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Police Respond to Shooting Incident at California High School; Flood Warnings in Washington State; Health Care Reform Repeal Debate Begins; Former Haitian Dictator in Custody?; Regis' Big Announcement
Aired January 18, 2011 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: OK, Casey, hang on the line right now.
Brooke Baldwin is here. She's going to take over our coverage of this now.
Casey, thanks for your good information -- Brooke.
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Ali, thank you.
And, Casey, stand by.
And I want to welcome all of our viewers here to the 3:00 Eastern hour of CNN. We have been following this breaking story for you for the better part of the last half-hour.
Here is what we know right now. We're dealing with this high school in the L.A. area. It's an L.A. suburb. It's called Gardena High School, student population about 3,000 students.
What we know, according to the Gardena Police Department, is that there have been three shooting victims, all of whom appear to be students. Their conditions are not -- unknown, though we did see one -- one of those victims taken away in an ambulance just a short time a -- ago.
And I -- we have been watching this video. We have been watching the police responding to -- it's a massive, sprawling campus here in Gardena. And we have been watching as a number of students seemed to file out of one of the buildings with their hands on their heads, and a -- a young individual who appeared possibly to be the suspect who went down on the ground.
And here he goes, as they're walking this person away. Is this person a suspect? We -- or, rather, a -- a student? We do not know.
But, Casey Wian, I know you said you were there on campus.
(CROSSTALK)
BALDWIN: And, if you can, reset for me, explain what you learned. According to the L.A. Unified School District, the -- the news about where the gun was found.
WIAN: According to a parent we spoke with right after we arrived, just a few minutes ago, who had been communicating with her daughter, who is in the bathroom, one of the bathrooms on campus, locked down inside the school, she knows that her daughter is -- is -- is safe, but she was also reading on a parent information line.
And this parent information line said that one suspect is in custody, and they believe that that person is the shooter. We don't have independent confirmation of that. But what we are hearing from the Los Angeles Unified School District is that this was apparently an accident.
A -- a student had brought a gun to school in his or her backpack, and dropped that backpack, and the gun went off accidentally. That's what we're hearing through the L.A. Unified School District, at least initially, Brooke. Like I say, we don't have any independent confirmation of that from law enforcement, obviously. It's still a very, very fluid situation here. And we're hoping to get some sort of a -- some sort of -- more details from law enforcement very soon.
BALDWIN: So, Casey, that is a significant, significant development, the fact that you are hearing from the L.A. Unified School District that this whole thing, this was not some school shooting.
According to the school district, this was an accident. This person with the gun came into school with a gun in his or her backpack, and the gun went off, thus then injuring those three individuals.
Am I hearing you right?
WIAN: That's what -- that's what I understand from the L.A. Unified School District's report, you know, that, look, it's an accident, but obviously bringing a gun to a school in your backpack requires an overt act.
BALDWIN: Right.
WIAN: But, apparently, at least from the initial reports, it doesn't appear that this suspect targeted anyone in specific.
BALDWIN: I want to make sure, if there are parents with children who go to Gardena High School, Casey, what do parents need to know? We're hearing from police. They're saying, parents, do not go to the school, do not try to pick your child up. Instead, what is guidance for parents?
WIAN: Parents are -- the -- the school district and police do not want parents to come to the school, because it is just going to complicate the situation. They want them to rely on this information hot line that the school is putting out.
You can understand, though, that the natural urge from many parents is to come to school and see how their child is doing. So, right now, they're not getting any information right now.
If you give me a -- if you will let me break off for just a -- a minute or two, I can --
BALDWIN: Absolutely.
WIAN: -- speak to --
(CROSSTALK)
BALDWIN: Go, Casey.
(CROSSTALK)
WIAN: -- and gather --
BALDWIN: Go for it.
WIAN: -- some more information, and we will find out what -- what -- what else we can learn.
BALDWIN: Go for it. I appreciate you, Casey Wian, there for me on campus there of Gardena High School.
I want to go now to Ken Trump. He's the president of the National School Safety and Security Services.
And, Ken, when you hear the story, as Casey just described, a -- a person with a gun, this whole thing was an accident, according to the L.A. Unified School District, what do you think?
KENNETH TRUMP, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL SCHOOL SAFETY AND SECURITY SERVICES: Well, several things going on at -- at this point in time.
Parents are going to come flocking to the schools. With students having cell phones, texting information is going out very, very quickly, now, some of that misinformation, some of it accurate information. But parents are coming to the school.
And schools need to have in their crisis planning staging areas, so they can communicate to the media, to parents, get accurate information. Mass parent notification systems very common now to get information, to tell parents, stay away. There's something active here. You need to be -- go to another area, where you have parent/student reunification.
Right now, schools are going to be on lockdown, especially when you have a suspect who's out running around, un -- not in custody yet, no one knows where they are. You may have other schools in the area also --
BALDWIN: Mm-hmm.
WIAN: -- under lockdown and a possibility that the person could potentially come there.
But we know that, at this time, a lot of confusion -- police are trying to deal with the emergency itself, look for the suspect. School officials are locking down, securing the kids that are in the building, while also trying to figure out what's going on, all of this going on at the same time, while parents are coming to school, confused, don't know what to do --
BALDWIN: And they don't want --
WIAN: -- what --
BALDWIN: -- them to do that. Let me just reiterate, they don't want parents to rush off and -- and do that.
And, again, just I want to speak to some of the pictures. This was just about 10 minutes ago. And you can see the -- the police, perhaps the SWAT -- SWAT team, lined up against this particular building on this campus, students walking out one by one by one with their -- their hands on their heads.
And there -- there goes the suspect down on the ground, willingly surrenders, appears to be handcuffed. And then, in a moment, we see him or her walking away.
And, again, according to what Casey was reporting from the L.A. Schools, the Unified School District, that this gun was taken to campus by this individual. We have not been able to confirm yet -- and, Angie, correct if I'm -- my ear, if I wrong -- we have not been able to confirm if this individual there on the ground is a student.
But the student dropped the backpack, and the gun went off, again, three victims here, three who appear to be, according to this lieutenant with the Gardena police force, a -- a -- appear all to be students, one of whom we saw taken away in an ambulance.
We're working to get someone from the L.A. Unified School District on the phone here.
But -- but, Ken, back to you, I mean, when you hear this about an individual presumably walking into a school with a gun, this day and age, I don't know if there are metal detectors in the school or not, but does that surprise you?
TRUMP: It does not surprise me. Take a look at the last few weeks. In -- last month, we had this Florida school board shooting in -- in Bay County, Florida.
We had, in Omaha, an assistant principal killed, principal shot at the high school. Nobody wants to be alarmed. We don't want everybody to be fear to send their kids to school and that this is happening every day. But schools have to be prepared.
And you made a great point. Parents need to pay very close attention to directions from school officials and not go to the school at that time. That's tough. As a parent myself and for other parents, we understand how you want -- parents want that instant connect with their child. They want to know their child is safe.
But if the child is on the cell phone or texting to parents, they're not getting accurate, paying attention to the school officials to get accurate information to keep them safe. Parents may be walking into an unsafe situation.
And this is where schools have to have confidence built into their school community that they're well-prepared to manage an unfortunate incident like this, and to have conversations with parents ahead of time about how they're going to get information to them in a crisis, the fact that they may not be able to immediately come on campus, so the parents know what to expect in an unfortunate situation, heaven forbid, it occurs.
This is a situation where planning in advance is critical. We have had several incidents. Nobody wants to be alarmist.
BALDWIN: Right.
TRUMP: This is a time of the year -- this is a time of the year, though, where it's unusual to have several high-profile weapons incidents. We tend --
BALDWIN: Hmm.
TRUMP: -- to see things pick up in -- in the spring. And, today, in schools, it's very challenging with budget cuts --
BALDWIN: And -- and --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: -- and time to deal with this.
BALDWIN: Unfortunately, we have seen several in -- in just the last few weeks, as you point out, Ken.
Ken, I appreciate you coming on -- Ken Trump, president, National School Safety and Security Services.
And I'm just learning now that the L.A. Unified School District has confirmed that the suspect -- Angie, repeat it one more time -- the suspect is in custody. Have we been able to confirm -- only one suspect in this particular case.
Have we confirmed if -- we do not know if the suspect is, in fact, a student.
We're working the phones. We have Casey Wian there on campus trying to get some answers to a number of questions I know we have. We will stay very close to the situation.
But, at least for now, suspect in custody, and the situation there at Gardena High School appears to be secure.
So, I want to move along for now and I want to take you to some pictures out of Washington State, flood warnings. We were talking about this yesterday, and the situation equally dire today as well -- flood warnings in effect today in the western part of the state. So, what you're looking at right now is actually part of the Seattle area, rivers overflowing their banks, roads, as you can see, swamped or washed out.
So, we will have much more on the situation there in Washington State and also Oregon. It is also a mess in -- in Oregon as well.
And we are on Capitol Hill today as well, watching the debate that should be under way right about now, the debate to potentially repeal President Obama's health care reform. That is under way in the House. We will take you to Capitol Hill here.
A lot going on, on this Tuesday -- CNN NEWSROOM will be right back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- way. So, Mr. Speaker --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BALDWIN: We want to remind you are -- we are still watching the situation there at Gardena High School, a suburb of L.A. And we should be hearing shortly here from a member the L.A. Unified School District to bring us up to speed as to what happened and just to triple-check everything is secure and safe now for those students there.
Again, the -- the suspect is in custody, three victims. Apparently, this gun went off, according to the school district, and three victims, appear to be students, were injured. We do not yet know their conditions. We will -- we will try to get answers to some of those questions when I talk to the school district member here in just a moment.
But I want to take you to Capitol Hill and what's happening right now, the first concrete sign of change, the change ordered by some of you, the American voters -- a live picture from Washington, House of Representatives, now led by the Republicans.
And their first order of business -- and it's happening right now -- you're looking at it -- is to roll back health care reform. And what we're looking at here is, this is the floor of the House, a number of congress men and women speaking here. They're -- they're -- they're debating actually today and tomorrow. They plan to vote to repeal health care reform.
But I want you to hold that thought for just a moment, because now I want to show you another live picture. Or it was a picture from earlier, I believe. Representative Steve King -- it is live -- Representative Steve King, some Tea Party allies, these are the folks who fought reform from the very beginning, from -- from when the whole thing passed last spring.
And we're hearing from them, just as we have in the past. In fact, I want to take you back a little bit. You remember this?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: We want our country back.
(APPLAUSE)
(SHOUTING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: You remember all that, the -- the -- the passions that the Republicans rode to victory in November. And now they're making good on their promise to try to repeal the Democrats' health care reform.
I want to turn to Ed Henry for me at the White House.
And, Ed, how concerned is the Obama administration that this is the, you know, opening shot, if you will, in this process of whittling away health care reforms bit by bit by bit?
ED HENRY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Oh, they're very concerned about it being whittled away. They're not really concerned about being -- it being outright repealed.
If you listen to Steven King, what he's saying is -- is that -- basically, that this is going to be something that goes over the long haul and that this is something they hope to build momentum on. They will get it through the House because they have got the votes there, but this is not really going anywhere in the Senate in the short term, but that they hope that, come 2012, if they continue to build momentum against this administration and pick up more Republican seats in the Senate, maybe even take it over, that maybe they can get that done in 2013.
And they also hope -- and I stress hope -- to have a Republican president here at the White House in January of 2013, who would actually sign repeal into law.
Right now, even if this were to get through the Senate, which it's not in the short term, this president would obviously veto it. So, this is mostly symbolic, but this is something Republicans ran on. So they want to follow up on that and they want to show voters back home that they're listening to them.
But you know what? A -- another big issue in that election was jobs, and there was a lot of Republicans pounding this White House for focusing too much on health care, other issues, and not focused enough on jobs. So the more time Republicans spend on this now -- and they're -- they're having a pretty quick debate. It's not going to go on for weeks or anything like that --
BALDWIN: Sure.
HENRY: -- we should be clear -- this White House may be able to turn it around on Republicans and say, well, where's your jobs plan? Now you're in power. You certainly made a lot of hay out of going after this president in November. What are you going now to create jobs?
BALDWIN: Well, you know, and I -- I know you've seen these numbers. I want to show this poll. We have this new poll out today. It shows 50 percent of the country supports repealing these reforms, every single reform.
But when we tweaked the question -- question just a bit here, we found that 39 percent expressed support for most of the health care reforms. That is actually the most important answer, as you can see.
Bottom line here, Ed, do the Republicans feel they need to move pretty quickly before all these reforms are fully put in place?
HENRY: Exactly.
You have put your finger right on it. And that's why they're moving to try to get this done, not just in the short term -- they will have this vote and take one step -- but get it done over the next couple of years, because a lot of these big changes don't kick in until, say, 2014.
But the -- what the White House is banking on is that, while, big picture, so-called Obamacare, as Republicans brand it, may be unpopular, but when you pick off the individual pieces, such as making sure kids who have preexisting conditions don't get kicked off their health care, that's a pretty popular component of this president's health care reform plan, and the White House is banking that they can sell these individual pieces.
The Republicans are going to beat on the big picture, but the White House is going to try to sell those individual pieces, and say, you may not like this big whole --
BALDWIN: Huh.
HENRY: -- thing, but, individually, there's a lot of good in here. And they're hoping that they can kind of run out the clock and make sure Republicans don't repeal it by 2014.
BALDWIN: And, you know, Ed, you mentioned jobs a moment ago. Let's talk about the economy, since I have you for a second here.
HENRY: Sure.
BALDWIN: I want to mention that, today -- you know this -- the president ordered a -- a full review of all federal regulations and their impact on the economy.
And he announced that order, if you read "The Wall Street Journal" and this op-ed -- and I want to read you just a -- just a piece of this article -- he wrote, "This order requires that federal agencies ensure that regulations protect our safety, health and environment, while promoting economic growth."
So, Ed, to you, is -- is the president moving maybe toward the middle and -- and counting on the Republicans to stay right where they are, or maybe move a little bit farther to the right?
HENRY: No, he's trying to run down the middle. There's no doubt about it. And the fingerprints of Bill Daley, the new White House chief of staff, are all over this.
BALDWIN: Hmm.
HENRY: This may be one of the first signs of -- of seeing his imprint.
It's no accident that that op-ed was written, as you noted, in "The Wall Street Journal," the --
BALDWIN: Hmm.
HENRY: -- newspaper the business community likes to read. It's no accident that the president of the U.S. Chamber of Congress, Tom Donohue, big business lobbyist and official, is saying: This is a great idea. We have been talking about this for years.
Business folks have been saying, wipe out these old, outdated regulations, make sure you're not stifling job creation. Now, to have the president of the United States writing it in "The Wall Street Journal" and actually doing something official and moving forward with action and issuing this executive order to try to clear out some of these outdated regulations --
BALDWIN: Right.
HENRY: -- music to the ears of the business community.
It has got Bill Daley written all over it.
(LAUGHTER)
HENRY: All we heard about him reaching out to business, this is exhibit A right here.
BALDWIN: Got his stamp right all -- all over it.
Ed Henry for me at the White House -- Ed, thank you so much.
HENRY: Good to see you.
BALDWIN: And, you know, the former dictator known as Baby Doc has just been taken into custody in Haiti this afternoon. We will tell you that story next, get an update there.
Also, it was a surprise announcement from Regis Philbin today. Were you watching? We are going to tell you why the 79-year-old talk show veteran says he is leaving "Live With Regis & Kelly."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BALDWIN: Want to take you back to Gardena High School, the scene of a school shooting, albeit a -- a -- they say an accidental school shooting.
Want to bring in Casey Wian, who is there live for me on campus.
And, Casey, what are you learning?
WIAN: Yes, we just had a briefing from the Los Angeles Police Department.
According to Deputy LAPD Chief Pat Gannon, what -- what he described as a chaotic scene here at Gardena High School has now been brought under control.
What happened, according to the police chief, is that a male suspect brought a gun in a backpack to school. He walked into his classroom, set the gun down on a desk, and the gun went off, injuring two students.
One is a 15-year-old female. She is now in critical condition, undergoing surgery --
BALDWIN: Oh.
WIAN: -- as we speak --
BALDWIN: Hmm.
WIAN: -- at a local hospital.
The other injured victim is a 15-year-old male, who also has a gunshot wound to the head. He is in stable condition at a local hospital.
The suspect fled after the shooting to another classroom, where he eventually -- I'm not sure if he surrendered or apprehended was -- is the right word, but he was taken into custody. And the investigation into this shooting is continuing.
Good news, though, for parents of the other students at the school who have gathered around the campus desperate to find out information about their children -- the police say they have (AUDIO GAP) family members of both of the injured students, and they are with them at the local hospital.
So, they have asked that no more parents come down to the school area, so they can continue this investigation. But that's what we right know, just to wrap up, Brooke: shooting this morning 10:30 a.m. local time, apparently an accidental shooting, where a student brought a gun in a backpack, set it down on a desk, and shot two fellow students accidentally.
One of them is in critical condition, undergoing surgery now at a local hospital. The other one is in stable condition. And the suspect is in custody -- Brooke.
BALDWIN: Casey, here's the big question everyone wants an answer to. Does this school have metal detectors? WIAN: And we asked a parent that. And he said they need more metal detectors. He said they are supposed to have metal detectors, but he had some concerns that perhaps they weren't working or were not installed the way that they -- they should be.
BALDWIN: Hmm.
WIAN: So, this one parent we spoke with had a lot of concerns about that. We spoke to a couple other parents, one who said he was a student here in the early 1990s.
And he said the violence at this school back then was a big problem. And he said it still remains a problem in terms of some gang issues. He called them little gang issues, whatever that means. But --
BALDWIN: Hmm.
WIAN: -- he said that continues to this day.
And we also talked to a school employee, who did not want us to use her name because she was not authorized to speak for the school. She was actually off campus on a break and could not get back onto campus.
She said that the school has actually become much safer in recent years and they have really gotten rid of some of the bad apples, as she termed it --
BALDWIN: Hmm.
WIAN: -- and it's a much safer place.
So, we're getting a mixed picture on exactly what's been going on at this school. But I will say that every single parent we have spoken to said it remains a tense and potentially dangerous place at times, Brooke.
BALDWIN: Casey, you bring up a couple of great points, which I plan to pose to an L.A. Unified School official as soon as we get him or her on the phone.
But let me just follow up with one question. You mentioned two victims, the 15-year-old female and a 15 -- 15-year-old male. We were reporting there were three victims. Are you telling me there are two?
WIAN: That's what the Los Angeles Police Department deputy chief is telling us: two victims --
BALDWIN: Got it.
WIAN: -- two victims.
BALDWIN: Got it.
Casey Wian, excellent reporting. Thank you so much. And we will be right back here in the CNN NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BALDWIN: The Baby Doc mystery gets more twisty and turny.
Look at the scene with me. This is Port-au-Prince just a couple of hours ago -- Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier showing his face the first time since his surprise return to Haiti on Sunday.
Now, he wasn't arrested, per se. We were told he was just escorted to a courthouse, where a judge is deciding what to do with him.
Plenty of questions for you, John Zarrella, and I'm hoping you have some answers for me.
First of all, is Baby Doc Duvalier under arrest, or not?
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN MIAMI BUREAU CHIEF: No, he's not. No, he's not, Brooke.
In fact, the twisties and turnies continue here in Port-au- Prince. In fact, about just a minute ago, a couple of dozen United States peacekeeping troops showed up here at the -- the hotel where Duvalier (AUDIO GAP) holed up for the past couple of days.
And he is now, Jean-Claude Duvalier, on his way back here to the hotel. He was not arrested. He is not in custody at this moment. Our understanding is that, when he was brought to the courthouse, that the government presented a (AUDIO GAP) of allegations against him.
And now it's up to the prosecutor to decide whether there is merit in those allegations, merit enough to actually file charges against Duvalier. Now, that could take up to a month, perhaps 30 days, before the -- the prosecutor decides that. It -- it could happen tomorrow.
BALDWIN: What --
ZARRELLA: But, at this point, we -- go ahead, Brooke.
BALDWIN: Do we know what charges he could be facing, if the prosecutor determines there is merit?
ZARRELLA: We do not know at this point --
BALDWIN: OK.
ZARRELLA: -- in time.
Our understanding had been all along that the Preval government had said back in 2007 that one of the things that, if he ever came back to this country, they would -- they would charge him with was embezzlement, because --
BALDWIN: Hmm.
ZARRELLA: -- he has certainly been accused over the years of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the Haitian people when he left the country (AUDIO GAP) in 1986.
There are also those who would like to see charges filed for human rights violations against him. We understand there are some private parties who intend as well to bring those kinds of charges.
But we do not have any specifics as to what allegations the --
BALDWIN: OK.
ZARRELLA: -- government presented against him today.
We do not know, when he comes back to this hotel, if he will be placed in house -- under house arrest. But he is, as we speak, on his way back here to the hotel.
BALDWIN: And, John --
ZARRELLA: That's our understanding -- Brooke.
BALDWIN: -- let me -- let me again just ask the obvious. I asked you yesterday. I'm going to ask you again today. Any clue yet as to why Baby Doc returned to Haiti?
ZARRELLA: You know, you'd think that he would have expected that something like this might happen when he came back. But there was also speculation that any crime that he might have alleged to have committed that there was a statute of limitations on those crimes. So perhaps he thought that there was no way that he could be charged with anything.
You know, we continue to hear the same thing today, that the only reason he came back was to show solidarity with the people here, that he wanted to for a long time make a trip back here, that it was totally nonpolitical. Had he been given the opportunity to talk to the media that was what he was going to say.
We don't know if he'll have that opportunity now, once he gets back. Certainly going to be here and see how all of this continues to shake out.
BALDWIN: You'll be there continuing to put together the bits and pieces and twists and turns of Baby Doc Duvalier's return to Haiti. John Zarrella, thanks for the update.
Then there is Sarah Palin. She says, yes, yes, those are crosshairs. They are indeed crosshairs dotting a map that appeared on Palin's Web site. Democrats including Arizona Gabrielle Giffords who continues to recover from the gunshot wound to her head.
And as controversy swirled all last week, one of Palin's advisers said, no, these are not crosshairs. They are surveyor symbols. Palin contradicted that in an interview last night. Here she is. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SARAH PALIN, (R) FORMER ALASKA GOVERNOR: For many, many years, maps in political races have been used to target certain districts that people would feel that they can get into those districts and find someone who they believe would represent the constituents' will better than incumbent. That is what this map represented that we used on my PAC.
And the graphic that was used was crosshairs targeting the different districts. And again, that's not original. In fact, Democrats have been using it for years.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Jessica Yellin, our national political correspondent, is there any way to discern right now whether Sarah Palin has been hurt politically by this?
JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, there are the poll numbers, and her poll numbers have fallen. They're now at their lowest level since she was picked by John McCain to be on the ticket.
A CNN/Opinion Research poll shows her favorability rating at 38 percent. That's down from 40 percent. But what's up is her unfavorability rating. That's up to 56 percent, a seven-point increase since last October. Gallup/"USA Today" did their own poll, very similar results.
So as long as she continues to talk about this issue and whether Democrats had a bull's eye map and she had a crosshairs map and not talk about issues that relate to people and people's lives directly, she keeps it alive. You have to see how it plays on in the coming weeks, Brooke.
BALDWIN: Let's push on to a city that I think you were supposed to be in today but because a de-icer wasn't working properly you didn't get there. Let's talk about Bill Clinton. He went to Chicago to campaign for his buddy Rahm Emanuel running for mayor. What we're hearing Jessica is some folks in Chicago are none too pleased president Clinton is there. What are you hearing?
YELLIN: Well, look, one candidate in particular is trying to make this about race. Carol Moseley Brawn, a former U.S. senator, an African-American woman running for mayor in that city. There are also two Hispanic candidates in the city. They're all trailing Rahm Emanuel very badly. The polls have Emanuel up significantly.
Today Brawn went after Bill Clinton for coming to Chicago to say the choice to come the day after Dr. King's birthday and insert himself into a mayoral race is "a betrayal to the people most loyal to him. It's a mistake." That's a direct quote.
BALDWIN: Wow. YELLIN: Stinging, but Brawn was already making noises like this before Clinton actually came, and clearly it wasn't enough to keep him away.
BALDWIN: Jessica Yellin for us in Washington. Thank you.
You know, there's this video getting all kinds of buzz on YouTube today. It shows what we're told is this 1950s housewife on LSD, like June Cleaver on LSD. Apparently she's the subject of this government study. We're going to show you just a bit of that video. I'll talk to the author who recently found this old footage. Stay right there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BALDWIN: Here's a flashback that no one really expected. Imagine your mother on an acid trip. I'm talking June Cleaver on LSD. That pretty much describes this rare old piece of video floating around now on the 90 today.
This is from a 1950s TV documentary series called "Focus on Sanity." And it features this housewife you're about to see who volunteered as a research subject for an experiment using LSD. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a glass of water, colorless, tasteless. It contains 100 gamma of LSD 25, one-tenth of a milligram.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Now, I want to be clear. We actually did try to reach the woman you just saw drinking that stuff. She would be in her late 70s, maybe 80s by now. But she's not identified in the program and we don't know her name so we have no way to contact her.
But who we have is the man who found this footage, posted it online. He's a free lance journalist and author of four books, including "The Harvard Psychedelic Club." Don, this got our team talking today. Let me just ask you, how did you find this footage?
DON LATTIN, AUTHOR, FREELANCE JOURNALIST: I was doing some research on my next book, which involves three characters, Gerald Heard, Bill Wilson, and Aldous Huxley. Gerald Heard is on this video. I found it in the Gerald Heard archive. Heard and Huxley and Wilson were interested in the spiritual potential in LSD, or the use for self-exploration and psychological understanding. This was before Timothy Leary made LSD infamous in the '60s.
BALDWIN: What I didn't realize is LSD was actually legal until 1966. So this was legal, this woman drinking this liquid.
LATTIN: That's right.
BALDWIN: Explain to me before we watch another clip, what exactly is the liquid? LATTIN: It's just water. LSD is a powerful drug. It takes very little for a significant dose. So it's just a glass of water with LSD which she was given. She was one of hundreds of people given this drug in experiments in the '50s.
BALDWIN: So let's show, Don, the effect of this water and LSD on her. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I've never seen such infinite beauty in my life. It's like a curtain or a spider web or -- can you see it? It's right here in front of me right now. Watch. No. Good heavens. You know, it went through me. It passed right through me!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Could you feel it?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I -- I -- me?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: So the air and the colors and "it's passing right through me." Don, what do we know about this woman?
LATTIN: Well, earlier on -- this is a half hour video. This is just a small clip from it -- she was a school teacher who had left her job. She had a son and she was raising her son, living on the beach somewhere in southern California, house on the beach. Her husband worked at the VA hospital where the research was being done. So she was just a normal '50s housewife. But she turns into this '60s, you know, acid goddess.
(LAUGHTER)
BALDWIN: Yes. Like I said, we were all talking, it's almost like June Cleaver. She looks like this innocent '50s housewife tripping essentially. And was this, Don, the norm? You mentioned a lot of government experiments. This is a VA hospital. Where were they doing this?
LATTIN: Well, there was all kinds of research being done in the '50s. A lot of it was very nefarious, funded by the CIA secretly, and the army. They were look being at using LSD as a chemical weapon, spraying it on enemy troops like a weapon of mass distraction rather than mass destruction.
(LAUGHTER)
But there was -- there was another kind of research going on by people looking for positive, beneficial uses of these psychedelic drugs in terms of psychotherapy, helping people deal with deep-seeded issues in psychotherapy, to better understand themselves.
BALDWIN: Spiritual awakenings?
LATTIN: Yes. BALDWIN: I can't help but mention alcoholics anonymous was start by Bill Wilson. He was actually given LSD because he was thinking that one of the 12 steps would be the spiritual awakening to wean somebody off alcohol.
LATTIN: Right. Wilson started AA back in the 30s and he was working with Heard and Huxley, one of the tenets of AA is you need to have a spiritual awakening to overcome your alcoholism, your addiction. A lot of alcoholics have no interest in religion or spirituality. So Wilson thought this could be a way for some alcoholics to have that spiritual awakening they needed to get over their addiction.
BALDWIN: Don Lattin, I appreciate you. I think I learned something and our viewers as well. Interesting video you found there, Don. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Just in here to CNN, breaking news, a major earthquake. We're hearing 7.4 in Pakistan. We're just getting some details. We'll get right to the story. We'll sneak a break in and get you more right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BALDWIN: Breaking news again here at CNN. There has been an earthquake in Pakistan, 7.4 in magnitude. In fact, our affiliate CNN IBM, they say they felt this quake and the tremors as far away Chad Myers as New Delhi and northern India. So show me the map.
MYERS: Hundreds of miles way.
BALDWIN: Hundreds of miles.
MYERS: A 7.4 is a very significant earthquake considering how the structures are built in the area. So this would be Abu Dhabi and here's Iraq and Iran and Pakistan and Afghanistan. There's the earthquake itself and there's India, New Delhi there. There's the epicenter of the quake, that little red dot there.
And 7.4, this is a preliminary magnitude. It may go up or down a bit. They're not even sure how deep it is yet. It is still to the default, which is 10 kilometers, about six miles. That will go up and down as well as they take a look at all the other maps in this area to see what happened there, to see how deep it is.
They tell how deep it is by how long it takes to get to a certain recorder. If it takes two minutes to go to one and three minutes to another and one minute to another. They know it's closer to the one that took one minute. This is near the town in Pakistan where it was shaking, you can see there are structures, although it is reported that this is an orchard village, where they grow things in orchard areas, not a populated area, thank goodness, because a 7.4 could do some significant damage. We see what something like that and did to Haiti. This is not populated like Port-au-Prince.
BALDWIN: And there are earthquakes from time to time in Pakistan, aren't there?
MYERS: Oh, sure, absolutely. This is getting to be the top of the world. You get mountains and you get plates crashing into each other, and those plates shake. Those plates move a lot. And they don't usually have the 2.5s and the 3.5s. When they have them, we don't report them.
But when you get a 7.4 and then you get a structure that's built from stone that might be hundreds of years old that was one stone built on top of another stone, chiseled to fit on another stone and you happen to be under one of those stones or underneath the whole structure as it shakes, they fall down rather quickly, the same way that unreinforced concrete fell down in Haiti when you literally have structures stone on stone on stone, even if there's mud on the outside, that's not a reinforced building.
BALDWIN: Apparently the epicenter of this was used -- the epicenter of this particular quake was near a base, used by U.S. forces?
MYERS: I didn't know that. You probably will have great reports of that, too.
BALDWIN: I'm hearing Barbara Starr at the Pentagon is getting up on that.
MYERS: Great.
BALDWIN: I think it's worth showing again, Chad, just to stay on this. That is where the quake hit where the red dot is. Show me, you see New Delhi, what, about 1,000 miles away?
MYERS: Pretty much. I can't do a magnitude or stretch on this, but Islamabad, Kabul would be here, then the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and then on up here. We talk about the straits and how ships go through. Go ahead, Sean. He's going to do a line. It's 794 miles away from where they felt it.
BALDWIN: It was that far away. That's amazing.
MYERS: And you have stone and you have areas here that would be able to penetrate and move that shock, whereas like the marina district in San Francisco, that's just kind of all wobbles and you don't transport the shock. It just wobbles in one spot.
BALDWIN: Let's bring in Barbara Starr at the Pentagon for us. Talk to me, Barbara, about where exactly in Pakistan that hit and how far from the base that is.
STARR: Well, you know, I think Chad's map really begins to lay it out for those of us who have traveled through that southern region of Afghanistan. This is an area on the Afghan side that has both desert and mountains on the Pakistan side, the same thing. So that's the geology you're dealing with.
But what is the security implication of what we're dealing with here? That is going to emerge over the coming hours. This is an area on both sides of the border where the insurgents have been very active. There have been U.S. military operations. As we know, the CIA flies unmanned drones through this region, as does the U.S. military on the afghan side there. There's been plenty of activity.
Now, you have to understand in Pakistan the real effort which has been hobbled lately is to try to get the Pakistani military to go after the insurgents. But they, for months now, have really been trying to cope with the aftermath of another natural disaster, which had been those terrible floods.
So if they now have another natural disaster, this earthquake situation, there could be a real security implication here emerging, which is that the Pakistani military, once again, will be delayed in trying to go after insurgents. The U.S. has been trying to convince them to get moving in an area far to the north of where this earthquake has hit.
But nonetheless the Pakistanis are saying, we're tied up with flood relief. We can't worry about the insurgent activity just right now. Another earthquake, another natural disaster is not what is needed in this country, Brooke.
BALDWIN: We are trying to establish some live pictures from this particular part of Pakistan was describing. Barbara, thank you. We will watch and wait to see what the security implications are, so we're not going to go too far from the story there in Pakistan.
Meantime, we are waiting for Chinese president Hu Jintao to arrive in Washington, D.C. That's supposed to happen any minute. It's supposed to land any minute now, and as soon as that happens at Andrews Air Force Base we will bring it to you live. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BALDWIN: I want to show you some live pictures. You're not seeing a lot of anything live yet. But you will see a plane on that tarmac. We're awaiting for the arriving of the Chinese president, 67-year-old Hu Jintao. He left Beijing coming to D.C. There's a big staircase ready for his arrival. The vice president and his wife will be there to greet him for this first official state visit in Washington, so as soon as we see that happen, we'll bring it to you live.
And also big, big news unfolding in Pakistan, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake hitting that country right along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. I want to go to Chad Myers. Just show me that map again, sir, and tell me where that is, and this is massive, massive.
MYERS: It's a big quake, 7.4 in an area where you're not building things out of structurally sound wood. You don't have San Francisco building codes. You have people in the area of the aftershocks now. We know that we've had a couple of them here, and we have built this wall amazingly well. We've done something on the wall that we can -- immediately when this pops up here, it will pop up and show me there's been a significant earthquake in the U.S. of 5.0 or higher or 7.0 in the world or higher and it will show us exactly where it is. We're talking about areas that we talk about a lot because of the military presence here. We're talking about Afghanistan and Pakistan.
And the shape of Pakistan, the tribal areas, here's that forever. I won't draw a line in there. Those lines, we don't even know where those lines are and the people battled back and forth for them, but that would be Pakistan, here up here towards Afghanistan.
And the shock at a 7.4, it is right along something else called a regional development highway. This highway used to transport things back and forth, and there you see where the quake was at 7.4. Still don't know the depth yet. They can figure out pretty close, plus or minus point two points where and how big the shock was. They don't know how deep it was until they do it a little bit more digging and seismologists look at it.
So here's the development of the regional highway and here are the people that live here, little houses through here, little villages here and more areas up here. There are orchards here. Obviously just not, not just desert property but it is rugged as well. Mountains up and down, I mean, literally like the Alps and like the Rockies in spots as these plates here crash to each other, and as they do that, they make earthquakes. They have been making them for millions of years in the same spots.
BALDWIN: We're still waiting to get those first pictures. Another point to bring up, it's the middle of the night now in Pakistan.
MYERS: Good point.
BALDWIN: People sound asleep and this earthquake rattled them quite a bit, I would imagine, 7.4. There are not just implications for people there on the ground, Chad, but as Barbara Starr so astutely pointed out, there are security implications as well. Active area right along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border for insurgents, also, CIA unmanned drones, so we'll also have to follow that storyline, the security implications of this particular earthquake.
And I mentioned and promised I would take you back to Andrews Air Force base, and we are going to deliver on that promise, because we are now -- I was told there was a plane, guys. It's turning around, I'm told, the plane from Beijing there to Washington arriving, turning around.
We should see the vice president here and his wife as well, Dr. Jill Biden. They are greeting the president of China. This is his first official state visit to Washington. It's not his first time in the United States, not his first meeting with President Obama, but it is Hu's first state visit. We'll get a break in, and we'll bring you back some more live pictures right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BALDWIN: Let's go to live pictures, Andrews Air Force Base there in Maryland. This plane on the tarmac arriving from Beijing, carrying -- an air China plane carrying China's president, Hu Jintao arriving there at Andrews. He will be greeted by the air force band and also the vice president and vice president's wife, Dr. Jill Biden. We'll show you some more pictures here in a moment.
But I want to get to Gloria Borger joining me now in Washington now that that plane has just about landed there with the latest from the CNN political ticker. Gloria, good to see you. What do you have?
GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIORPOLITICAL ANALYST: Good to see you. As you've been talking about today, President Obama's approval rating is up five points, but when I look deeper in these polls, Brooke, what was the most interesting thing to me is that the president's approval rating among independent voters has jumped a whopping 15 points. Take a look, now, 56 percent, back in December 41 percent.
That is so important for Barack Obama. There is an election coming up in 2012 and, of course, those independent voters are the voters that he had lost over the last couple of years. Maybe as a result of his speech in Tucson or the lame duck session, those independent voters are starting to come back to him.
Now, one big test for independent voters will be health care reform. As you know, people of all political persuasions have decided they don't much like this health care reform bill. Our polls show that voters are split on that.
Today the House Democratic whip, that's the number two leader in the House, Steny Hoyer, told CNN that Democrats have a lot of work to do in terms of their message on health care reform and how they sell it again to the American people.
Now, Republicans that I talked to say to me, you know what, the Democrats have never understood this. It's not the message. It's the bill that the American people have a problem with.
And the Democrats right now in this debate we will be watching this week on the floor of the House are going to have to tell the American people, take another look at health care reform. If you repeal it, there are going to be lots of things you are going to lose, and you won't like it -- Brooke.
BALDWIN: Gloria, thank you.
BORGER: Sure.
BALDWIN: I want to remind everyone, we will get another "Political Ticker" update for you in about half-an-hour. You can always hop online, get the latest tickers. You can read those at CNNPolitics.com or on Twitter at @PoliticalTicker.
