tragically misapplied not many years later, in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

  The year brought the first of several furtive sexual encounters between President Bill Clinton and a nominal White House intern twenty-seven years his junior, Monica Lewinsky. Their intermittent dalliance began in 1995 and eventually erupted in a lurid sex scandal that rocked the U.S. government and brought about the first-ever impeachment of an elected American president.

  The emergence of the Internet, the deadliest act of homegrown terrorism on U.S. soil, the “Trial of the Century,” the muscular diplomacy of the United States, and the origins of a sex scandal at the highest levels of American government were significant events in 1995, and each is explored as a chapter of this book. They were profound in their respective ways, an
d, taken together, they define a watershed year at the cusp of the millennium. Nineteen ninety-five in many ways effectively marked the close of the one century, and the start of another.

  With the critical distance afforded by the passing of twenty years, the exceptionality of 1995 emerges quite clearly. It was not altogether obvious at the close of 1995, at least not to commentators in the media who engaged in no small amount of hand-wringing about the year. A writer for the Boston Herald, for example, suggested that history books “may well remember 1995 as one sorry year.”2 It was, after all, the year when Israel’s prime minster, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated at a peace rally in Tel Aviv, in the Kings of Israel Square. It was the year when a troubled woman named Susan Smith was tried and convicted on charges of drowning her two little boys in 1994, of having strapped them in their seats before rolling her car into a lake in South Carolina. Smith at first blamed an unknown black man for having hijacked the car and making off with the boys inside. She recanted several days later and confessed that she had killed her sons.

  In a summing up at year’s end, the Philadelphia Inquirer recalled the massacre at Srebrenica in July 1995, when Bosnian Serb forces systematically killed 8,000 Muslim men and boys in what the United Nations had designated a safe area. “So base were the emotions, so dark the actions, that at times you had to wonder which century we were in,” the newspaper declared. “Was it 1995 or 1395? A tribal war with overtones of genocide? We bring you Bosnia and the mass graves at Srebrenica. . . . At least there’s one difference between now and 600 years ago. The killing’s become more efficient.”3

  But not all leave-taking assessments of 1995 were so grim. Reason magazine observed that, at the end of 1995, Americans were living the good old days; they “never had it so good.” Living standards, Reason argued, were higher than ever. Americans were healthier than ever. They had more leisure time than ever. “Americans will swear life is more hectic than it used to be, that there’s not enough time anymore. What’s crowding their lives, though, isn’t necessarily more work or more chores. It is the relentless chasing after the myriad leisure opportunities of a society that has more free time and more money to spend.”4