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In the Arena
The Great Taliban Escape; A Look Inside Guantanamo; China Syndrome
Aired April 25, 2011 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ELIOT SPITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening. I'm Eliot Spitzer. Welcome to the program.
Here are the questions I'm drilling down on tonight. The great escape in Afghanistan. The jail break that might make a hit movie but it makes for disastrous foreign policy. What are we doing in a country where hundreds of dangerous Taliban waltz out of jail right under the noses of our supposed partners?
Then in Guantanamo, dangerous terrorists and random bad guys we don't have the evidence to convict. But many are too dangerous to turn loose. What in the heck do we do with them?
Is the age of America over? A new report that China will become the world's biggest economy by -- get ready for this -- 2016. Just five years from now. What does that mean for the good old USA?
But we start in Afghanistan with a prison break that looks for all the world like an inside job. How did 500 prisoners leave their cells, climb down into a tunnel, and escape without a single prison official noticing?
Come on. This isn't Hollywood. This prison break -- I'll call it a Taliban surge -- could not come at a worst time. Spring and summer are fighting season and with a major cadre of newly freed fighters and commanders, the Taliban is poised to push back against our troops.
Nick Patton Walsh has been reporting the story. He joins us now live from Kabul.
Nick, take us through how this crazy jail break took place.
NICK PATTON WALSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, really, today we've been learning of frankly what seems to have been an operation of some sophistication by the Taliban.
The government now admits that in the dead of night -- up to 470 Taliban insurgents went through a tunnel that have been started in a house just outside the prison compound. They crawled their way out and many of them actually found mini buses waiting for them to whisk them away.
And we're also hearing the Taliban who quite proudly announced this operation first thing in the morning, claiming it took them five months to dig this particular tunnel. And about one man who's introduced us to the Taliban and claims to be an escaped prisoner said that it took him 30 minutes to crawl through this tunnel.
So you have to bear in mind the scale of this operation. Over 400 men crawling through a tunnel on their hands and knees.
Now the police have begun a search operation in the city. Dozens of people arrested and two killed we hear from the police, but actually I think the fear really is that these militants would have melted back into the population in this highly volatile and unrested part of Afghanistan -- Eliot.
SPITZER: You know, Nick, one of the things -- the first questions I think that leaps to mind for everybody is, isn't it inevitable that this was an inside job? You think about 400 prisoners in what was called the political wing of the prison, in the middle of the night they all leave, they all go down one tunnel and not a single person inside the prison knows about this.
They have the keys to the cells. Put aside the impossibility of digging this tunnel. You know it just -- it boggles the mind. Is there any doubt this was an inside job?
WALSH: I can ask the question everybody asking all day. We haven't heard reports of fighting with the prison guards as far as I am aware. It does seem as though there could be have been some sort of collusion. Absolutely.
And this raised really a much important question, and that's trust between NATO's campaign here and the Afghan institutions they're building in a bit to hand over power and security so they can withdraw.
Really this issue is all about key insurgents in a vita part of town being handed over to the Afghans for security and safe keeping. And it seems like in this moment the trust really was misplaced perhaps -- Eliot.
SPITZER: You know, it goes to the heart of two critical elements of the argument for our being in Afghanistan. One, that we can trust Karzai and his government which of course most people reject out of hand, viewing him as totally corrupt.
And the second is argument being made by our military that somehow in Kandahar which is where this prison is in particular -- somehow we are winning the hearts and minds of the public and yet here in broad daylight as it were, these prisoners just waltzed out there and nobody seems to help the Karzai regime or help us stopping this.
So doesn't this challenge the very predicate of our foreign policy?
WALSH: Well, I think that's a serious point there. I mean obviously Kandahar has always been the Taliban's heartland. And that's why when President Obama announced the surge, tens of thousands of troops were sent in there to take part in this territory off the Taliban to try to stall the pro-NAT/Afghan government there and try and basically put the Taliban on the back foot. Now, there have been -- NATO had been lauding their successes in advance of the fighting season coming up here, the summer months, where violence normally peaks. But I think this particular instance may cause them -- thinking again, frankly. I mean a lot of NATO units you meet down in Kandahar often face enemy units, they say, about 20 to 30 men in some of the areas they operate. Not huge groups so the idea of flooding this area with perhaps as many as 400 Taliban I think actually may have some NATO officials deeply concerned tonight.
SPITZER: You know, one of the things that's become a reality unfortunately is every time we hear we have sort of retaken a part of Afghanistan, emotionally, politically, economically, something like this happens.
And I just want to drill down for a moment. They dug a tunnel that depending upon the accounts is either a quarter of a mile long or longer. Where did all of the dirt go? I mean you just think about the mechanics of this operation and nobody in town right there, a town we supposedly have wired in terms of people being supportive of us, nobody said gee, all this dirt is coming out of here every night, where are they putting it, what's this from? What's it about?
I mean this isn't -- you know, this isn't "Hogan's Heroes." You know, when I was a kid a TV show which made a mockery of a prison scene. This is real life. How could this happen?
WALSH: What we're hearing from one local who actually suggest the Taliban bought a plot of land and built a wall around it specifically so they could begin digging this tunnel. Actually the prison is on the outskirts of town off to the west and around it there are some sort of patches of barren land.
Now you might think that would make it easier to observe and easy to prevent this sort of thing from happening. But I can't imagine how perhaps the soil was brought out into this house and distributed elsewhere. There are reports even that it was sold in the market, unconfirmed by us but actually that locals were aware of it being distributed and actually sold maybe as some sort of souvenir perhaps amongst the local population.
But bear in mind, this is a deeply pro-Taliban heartland where NATO was always going to have its work cut out -- Eliot.
SPITZER: All right. Thank you, Nick, so much for that report.
Joining us now from (INAUDIBLE), Vermont, to talk about just how troubled our mission in Afghanistan is, diplomat Peter Galbraith. He worked for the U.N. in Kabul. And he's no fan of our Afghan policy.
Welcome, Peter.
PETER GALBRAITH, FORMER AFGHAN DIPLOMAT: Eliot, good to be with you.
SPITZER: So here's my question. Is this horrific sort of unfortunate fact pattern just a metaphor for everything that is wrong with our Afghan policy? GALBRAITH: Well, it's a metaphor for what's wrong with our Afghan policy and it's a big problem in its own right. We now -- we have spent -- billions of dollars in Kandahar province trying to round up the Taliban to arrest people. These 450 people who escaped are some of the product of that billions of dollars of effort.
Now as the fighting season has begun, they are free. But what it really underscores is that the counterinsurgency strategy of which we have embarked is not working and cannot work.
The counterinsurgency strategy depends on having an Afghan partner. It depends on the government winning the trust of the population. And when they win the trust of the population, people are then going to be prepared to turn against Taliban and to inform. And this escape took place with not one person in Kandahar informing on the very unusual developments such as you're discussing earlier how they dispersed the soil.
SPITZER: You know, Peter, it strikes me almost as an impossibility that this wasn't an inside job. But put that aside for a moment. I want to ask a more fundamental question.
Who was the enemy? And I asked that not in some sort of naive way, obviously, but is it al Qaeda? Is it the Taliban? It seems to me that the entire effort in Afghanistan was predicated on beating back al Qaeda. We've been told there maybe only 50 or 100 total in the country. Much more in Pakistan. And of course we know that is a froth relationship.
But are we fighting against the Taliban or negotiating with them? You hear inconsistent things. From your perspective, you've studied this, who is the enemy and what should the objective here be?
GALBRAITH: Well, the enemy which is the reason we invaded Afghanistan nearly 10 years ago of course was al Qaeda because it was from Afghanistan's territory that the September 11th attacks were launched.
The Taliban had been sheltering the al Qaeda but most people do not believe they had any involvement in it. But I want to come back to inside job question because actually I think it's much more important.
We have an idea in the United States that there are two sides to the conflict. There's the Taliban on one side and then it's the -- NATO and we have the Karzai government as our corrupt and ineffective ally but he's our ally.
When in reality the government saw and the Taliban cooperate as well as on occasion fight each other. In the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan virtually everybody has a -- somebody in the family in both camps. They are in touch with each other. They're doing business.
So while I don't have any evidence of an inside job here, it's certainly very consistent with a pattern in which the people we're supporting are actually in many occasions working with the people we're fighting. SPITZER: You know, Peter, it sounds to me like you're saying something so fundamental that people have just got to hear it once again. We are in a way being played by the Karzai government that has maintained a foot in each camp. On Monday they may deal with us, on Tuesday they deal with the Taliban.
They are almost indifferent to who wins and what you're saying is that we are there without a true honest ally in our corner.
GALBRAITH: Well, we absolutely don't have an ally. We do not have a government that's capable of winning the trust of the population. There's no Afghan police that's capable of providing law and order. The Afghan military is a questionable institution.
But more importantly the -- if not the government, the individuals, they have their feet in both camps. They're collaborating with each other and they're making billions of dollars off of us.
When we hire a security company, that security company is then paying off the Taliban not to attack or if they think their contract is in danger, they're paying off the Taliban to attack and demonstrate their value. The drug trade, it involves people who are associated with the government and people in the Taliban. And it just goes on.
The problem is that it's a fundamentally corrupt system. Our involvement, our assistance, our expenditures have fueled the corruption and there's no way for us to get back on track. We cannot reform Karzai and his cohorts to make them into some kind of honest government that's capable of winning support of the Afghan people.
SPITZER: Peter, Peter, I wonder if perhaps the tragedy of this jail break will somehow crystallize the moment when we step back and reexamine what is going on in Afghanistan as a broken policy and a broken country without rationale for our risking not only the lives of good American soldiers but more money than people understand.
It is simply a waste. It's time to re-evaluate. Anyway, Peter, we've got to move on. But thanks so much for being with us.
GALBRAITH: Well, very good talking to you.
SPITZER: Thank you, Peter.
E.D. Hill now joins us.
E.D., you've been working on the end of the age of America. Does not sound like a happy story. Tell us about that.
E.D. HILL, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: It does sound a bit dire, doesn't it?
SPITZER: Indeed.
HILL: As Americans, we're not used to chanting we're number two. Get ready for it. The new outlook from the International Monetary Fund is pretty scary. And guess what, China is coming to get us, economically speaking of course. And it is happening a whole lot sooner than almost anyone guessed. We'll tell you when and how it will change the world as we all know it -- Eliot.
SPITZER: My goodness, I'm not sure I want to hear this. We've heard -- had enough bad news for one day.
HILL: Yes, we do.
SPITZER: Can you give us something happy perhaps?
HILL: We'll look for that.
SPITZER: We'll look for that. All right. Look forward to hearing about that, E.D.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: New revelations about a prison for terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and how impossible our job is there. WikiLeaks has released more than 700 classified documents about the al Qaeda operatives held in Gitmo.
Joining me now to talk about revelations, CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen and senior legal analyst Jeff Toobin.
Welcome to both of you.
Jeff, let me start with you because you're here and you've been there. You've been to Gitmo twice in your capacity as a journalist, I believe. Not as an inmate.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: That's correct.
SPITZER: Just want to put that out there. What do these documents tell us about our capacity to prosecute successfully the 172 people we hold there?
TOOBIN: It's really hard. It's really hard to learn anything accurate about these people. I mean the judgment that the Bush administration tried to make in these -- in these seven years covered by these documents was who's dangerous and who's not.
An d we've seen that sometimes they were right and sometimes they were wrong. There was one terrible example of someone who was released who went on to be a suicide bomber. There were several examples of people who appear to have done nothing who were held for many years.
So the ability pro project future dangerousness particularly on an ad hoc basic as was done in Guantanamo is just very difficult. And we weren't always right.
SPITZER: Yes. Well, Peter, look, you were the expert in al Qaeda. You're the expert in Gitmo. It seems to me we have to place to send these guys, we don't have enough evidence to convict any of them. Nobody in the world wants them. Does this just become a permanent and of course we can't release them because some of them are dangerous and so no president will do that? So does Gitmo just become a permanent repository for these 172 people?
PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, that is what the Obama administration seems to have concluded. Not 172 but certainly a large proportion because a group proportion are of course Yemenese and because the Yemeni prison system is about as good as the prison system in Kandahar that you just covered, they're unlikely to be sent there because there's no way they can be held.
Then there are about 50 people in Guantanamo where there's real concerns about their dangerousness but really no evidence to put them on trial. And so the Obama administration effectively has come up with the policy of indefinite detention. They didn't call it that because of course that's a sort of thing we associate with regimes like the -- you know, the Egyptian regime before the fall of Mubarak.
But that's a fact. And it's an uncomfortable fact. And it -- you know, Obama came into office immediately within two days promising that Guantanamo would be closed and it turned out to be a very hard mission. And basically it's very much where it was under George W. Bush in terms of military commissions, in terms of people being held for many, many years without really recourse to what we consider a normal trial.
SPITZER: You know, Peter, I think -- for both of you what is so patently clear when you read these WikiLeaks documents is that the ability to break through and actually find out who these detainees are, were they in fact members of al Qaeda, it's simply not there.
We don't have the capacity no matter how many interrogations there have been. I mean some of them, they were relying upon the fact that some had a Casio watch, a very common Casio watch, that was given out at a certain al Qaeda training facility to say aha, here's the link. As though somehow, you know, there are probably 100 million people in the world who have that Casio watch, and that's the sort of evidence we're relying upon.
So Jeff, when you see this, as a lawyer and somebody who's been a federal prosecutor, you look at this and what -- how does that make you feel about our capacity to go forward?
TOOBIN: Well, it's just -- I think it shows that the original sin was setting it up in the first place because we have had wars before. We have had situations where we had dangerous people who were picked up. And we had procedures. We had military tribunals, we had criminal trials.
What we did was we set up a separate system here where people were dealt with differently. And because so long has passed, that system has now taken over for those people and you know the problem is so bad, I mean Peter mentioned that the one that's really sort of the most heartbreaking of all is that there are people there among the 170 who we know are cleared for release but because Yemen is such a disaster area and so unsafe, we are not going to send anybody there. So it's basically a system of paralysis now and we should try as many as we can in military tribunals. We should try as many as we can in criminal cases and at least reduce the number from 172 but obviously it's going to be present well after Obama's president.
SPITZER: You know, Peter, to come back to you. You are one of the leading experts about al Qaeda. When you read these WikiLeaks documents and add it to knowledge you brought with you, what is your sense of the current state of strength of al Qaeda?
I mean it's amorphous thing and we're always trying to listen to intelligence warnings and piece it together. You're closer to an insider than anybody else. What do you make of how strong they are right now?
BERGEN: I think, you know, as a -- you know, if al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula burned up Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, I think the Obama presidency probably would have not recovered from that blow. And of course you would have had 300 dead Americans, you would have had a crippling blow to global aviation tourism and business in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression.
It wouldn't have been a somewhat big deal. But of course it would not have been a 9/11 style event. So that represents the outer limits of their capabilities which is not insignificant but it's certainly not (INAUDIBLE) in its -- in the size of the threat as it was betrayed after 9/11 George W. Bush comparing this to fight against the communist or the fascist which I think was of course very much overblown.
You know al Qaeda -- you know, but that said, you know it's always been a small group of people. They aren't going to change their mind about the United States. They regard it as the main enemy. We -- you know, they continue to plot, they continue to inspire people.
It's -- you know, we may look back on this as a period of sort of unprecedented peace in a sense in terms of the kinds of threat United States has faced, our own civil war, the fight against the Nazis, and the Cold War. And I think this is relatively insignificant. But it is something.
SPITZER: You know, but I -- Jeff, I'm sorry.
TOOBIN: I was going to say, when I first went to Guantanamo which was 2005, I remember interviewing the general who was then in charge. And I said well, what does it mean to be interviewing people for actionable intelligence. That is intelligence you can use for years day after day.
How can you learn anything new that's useful and I think these documents suggest they haven't learned much that's useful.
SPITZER: Well, look, that certainly is correct. I mean Jeff, your point is overwhelming. This is many years after some of these individuals have been captured. How is it possible that anything they could tell us today would be terribly useful going forward.
On the other hand, Peter has made the point -- I've seen you and listen to you over the course of the day.
Peter, you've made a very powerful point. What we have not seen are the top secret documents, the most secretive documents that have been released. So it's conceivable that there are other morsels and gems that have been forthcoming from these individuals.
Is that a fair statement of what you have said?
BERGEN: Yes, I mean it is conceivable. But I mean I think, you know, the CIA -- we've had a lot of inspector generals reports from the CIA which we've looked at kind of what information we did get from the high level detainees like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational commander of 9/11. And so we do have a pretty good sense of what's out there.
The Obama administration released the --you know, stuff that was fairly highly classified and so, you know, I think both the WikiLeaks today -- this release today, you know, it will be of interest to historians as really little crumblets (ph) as Jeff has pointed out. The part of the original sin was the way this place was set up in the first place.
And I've had any number of FBI senior officials who said to me years ago that the information that came out at Guantanamo was just not very useful for them in terms of their actual investigations.
You know so many people were swept up who -- you know, some were bad and some were good and we just didn't -- we didn't really apply a very right kind of rigorous frame work to think about who we were sweeping up at the beginning and we sort of left with this problem which is going to linger on now for years.
SPITZER: You know, Peter and Jeff, this is the very difficult and unfortunate intersection between fighting a war and then applying legal principles to it. It's one thing to pick people up on a battlefield and say you're dangerous, you're an enemy combatant, and then afterwards to try to make a criminal case against them based upon the very strict rules you've got. It simply doesn't work.
All right. Peter Bergen, Jeff Toobin, thanks so much for joining us.
BERGEN: Thank you.
SPITZER: Coming up, look who's not number one? The U.S. economy will soon be surpassed, in fact sooner than you might think. Is there anything we can do to change the tide? Details when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HILL: Follow the money. That is all had the International Monetary Fund did and when it reran figures using a corrected forecasting model it became pretty clear that America's reign as the world economic leader is almost over. Now the man who accurately figured that out four years ago is our next guest, Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, and author of the book, "How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes."
Probably one we should look at right now and read and learn from.
So, you know, regardless of how you measure the size of the economy, the good news I guess is that they're going to pass this quickly. The bad news is that it may be, as the IMF is now saying, before the next president takes office.
PETER SCHIFF, CEO, EURO PACIFIC CAPITAL: Yes, I think what IMF did correctly, though, what a lot of other forecasters missed, is when they looked at trajectory between Chinese economy and ours they assume a static exchange rate. And I think what the IMF is doing is making a more logical assumption that the Chinese currency, the RMB, is going to rise.
And I think it's going to rise significantly over the next five years. And if you couple that with their growth and their economy, they will surpass the United States I think before the end of the decade. I think the IMF is saying 2016.
HILL: Right.
SCHIFF: But I think certainly before the decade is over China will be the world's largest economy. We'll be lucky if we're still number two.
HILL: Let's not go there yet. You know one of the things that I look at -- and take a look at the graph right there. Only it (INAUDIBLE) as a chart. This chart I don't think anybody in America could like because that shows you how quickly the Japanese are catching up to us and how fast they will surpass us. But you know --
SCHIFF: The Chinese.
HILL: I mean the Chinese. The thing that I guess I took hope from was that the Chinese own so much of our debt that I figured they've got an investment in keeping us strong.
SCHIFF: Well --
HILL: However, you then have the governor of China's central bank come out and announce that he wants to -- that he thinks we've got too much American debt maybe to diversify.
SCHIFF: Well, they're going to take a big hit there. I mean for years the Chinese have made the mistake. They're throwing good money after bad which is what they do every time they buy more U.S. treasuries.
HILL: Then why? Why does their good money go bad when they buy into us?
SCHIFF: Well, because we can't pay them back. You know all we can do is print money. But when we print money, it loses value. And in fact the Chinese are sitting on a pile -- a trillion-dollar plus pile of U.S. treasuries that they can't sell because if they try to sell them, they'd crash the dollar.
But eventually they're going to understand that that is better. You know the cost of propping up the U.S. economy is much greater than letting it fail. Right now there is a belief out there that China needs America because we buy their products. Well, they don't need America because we don't buy their products. They give us their products. They loan us the money to buy them.
But if they didn't do that, if they simply let their own currency rise, then their -- the Chinese currency would gain value and their own people would buy their products.
HILL: And we wouldn't be able to afford them.
SCHIFF: Well, we'd be left with nothing. We have nothing to buy and we have nothing to borrow. And ultimately America is going to suffer a big increase in prices and a big increase in interest rates because the Chinese will withdraw their subsidies.
HILL: And what about the other things that this then impacts? Such oil and gas? And John King was just looking at the price of gas that we're paying right now. It makes you choke on your dinner, almost $5 a gallon.
SCHIFF: Well, thank Congress, thank Obama, and thank Ben Bernanke for that. The reason that gas prices are rising is the same reason that food prices are rising. The same reason all oil price is rising, we're creating too much money. The government is running a big deficit. And the Federal Reserve is monetizing it.
But what's going to happen when the Chinese allow the dollar to sink and other countries as well, then, all of a sudden, you're going to see huge increases in demand for gasoline in countries like China. So, for Americans, prices are going go through the ceiling.
I wouldn't be surprised to not only see $5 a gallon but $10 or $20 a gallon for gas, and that's going to price many Americans out of the market. We're going to be riding bicycles and Chinese are going to be trading in for bicycles for automobiles because now, they're going to be able to afford the gasoline that Americans are going to be too broke to afford.
HILL: Yes. The Chinese are riding the bicycles and as soon as they can afford the cars and make the switch.
SCHIFF: They'll make that switch. And, you know, the IMF makes one mistake. See, they say that the reason that China is doing so well is because they've got this centrally-planned economy and the Chinese bureaucrats are doing it right, whereas we got a free market economy. They've got it backwards.
We don't have a free market. It's because we have a centrally planned economy where government policy and fed policy is so distorting market forces. That's where our economy is stagnating. And Chinese are doing well because they have free market capitals than we do.
HILL: Now, wait a second -- that goes against what everything that most people think. So, you are telling me, if you are to start a company in America right now, it would be easier if you instead did that in China?
SCHIFF: Oh, absolutely. It's not like America -- we're giving capitalism a bad name and China is giving communism a good name because there's more capitalism in communist China than there is in America. And absolutely, if you start a business today in China, you have far fewer obstacles in your path than you do in America.
Now, China is not perfect. But if you want to compare China to America from 100 years ago, China is a lot closer than we are. We have changed. We are now a huge centrally planned welfare state where central bankers and central planners have distorted this economy.
And we don't save. We don't produce anymore. We're consuming and borrowing. But the Chinese are doing the opposite.
HILL: Now, I know that it's sort of popular pastime in the world to dislike America. But isn't it true that when people start thinking about China being the world's leading economy and having all that power, the money, the people, the military, all that, we start looking a little bit better and we're sort of that counterweight to China?
SCHIFF: Well, I don't know how much of a counterweight we are. I know that when -- China is going to enjoy more influence throughout the world because of their wealth.
HILL: What do you mean by that? By enjoying influence -- does that mean that they're going to be able to tell people what they can and can't do?
SCHIFF: They're going to have money. They're going to be able to invest. They're going to be able to make loans. See? America, we're the biggest world's debtor. I mean, the only money that we can give is money that we borrow.
And when we can't borrow anymore from China or Japan or Saudi Arabia, our influence is going to be dramatically diminished. But more important than that is going to be our standard of living, because for years, we've been living beyond our means -- countries like China made that possible by living beneath their means. All of this is going to change.
HILL: Now, enjoy it while you can. I'm sure we'll be talking to you more about this.
Peter Schiff, thank you very much. The book is called, "How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes."
SCHIFF: We're in the second part.
(LAUGHTER)
HILL: Unfortunately.
Coming up: a quarter of Americans still believe that President Obama was born in another country. We sent our own reporter to Hawaii to get the facts. His interesting findings, up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ELIOT SPITZER, HOST: It's the issue that won't go away. The birther issue, doubts about whether President Obama was truly born in America and questions about whether a real birth certificate exists to prove it. It sounds ridiculous but polls show 25 percent of Americans think President Obama was born outside the United States. So, it's worth asking again: what's the real story?
CNN sent Gary Tuchman to Hawaii to dig for the truth. Tough assignment. And he's back now with answers.
Gary, welcome.
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Eliot, thank you very much.
SPITZER: So, look, I'm one of those people who believe 1,000 percent he was born here. Let's move on to the real issues about governing and making sure that we go forward the right way. But why doesn't he just get his hands on his own birth certificate, show it to the world and finish the story once and for all?
TUCHMAN: Well, the reason he doesn't, according to the White House, in part just because, if this was the original birth certificate and held it up to my camera, there would be a segment of our viewership and other people who would say that's not the real, original birth certificate. The Obama administration believes that many doubters will still doubt.
That being said -- and this is a very important point -- the birth certificate that Barack Obama has shown is the only birth certificate that is now given out to Hawaiians when they go to get his birth certificates. So, if Barack Obama is not an American based on the short version of this birth certificate, then there are millions of Hawaiians also are not citizens of the United States.
SPITZER: Gary, are you saying there is another document that's hidden in a vault somewhere that he can't get his hands on but it does exist?
TUCHMAN: He can get his hands on if he wants to. And, yes, there is an original vault birth certificate that every Hawaiian has. You can physically get a copy as a Hawaiian citizen. It's very cumbersome. You have to file a Freedom of Information request. It takes weeks.
Instead, though, what you typically do is you go to the health department office. You spend 7 bucks and within five minutes, you get a birth certificate that is actually more legal than the original one. I mean that seriously. According to Hawaii health department, the short version which Barack Obama has made public is certified, legal for all uses. The original version, which is in the vault, is no longer certified for legal uses. So, therefore there's no reason for Hawaiian to get the original vault form. The vault form had a little more information. It has the name of the hospital. It has your parents' ages. It says if you were born in a plantation or a farm, some old fashioned information. But it's not needed information anymore.
The short version which cost 7 bucks is the official version in the state of Hawaii. It's the version that Barack Obama has shown to the world.
SPITZER: Look, Gary, I'm one of those people -- as I said, there's absolutely no doubt in my mind about where this is and what the facts are here. But two questions: have you spoken to people who have seen the original birth certificate, the one that's in the vault? And two, you know, maybe it's cumbersome, 7 bucks isn't that much, he's going to spend $1 billion on his re-election campaign. I'm sure there are people who will front him the 7 bucks.
Why doesn't he just go through that and end this dispute? I'm still not comfortable with that. I wish they would do that.
TUCHMAN: Well, first, to answer your first question, we have interviewed on camera, it's our first on camera interview of a very devoted Republican who was the Republican director of the department of health under the administration of Governor Linda Lingle, who's a Republican, last year. You are not allowed to look at anybody's original birth certificate unless you are that person unless you have a direct interest in doing it.
And she felt, as the person who was in charge of all birth certificates, that's director of the department of health, she's been told she had to make a news conference about the controversy. She felt obliged to see the original birth certificate. And what she told us on camera is very interesting. It's unequivocal what she told us.
But also, regarding 7 bucks, it's 7 bucks for the short version. That's the one Barack Obama has shown. The other version, it doesn't necessarily cost anything but it takes weeks to get. You have to file a FOIA request.
And I have to be honest with you -- the Hawaii health department isn't interested in giving it to people. It's not legal anymore. They encourage everyone who needs the birth certificate to go to the health department office, get the short version. It's a standardized version, it's legal for everything and it's more legal than that original birth certificate.
And there's fear in the White House, like I said in part, there's other reasons, but in part it won't satisfy doubters and it sets a bad precedent.
SPITZER: Well, look, I like everybody else who's going to watch that last piece of evidence at 10:00 tonight here on "A.C. 360." I think you're going to have that interview with the one person who has seen this document. I still wish he'd do the FOIA. Let me ask you this: those who don't believe him because I think the evidence is overwhelming that he was born in Hawaii. What do they rest their case on? What is the evidence that they put forward to say, aha, he was born some place else?
TUCHMAN: Well, I will tell you, Eliot, that what we are finding is that the evidence that many people have given to us, as part of our investigation, is not evidence. It's speculation. It's material that would never hold up in a court of law.
Now, this is not a court case. We went to do this investigation in Hawaii, we tried to do a meticulous investigation that could stand up in a civil court case. Once again, we're not attorneys. But that was the best way to do this investigation.
So, I can tell you that much of the evidence that people tell us that he wasn't born in the United States is not evidence at all. It's idle speculation.
SPITZER: All right. Gary Tuchman, thanks so much for that report. I can't wait to see the outcome.
Coming up: bloody battles continue on the streets of Syria. We have a firsthand account. Do go away.
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SPITZER: In Syria tonight, a trail of dead bodies litter the streets. This according to an eyewitness as the government sends thousands of soldiers into the southern city of Daraa. Between 4,000 to 5,000 troops equipped with at least seven tanks rolled into the city early this morning, firing into people's homes even as they slept. The assault captured on camera. Take a look.
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SPITZER: It's just the latest in a string of brutal government crackdowns.
Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian author, activist and a leading voice in the Arab world. He joins us now with the latest.
What -- from what you have heard -- is the scope of the protests and are they still growing despite this brutal government crackdown?
AMMAR ABDULHAMID, HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST: Indeed, this protest movement has swept the entire country from the north to the south from east to west. Coastal areas have come out strong. Daraa is the first city that's now is being invaded by the Syrian army and have been the first to go the way by protest movement and to ask for the regime to be toppled.
But, you know, soon after that the spark has spread all through Syria and the main demands now of the protesters is to, in fact, topple the regime. They have been peaceful, though. There were no -- you know, despite government propaganda that there were violence on part of the protesters, the reality is the violence all that we can confirm and we can see on all these YouTube videos that we've managed to smuggle out of the country and we continue to smuggle out of the country on a daily basis show that the violence is restricted to the authorities and the army and the security forces, and that the protests have been peaceful. But the protests are all over the country.
SPITZER: Well, let me ask you this -- is there any organization to the protests at this point they're breaking out in cities across Syria, top to bottom, and the objective is clearly stated. But is there an organizing structure you've been exiled from the country because of your participation in protests and your journalism? But is there an organizing group that can orchestrate this and stand up against the existing leadership?
ABDULHAMID: This has become a self-organizing movement, really. Like in the beginning, it was a little bit haphazard. And there were different networks taking part and sort of advising on how to protest can be carried through. There were a lot of networks on the ground, of young people in their late teens and early twenties who decided to come -- and inspired by the examples in Tunisia and Egypt to come, in fact, and do something along the same lines.
And they reached out to us through social networks, through Facebook and Twitter, and they've asked for our advice and we have provided certain expertise and certain support. But the reality is, this a self-organizing movement on the ground, grassroots movement, organic and indigenous to all of these different communities.
And this has made it a bit difficult to sometimes report on it or to predict how it's going to expand. But in last two to three weeks, this has really become a very much an organized movement. The protesters have gotten in touch with each other across the country. They are on message. They have basically spoken about national unity and the same chance that you hear reiterated in Daraa. On one hand, you can hear the same chants reiterated also and across those cities of Jableh and Baniyas and the central city Homs, and Damascus and (INAUDIBLE) and so on.
SPITZER: Ammar, let me ask you this. In Egypt, where you also had this indigenous, organic uprising, the military stayed neutral and ultimately, at the end of the day, came on the side of the protesters. In Libya, you have a significant armed force who is able to stand up or continues to stand up to Gadhafi, the outcome uncertain.
So, in Syria, do you -- you don't have the military with you. Do you have enough of a military presence to push back now that Assad is clearly showing he will fire and he is being as brutal as any governments in the Middle East?
ABDUL HAMID: From the very beginning the issue of the military had big question mark on it simply because of the sectarian dimension to the rule in Syria. The Assad family are -- you know, come from a minority, Alawite sect, which represent 8 percent to 12 percent of the population, and they have populated the key parts of the military and the security apparatus with members with the Alawite community.
And they have always played this idea, you know, of the Sunnis vis-a- vis the Alawites. And they've also tried to encourage other minorities like the Christians and the Jews to side with them vis-a- vis Sunni majority.
Our main challenge was to recreate national unity and to be able to reach out to these communities, the Alawites, the Christians, the Jews, of course, Arabs and Kurds alike, and to be able to put them all together again.
This has been part of the challenge.
SPITZER: All right, Ammar --
ABDULHAMID: We are doing our best. The army has not taken a neutral role but we hope to neutralize it in due course of time.
SPITZER: We will continue this conversation in days ahead. Thank you for joining us and we will be in touch with you. This is obviously an ongoing story. Thank you so much.
ABDULHAMID: Thank you. Thank you very much.
SPITZER: Coming up, Donald Trump. We go head to head as mogul- turned-media star continues to defend his finances and takes on some of the biggest issues of the day. Drilling down with the Donald, when we come back.
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SPITZER: Whatever you think of Donald Trump as a celebrity, Donald as a candidate has already had a trump sized impact on this campaign. That's why tonight, I continue my ongoing examination of him.
I spoke with Trump on the phone and drilled down on some big political issues.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SPITZER: I want to ask you this question about equity of our tax system. Do you think the wealthy can afford to pay more and should we ask them to pay more at this moment when we've got this enormous deficit?
DONALD TRUMP, BUSINESS MOGUL (via telephone): Well, it's a very, very hard situation for everybody. But the fact is, you need to create incentive. And if you don't create the incentives, these people aren't going to be investing and you're going to lose even more jobs.
And, you know, whether you have a 9 percent unemployment rate or a 19 percent unemployment rate, it really depends because I don't believe it's 8.8 percent. I think it's very much higher than that. I see what's going on in the country.
You do need something to get people to go out and create jobs and create companies and put people to work.
SPITZER: You're right. If unemployment were much lower, of course, the economy would be robust. Tax revenues would go up. We wouldn't have a deficit. We could afford things we can't afford right now.
TRUMP: Right.
SPITZER: Which brings me to Paul Ryan's budget plan -- which I think is bordering on frivolous.
But I want to ask you this question. He presumes in there by 2016, we'll have unemployment rate of 3.5 percent. Is that plausible? And if it's not plausible --
TRUMP: Well, I don't want to comment on that. But I will comment on this.
SPITZER: No, but this is the big Republican plan out there right now.
TRUMP: I think he's a wonderful guy. I think he's a wonderful representative. But I think from a Republican standpoint and I'm sure you are laughing about this one and, you know, I'm not sure that you shouldn't be, from the standpoint of a Republican, I think he's too far out in front.
I think that he should let Obama lead the charge and then they can cut it to ribbons if they want. I think for him to come out first salvo was a big mistake. He should have let -- from a negotiating standpoint he should have let Obama and Democrats come out with the first proposal. And then he can start shooting from there.
SPITZER: OK. You're talking politics and the strategy, political strategy of negotiation.
TRUMP: Well, it's all about that when we get right down to it.
SPITZER: Well, some of it is. But I want to understand your substance, where you want to end up. I want to understand the end point where you want to get to and then we can figure out the negotiating strategy.
TRUMP: Let me just tell you --
SPITZER: Let me ask this question --
TRUMP: I want to end up with a rich country again. Right now, we're a debtor nation. I want to end up with a rich country again.
SPITZER: OK. But, Donald, you can't run for president without being a little bit more specific than that. I want to ask you --
TRUMP: I don't want to be specific right now because I'm formulating a plan which I think is going to be a very good one. I don't want to talk about it right now.
SPITZER: Look, I mean, to push hard -- as you said, we're buddies. But, you know, you got to have more than that at this point. What do you want to do to rein in health care costs? Health care costs are clearly the driver. Many people think they are the reasons --
TRUMP: Eliot, there's so much fraud and waste it's disgusting. That's the first thing that should be looked.
SPITZER: Donald, wait a minute.
TRUMP: One other thing, I see with my company and I think probably
SPITZER: Stop, wait a minute.
TRUMP: -- what happened here more than anything else is lobbyists got involved. But if I want to buy health insurance and I have a great health insurance company for my people, I have wonderful health insurance and benefits. But -- for the people that work for me.
If I want to go to different states to buy it and negotiate a better price for myself and maybe get even better benefits for my people, I can't cross New York City lines or New York state lines. And I don't understand why can't I go to California, why can't I go to other states to buy health insurance for my people? And it would give you so much better bargaining position.
SPITZER: Listen --
TRUMP: And I think that's frankly the lobbyists not allowing politicians to allow that to happen. I think it would bring down the cost of health care greatly.
SPITZER: Look, there's no question interstate competition should be allowed. Some of us have been saying that for years. The McCarran- Ferguson Act that said insurance companies weren't subject to antitrust laws should be repealed. All of that is right.
But it would have only a marginal effect. Waste, fraud and abuse, it's part of it. I was a prosecutor. We tried to root it out. We did with some success.
But GDP, the rate -- the cost inflation of health care has grown at the rate of GDP plus one, two and three. You understand beauty of compound interest. In this case, it's killing us. You're not talking about the real core of the problem.
Are you going to say that seniors get less care because we can't afford it anymore?
TRUMP: I'm developing a plan. You'll be very impressed with it. I'll talk to you about it at a later date. I'm not willing to talk about it now. It's too soon.
I have another decision to make. Will I run or won't I run? I think you're going to be very impressed with my decision. I think you're going to be very surprised.
SPITZER: All right. Donald Trump, thanks so much for calling in. Let us know -- we can't exclusive on that press conference you're going to have.
TRUMP: OK, I'll let you know. It would sometime prior to June.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SPITZER: All right. I just got to tell you, Donald is fun to talk to. He's full of bravado. He is the quintessential New Yorker at that level.
But let me tell you something, he can't give us a straight answer on the budget, on foreign policy, on health care, on economic development. He's giving us a string of irrelevant platitudes. It's not a campaign. It's a media circus.
That's it from New York. Thanks for watching. Good night from "IN THE ARENA."
"PIERS MORGAN TONIGHT" starts right now.
