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Campbell Brown
Dick Cheney Hospitalized; Broken Government
Aired February 22, 2010 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAMPBELL BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Hi there, everybody.
We're starting with some breaking news right now, picking up where Wolf Blitzer left off: former Vice President Dick Cheney hospitalized tonight after experiencing chest pains.
He's what we know at this hour. He's at George Washington Hospital in Washington. His doctors are evaluating the situation. Cheney's office saying that he's resting comfortably right now. The former vice president is 69 years old. He has suffered four heart attacks in his life.
The first was in 1978, when Cheney was just 37 years old. He had a second heart attack in 1984, a third in 1988 and a fourth in 2000. He had quadruple bypass surgery in 1988 and he has undergone two angioplasties in the years since.
The former vice president had a special pacemaker installed in 2001. All of that said, he, from all appearances, has been in really good health, especially recently. He made a surprise appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington and stole the show on Thursday.
He's been very much out front on a lot of the political issues over the last six months. So, again, what we are hearing from his family -- or from his office, rather, is that he's resting comfortably. He does appears to be OK. But again he had been experiencing chest pains.
So, we just want to check in quickly with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who is on the phone with us now, just for a little context here.
Sanjay, how troubling is it, given somebody with the former vice president's medical history here, that he goes into the hospital complaining of the chest pains?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's obviously very significant.
The doctors I'm sure at this point are trying to figure he out if he, in fact, has had a heart attack, which means that part of the heart muscle has, in fact, gone without blood for too long, and some of those cells have died, or if he's just having milder symptoms that may be related to an abnormal rhythm in his heart or something else.
You're absolutely right. Given his history, you have to think heart first, but clearly there's other things that can cause chest pain as well. So all those things are probably being sort of investigated right now.
As far as his pain, when someone is having chest pains, oftentimes they will give them medication, a nitrate-type medication that will open up the blood vessels to make sure he can get more blood flow to his heart. He may be given an aspirin. He's probably already on blood thinners, but given an aspirin, to make sure there's not some sort of clot that is breaking -- causing a problem. That aspirin will act as a blood thinner.
So, that's probably what is happening right now.
BROWN: And, Sanjay, you kind of touched on this. I was reading in 2007 and 2008, the former vice president had to have a procedure to restore his normal heart rhythm after atrial fibrillation, if I have got this right.
GUPTA: That's right.
BROWN: Explain what that is.
GUPTA: Yes, there's a couple things that have gone on with the former vice president's heart rhythm. One is exactly that, atrial fibrillation.
There are four chambers in the heart and the atrial chambers are the chambers that are on top. And sometimes, they start to quiver instead of beating normally. And they just can't -- it sort of slows down the amount of blood that he can get out of the heart. And in his case, he had a little electrical shock applied to his chest to sort of shock that atrium back into a normal rhythm.
He also has that special defibrillator that you mentioned earlier, I believe, Campbell. And what that does, it is constantly monitoring the heart for a drastically abnormal rhythm. And if that occurs, that defibrillator automatically shocks his heart back into a normal rhythm as well. So, he's had two issues with that over the years.
BROWN: All right, Sanjay Gupta, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, joining us.
Sanjay, thank you very much.
And, again, from what we know, he's being evaluated right now at a Washington hospital, his office saying he's resting comfortably. So, we will update you and bring Sanjay back in if we do get any more information on that front.
I do want to bring in CNN senior political analyst Gloria Borger, who is with me right now from Washington, and here with me in New York is Mark Halperin of "TIME" magazine, just to talk about the fact that he -- we just saw him Thursday night, in fact, at -- or Thursday afternoon at the CPAC Conference down in Washington, where he gave what was quite the crowd-pleaser of a speech. And let me play a little bit of that. And then we will talk on the other side. Listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DICK CHENEY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: As I look to the future now, I think that the developments that we have seen over the last several months are enormously encouraging. I think when we can achieve the kind of results that we have achieved in places like Virginia and New Jersey and Massachusetts, the sky's the limit here. I think 2010 is going to be a phenomenal year for the conservative cause.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
CHENEY: And I think Barack Obama is a one-term president.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Again, back with me now, Gloria Borger and Mark Halperin.
And, Gloria, let me just say that this has not been a man who has been fly-fishing in Wyoming for the last six months.
GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: No.
BROWN: He's been very visible, very outspoken, and, again, by all appearances, in very good health.
BORGER: Yes, and more outspoken than his former boss, George W. Bush.
It's interesting watching that clip, because during the last years of the Bush presidency, you were used to hearing Dick Cheney talk an awful lot about terrorism and not a lot about politics. And he's been so politically outspoken on both politics and terrorism, saying that we're less safe under Barack Obama, for example, that lots of conservatives were saying, gee, is this Dick Cheney reborn as a politician? Could he be thinking about running again?
And then there was always this heart issue in the background that kept him really from being a serious presidential candidate. And it's still there for him, Campbell.
BROWN: Mark, how does he handle this stuff generally? He's been dealing with it for a long time, 37 when he had his heart attack.
MARK HALPERIN, SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST, "TIME": He has.
And whenever a reporter deals with him, whenever I deal with him, I always ask him how he's feeling. So, it comes up quite a bit. He's, as you know, one of the most clinical people you will ever deal with about any issue, not a lot of emotion, and that's how the way he has always talked about his heart issues.
He knows the statistics. He's changed his lifestyle some, not as much as perhaps he should, like with anybody struggling with balancing their lifestyle with a health issue. But he's, every time I have talked to him about it, remarkably matter of fact, knows what he needs to do, very clinical in talking about his doctors, not all evincing any sort of fear over it or sense of mortality about it at all.
BROWN: Given what you know about him, have you been surprised at how engaged he's been in the political process over the last six months?
HALPERIN: Well, it's kind of become the family business. His daughter Liz has been very active and out there as well. They're working on his memoirs together.
BROWN: Right.
HALPERIN: And so I think he's feeling like he's always been part of the Republican establishment. He's always been outspoken. He thought about running for president himself in 1996. And I he think he sees an opening there, in part because he doesn't feel, for whatever reason, the same constraints that President Bush does about not being outspoken.
He's been very outspoken and he does feel passionately about these national security issues. And because I think the left has come after him so hard, I think both Dick and Liz Cheney have felt they need to be out there in the arena. They're going to be attacked anyway. They might as well be on the offensive a bit as well.
BROWN: And glad to be out of the administration and able to unleash a little bit, right?
BORGER: Unbound.
HALPERIN: That's right.
BROWN: Go ahead, Gloria.
BORGER: Cheney unbound is what you're seeing now. And I think he's very happy about it.
And talking about Liz Cheney, I think it's really becoming generational now. Lynne Cheney, his wife, was a quite outspoken conservative. And I think right now she's given a bit of that platform to her daughter, who is helping Dick Cheney with his memoirs right now. And I think that's also what we're seeing. We're somebody here who wants to create a lot of buzz for his book when it comes out.
HALPERIN: The other thing that he's done is separate himself a little bit from President Bush.
In an interview he did last Sunday with Jonathan Karl on ABC, he was almost as outspoken and being critical of things that happened in the Bush administration that he said he disagreed with as he was against Barack Obama.
And, again, as Gloria just said, clearly, that's going to suggest that that's going to be part of his memoirs as well, setting the record straight, not just how he differs from the current administration, but from his own.
BROWN: Yes, good point.
All right, guys, stand by. We are going to talk a lot more about this.
Just for those who are just checking in, though, I just want to be clear. The vice president has been hospitalized in a Washington, D.C., hospital. He's being evaluated. We're told by his office that he is resting comfortably. We are going to stay on top this and of course we will be updating you throughout the hour, as we have more information.
Mark Halperin, Gloria Borger staying with us, because, when we come back, we are going to talk about President Obama's new health care plan. The president finally unveiled his own blueprint for reform today. It comes with a $950 billion price tag. It is your money, so what are you going to get for it? When we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Our top story tonight: President Obama's $950 billion health insurance plan.
Here's what's in and what's out. What is in, insurance exchanges. They make it easier for small businesses and people who are self-employed and unemployed to buy cheaper coverage. The plan would also fine people who don't buy coverage. And it bans insurers from excluding people based on a preexisting condition.
Here's what's not in, no public option, no special deals. And that means no Stupak amendment, which added language to restrict abortion funding, no Cornhusker amendment, that sweetheart deal that allowed Nebraska to duck the cost of Medicaid expansion. There are no health care benefits either for illegal immigrants.
The plan's $950 billion cost would be paid over 10 years, much of it coming from, you guessed it, taxes, specifically taxes on insurers who offer high-cost medical plans, that tax likely to be passed on to consumers, and increased Medicare taxes for high-income households.
So, could this, this new plan being pushed out by the White House, finally break the logjam on Capitol Hill? That's the question tonight for CNN senior political analyst Gloria Borger and "TIME" magazine editor at large Mark Halperin.
Gloria, I know you talked to a lot of folks over at the White House today. What is the thinking behind the latest proposal?
BORGER: Well, the thinking is that they had to do something before the health care summit on Thursday, Campbell. They wanted to get something that was a document of the doable, as one person put it to me, that both Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid could agree to, and that is not insignificant here.
So they had to try and thread the needle. Still unclear where the house will be. But when they sit down with Republicans on Thursday, they have to say, this is what we believe. Come up with something of your own, and then we will try and cut a he deal.
But they couldn't go there without something to present.
BROWN: Mark, the initial reaction from Republicans has been pretty negative. Is there anything in it for them to love?
HALPERIN: Well, there are things in there that, if you put in a different plan, Republicans would say these are good building blocks.
But, overall, the reaction is not unexpected. This plan is somewhat closer to the Senate Democrats' bill than the House Democrats' bill, which is always the way the White House has been leaning. But it's not a plan that starts from scratch or has the kind of Republican principles overall that the White House would have expected Republicans to get on board.
So, they have showed their hand now. They're trying to, as Gloria said, thread the needle to get something that Democrats only in the House and Senate will vote for to get a win on health care, on something pretty good, and move on. They're not going, it appears, to try to restart this and build a centrist coalition.
BROWN: But with all the talk we have heard from this president about bipartisanship, why not throw them a bone?
HALPERIN: Well, he's thrown them a bone. But to go for a centrist coalition, to really build up and say to the more moderate Republicans and maybe even the leadership, let's start with only things that we can all agree on, that's...
BROWN: Just whittles it down to almost nothing.
(CROSSTALK)
HALPERIN: That's right. It whittles it down to nothing, and it's not clear that that could pass, because the minute the president did that in any significant way, he would lose defections on the Democratic side en masse in the House and in the Senate.
BORGER: Campbell...
BROWN: Yes, go ahead.
BORGER: ... if you read what the White House is doing, they say in their proposal in some places as suggested by Republicans, as suggested by Republicans, because they're trying to show, yes, we have accepted some of your proposals.
But in talking to some Republicans today, they're like, where is malpractice reform in all of this? This isn't -- so Republicans are saying, look, they're trying to set us up here. They're saying they're coming in with something that incorporates some of our ideas.
And that is not true, say the Republicans. And this is, of course, Campbell, why everybody thinks Congress is completely dysfunctional, because, you know, they -- they can't talk directly to each other.
And, unfortunately, we may see a bit of that on Thursday, when we see this health care summit.
BROWN: There's also talk, Mark, of maybe using this sort of tricky parliamentary procedure where they don't have to get a supermajority, where it could be passed with a simple majority. And I guess, first of all, how realistic is that? And, second of all, is there political fallout from doing it that way, without showing a little bit of unity at least, trying to bring in at least one moderate Republican over or something along those lines?
HALPERIN: Well, the answer to the second question I think wholly depends on how things play out between now and then. The White House today was more open and explicit about their willingness to use this maneuver to basically get a majority only in the Senate and not have to try to break a filibuster.
It's not 100 percent clear that they can even get those 50 votes, but they probably can.
BORGER: Right.
HALPERIN: And I think the White House strategy is clear now. It's to get to the point where they can say to the country, we reached out to Republicans, they didn't want to deal, and then to say to the Democrats, time's up. You're giving up on health care and we're all going into the November elections having failed, or we're all going to hold our breath, hold hands together, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
BROWN: And then jump off the cliff.
HALPERIN: Jump off the cliff together, with some political repercussions, but we will have succeeded.
And the only way to do that probably is to this reconciliation methodology in the Senate.
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: We're totally out of time, Gloria, but I have got to ask this anyway. Very quickly, Thursday, what is this circus going to look like on Thursday?
BROWN: I think it's going to be a bit of a Kabuki dance, Campbell, and this is of course what the public does not want.
But you have GOT the Democrats staked out a position. Hopefully, by then, the Democrats believe they can actually agree with each other. Then you are going to have Republicans going in and saying this is exactly what we don't want. They believe the public is on their side. A majority of the American public doesn't like this bill that the president is now proposing. And so, they figure, you know what? We're going to oppose him on this. We may go with him on a certain jobs bill to show that we're trying to cooperate with him, but, for 2010, this is all we need to do.
So, you know, I don't have real high hopes for this, but you can always keep your fingers crossed. You never know what is going to unfold when these folks get together.
BROWN: All right. Our own Gloria Borger and "TIME" magazine's Mark Halperin with us tonight, thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
When we come back, we are kicking off our special series "Broken Government" with a look at independent voters in this country and why the two big parties keep ganging up against them -- that when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Welcome back, everybody.
We want to start by bringing you up to date on tonight's breaking news. Vice President Dick Cheney is in the hospital tonight after experiencing chest pains. His doctors are evaluating the situation at this hour. We did get a statement from the vice president's office -- former vice president's office saying that he's resting comfortably, and we will be updating you throughout the evening as we get more information on his health and the circumstances.
But, first tonight, we are beginning a weeklong series of reports taking a hard look at our nation's broken government. We're examining the critical issues to show you why our elected leaders can't seem to fix anything. It is a frustrating phenomenon, and it's firing up an increasingly powerful group of voters, independents.
Both parties want them, but in many states, they're essentially locked out of the political process.
Casey Wian shows us the battle to give independents the right to vote when it matters.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This mother and son rarely see eye-to-eye politically. He's an unabashed liberal. She's more conservative. But now Jacob Carr and Nancy Corradini could find themselves in the same boat as registered independents, which could essentially rob them of the right to vote in some very important elections.
JACOB CARR, DISILLUSIONED VOTER: I was one of the people who voted for Ralph Nader.
WIAN: In 2008, Jason registered as a Democrat to vote for Barack Obama. Today, he's disillusioned and disappointed.
CARR: I guess, just throughout the year, my hope flame has been dwindling and dimming.
WIAN (on camera): Would you consider becoming an independent and declined to -- state voter again?
CARR: Yes, I'm definitely considering that, or even maybe registering as some -- like a third party.
WIAN (voice-over): Nancy beat her son to the punch. She became an independent two years ago, after determining her party just didn't speak for her anymore.
NANCY CORRADINI, INDEPENDENT VOTER: Sometimes, that's difficult, to be a moderate Republican in the public -- Republican Party. They call you Republican in name only.
WIAN (on camera): RINO?
CORRADINI: Yes. I heard that buzzword the other night, RINO. I thought it was so insulting. I emotionally became detached from the Republican Party.
WIAN: But Nancy never considered that going independent would actually take away her right to vote in some key elections: primaries. Here in California, political parties get to decide before each and every election whether to allow independents to vote.
(voice-over): Joseph Holland is the elections registrar for Santa Barbara County.
JOSEPH HOLLAND, SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, CLERK: Elections are not simple. Every election is different. Believe it or not, they do change from election to election.
WIAN: That can leave independents like Nancy pretty confused, but that's not all.
(on camera): On a local level or in even congressional races, primaries are often where the key political decisions are made. Say you're an independent living in a heavily Democratic district. If you can't vote in the Democratic primary, you are not going to have much influence over who wins the general election. It's probably going to be a Democratic candidate you had no role in choosing.
(voice-over): In the 2008 presidential primaries, independents in 17 states and the District of Columbia were shut out of crucial primaries. Those voters had no say at all in determining the major- party candidates.
JASON OLSON, INDEPENDENTVOICE.ORG: We're second-class citizens when it comes it political representation and participation.
WIAN: Jason Olson is an independent voter activist pushing to change the law in California. This June, there's a proposition on the state's primary ballot to eliminate party primaries entirely.
OLSON: All the candidates are on the same ballot. All the voters, regardless of party, vote for the best candidate. And then the top two vote-getters would then go on to a runoff-style election. So, there would be no more segregating voters by political party and excluding independents.
WIAN: That's how it's done in Washington State and Louisiana. In other states, party officials are trying to move things in the other direction.
In Arizona, for example, the Republican Party is trying to close its primary, so only registered Republicans can vote. Still, Olson sees momentum moving in his direction.
OLSON: We have a real shot to have independents kind of crack open the doors, if you will, and start forcing some real change.
WIAN: And newly independent Nancy Corradini agrees.
CORRADINI: I think it's going to snowball. It's not going to stop.
WIAN: Casey Wian, CNN, Santa Barbara, California.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: And one final note here: As Casey reported, in 2008, independents were not allowed to vote in 18 presidential primaries. But, that said, their tax dollars certainly were good enough to help pay for all those primaries. And that is exactly what's going to happen in this year's midterm elections, too.
For more on our broken government, including polls and iReports, go to CNN.com/brokengovernment.
Coming up: The country may be drowning in red ink, but Congress continues to spend your money on their pet projects. Ali Velshi reveals the top three offenders in the House when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: And we're back now with more on our series "Broken Government."
Despite a White House push to cut spending, lawmakers packed $15.9 billion in earmarks into this year's spending bills. Who are the worst offenders? We're going to start with the House tonight.
And chief business correspondent Ali Velshi is joining us right now from CNN's earmark desk.
So, Ali, who are the worst offenders, and where is their money going?
ALI VELSHI, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Well, let me tell you about that. This is the earmark desk, by the way, Campbell, which is living proof of how much fun you can without breaking the law. This is a bunch of CNN producers who are digging into the 9,500 earmarks in the full-year budget, the full fiscal year. It's not -- earmarks aren't actually in the budget. They're things that are added onto appropriations bills to get funding for things in people's districts.
Let me start by showing you the biggest offenders, as you just asked me. The three biggest offenders in the House -- I'll tell you about the Senate tomorrow -- in the House -- Representative Bill Young from the 10th District in Florida, a Republican, figuring out a way to get $90 million in 41 different earmarks.
Representative John Murtha, who has just passed away, the 12th District of Pennsylvania, was able to get $82 million in 34 different appropriations or earmarks. And Representative Jerry Lewis of the 41st District in California, a Republican, $82.6 million in 51 different appropriations.
In total -- well, let me just tell you what an earmark is. According to the Office of Management and Budget, it's funding for programs or grants that circumvent an otherwise applicable merit-based or competitive system.
I will just paraphrase the rest of it. It may be it refers to a specific location or a specific recipient. And it basically curtails the ability of the executive, the president's branch of government, to allocate funds appropriately. That is what an earmark is.
And I want to just show you that, in this last fiscal year, 2010, earmarks totaled $15.9 billion. Campbell, that may not seem like a ton of money, given how much money the government spends, trillions of dollars in the budget, but tell that to somebody who has lost a job or wondering where government spending goes.
Hard to understand how this actually happens -- Campbell.
All right, Ali Velshi for us tonight -- Ali, thanks for those numbers.
As we have been telling you, we're focusing on this issue, on broken government, all week. The scope of the problem is huge.
Just take a look at our new CNN/Opinion Research poll -- 86 percent of Americans tell us that America's government is broken. The good news, I think, 81 percent think it can be fixed. So how exactly?
We want to bring in David Osborne right now who's the lead author of four books on the subject including one called "Reinventing Government."
Welcome to you, David. Appreciate you being here.
DAVID OSBORNE, SR. PARTNER, PUBLIC STRATEGIES GROUP: Thank you.
BROWN: Do you agree with this idea that the government is broken, and if so, in a nut shell, what exactly is the problem? What is so wrong?
OSBORNE: Well, I think there's really two dynamics. The one we're all talking about these days is the political system. The gridlock in Washington, in the U.S. Senate where one party is threatening to filibuster everything and we just can't get action. But there's another dynamic going on, I think, that frustrates the American people. And that's you might call it a crisis of performance.
We've got all of these public organizations, public institutions that were really built for a different age, you know. We built them back in the industrial era on a bureaucratic model. We created large top-down hierarchical, centralized bureaucracies that are controlled with all kinds of rules and regulations. And that model actually worked, you know, in the industrial era. But when things changed as the information age was born, the pace of change accelerated. Information technologies gave us all kinds of possibilities to improve and the private sector grabbed them. And as a result government's customers, the citizens, developed much higher expectations.
We also face global competition, which means our institutions have to be much more nimble, and we're in a permanent fiscal crisis.
BROWN: But --
OSBORNE: So you add it all up, and bureaucracy is not very effective, not very functional today as a way of organizing.
BROWN: You hear people complain about it all the time. The bureaucracy is what's tripping us up.
OSBORNE: Yes.
BROWN: The bureaucracy is what's slowing us down. The bureaucracy is the reason we can't get from A to B. How do you blow it up, then? I mean, how do you, especially in Washington, where it is so entrenched, how do you get beyond it.
OSBORNE: Well, you transform these bureaucracies into information-age organizations. You know, this same thing happened in business.
General Motors is kind of the classic bureaucratic organization. It was once admired for that. It's now having great difficulties because of it. But if you look at Apple computer or Google or these other high-tech firms, they're not bureaucracies.
BROWN: But they didn't have to transform.
OSBORNE: It's not the only form --
BROWN: They started being sort of unique entrepreneurial businesses?
OSBORNE: Sure. Yes, yes.
BROWN: Right?
OSBORNE: Sure. Sure. But there's lots --
BROWN: So how do you get something that is like a big government agency to transform and go from being what you were talking about into something that works in today's world?
OSBORNE: Well, it's not easy, but here's what you do. And this is sort of -- this is the work that my colleagues and I do every day.
You get clear on what you're trying to achieve, what your goals are. You empower your employees to go out and change things. You measure how well they're doing. You measure whether you're reaching your goals, and you intervene when you're not. You give -- you reward people for good performance. You create negative consequences for bad performance. And you know, you organize in a way where results are at the center and everyone is accountable for results. And if results are not being produced, you step in and do something about it.
BROWN: You know --
OSBORNE: And there's plenty of public organizations that have done that and turned themselves around.
BROWN: Right. But you look at, like at an example of that, say, because we were talking about it earlier today, is charter schools that are thriving in many parts of the country, which, you know, sort of follow that -- those rules that you just laid out.
OSBORNE: Exactly. Exactly.
BROWN: And yet, they're incredibly controversial.
OSBORNE: Oh, sure. They're controversial, and one of the reasons this doesn't happen faster is because it is controversial. You need courage. But they're very popular with the citizens.
They're controversial because they compete with public school districts. And the people who run the adults in those systems who run those school districts don't like the competition. But you know, most Americans realize that as much as we'd all like our own little monopoly, competition is really the force that gives us no choice but to improve. No choice but to deliver services that our customers want and quality that they want.
BROWN: David, we're almost out of time, but is there one place, one area where you do see innovation and sort of an exciting move in that direction, especially with the government?
OSBORNE: You know, in our system innovation comes from the bottom up. So you see it most -- the most intensely at the local level where the rubber meets the road, where governments can't run deficits and they have to deliver services. Because of the fiscal crisis, they are forced to figure out new ways to do things, how to squeeze more value out of every dollar. Then it moves up to the state level and then finally things get to the federal level. And there have been examples of huge turnarounds in the federal government. It is possible. You know, when I worked for Vice President Gore on the national performance review in 1993, we were talking about whether the veterans hospitals were so bad that maybe they should just be put out of business and we should just send the veterans to other hospitals. Because of what the vice president and the president did and their whole eight-year effort to reinvent government, it helped the people who ran that system, the Veterans Health Administration, turn it around to the point where 10 years later they had the best electronic medical records system in the world.
BROWN: Right.
OSBORNE: And by any measure they had better performance in terms of health care outcomes, quality and customer satisfaction than the private sector in health care.
BROWN: Right.
OSBORNE: So, you know, there is hope. It's just we have to focus on it. Our leaders have to pay attention to it, and they have to have the courage to break a few eggs in the process.
BROWN: David Osborne who, again, has done a lot of writing on this stuff, we really appreciate having you on this week, David. Thank you so much.
OSBORNE: My pleasure.
BROWN: And when we come back, the very latest on the deadly NATO air strikes in Afghanistan. How did civilians, including one child, end up in the crosshairs? That when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Tonight, outrage in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Robert Gates today facing tough questions about a NATO air strike that killed more than two dozen civilians including at least one child. It is the third such coalition strike to kill civilians this month. Despite the latest casualties, Secretary Gates is standing firm behind his top command. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERT GATES, DEFENSE SECRETARY: General McChrystal is doing everything humanly possible to avoid civilian casualties, but it is also a fact that the Taliban mingle with civilians, they use them for cover, which obviously complicates any decision process by a commander on the ground in knowing whether he's dealing with the Taliban or innocent civilians or a combination of the two. I'm not defending it at all. I'm just saying that these kinds of things in many respects are inherent in a war. It's what makes war so ugly.
(END VIDEO CLIP) BROWN: CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour joining us right now with the very latest on this. And, Christiane, obviously U.S. forces take every precaution to try to avoid something like this, but you just heard Secretary Gates talk about the Taliban's strategy. So how do you avoid it?
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, it's not just Taliban strategy. The fact is the Taliban have been in this area, Marjah and around in the Helmand and southern area, for a long time. They're entrenched in them. The people only sort of --
BROWN: These are their communities.
AMANPOUR: Exactly. There's no alternative government right now. So whether they're using them as human shields or not, they are there, the civilians.
Now, obviously, it's U.S. strategy and it has been even before General McChrystal took command that they must keep the civilian casualties down to the minimum because it will cause so much anti- American feeling over there. And as you know, they broadcast this offensive for weeks before it took place. Many people said why? Well, the reason was to try to get those civilians out of the way.
Many of them did get out of the way. A lot of them didn't really know where to go. And as yet -- and this is the critical thing -- as yet do not quite know who to throw their support behind. The Taliban or the yet-to-come Afghan government, which the U.S. is trying to put in place after this offensive.
BROWN: Also today, Admiral Mike Mullen, who is chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in his words progress has been in the (INAUDIBLE) offensive, steady but messy and slower than they had anticipated. Explain why.
AMANPOUR: Well, war is messy, as everybody knows. All of us know that it never shapes up exactly how you think it is. Maybe some people thought that it's going to be quick, Marjah is small, the Taliban maybe on the back feet. But no, they've been entrenched. They were waiting. They apparently have some quite sophisticated sniper techniques that people weren't expecting. They have obviously the IEDs that the military was expecting. But look, it's slow, it takes time. Plus, and here's another thing, because the United States has not relied as heavily on overwhelming air power as it has done in the past, precisely to avoid civilian casualties --
BROWN: Civilian casualties.
AMANPOUR: -- it is slower, more methodical that perhaps many people thought it might be.
BROWN: But just this one victory in Marjah is not the long term plan. What is the long term game plan behind it?
AMANPOUR: Marjah is the microcosm of what they want to make in the south and all of Afghanistan. In other words, push back the Taliban, get them out of the entrenched positions that they have, give space for the civilians to come and this term, government in a box, where the State Department is meant to be following the military and putting government in place, bringing people who are approved by the Afghan government to come and provide an alternative government to the Taliban, which as you know, has had shadow government in most of the Afghan provinces up until now. So that's the aim. But that, too, is slow.
You know, I've been reading accounts of some of the State Department, people go in there and say, well, you know, why aren't the Afghans in the market? Where are the Afghans? Hang on, the war is still going on. It's slow. You have to move them back and only then slowly can you bring them in.
BROWN: So still a long way to go. Christiane Amanpour for us tonight. Christiane, as always, thanks.
AMANPOUR: Thanks.
BROWN: And still ahead tonight, cyber crime. It costs a trillion dollars a year. Tonight, Drew Griffin takes us inside a top secret security team protecting all of us from what some call a cyber Pearl Harbor.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Could a computer virus really bring America to its knees? A special CNN investigation just ahead, but first, more must-see news happening right now. Mike Galanos has tonight's "Download."
Hi, Mike.
MIKE GALANOS, HLN PRIME NEWS: Hi, Campbell. First off, an update to tonight's breaking news. Former Vice President Dick Cheney is in the hospital after experiencing chest pains. Well, now, a family source tells CNN that Cheney will be spending the night in the hospital pending additional observation and testing. One of Cheney's assistants says that the former vice president is resting comfortably. We'll follow on that.
The man accused of plotting to bomb the New York City subway system pleaded guilty to terrorism charges today. Najibullah Zazi says he was recruited by Al Qaeda, trained in Pakistan, and was willing to sacrifice his life for the people of Afghanistan. Zazi could be sentenced to life in prison.
And the search for survivors of a weekend mudslide in Portugal is growing grimmer by the hour. At least 42 people are dead. Some 32 others are missing. Rescue team say the missing may have been swept out to sea. Two oceanside communities bore the brunt of the mudslides after a storm dumped what's normally a month's worth of rainfall in about eight hours. Incredible video there.
Campbell, back to you.
BROWN: Mike Galanos for us. Mike, thanks.
"LARRY KING LIVE" starts in just a few minutes. Larry, what do you have tonight?
LARRY KING, HOST, "LARRY KING LIVE": We have got an exclusive, Campbell, with the Dalai Lama about his controversial meeting with the president and other issues of the day. And we're going to hear what he says or doesn't say about Tiger Woods. And then Ron Paul and James Carville are here to talk politics. And the Olympic gold medallist Shaun White is with us. He'll tell us what it's like to be king of the hill next on "LARRY KING LIVE" -- Campbell.
BROWN: All right, Larry. We'll see you in a few minutes.
When we come back, an exclusive look at the fight to stop computer hackers from bringing the nation to its knees. That, when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: News developments in the hacking of Google in China. The "Financial Times" reports the U.S. has identified the man whose programming code is thought to be behind the attack. The report says he is not a full-time government worker and did not launch the attack. Just last week the U.S. held its own cyber security drill. Experts agree the government as well as our biggest companies are vulnerable to what some call a cyber Pearl Harbor.
We wanted to see for ourselves what exactly that means. So tonight, Drew Griffin of CNN's special investigations unit gets unprecedented access to a place most of us never knew existed.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We do not advertise to the public what goes on inside this facility.
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): We can't tell you where we are. This building is a national security asset run exclusively for the government by a private contractor, the Harris Corporation.
DALE MEYERROSE, HARRIS CORPORATION: The folks on this side are actually doing things which causes the network to operate.
GRIFFIN: Former Air Force General Dale Meyerrose now is a vice president at Harris, but the job is almost exactly the same as when he wore a uniform and worked to prevent computer attacks against the military. Most government computer networks, he says, are constantly getting barraged with cyber attacks. He and his staff are paid to keep one vital network secure.
MEYERROSE: Attack is a certainty. The fact that there's attacks going on now and will go on tomorrow is a certainty. Deliberate attacks. Deliberate attacks. GRIFFIN: This network would be very tempting to any potential cyber terrorist. If it was disrupted, the lives of thousands of people could very suddenly be at risk. But when you look at most government and corporate networks, the real threat right now may not be from terrorists but from criminals.
MEYERROSE: We already lose a trillion dollars a year through cyber and cyber crime.
GRIFFIN: According to a private computer watchdog company called Net Witness, hackers in Europe and China broke into nearly 2,500 corporate and government computer networks over the past 18 months, exposing vast sums of money to theft. Who's behind something like this? Not likely to be Al Qaeda with its headquarters in remote caves. Cyber expert James Lewis says the threat is more likely to come from those who back terrorists or hostile governments trying to damage the U.S. from within.
JAMES LEWIS, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTL. STUDIES: This is a major problem for national security, but it has to do more with espionage, with crime and with the potential risk to critical infrastructure, but it's not terror.
GRIFFIN: Power grids shutting down, ATMs no longer functioning. Large metro rail systems squealing to a stop would have major psychological fallout. But what is happening now is more of a cyber crime spree.
LEWIS: This is a global phenomena where you've been seeing in Africa now. When African countries get their high-speed interconnection, the first thing that happens is they become a source sometimes unwittingly of cyber crime.
GRIFFIN: General Meyerrose says bashing China may actually be pointing us in the right direction, because cyber criminals move from server to server across the world.
MEYERROSE: First of all, many of the attacks don't necessarily emanate directly from China. I think those end up coming from elsewhere. But our intelligence folks and our government --
GRIFFIN (on camera): Are they masked to look like China because China is the boogie man?
MEYERROSE: Perhaps, perhaps.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): What you would need to defend against all this is something like you're seeing in this room. This is a state- of-the-art system largely because the government can afford to pay for it. Any hardware, software, anything introduced to the system is first torn down to its very roots, searched for viruses or implanted Trojan horses, tested again and again before any of those components can enter the system. But very few private companies can really afford to replicate this. Stepping up cyber defenses, say the experts we talked with, all depends on what you can afford and how much risk you're willing to bear. (END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: And Drew Griffin is joining us right now. Drew, I guess the question is with all the other threats out there, how do you convince people that the real threat may, in fact, be from computer hackers?
GRIFFIN: Yes, how to convince them that there's a real threat and that it's going to affect them. This is the problem with this kind of cyber terror which really right now, as we said in the piece, is cyber crime. Until that cyber Pearl Harbor happens, until the northeast power grid shuts down, or all the ATMs for several breaks don't work, it's not going to resonate through the companies that are hit or the public at large that this is really a threat. But, Campbell, they say this threat is out there waiting to happen, and that we should be defending against it now.
BROWN: Drew Griffin for us tonight. Drew, thanks.
"LARRY KING LIVE" starts in just a few minutes. But first, tonight's "Guilty Pleasure" when we come back.
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BROWN: Larry King starts in just a few minutes. But first, tonight's "Guilty Pleasure," how to build a better hot dog. Here's Jeanne Moos.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MOOS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You may think of it as a tasty treat, but to pediatricians it's a missile that chokes toddlers.
(on camera): Doctors say it is the perfect size to get down your throat and then get stuck.
(voice-over): Pediatricians say hot dogs are the biggest culprit among foods that toddlers choke on, but to suggest the redesign of an American icon?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely not. I love the hot dog just the way it is.
MOOS (on camera): Now the doctors are saying to the meat industry --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, come on.
MOOS: -- you got to, you know, redesign the hot dogs.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, tell these doctors to go back to school.
MOOS (voice-over): The hot dog got its distinctive form because tube-shaped sheep intestines were originally used as casing. That's rarely the case now, but the shape has become iconic.
JANET RILEY, NATL. HOT DOG & SAUSAGE COUN.: We call Dachshunds Weiner dogs because that's how hot dogs are identified by that sort of long shape.
MOOS: Put that in your bun.
(on camera): What could they do to redesign a hot dog?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Make it a square one.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would twist it.
MOOS: Twist it?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
MOOS: Twist it how?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, you use a longer one.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Puree.
MOOS: Puree it? How would you eat it?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Slop it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Make it look like a hamburger/
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A hamburger patty. But I've choked on hot dogs.
MOOS: Did you have to get the Heimlich maneuver?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, I choked it up.
MOOS (voice-over): The pediatricians want better labeling. Right now, about half of hot dogs come with a fairly small child safety warning for parents to cut up the dogs into easy-to-swallow pieces. Trying to figure out how to redesign the hot dog left folks perplexed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In order to put the meat inside the freaking thing, you're going to have to squeeze it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know what parents have to learn how to do? They have to learn how to watch their kids. It's ridiculous. I've been eating hot dogs my whole life.
MOOS: He's probably been eating pizza too, but they just redesigned it for the first time in New York selling pizza in a cone. You just stuff in the ingredients. You're more likely to strangle yourself with the cheese than choke on a pizza cone.
If they can redesign pizza, why not the hot dog? But the hot dog council isn't biting. MOOS (on camera): So basically don't hold your breath?
RILEY: I think that's a safe statement.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I wish I were an Oscar Meyer winner (ph).
MOOS (voice-over): Everyone would be redesigning me.
Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: OK. That was kind of gross. That's it for us. You can follow me anytime on Twitter. Thanks for joining us tonight.
"LARRY KING LIVE" starts right now.
