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American Morning
Red River Reaching Flood Levels in North Dakota; Home Stretch for Health Care: Democratic Holdouts Face Heavy Lobbying; Cut Clutter and Save Money on Tax Time; ACORN Offices Vanishing
Aired March 18, 2010 - 07:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: Glad you're with us on this AMERICAN MORNING. It's Thursday, March 18th. I'm Kiran Chetry.
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, I'm John Roberts. Thanks for being with us.
Here are this morning's top stories.
A dire, dangerous situation right now unfolding in North Dakota. The Red River expected to swell eight more feet, threatening the entire city of Fargo. Hundreds of volunteers are filling a million sandbags to keep the river in its place. We'll have a live report just ahead.
CHETRY: Health care holdout in the home stretch. As the Democrats gain momentum, a very few are finding it very hard to hide from the White House. This morning, we're going to speak to one congressman who is still on the fence. Wait until you hear about the invitation he just turned down from the president.
ROBERTS: And has the ACORN cracked? The liberal activist group ACORN group helped to get President Obama elected, but charges of voter registration fraud and an ugly video has driven many chapters out of office. Drew Griffin has our special investigation report for us this morning.
CHETRY: We begin the hour, though, in the upper Midwest where floodwaters are dangerously rising. There's rain and also add on to that melting snow, and that's pushed the Red River to a level of more than 30 feet.
People along its banks are expecting another eight feet by the weekend. That river, highlighted in red on this map, stretches almost 400 miles, passes right through North Dakota and Minnesota. In Fargo it's hand-to-hand combat as hundreds of volunteers fill and distribute more than a million sandbags.
They've already built miles of levees, some as high as 40 feet to hold back the river.
ROBERTS: Also this morning hundreds of North Dakota National Guard troops are on standby should the river burst through the levees and begin to swell. Our Chris Welch is live on the banks of the Red River.
Chris, what's the situation like there this morning? We've been seeing all the pictures, but what's it like on the ground?
CHRIS WELCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, believe it or not, John, residents here are taking this situation rather calmly. If you think about it, last year, they had a crest of about 41 feet. This year they're only anticipating 38 feet. That does sound like a flood, but these people have been through this last year, they've learned their lesson. They think they can handle this one.
This morning I want to introduce you to a man whose backyard is literally feet away from the Red River. When it floods he is on the frontline, but he refused the city's offer to buy his house so they can build a levee system. He says he just loves his house too much.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LLOYD PAULSON, NOT SELLING HOUSE: This is my house.
WELCH (voice-over): On this stretch of River Shore Drive, Lloyd Paulson is the last man standing.
PAULSON: I don't want to leave. I want to stay here because I enjoy it so much.
WELCH: His neighbors' homes look like this. They've been sold to the city so a permanent levee system can be built in their place, but Paulson remains, saying no thanks to the city's purchase offer.
PAULSON: There isn't a better place to go. The whole way out, as far as the neighborhood is concerned, it's just so ideal.
WELCH: The buyouts are voluntary, but since Paulson stayed, the cost his second of the new levee comes out of his own pocket.
WELCH (on camera): How much money did that cost you?
PAULSON: I have no idea. I haven't got the bill.
WELCH (voice-over): But Paulson says it will be worth it. That mountain of land should mean no more sandbags. Last year it took him 30,000 to stay dry. This year as an extra precaution, he'll be surrounded on all sides by the clay hills.
PAULSON: The freezers are stocked up, so I can stay here for weeks without having to go out.
WELCH: Most walls will be removed after the flood, but the one in the backyard stays.
PAULSON: We had a nice view of the river before they put this dike in. But it will protect my home.
WELCH: And for Paulson, that's all that matters.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WELCH: And he says it's 11 houses to the south of him, three to the north of him. That's how many will disappear. He literally will be the only one on that stretch of the street right along the river there. And he says he won't be lonely because his friends will come and visit him. And believe it or not, he's an outdoors kind of guy anyway -- John.
ROBERTS: All right, Chris Welch for us this morning. Thanks so much.
CHETRY: Chris' report showed us what it looks like on the ground. But let's take a look at the view from the air. This is new video this morning along the Red River. These shots were taken about 50 miles south of Fargo. In the shots you can see the river spilling over the banks, filling acres and acres of farmlands, as well as homes.
The scene reminds us of last year when the Red River hit a record level. As Rob Marciano told us, it went over 40 feet.
This morning, we're keeping a close eye on the rising River. Rob is watching the situation as well. They think it's going to go over eight inches. That would make it much lower than last year.
ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You know, it's just human nature, guys, to say it's not going to be as bad as last year. But last year just blew all records out of the water. So if you're even coming close to that, there's no way you can rest easy on this.
And they're certainly taking this very seriously there, and there was damage to about 100 homes there and businesses. Any breach in the levee system, boom, you've got a disaster on your hand.
So we've got to get through Sunday, Monday and Tuesday before this comes to bear here. You have 38 feet is the forecast for Sunday afternoon. Again, that's getting close to record stage.
And then you've got the Mississippi, the Missouri. We've got a number of named rivers in the river system across the Midwest that we have to deal with. And, of course, we have what's going on in the northeast.
Check out the iReport coming in from Patterson, New Jersey. "My goodness, if that's not class five rapid, I don't know what it is. Do not take your kayak down that puppy." That is hard to believe that is in the middle of New Jersey.
And the tremendous amount of rain that we saw with that storm that brought of the wind as well certainly bringing in a tremendous amount of video.
Warm air today, exacerbating some of that melting. Then when we get cold in the upper Midwest, it will be warm in the northeast, so warm, high of about 70, that may actually help evaporate somewhat at least the puddles that came with the rainstorm over the weekend. We'll talk much more weather in 30 or 40 minutes, guys.
ROBERTS: Pretty impressive pictures of the Passaic river there.
MARCIANO: Yes, that was cool stuff.
ROBERTS: All right, Rob, thanks.
CHETRY: Stay with us, we're going to be talking with Fargo's mayor Dennis Walaker about the city's ongoing efforts to keep the Red River at bay. It's all hands on deck.
ROBERTS: Also new this morning, the CIA strikes back. Officials say a predator drone operated by the agency struck and killed a suspect in December's suicide bombing at a base in Afghanistan. That attack killed seven CIA workers.
CIA Director Leon Panetta says the man was one of the top 20 Al Qaeda leaders and provided explosives for the attack. In fact he was hit in a suspected bomb-making facility in Pakistan.
CHETRY: Also, President Obama expected to sign the jobs bill today. And the senator passed it yesterday with 11 Republican votes. It's about $18 billion in tax breaks, and that's intended to help nudge companies into hiring more workers.
ROBERTS: Toyota finally admitting a possible electrical problem, but it has nothing do with runaway cars. The company told federal regulators that it's considering a fix to more than a million Corolla and Matrix models that may stall out because of an electrical short. But Toyota says it believes the problem will not put any drivers in danger.
CHETRY: Don't click on any e-mails that say your Facebook password has been reset. A security firm says it is a virus and it could steal other passwords to things like your bank account. Hackers have flooded tens of millions of Facebook users with this spam since Tuesday. The messages are going to users' real e-mail address, not through the internal Facebook system.
ROBERTS: Call it the "Avatar" effect -- Panasonic said its 3-D TVs sold out in the first week on the shelves. The 50 inch sets were bundled with two sets of 3-D glasses and a Blu-Ray player. They cost about $3,000 for all of that.
CHETRY: Tiger Woods' return to golf has singlehandedly ended the recession at least at the Masters. Stubhub.com says that average ticket prices jumped 10 percent to about 500 bucks after Tiger announced his return. That put him back at 2008 levels before the economic crisis hit.
ROBERTS: And a House vote on health care reform could happen this weekend. But there are still holdouts that are getting lobbied hard, getting whipped in the parlance, including our next guest. We'll have Congressman John Boccieri and the offer from the president that he decided to refuse, just ahead. CHETRY: Also, a multimillions million high-tech virtual wall that was supposed to keep illegal immigrants from the crossing the U.S. Mexico border has been scrapped. At 7:30 Eastern we're talking to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano about her priorities and where the money is going now.
ROBERTS: And at 7:40, priceless masterpieces vanished in the middle of the night, the crime in its own way a work of art. But now 20 years later possible choose in what is the largest art heist in U.S. history.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning right now.
House Democrats are still shy of the 216 votes needed to score a major presidential victory for a top domestic priority of President Obama. There are those still undecided about health care reform, and they're pretty popular these days. They're actually getting a lot of love from the White House. Some are even getting personal invitations from the president to fly on Air Force One.
Our next guest bought one of those invitees, and he actually turned it down, Ohio Congressman John Boccieri. He joins me this morning from Washington.
Congressman, thanks for being with us this morning.
REP. JOHN BOCCIERI (D), OHIO: Thank you, Kiran.
CHETRY: As we said, you're pretty popular these days in the halls of Congress. You voted against health care reform, the one passed by the House in the fall, since then you've been heavily courted by the White House. You've been invited to go on Air Force One and invited to join the president at a rally on health care, and you said no. Why?
BOCCIERI: Well, it was very difficult for this Air Force pilot to turn down a ride on Air Force one. But at the end of the day we had a job announcement in our district, $16 million was being awarded to expand a runway in my district. I had to be there and get on the road two hours earlier.
Read nothing into it. The president had to stand on the national stage that day and talk about health care reform and the balance as we move towards it here in the Congress.
CHETRY: Right, but you have been facing pressure, as well as other Democrats who are not sold on this yet. I know we talked to one out of Pennsylvania who is waiting for the CBO numbers to come out and see what's going on. But what will it take for you to vote yes on the House version of this?
BOCCIERI: Well, I agree we need to have reform. Our nation needs to have this debate. We need to do it in the way that doesn't explode the deficits, has cost containment, goes after fraud, waste, and abuse.
I'm encouraged by the Senate because it reduces deficits by $132 billion and over $1 trillion in the second two years. I'm encouraged by that. But there needs to be changes. The Senate version, there's no way Ohio should have to pay for Nebraska. I want those deals out.
CHETRY: It looks like it's out, though, right, the so-called cornhusker kickback?
BOCCIERI: That's correct. We're waiting for the final version of the bill. We want to look at the numbers, make sure they're in line with what we believe, and move from that point.
CHETRY: One of the obvious considerations has to be what's good for your own district. And I know that Henry Waxman has been putting out some e-mails just to explain to individual congressmen what they can say to people in their district.
For you, the largest employer is a hospital. According to this memo that was put out by Congressman Waxman, he says the health care bill would reduce the cost uncompensated costs for health care providers by $56 million. That's a lot. That seems like it would be a boon four guys to be able to save that amount of money on health care costs?
BOCCIERI: That's true. That's why the House version didn't go far enough in my opinion. If it was up for a vote today, I'd vote the same way. I'm encouraged by the numbers. At the end of the day, we have to do what's best for our district, what's best for Ohio, and best for America on this vote.
CHETRY: I want to ask you about what your fellow Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich ultimately decided. He was a no. He announced yesterday that he is going to go ahead and support this bill. It may not be his favorite, he says, but what he wants to do is move forward in the process so that there are other issues that he can focus on, specifically job creation. And he says that, you know, it's not going to be my way or the highway. He's not thrilled, but he's going to say yes for the greater good.
How much of a consideration is that for you?
BOCCIERI: Well, Kiran, that is the consideration. We're faced with passing an imperfect bill or doing nothing. There's a cost of doing both. There's a cost of doing nothing, and there's a cost for doing something in terms of moving this bill forward and that's what we're faced with.
But at the end of the day, we need to end the most abusive practice of the insurance industry, dropping patients because they get sick or ill or denying them coverage because they have a pre-existing condition. At the end of the day, that's what this debate should be framed around.
CHETRY: You know, in all of these districts, as we say, politics is local. And you're up against it because there are people that are thinking about trying to -- they're running ads based on whether or not you vote yes on this bill. And it's going to be what the GOP competitors in your district are going, you know, seize upon. How much of this -- how much of a concern do you have to factor in, wanting to continue as a congressman representing your district?
BOCCIERI: Well, I care less about what's done in the elections. We'll have to stand on our record and defend our votes. At the end of the day, I want to do what's right for America, what's right for Ohio. And you know, there's a lot of attention being put on our district. This is one of the, you know, of course, more moderate districts in the country. So we want to make sure that we make a good decision for our constituents.
CHETRY: If it comes out today, the CBO numbers and say this is deficit neutral, are you a yes?
BOCCIERI: Well, I'm moving at looking at those numbers very closely and moving in a direction and making a decision here very shortly.
CHETRY: All right. Well, Congressman Boccieri, thanks so much for being with us this morning.
BOCCIERI: Thank you, Kiran.
ROBERTS: Coming up now on 17 minutes after the hour. And like a squirrel hiding its nuts, ACORN offices are vanishing across the country. Our CNN special investigation looks at just how far the once mighty liberal activist group has fallen.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: Twenty minutes after the hour now. That means it's time for "Minding Your Business." Stephanie Elam in for Christine Romans today. And you find yourself maybe at tax time looking for this document and that document.
STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Exactly.
ROBERTS: You have one over here. And I take this one under the desk.
ELAM: And probably one out on the desk out there.
ROBERTS: Yes, you're not alone because a lot of people are pretty disorganized when it comes to their finances.
ELAM: A lot of it. You know what's really funny is that 89 percent of Americans say that they actually feel like they're fairly organized. This is according to a new Consumer Reports poll. But someone is not telling the truth if you look at the rest of the answers. Let's take a look at this.
Forty percent say they think they can find an important financial document quickly. A quarter of these people say they've lost critical paperwork in the past. And 16 percent say they've lost money or had been charged extra fees because they were not organized.
All right. So let's take a look at what things you should keep and what things you can just go ahead and toss. I think that's a good question a lot of people have out there.
For one year or less, you can keep your bank records. Until you match them up with your monthly statements, the ATM deposits, keep them. You see that they're there then toss them.
Credit card bills, you don't have to hold on to them. In most cases, you can shred them right after you pay them. You don't need to keep those.
Investment statements, the same thing. As you ones arrive, shred the old one. Notice I'm saying shred. Do not toss them. You don't want to be a victim of identity theft. That's one way you can help.
Now things that you want to keep for a while. Take a look at this. You want to keep your tax returns. Household furnishing paperwork. As far as those warranties, receipts, instruction booklets.
CHETRY: That's our problem.
ELAM: That's something that kind of gets under my nerves and people toss those.
ROBERTS: So when the VCR, if you still got one of those starts flashing 12 and --
CHETRY: Right.
ELAM: Right. And you don't know how to fix it?
CHETRY: No.
ELAM: All right. So loan document saving bonds, you want to save as well. Never toss your pension plan documents, your estate planning documents, wills, trusts, powers of attorney and life insurance policies. You want to hold on to those. This is really important at tax time. It's really important during emergencies.
CHETRY: Right.
ELAM: If you lose someone, God forbid, your husband or your wife dies, you want to have your hands on these quickly.
CHETRY: Yes.
ELAM: So that is not as difficult. It's already a difficult time. You don't want to make it more difficult because you're going through all this paperwork.
CHETRY: One thing that's helpful, if you do lose something that's critical, oftentimes, you can get it online.
ELAM: A lot of times, you can. But some of the things, it's just good to have copies of and shred.
ROBERTS: Good tips. Stephanie Elam "Minding Your Business" this morning.
CHETRY: Thanks, Steph.
ROBERTS: Thanks, Steph.
As we all saw back in February, her Super Bowl commercial was a screaming success.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BETTY WHITE, ACTRESS: Man, you've been riding me all day.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're playing like Betty White out there.
WHITE: That's not what your girlfriend says.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whoa, whoa.
WHITE: Eat a Snickers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: Now hundreds of thousands of Facebook fans got her a hosting gig on NBC's "Saturday Night Live."
CHETRY: So how does 88-year-old Betty White do it? The comedienne sat down with Larry King to talk about her life, her career. Check it out.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LARRY KING, CNN HOST: OK. How did the "Saturday Night Live" thing come about? It's going to feature a reunion of six former female cast members -- Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Molly Shannon, Maya Rudolph, Ana Gasteyer, Rachel Dratch and you.
BETTY WHITE, ACTRESS & COMEDIAN: Don't ask me. It all came out of nowhere. Somebody put -- I think it's Facebook. And they began to get hits.
KING: You're nervous?
WHITE: Yes.
KING: You're nervous? All these years of experience you got in the business, you're nervous?
WHITE: Well, the more years that go by, the nervous you get.
KING: How do you explain your longevity?
WHITE: Sheer, blind luck. I'm the luckiest old broad that ever drew breath. KING: Do you consider yourself a new sex symbol for the younger generation?
WHITE: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I mean, not that I consider myself that. I just have to concede the point. You know, it's so true.
KING: You were a loose woman, weren't you, Betty? Admit it.
WHITE: Oh, I was loose. And gravity took over, you know.
KING: Were you easy? Would you say you were easy?
WHITE: No.
KING: I mean, not when you're married to Allen.
WHITE: No. No, I wasn't easy. I was -- I'm an incurable romantic.
KING: But you played easy on "Mary Tyler Moore"?
WHITE: Oh, well -- oh, well, she was -- she was just this side of hookerville.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTS: She's so funny.
CHETRY: So adorable. Love, love, love her.
ROBERTS: Yes.
CHETRY: I want a "Golden Girls" reunion on "Saturday Night Live," too. Get back.
ROBERTS: Keep pushing it for it. Get a Facebook.
CHETRY: She goes I believe it was Facebook. It's so cute.
ROBERTS: Best thing on the Internet.
CHETRY: Well, White is also working on a new TV show, by the way. You know, how about it? "Hot in Cleveland" which will air on TV Land. So there you go.
ROBERTS: She is hot.
CHETRY: Yes.
ROBERTS: She is smoking.
Twenty-four and a half minutes after the hour. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: Twenty-six minutes past the hour now. Our top stories just three minutes away. First, though, an "AM Original," something you'll see only on AMERICAN MORNING.
A once powerful ally of the president now appears powerless. New election fraud charges have been filed against former ACORN workers stemming from the 2008 presidential campaign. In a CNN special investigation, Drew Griffin tells us the scandal-plagued liberal activist group is crumbling.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They were everywhere during the 2008 election, but try to find them now.
(on camera): Hey, is this ACORN?
(voice-over): Like we did in Milwaukee.
(on camera): ACORN is not here anymore? Do you know where they went?
(voice-over): And you'll find ACORN offices and its workers are vanishing.
DANIEL BICE, MILWAUKEE COLUMNIST: Are you trying to find them? You can't find them here.
GRIFFIN (on camera): Gone.
BICE: Gone.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): Gone says Milwaukee columnist Dan Bice, but certainly not forgotten. Just last week, charges were filed in Wisconsin against two ACORN voter registration workers. A five-page complaint filed by the state's election fraud task force describes ACORN's licensed special registration deputies conspiring to falsely register voters so they could make their ACORN quotas and get paid. One ACORN worker stated if he didn't get 20 signatures a day, he'd be docked an hour's pay. They were "all hoodlums" working for ACORN," he said. "They all had criminal histories, and that they were going to do whatever they had to do to be able to gain their money at the end of each day."
At the state capital in Madison, Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen says ACORN's voter registration drive was flawed from the start.
J.B. VAN HOLLEN, WISCONSIN ATTORNEY GENERAL: Goal wasn't to make sure we had as accurate the voter registration as possible but as to get as many people or as many registrations in as possible. And whenever you have quotas, I think you've got a system that's rife with fraud or certainly rife for fraud.
GRIFFIN: That is certainly what CNN discovered in its own nationwide investigation during ACORN's voter registration drive. In Indiana, we found ACORN registered a sandwich shop.
(on camera): Is there anybody here that's actually named Jimmy Johns?
(voice-over): In Florida, Mickey Mouse. And in Philadelphia, the registrar of voters told CNN literally thousands of fake or suspicious voter registration cards clogged his office. Many with names copied straight from the phonebook.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We just looked and it was all in the same hand.
GRIFFIN (on camera): During the election, this is where ACORN Milwaukee was basing its voter registrations but their name is no longer on the door, no longer here where you buzz yourself in. And on the outside of this building is this huge "office space for lease" sign. This is happening all over the country at ACORN offices.
(voice-over): In Ohio, where ACORN registered a Cleveland man 72 times in exchange for cigarettes, the group is permanently surrendering its business license to settle a lawsuit. Maryland's ACORN chapter, stung by this video of a pretend pimp and prostitute getting tax advice, is apparently no longer operating. In California, local ACORN chapters have split off from the national group. It's difficult to know how many ACORN offices have closed nationwide. We tried to track down ACORN.
Kevin Whelan (ph), who says he's ACORN's communications director, sent a statement saying "The small number of instances in which an employee has submitted duplicate or fake voter registration cards are an example of workers attempting to defraud ACORN by passing off bad work as good work and the organization supports their prosecution, the overwhelming majority of ACORN volunteer canvassers," he writes, "did good work."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GRIFFIN: Kiran, many of these offices of ACORN are trying to rebrand themselves into what they're calling the affordable housing centers of America. But really, ACORN itself is crumbling. And has been for more than a year now. Even before the pimp and prostitute video, even before the voter registration fraud issue. ACORN was reeling from an internal embezzlement scandal at its headquarters and has never really recovered -- Kiran.
CHETRY: Well, all right. Drew Griffin for us this morning. Thank you.
All right, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back; 31 minutes past the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: This morning in our "Security Watch," the virtual border fence that cost more than $1 billion has been canned. The House Homeland Security committee even called it a "grave and expensive disappointment." It was designed to use cameras, radar and sensors to stop illegal crossings, but a government review found it wasn't tested properly, froze the funding. Now $50 million is being move to other projects.
We're tracking exclusively this morning with the secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano about the fence and her push for international airport security. She's in Washington for us this morning.
Madam secretary, good to see you. So does this mean that this virtual fence also called SBInet is dead?
JANET NAPOLITANO, U.S. SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY: Well, we're going to complete phase one and we're going to look at it very objectively and do a thorough review. But in the meantime, we're going to take money that's been appropriated for SBInet and put it into technology that actually goes into the hands of our border patrol. Sensors, different types of radios, thermal imaging devices, the kinds of things that really help us be more effective in intercepting illegal immigration.
ROBERTS: If this virtual fence doesn't help now, do you have any hope that it will work in the future? And if it doesn't, how are we going to protect that part of the border? There's hundreds of miles of remote border that this virtual net was supposed to give us some eyes on?
NAPOLITANO: That's right. And the phase one part which goes along the Arizona-Mexico border. And I'm the former governor of Arizona, so I'm pretty familiar with that one. That one's being tested now, but rather than keep extending this very expensive project, we want to look at other technologies that may be more efficient and quicker to deploy. One of the major problems with SBINET is it's just taking too long.
ROBERTS: Yes. So we've been talking about securing the borders since the early 2000s, because of the illegal immigration problem, the violence on the border with the drug wars. Why is it taking so long? Well, you know, SBInet was a different way of looking at the border. It was a contract entered into several years ago. It deserves a fresh look. We actually started that review several months ago and alerted the Congress that we are going to take a fresh look at technology.
But with the manpower, the infrastructure and the other technology we are now deploying at the border, the numbers really have gone down. That border is very different than it was even three or four years ago.
ROBERTS: Yes. A lot of people are saying the economic situation has got a lot to do with it as well. It's not the jobs here. Let me switch gears, let's talk about airport security. Because this certainly has been a concern since the Christmas day bombing attempt. We got some pictures of you here, yesterday, you were in the state of Georgia at a training seminar where they were learning how to deal with potential guns in an aircraft.
But you're also just back from Tokyo where there was a series of international meetings in the wake of the Christmas day bombing attach. There still appear to be inconsistencies in airports around the globe in terms of applying security. Is it possible to close those holes?
NAPOLITANO: That's what we're working on right now. What Christmas day revealed is something that we all know, this is really a global aviation system. And once somebody gets into one part of it, they potentially can get into all of it. So working with ICAO, which is the United States-United Nations aviation branch, we have been participating in a series of meetings around the world aimed at lifting the overall global level of aviation security.
ROBERTS: There was a recent incident in which a Dutch investigative reporter went to the same airport from which Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is the alleged Christmas day bomber, went through. And he went to the Duty Free store. He bought a bottle of liquor, he took it. He emptied it out. He refilled it with water, put it back, returned it to the Duty Free store and came back later, bought it again, got through security and went on the aircraft. How troubling is it to you that that airport, there still appears to be real gaps in security?
NAPOLITANO: Well, you know, that should be troubling to everybody who is involved in aviation, aviation security. But that's why we have to have many layers of security. There are errors that are going to occur. That's going to happen, given the volume of passengers that travel.
That's why we're focusing on more information about who is traveling. More passenger vetting. Better exchange of data that we have. And to do it in a global setting, so that everybody has the same information. We know who's getting on the plane.
ROBERTS: Right. And you know, one of the things that you're also going to be relying on, particularly here in the United States when it comes to airport security, these new back scanner x-ray, total body, whole body scanners, as they're called. You're hoping to get 450 of those deployed by the end of the year. You've already got some 600 complaints about them, privacy concerns. And the Electronic Privacy Information Center obtained a document, gave it to CNN earlier this year in which the TSA stipulated that the machine must be able to store or transmit images when they're in test mode.
Now, TSA has also stipulated that these can't be used in test mode. They've got to be used in scanning mode. But can you, madam secretary, hearing now this morning guarantee that we are never going to hear a story about somebody operating those machines has been storing and or transmitting inappropriate images?
NAPOLITANO: Look, the machines are not set to store images. They're not set to transmit images. And they are objectively better at detecting liquids, powders, gels, other things that somebody may try to smuggle on a plane to blow up the plane. We have really been working on the privacy side to make sure those concerns have been mitigated from the original iterations of the technology. A lot of the reports that are out such as the one that you referred to are really talking about, you know, older iterations of the technology. ROBERTS: Sure, but -
NAPOLITANO: We want to deal with those as we go through the implementation.
ROBERTS: Sure, but you can guarantee, madam secretary, again that we will never, ever hear a story of somebody inappropriately storing or transmitting these images?
NAPOLITANO: Look, I'm going to tell you, we're not retaining. We are not keeping. They're not designed for that at all.
ROBERTS: Right. But that doesn't sound like an unequivocal no.
NAPOLITANO: Well, I guarantee as - can a human error occur? Of course, it can occur but is it set? Is it designed not to retain images? Is that not the plan? Absolutely.
ROBERTS: All right. Janet Napolitano, the secretary of Homeland Security. Thanks for joining us this morning. Appreciate it.
NAPOLITANO: Thank you.
CHETRY: Forty minutes past the hour.
It's the case that baffled detectives for 20 years. It was on this day in 1990 that two men took off with half a billion dollars in art from a museum in Boston.
ROBERTS: There have been countless dead ends and disappointments associated with this case but there is new hope that the greatest art heist in American history will one day be solved. Our Alina Cho joins us now with a look back at this case. Good morning.
ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, guys. Remember, there's DNA technology now that didn't exist 20 years ago, right?
CHETRY: That's true.
CHO: You know, remember, guys, this may have happened in a tiny museum in Boston, but in dollar terms, we're talking about the largest art heist in history. For two decades now, investigators have been chasing down hundreds of leads, they've interviewed countless witnesses and they've traveled the world looking for answers.
Still the central questions remain, where is the art? And who did it.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELLY: These are the hottest stolen paintings in the world.
STEPHEN KURKJIAN, BOSTON GLOBE CORRESPONDENT: Because there's so many known parts of it, except the Black Hole. Where did they do?
ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A mystery. What happened on March 18th, 1990 at Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Twenty years later, a new portrait is emerging about the famous heists with some tantalizing details.
(On camera): Investigators say at precisely 1:24 a.m., two men disguised as policemen, knocked on this side door, saying they were called to look into a disturbance. The night watchman let them in.
Once inside, the two thieves, handcuffed both of the guards on duty, duct taped them and then with free reign of the museum they went to work.
(Voice-over): What the pair took, didn't take and how they did is as baffling to investigators as the crime itself.
KELLY: Certainly, they don't know a lot about art.
CHO: Among the 13 works stolen, three Rembrandts, including "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee," his only known seascape. Five drawings by Degas and "The Concert" by Vermeer, one of only 36 known Vermeer in the world.
But the thieves left hanging Titian's "Europa," the museum's most valuable piece, estimated worth, $400 million. Then there's the method they used. Cutting some of the paintings out of their frames which can damage them.
Today museumgoers see empty frames as a haunting reminder.
KURKJIAN: That's the fear, is that they rolled up two of the Rembrandts, and that is a big fear because that is -- that paint will crackle.
CHO: Stephen Kurkjian has been following the Gardner heist for "The Boston Globe."
KURKJIAN: They missed a Michelangelo and they took something two steps away that had nowhere near the value.
CHO (on camera): But the question remains who is behind the biggest art heist in history. Over the past 20 years, there have been wild theories. Was it a fugitive mob boss? An eccentric art collector or was it just a work of local criminals?
KELLY: There's so many good suspects. I mean it's like an Agatha Christy novel where everybody is sitting around the -- you know, in the living room and everyone has a particular motive as to why they committed the crime. And that's really --
CHO (voice-over): FBI special agent Geoffrey Kelly on the case for eight years says DNA testing is now in play. But won't reveal details. "The Boston Globe" reports, investigators may be analyzing the duct tape used to silence the guard.
If there's sweat on the tape, there's a possibility of a DNA match. And the break investigators have been hoping for for 20 years.
(On camera): Why do you think people are so fascinated by this case?
KELLY: This case has everything. I mean, it has everything that would make the greatest crime novel ever, except it's missing that last chapter.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHO: People certainly are fascinated. Now, the FBI has even taken out ads, huge billboards on the highway, advertising a $5 million reward for any information that leads to the safe return of the art. Now, remember, there are two crimes here. The actual theft and the statute of limitations on that crime ran out back in 1995. So even if those two thieves were caught, they won't be prosecuted.
Then there's the second crime, possession of stolen art. Now, there's no statute of limitations on that. The U.S. attorney's office is now offering immunity, guys if you come forward, return the artwork and they won't charge you. They say all will be forgiven and there's a reason for that, the artwork, it's quite possible, has changed hands several times over the years. So the people in possession of that art now, possibly have nothing to do with it.
ROBERTS: If you can give it back without penalty.
CHO: That's right.
CHETRY: It's ironic that the people who actually committed the theft, the statutes run out, they're not going to face any charges, either way.
CHO: But you know, the prosecutors, and the FBI, we should mention, they're really, really are just concerned about the safe return of the art. That's what they want.
ROBERTS: All right. Alina Cho, fascinating story. Thanks so much.
CHO: You bet.
ROBERTS: Rob Marciano has got a quick look at your travel forecast right after the break. Stay with us, 45 minutes after the hour.
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ROBERTS: Forty-seven and 1/2 minutes after the hour. Good morning, Miami, where it's 59 degrees right now. Later on today, it's going to be sunny with a high of 73.
CHETRY: Hey, that's interesting. Forty-seven minutes past the hour. We might be almost in the same range as Miami for high temperatures, right? Mid-60s?
ROBERTS: It's supposed to be a beautiful day here today.
CHETRY: There you go. No complaints about that one. Let's check in with Rob Marciano. Wish things were as great in other parts of the country, but they're not. Unfortunately dealing with some weather and some flooding threats in North Dakota.
ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes. That. I know you guys are in the 60s, you might even touch 70 and meanwhile, folks like in Atlanta and Florida were in the 40s and 50s yesterday. So kind of an upside down deal.
(WEATHER REPORT)
CHETRY: We'll let you know if we hit it. All right, Rob, thanks so much.
MARCIANO: All right.
CHETRY: Fifty minutes past the hour. We'll be right back.
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CHETRY: Welcome back to the "Most News in the Morning." Fifty- three minutes past the hour right now. Time for your "AM House Calls." Stories about your health. And it's down to the wire on health care reform. Both sides are scrambling for votes in the House and many Americans believe that if the bill is passed they'll actually be instantly insured.
ROBERTS: But critics say that it could be a lot more complicated than that.
Our chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us from Atlanta this morning to break it all down for us. Bring us some clarity on the topic as well.
Sanjay, if the health care bill were to pass today when would Americans see the changes implemented?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, as you both know, obviously there's still some final tweaks that are happening right now. But we've tried to dissect down to figure out what would happen now, what would happen certainly in the future.
Let me try and put it to you like this. And again, there's a lot of moving parts to this. But as the thing that would happen probably closer to 2010, no annual caps. So this is really dealing with this idea that people may have some sort of health problem and the amount of money that's paid by the insurance company is capped. Either annually or over a lifetime that makes it difficult for them to continue to pay their bills.
This pre-existing condition, we've been talking about this for over a year. People would not be able to be discriminated against based on pre-existing conditions. They way they're that incidentally is setting up this high risk insurance pools to try and allow people who have some medical illness to get health care insurance.
Young adults covered at 26. Again, these are people who may have graduated from college, haven't gotten their first job yet, they have sort of fallen through the cracks in the past. This would help with that.
And drug discounts for seniors. The so-called doughnut hole. Based on an imaginative doughnut. Insurance would cover you as you eat through the first part of the doughnut, but then you wouldn't be covered as you're going to through the hole. You'd have to buy a certain number of drugs before the coverage would kick in again.
That would start to be defrayed by this health care plan. Again, these changes coming soon. But, you know, this is -- you know they tried to put some math to this. And they say maybe this would cover between 5 and 10 million additional Americans. Not the 30 or so, at least not initially, that people have been talking about.
CHETRY: Right. So about them, those 31 million uninsured Americans that the House bill claims it would cover, many of them think that if this passes you'll instantly be covered. You'll be able to, let's say, have a surgery you've been putting off or get treatment. Is that really the case?
GUPTA: Well, you know, it's interesting. For a lot of them it's probably not going to be the case, at least not immediately. Some of the plans that would affect them most directly really start to take place over the next four years.
So let me give you a couple of examples to your question, Kiran. First of all, by the year 2014 people would have to have health care coverage. You know you have to either buy it if you can afford it or face a fine. And that's sort of what directs all of the rest of this.
They would -- these health insurance exchanges would be set up. Think of them as like supermarkets where you can go buy health insurance. You have to go through a lot of books like we go through right now to figure out what plan is right for you.
But through those exchanges you could not be discriminated against. So if you've had some sort of health problem you still would be able to get health care insurance. In order to pay for it people would be given tax credits.
So right now you're saying, look, I simply can't afford it. My employer's not providing it. You get the tax credit to try and help. It won't be free by any means. But there'll be a little bit of a discount there.
And finally this idea of expanding Medicaid. And when you look at the language specifically, they say expanding Medicaid to childless adults who are living near poverty, that's basically who would be most affected by that expansion.
But Kiran, when you add all that up, combine it with some of the things that implemented in 2010, that's when you start to get to the 30 or 31 million Americans. But the average consumer right now who says, look, I simply can't afford to have the surgery that I need, it's not necessarily clear that if this bill passes that within a week or two it's going to change for that person.
CHETRY: All right. Sanjay Gupta for us clearing up some of the confusion. We appreciate it. Great to see you this morning, Sanjay.
GUPTA: You, too.
ROBERTS: All right. Top stories coming your way in two minutes' time. Stay with us.
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