Reuters, 4/17/96: Clinton worried Internet may help arm terrorists TOKYO, April 17 (Reuter) - U.S. President Bill Clinton said on Wednesday he was worried the Internet was aiding international terrorism by making it too easy for sinister forces to learn how to make bombs or produce nerve gas. "Are people learning, for example, from the Internet how to make the same sort of trouble in the United States that was made in Japan with sarin gas?" Clinton said at a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto in Tokyo. "Isn't it a concern that anybody, anywhere in the world, can pull down off the Internet the information about how to build a bomb like the bomb that blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City?" he added. Clinton said Japan and the United States, both victims of home-grown terrorism last year, should learn from each other about how to deal with the issue. In the United States anti-government groups are linked "like no rebel force has ever been" by the Internet and fax, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group which campaigns for civil rights, said in a report released last week. Anti-government right-wing activism has been linked to the Oklahoma blast in which a truck bomb destroyed a federal building and killed 168 people on April 19, 1995. Information on how to construct a similar bomb is available to anyone around the world with Internet access. Meanwhile in Japan, the doomsday cult Aum Shinri Kyo (Supreme Truth Sect) was able to download from the Internet a formula for synthesising green-mamba snake venom, according to a recent magazine report. The sect is also believed to have been looking to procure samples of the lethal ebola virus. Cult leader Shoko Asahara goes on trial on April 24 charged with the murder of 25 people, including 11 who died in a sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway on March 20, 1995. About 5,000 other commuters where taken ill in the incident. Clinton also told the news conference that in the next 20 years "every great nation will have to face" the question of terrorist access to the Internet. Clinton called acts of terrorism, whether home-grown or international, "a genuine threat not only to the lives of the innocent civilians who may be killed in them, but to the whole idea of an open, civilised society in a global economy." Clinton's comments on the Internet were in response to a question about his thoughts on terrorism. He said nations must ask "how can we work together to learn with each other about how to prevent these things before they occur, when they're purely domestically driven, as well as sharing information and technology and law enforcement about the international terrorist networks that are out there?" REUTER