You wrote about the bill as was part of an actual effort to restrict cryptography. But it wasn't. In fact, the bill preceded CALEA, which was a very important bill that established statutory authority for lawful intercept; lawful intercept is the most important concept captured in Biden's (practically meaningless) amendment, and cryptography is only ancillary.

Further, the record over the rest of the '90s supports that interpretation. Most importantly CALEA, which Biden cosponsored, and which forbids the federal government from requiring telcos to adopt any specific equipment (ie, the government could not mandate that MCI use switches with specific lawful intercept features) and which all but demands that telcos stay out of the business of encrypting and decrypting altogether, which is exactly what the cipherpunks wanted.

I'd like to see actual evidence supporting the idea that Biden opposed general-purpose cryptography. It may well exist, but I haven't found it on the record. Phil Zimmerman is many things, but "legal expert" is not one of them; we need to do better than "Phil Zimmerman felt like he was under attack" (all commercial cryptographers felt that way even after CALEA passed) and "Biden thought the director of NSA was competent" (hey, he probably was.)