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In the Arena
Producing Manufacturing Jobs; Abortion in America; Bipartisan Group Slams Obama with Lawsuit over Libya
Aired June 15, 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 HOST: Good evening. I'm Eliot Spitzer. Welcome to the program.
Tonight, an urgent question, just how bad is our economy? One answer came from the ailing stock market today. The Dow plunged almost 180 points and it has lost more than 7 percent of its value in the last two months.
And there's another powerful indicator of just how bad things are in the American economy. But it's not happening here. Take a look at the streets of Athens, Greece. Riots there today as more than 20,000 people massed in the streets. The protest became violent over drastic cutbacks on social programs.
The Greeks continue to struggle with crushing debt. They're in a desperate and perhaps doomed fight to avoid default. Police used tear gas to repeal protesters hurling rocks and fire bombs. A frightening scene. But what exactly does it mean to us?
A lot. Another bailout for Greece has far-reaching implications in a global economy and the stock market knows it. A default for Greece could trigger other European economies to go under. It's all very scary. But perhaps the biggest threat to us is simple. It boils down to one word -- jobs.
I'll have more on all this in a moment. But first, a look at the other stories we're drilling down on tonight.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SPITZER: Pakistan. We got bin Laden. But now Pakistan's intelligence service is rounding up the people who helped us get him. I'll ask a former CIA officer, is this revenge?
And America under siege. A new wave of cyber attacks threatens to crash our systems, from power grids to banks to national defense. E.D. Hill asks an expert, is this our next Pearl Harbor?
Then, are we at war in Libya? A group of congressmen say of course. President Obama says no. So now they're going to court.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
SPITZER: Now for more on our top story, what's keeping the U.S. economy from turning around? Jobs, jobs, jobs. We all know that. Almost 25 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed.
I'll say that number again. Almost 25 million Americans either not working or forced to work part time.
My guest tonight knows a whole lot about jobs and the American economy. As vice chairman of General Motors, Bob Lutz has been at the top of the auto industry in particular. In fact, he helped turned the industry around. He talks about that in his new book, "Car Guys Vs. Bean Counters."
Bob Lutz, welcome.
BOB LUTZ, FORMER VICE CHAIRMAN, GENERAL MOTORS: Good to be here, Eliot. Thank you very much.
SPITZER: Well, thank you and congratulations on an amazing career that's been virtually every car company, every cycle in the economy. And let me come to that. You have -- when things got bad, you needed to fire people. Recently when things have been bouncing back, GM is beginning to hire.
LUTZ: Yes. Thousands.
SPITZER: Thousands. Which is the good news. As a CEO, somebody who makes these decisions, what would you look for, what data, what policy to get you to start hiring again?
LUTZ: It's quite -- it's basically a question of supply and demand. And the U.S. auto industry has regained its competitiveness, thanks to exchange rates moving in our favor, restructuring the companies, getting rid of a lot of debt, getting rid of the health care obligation to where for the first time in 30 years the American automobile business is globally competitive and producing the best cars in its history.
And as demand expands and market share expands, you have to add jobs for extra shifts and even added plants.
SPITZER: OK, now to some of us this sounds like simple Econ 101.
LUTZ: Yes.
SPITZER: Demand.
LUTZ: Yes.
SPITZER: Demand requires that you hire more people.
LUTZ: Sure.
SPITZER: But the big debate out there, and I want to go back to the Republican presidential debate the other night.
LUTZ: Yes.
SPITZER: Where everybody was talking about cutting taxes. Which is more significant to you as a CEO? Is it taxes being cut or demand going up? Because this is --
(CROSSTALK)
LUTZ: Well, first of all, I have to point out I was never a CEO except of a battery company.
SPITZER: I see. All right.
LUTZ: I was vice chairman. So I was -- I never actually -- I never actually held the steering wheel. But I would say, if I were to -- looking back at the stimulus package, the sort of $800 billion.
SPITZER: Right.
LUTZ: I would have done that, rather than the way the administration did it in various social programs and highway construction, all useful but doesn't really create jobs. I think I would have done a major portion of that in middle class and even upper income tax cuts.
Give the money to the people and let them spend it the way they see fit and let the market drive the spending behavior.
SPITZER: Tax cuts designed to get consumption into the economy.
LUTZ: Exactly. Tax cuts designed to get consumption into the economy. Absolutely.
SPITZER: So in other words, you're talking about getting money to consumers because we have a demand crisis.
LUTZ: Yes. That's basically, as people -- and we are not going to work our way out of this. And you know, I'm as much in favor of fiscal responsibility as anybody else, but we're not going to work our way out of this by added -- by adding taxes on people who make over $200,000 a year.
Because those are the people who, through their lifestyle, create jobs. And you start raising taxes on the moderately wealthy -- as my dad always used to say, in a country where there are rich people, there are unfortunately also poor people. In a country where there are no rich people, there are only poor people.
You try to make the rich people poor, and you are going in the wrong direction.
SPITZER: We'll circle back to this in a minute. But I do want to come back to the issue of the bailout and the stimulus because I think it's fascinating what you have to say.
LUTZ: Yes.
SPITZER: But I want to come back to something more basic. You have a fascinating critique in this book of what went wrong. Of course you've got to study what went wrong to understand how to change it. LUTZ: Yes. Of course, yes.
SPITZER: And some of your energy you focus on the executives. What was wrong with the executives in their perspective?
LUTZ: I think we were -- we got off on the wrong foot after the heyday post-World War II when we had incredible excess demand and pent-up demand from the years in World War II when we couldn't produce any cars. Japanese competition was practically unknown, German competition was only at the very high end, you know, it was a couple thousand cars a year.
And we felt like we not only had the best team on the field but we owned the football. And so we got into the habit of, instead of trying to do great new products and take risk and innovate, it was felt that the way to create shareholder value was avoid risk, do the cars where they're just good enough, shave a little out of the cost to improve the margins.
And it was all a financial cost optimization exercise as opposed to trying to do great new products that would excite the consumer.
SPITZER: Am I oversimplifying this when I read -- I haven't read every page, I've read most of your book. It seemed to me that you're saying the entrepreneurial spirit was ripped out of the country. And we --
LUTZ: Yes. And the willingness to take risk.
SPITZER: And -- putting back in MBAs who just studied numbers.
LUTZ: I will tell you the automobile industry -- I used to say at Chrysler, there's -- I have both bad news and good news. The bad news is the average guy at GM has 20 points of IQ on the -- on the average Chrysler executive. Now the good news, the average GM guy has 20 points --
SPITZER: Right.
LUTZ: I mean, GM has some of the absolute from a standpoint of IQ and analytical capability, the smartest people I've ever come across. And they can't make decisions and many of them have no common sense.
SPITZER: Because they're too bound by numbers. What --
LUTZ: A total left brainers. No imagination, no ability to see the whole picture.
SPITZER: And you say the focus was no longer on customers. And what was going to make the customer happy and loyal and dedicated to a brand.
LUTZ: It was cars, instead of being seen as a holistic object that would trigger lust or desire to buy, were broken down into a series, an infinite series, of submetrics like percentage of parts reused from the prior model and all kinds of dimensions, numbers of cup holders and so forth.
And all of these sub-objectives were pursued and somehow at the end of the day, if you did all that, you assumed you would have a great car. Not.
SPITZER: And the person who stands in opposition to all of this, the sort of epitome of what an executive should be, is Steve Jobs.
LUTZ: Exactly. And that's why I use him as a book of a shining example of a great businessman, a person who has a personal vision of what the -- is enthusiastic about the product, is willing to take risk to create new stuff, has a fantastic innate feel for what turns people on.
SPITZER: OK. Look, I want to --
LUTZ: And probably will make some mistakes.
SPITZER: If you take risks you always make mistakes.
LUTZ: Of course.
SPITZER: I want to focus quickly, time runs short, unfortunately. You also say the unions got the company in trouble and the way the management gave too much away when it shouldn't have.
LUTZ: Yes. It was sort of a symbiotic process.
SPITZER: Both sides.
LUTZ: Symbiotic process, and the assumption when we really gave away health care and retiree health care was all of the analysis pointed to continued growth and moderate health care escalation.
SPITZER: Which assumes the line of market share control with continuous revenue.
(CROSSTALK)
LUTZ: Yes, exactly right.
SPITZER: Let me -- let me come back to a question about today. You said you're coming back, but the bailout worked for GM.
LUTZ: The bailout absolutely worked.
SPITZER: It was the right thing to do.
LUTZ: It was the only thing to do because now there's a lot of second-guessing, should have done a normal chapter 11, should have taken months, should have had private dip financing and everything. These people forget the banks were out of money.
SPITZER: OK. Let me ask you this part.
LUTZ: There was no financing. Yes. SPITZER: I know you're not a political sort by nature, but why is there such political opposition right now to something that's so manifestly worked and brought back a whole sector of the economy?
LUTZ: Well, this is -- you know, to tell you the truth, I am a free market Republican by trade, but I get off the boat with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and everything when they criticize -- they're even criticizing the Chevy Volt now as a product of the Obama administration.
Hello, I thought of that in 2006.
SPITZER: Right.
LUTZ: And I think what this is, is an unfortunate tendency to use whatever is available as a lever against the Obama administration. Good, bad or indifferent. And the auto bailout was absolutely -- and it's worked. Look at all three companies. They're profitable.
SPITZER: My view now, don't want to put these words in your mouth, obviously. They don't understand that sometimes the government has to step in and do things --
LUTZ: Absolutely.
SPITZER: -- that the private sector simply can't.
LUTZ: Well, when the banks are out of money, the private sector is gone.
SPITZER: All right. We're out of time. But Bob Lutz, thank you so much. It is a great book. Read an excerpt from it on our Web site. "Car Guys Vs. Bean Counters." Go to the Web site. It is worth the read.
Thanks so much for coming on for that conversation.
Coming up, Planned Parenthood, guardian of women's health or subsidized abortion provider? We'll look at the embattled organization. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: In tonight's "American Issues" segment, are we seeing the beginning of the end of abortion rights in this country?
Today a third state has voted to cut funding to Planned Parenthood. North Carolina joins Indiana and Kansas in stripping the country's largest family planning provider of government funds. And three other states are on the verge of doing the same.
This on the heels of the vicious war on Capitol Hill earlier this spring when Republicans risked a government shutdown to cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood.
Tomorrow we'll be speaking with an abortion rights opponent, someone who agrees with the move in North Carolina today.
But first, tonight joining me here is Cecile Richard, president of Planned Parenthood.
Thank you so much for being here.
CECILE RICHARDS, PRESIDENT, PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA: Thanks for having me.
SPITZER: Look, here's what I don't understand. It's kind of a political question. Sixty-five percent of the public supports government funding for Planned Parenthood.
RICHARDS: Correct.
SPITZER: Over 50 percent of the public supports abortion rights either in all cases or most cases. So why have you been playing defense for the past two years?
RICHARDS: Well, I don't think we've been playing defense at all. Planned Parenthood is the largest family planning provider in the country. We see three million patients a year. And despite the political winds, whatever is happening, women continue to come to us no matter what for services, you know.
And we are -- again we provide family planning, we provide cancer screenings. And unfortunately these moves by the legislatures in Indiana and North Carolina are really targeting those services that women need to stay healthy.
SPITZER: But to come back to the issue of whether you are playing defense, and it seems to me that for a number of years the issue of abortion rights to a certain extent had taken a step back from the political arena.
There wasn't this day-to-day battle either for funding or in litigation about what defined the parameters of abortion rights. We're back to seeing it in had the political arena again. Is it just a presidential year therefore it's raised?
RICHARDS: I think what we saw is a rightward shift in the -- you know, in the voting that happened in November. Unfortunately, of course, what the voters really wanted to see as a result of those elections was people going back to work. They were frustrated about the economy.
Unfortunately the result has been these legislatures are attacking women and attacking women's health care. That's not what the American people want. And as you said yourself, more than two- thirds of the American people believe Planned Parenthood should be able to provide services to women, particularly the preventive care that we're known for.
SPITZER: Look, there was no question watching the Republican presidential debate a couple of nights ago. Most of the focus was on economic issues. And yet when the issues relating to the social agenda were asked, a uniformity across the board, over hostility to abortion rights.
Is there any crack in the Republican Party? Are you finding any support within the Republican national agenda for choice abortion rights?
RICHARDS: Well, we're finding enormous support for Planned Parenthood by Republicans and Democrats across the country. And what we saw, of course, in the vote in the United States Senate, that five United States senators from the Republican Party voted in support of Planned Parenthood -- in support of Planned Parenthood being able to provide services.
I think it's a political miscalculation, Eliot. I think that they are playing politics with women's health care. And when you talk about -- we're not even talking about abortion here. The moves by these legislatures -- I mean efforts by the U.S. Congress were to eliminate access for women to get access to lifesaving breast cancer screenings, Pap smears and birth control. And the American people don't want that.
SPITZER: Well, you're making an important point. Some of the battle obviously relates to funding for abortion services but that's already illegal.
RICHARDS: That's exactly right. The Hyde amendment of course has prohibited federal funding for abortion for decades. And so really what's at stake here is whether or not women in this country and the three million women who turn to Planned Parenthood each year will continue to be able to come to us for birth control services as well as cancer screenings.
SPITZER: OK. Now you have a budget of about $1.1 billion, am I correct, of which about 363 million comes from the federal government -- from government sources?
RICHARDS: Roughly. Roughly.
SPITZER: You're talking about that for 363 out of $1.1 billion total. And what you say is what percentage of your services total relate to abortion?
RICHARDS: We -- 97 percent of our services are preventive care. So about 3 percent of our services are abortion related.
SPITZER: And by preventive care, you would mean what?
RICHARDS: It's everything from -- we do -- we provide birth control to 2.5 million patients each year. We do 830,000 breast exams, about a million Pap smears, and we provide sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment for more than four million tests each year.
SPITZER: And so your assertion is that 3 percent of your procedures relate to abortions.
RICHARDS: That's exactly correct. And, in fact, I think what's important -- and some of our -- some folks self-described pro-life members of Congress support Planned Parenthood.
They said, you know, the most important thing we can do in this country and to reduce the need for abortion is to make sure every woman in America gets access to high-quality affordable family planning. That's what Planned Parenthood does more than any organization in the country.
SPITZER: And so then let me ask you the hard question.
RICHARDS: Sure.
SPITZER: Three percent of your services do relate to abortion. You get about a third of your budget from government services. How do you make sure that the money you get from government doesn't go to those services, which is prohibited by the Hyde amendment?
RICHARDS: Well, it's prohibited. We -- you know, we report like -- we work like every other hospital in America. Every other medical provider. And we are reimbursed by the federal -- from the federal government exactly for the services we provide.
And again, I think that's -- I'm glad you're raising this point because what's really important, as you look at the state of Indiana where Governor Daniels just signed a law that would prohibit women in Indiana from going to Planned Parenthood, not for abortion services but for birth control, for lifesaving cancer screenings.
SPITZER: OK. Accepting the ban they're trying to put in place would expand way beyond abortion services, here's my question.
RICHARDS: Exactly.
SPITZER: The 3 percent figure I do think maybe that's a little bit unfair. You provide 11 million visits with -- with people coming into Planned Parenthood each year. Only about 360,000 are abortions.
RICHARDS: Right.
SPITZER: So 360,000 is only 3 percent of the 11 million, but really that takes up more than 3 percent providing an abortion is a bigger procedure than simply giving somebody a test and certain other regards, right? So the --
RICHARDS: Well --
SPITZER: The 3 percent is really more than that in terms of your total services provided.
RICHARDS: No, I mean we -- well, we are very transparent about all the services we provide.
SPITZER: Right.
RICHARDS: And what's -- I mean I think what's really important here, what's at issue, is not abortion services. What's at issue here and what these laws are preventing is women from getting preventive care. And again, for many people they would say the real crime in America is, you know, we see three million patients for birth -- 2.5 million for birth control every year.
SPITZER: Right.
RICHARDS: There are millions more women in this country who need access to affordable family planning and can't get it. And at a time in this country when women are struggling, I hear from then every day. They write me every day, saying, I'm just trying to make ends meet.
I can't believe that the state legislature or the U.S. Congress is going to tell me I can't get where I've been going to Planned Parenthood for years for my preventive care, for my birth control, and they're telling me now I can't go to the health care provider that I trust with my health.
SPITZER: But you're saying that you are no different than any other hospital that provides the full array of medical services.
RICHARDS: Absolutely.
SPITZER: And just like you were already prohibited from using government money for abortions.
RICHARDS: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I don't think really, this is -- I think the reason we're seeing such outrage around the country from men and women, Republicans, Democrats, is this is really going to the heart of health care. And I think of the state legislators in North Carolina, I wouldn't want on my conscience voting against access for women that could help detect early breast cancer screening and get women care. And that's what we're talking about.
SPITZER: All right. Cecile Richards, thank you so much.
Tomorrow night we'll hear from someone on the other side of this issue. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.
Thank you.
Coming up, is our military involvement in Libya unconstitutional? Some congressmen are threatening to take the president to court to find out. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: Turning now to the rules of engagement. Did President Obama do an illegal end run around Congress when he sent U.S. troops to bomb Libya? At least 10 members of the House say he did and they're taking him to court to prove it.
The Obama administration is arguing the president has clear constitutional authority to address, quote, "such limited military operations abroad."
Massachusetts Congressman Mike Capuano, a Democrat, is one of the House members bringing suit against the president. I spoke with had him a short time ago.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SPITZER: Congressman Capuano, thank you for joining me.
REP. MIKE CAPUANO (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Happy to be with you, Eliot.
SPITZER: So you're trying to do what no member of Congress has ever succeeded in doing, which is to get a judge to tell the president to pull our forces out of combat. Why do you think it's going to work?
CAPUANO: I'm not sure it will. I just know it needs to be tried again. The war and peace the most important thing that we do down here. I think the Constitution is pretty clear. I think it's very clear that only Congress has the power to declare war. And for me, that's kind of paramount above all else. It's -- there's really no other issue that is more important.
SPITZER: Now you know of course that the War Powers Act notwithstanding it has been decades since a declaration of war has been issued or voted upon by the United States Congress, and presidents have routinely taken us into combat with ambiguous congressional support.
So what argument are you going to make to the court to have the judge decide in your favor and tell the president to pull our troops back from Libya?
CAPUANO: I think in this case it's even more clear than most. I mean, at least in Iraq, though I voted no, Congress at least was on record with something saying it's OK. In this particular case, Congress wasn't even asked.
And in my opinion this make it's a cleaner case. Hopefully a court will find its way clear to at least answering the question.
SPITZER: Now you have bipartisan support for your litigation. You're going to go to court. You have Republicans and Democrats, as I understand it, joining you in this effort. Am I correct about that?
CAPUANO: That's right. That's right.
SPITZER: And --
CAPUANO: This is a nonpartisan effort. And for me, I'm a strong and early supporter of President Obama. This has nothing to do with him. I think he's a good president. But I think on this particular issue he was wrong. And for me, it's not even about Libya. It's about the next war and the next president whatever might happen tomorrow. I think it's critical that this issue be answered.
SPITZER: Now the issue which you keep referring to is whether or not the president, without congressional power, congressional authorization, can continue U.S. -- having U.S. forces in a combat zone in the midst of hostilities for more than 90 days.
The White House is saying that the hostilities in Libya don't fall within the purview of the War Powers Act resolution. Do you buy that argument?
CAPUANO: Well, no, I don't. But I'll be honest with you. It's not even the War Powers Act that I put my -- hang my hat on. It's the Constitution. I think the War Powers Act in and of itself is already a compromise giving any president 60 to 90 days to come to Congress.
I think the constitution is clear that only Congress -- doesn't even mention the president. Only Congress has the authority to declare war. And I know that some people might want to split hairs on the declaration of war. But I think when you're shooting missiles at a sovereign country, I don't see how you can find it as anything other than war.
SPITZER: All right. Let's put the litigation aside for a moment and the battle over the power that the president might have or not have unilaterally to take us into the Libyan -- zone of Libyan combat.
Do you think that we are doing the right thing there as a matter of pursuing a humanitarian mission?
CAPUANO: Based on my knowledge of it, the answer is no. That's an individual opinion, not a congressional one. I don't think the United States has the obligation nor the responsibility across the world to police the world or to get rid of all bad dictators.
Gadhafi is a bad guy, the world would be better off without him. Democracy is a good thing. The people of Libya deserve that if they can get it. But I don't think it's the United States' role to bring it everywhere. Because if we do that, then what's to -- what's the difference between that and Syria or that and Yemen or that and the next country?
I just think that it's an inappropriate role for the United States. But I also think that's a fair point to have a discussion on in Congress. Let Congress make that decision.
SPITZER: All right. Congressman, thank you so much for joining us.
CAPUANO: Thanks, Eliot.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SPITZER: So is the congressman's lawsuit valid? When we return, I'll ask one of the nation's keenest legal minds. Is President Obama violating the constitution? Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: President Obama says our involvement in Libya is consistent with the War Powers Resolution. Our next guest says it's not that easy. But the administration's position is defensible.
Walter Dellinger is one of America's top lawyers, a former solicitor general and White House adviser. He joins me now from Washington.
Walter, thank you so much.
WALTER E. DELLINGER, FORMER SOLICITOR GENERAL: Good evening, Eliot.
SPITZER: So, look, the White House is arguing today, after they've been sued or are going to be sued by the members of Congress, that we're not really at war in Libya, we're not really in the midst of hostilities. Does that argument even pass the smell test? Of course, we're at war. Come on, how can they argue that?
DELLINGER: Well, I think the question whether we're at war in the constitutional sense requiring a declaration of war, that question is easy. For half a century, we've held that, although only Congress can declare war. The president can use military force, can deploy the worldwide military that Congress has given him into hostile situations without a declaration of war because it's not war in terms of nature, scope and duration.
The harder question is on the War Powers Resolution, which requires the president to remove U.S. forces after 60 days -- it can be extended to 90 days -- of involvement in hostilities. So the question is, is this hostilities within the meaning of the War Powers Resolution.
Now the word "hostilities" obviously encompasses sending bombs into another country. But when you look at the purposes of the War Powers Resolution, it was to make sure that, first of all, U.S. forces were not put at risk of being subject to hostile fire without congressional approval and secondly, that we didn't commit U.S. forces into a foreign country in a way that made it difficult for Congress to come along and to extract them. Neither of those purposes is relevant here. We're not in the country.
SPITZER: Walter, let me jump in for a second. You are making a brilliant appellate argument, as per your reputation, the smartest lawyer in the nation. But at a common sense level, let's go back to what the constitution was supposed to do. Clearly a balance between the executive authority as commander in chief to send forces in defense of the nation. On the other hand, Congress said, only we can declare war based upon the scope and the duration, the factors you just argued about. But here we are approaching that 90-day threshold in Libya, and the White House is saying it's not even within the scope of the definition of "hostilities" when we are bombing, we have covert CIA operatives on the ground, we are dropping expensive bombs, smart bombs, aircraft flying over Libya. Would you really want to argue to an inquisitive judge that that does not constitute hostilities within the War Powers Act?
DELLINGER: Listen, that's a difficult question, but the president's position is consistent with what administrations have done for at least the last 36 years. Starting in 1975, the administrations have said that hostilities must involve serious risk of attack on U.S. forces. That's not present here. I think that's a debatable proposition. Obviously some bombing would trigger the War Powers Resolution. But here when you're talking about not committing U.S. forces beyond easy retraction by Congress, you don't need an exit strategy when you're not even in the country.
SPITZER: Just as a point of inquiry so our viewers understand this, how many decades has it been since a declaration of war was voted by Congress?
DELLINGER: Gee, I would suppose the last one was World War II.
SPITZER: Right. So we're talking decades without Congress exercising that constitutionally mandated power. And I think everybody knows, whether it's Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East in several cases, we have obviously fought in several protracted wars. So is it fair to say that the War Powers Act notwithstanding the congressional power to declare war has basically disappeared and the president has arrogated to himself the power to deploy our military forces as he deems appropriate, despite some mattering by Congress on the fringes?
DELLINGER: No. And this is a very important point. I don't want anyone to think that we can just say that the Obama administration has ignored the War Powers Resolution and is therefore a dead letter. The central provision of the War Powers Resolution that we not commit U.S. forces, generally we're thinking of ground forces sent into a combat situation, a sustained combat situation, without congressional authorization. That 1973 provision has never been violated. And I don't think one should cavalierly assume it's been violated here, when the nature of our involvement doesn't even involve a physical intrusion of ground forces into the country where we're operating under a humanitarian mandate where the nature, scope and the purposes are quite limited to humanitarian purposes. I think it's, by no means, clear that the War Powers Resolution is a dead letter. It will still, I think, ought to constrain Congress -- ought to constrain presidents.
SPITZER: Let me jump in very briefly with another issue here that is certainly raised. Even though this is really a battle, an ongoing battle between the Congress and the executive over who can make this determinations, the judiciary, am I right, has never interposed itself and said to the executive, you must withdraw troops? The judiciary is hesitant for all the obvious reasons to do that.
DELLINGER: They never have and they never will. The courts will hold that this is a political question, not for the judiciary. This is for the president and Congress to resolve. And there's nothing to stop the Congress from saying, we want you to stop the bombing. You don't even have to extract any U.S. forces.
SPITZER: Walter, let me interrupt, just add one thing in the waning seconds. Perhaps a footnote issue in the constitutional magnitude, but we're talking about expenditures so far of over $700 million, soon to be $1 billion. And so the president has basically said, unilaterally I will spend this money. Usually Congress has to authorize that. Does that weigh in the balance?
DELLINGER: Well, you know something I don't know, which is this is not a part of the funds that are actually already authorized for the Department of Defense. And remember, you can't isolate this from the war on terror. We are doing something our European allies who are with us on the war on terror care very much about, which is helping to stabilize the situation in Libya, which is a threat right across the waters from Italy and other European countries.
SPITZER: All right. Walter, thank you so much for being here. I think everybody now sees why you're viewed as such a spectacular lawyer. You made an impossible argument but you probably win. All right. Thanks for that information.
DELLINGER: Thank you.
SPITZER: Coming up, we got bin Laden. But now Pakistan is rounding up our sources and arresting them. Is this how allies should behave. I'll ask a former CIA officer when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: Now from our covert operations file, troubling news about the people who helped the CIA and Navy SEALs catch and kill Osama bin Laden. It turns out right after the raid Pakistan arrested several of them. What does this mean for U.S./Pakistan relations and for the future safety of our sources on the ground?
Joining me now is former CIA officer Peter Brookes. Welcome, Peter.
PETER BROOKES, FORMER CIA OFFICER: Welcome. Thanks for having me.
SPITZER: My pleasure. Look, before we get started, I want to show you a fascinating exchange from today's Defense Department budget hearing. Senator Patrick Leahy is quizzing Defense Secretary Gates about our relationships with supposed allies like Pakistan. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D), VERMONT: How long do we support governments that lie to us? When do we say enough is enough? Secretary Gates I'll start with you.
ROBERT GATES, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Well, first of all, I would say based on 27 years in the CIA and 4 1/2 years in this job, most governments lie to each other. That's the way business gets done.
LEAHY: Do they also arrest -- and we also arrest the people that help us?
GATES: Sometimes.
LEAHY: When they say they're allies? GATES: Sometimes.
LEAHY: Not on --
GATES: And sometimes they send people to spy on us and they're our close allies.
LEAHY: And we give aid to them.
GATES: That's the real world that we deal with.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SPITZER: Peter, that was a more stark and open and honest critique of the relationship that we've got with our supposed allies than you normally get certainly at a budget hearing.
BROOKES: Yes.
SPITZER: But let me ask you this. Isn't it really one step beyond the norm of smoke and mirrors -- and I ask you this, you're a spook I think I can call you that, having been in the CIA for a lot of years -- isn't it one step beyond what normally happens for them to affirmatively arrest our sources of information?
BROOKES: Well, this is a very troubled relationship. I think Secretary Gates was quite frank. You can tell he's leaving his job at the end of the month and doesn't need to worry too much about diplomatic niceties. But the fact of the matter is, I wouldn't necessarily call Pakistan an ally. That's a very strong term. They're a partner and they're a problematic partner for us. And I'm having a hard time finding any good news in this relationship recently.
What we had hoped is that they would actually investigate how Osama bin Laden had been in that country for five or six years in Abbottabad, maybe even longer in Pakistan. And instead, they rounded up a bunch of people they're calling informants.
Now there are some -- we still need to know more about the story. How were they able to wrap them up so quickly if they were actually informants? The CIA is never going to acknowledge that they had informants there. So there's still -- we still need to know more, but it's not at all helpful when we have a real war on terror, we have a real fight in Afghanistan we're facing.
SPITZER: Look, you are so right about your observations. The first question that occurred to me is, how did they know who to arrest?
BROOKES: Right.
SPITZER: If these were our very secure dark sources for such critical information, how did they know who had been giving this to us? Either there are leaks in our side or they knew more than they're letting us know. Either one of those is a troubling conclusion, isn't it?
BROOKES: Well, there's a couple of possibilities here, Eliot. One is that some of them are scapegoats. Maybe this is for domestic consumption in Pakistan saying, those Americans can't do what they want here. They can't conduct unilateral operations and we're going to grab some people. Of course, we may have shot ourselves in the foot by giving so much information out about the raid in the days just after it happened. For instance, I have to applaud the CIA for having a safe house in Abbottabad near Osama bin Laden's compound, a great piece of technical trade craft, of spy trade craft. But the fact of the matter is that the general public didn't need to know that. And now the owner of that house who probably didn't know he was renting a house to a CIA operation may be in a lot of danger.
The real ramifications here are, our people outside of Pakistan or in Pakistan, other possible informants going to work with the CIA in the future to our benefit if they feel like they're not secure? And so this is something that's really troubling. It's not just about the U.S./Pakistan relationship. It's about all our clandestine relationships around the world.
SPITZER: Peter, I disagree with you on one little thing. I think he must have known it was the CIA or U.S. government agency because it's the only time his rent was ever paid on time. So I think he was happy to have a good tenant like that. But, you know, go back to World War II, the old poster that said loose lips sink ships. There really was and we saw it from Secretary Gates and General Petraeus shortly after, you know, the happiness, the euphoria after the raid, too much was said is a general conclusion. So now I think somewhere in the White House they're saying, you know what, we may have cost ourselves five operatives or five allies, friends of ours in Pakistan. Are they going to change behavior because of this?
BROOKES: I certainly hope so. I was critical of them in an article in the "New York Post" a couple of weeks ago. I said this is not the sort of grandstanding we need. We may put the families or our Navy SEALs in danger if people find out who they were. Our operational tactics for our military, our SEALs, our CIA were trotted out before the public when they didn't need to be.
I mean, the fact the details of the operation were irresistible, even I was very, very interested. But we didn't need to tell people about this because this isn't the last time we're going to have to undertake a raid like this. So it's not a good idea and the administration, any administration has to be careful about talking about these very, very sensitive operations.
SPITZER: But to come back to the underlying core facts, this has got to define a new low for the relationship between the ISI, the Pakistani secret intelligence agency and the CIA. Even though we probably know there are people here who are feeding information to foreign intelligence agencies, if they are partners not allies as you point out, we're not going to willfully pick them up and interrogate them and arrest them and charge them unless the relationship is so fraught that you're just not presuming you're going to work together anymore. BROOKES: It's a poke in the eye of the U.S. government and of the CIA. And, Eliot, the other news is that the fact that we supposedly gave them some information about a bomb making factory that was making IEDs that were being moved into Afghanistan. And when the Pakistanis actually moved on this, these facilities were supposedly empty. Somebody had been tipped off.
I mean, the problem here is that we're both in this fight. Pakistan, the government in Islamabad is as much in the crosshairs of the extremists and the terrorists as the United States is. And if things go bad in Afghanistan, it's going to hurt Pakistan. And Pakistan is riding this extremist tiger. And when they get off, that tiger may start to look at rider and they've got a real problem.
SPITZER: Yes. You don't want to be the person riding that tiger as you point out.
All right. Peter Brookes, thanks so much for joining us.
BROOKES: Thanks for having me.
SPITZER: Coming up, E.D. Hill looks at another undeclared war. E.D., tell us about it.
E.D. HILL, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Tonight a tweet went out and it said, "tango down cia.gov." And what it referred to is that a group of hackers have brought down the CIA Web site. And so, Leon Panetta, CIA director, talked about this, the threat from cyber warfare and the security threat being our next Pearl Harbor. We're going to take a look at how serious the problem is.
SPITZER: All right. Fascinating stuff. Don't go away. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HILL: Tonight, hackers shut down the CIA's public Web site. They relentlessly target the military, defense contractors and the highest levels of government. And it's grown so extensive it is now seen as a national threat. How serious?
Well, this is CIA Director Leon Panetta testifying before a Senate committee last week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LEON PANETTA, CIA DIRECTOR: I've often said that there's a strong likelihood that the next Pearl Harbor that we confront could very well be a cyber attack that cripples our power systems, our grid, our security systems, our financial systems, our governmental systems. This is a real possibility in today's world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HILL: Joining me now is Mark Rasch, a cyber security expert and director of CSC, a security and privacy consulting group. Thanks for being here.
MARK RASCH, CYBER SECURITY CONSULTANT, CSC: Thank you.
HILL: Amazing. We were working on this story because the Senate had been hacked into twice in the past week, again today. And all of a sudden the cia.gov Web site goes down. Same group claiming responsibility. Director Panetta saying this is a serious problem, the cyber warfare.
You investigate these things. How serious is it?
RASCH: Well, these particular attacks are examples of what we call hacktivism. These are hackers trying to make a political statement by taking down a public Web site, sort of like spray- painting the CIA's wall or something. SO it's serious that they were able to get in, seriously they were able to shut it down, but it didn't impact the core functions. But most of the government agencies are under what I would call continuous probing by foreign governments, by hacker groups and others. And so they're under almost continuous warfare.
HILL: Not just the government groups. I think we focus on the government groups. However, what about the Boeings and the Lockheed Martins, the defense contractors, the FAA, the people who are running our electrical grids? Those are the companies and the organizations that we sometimes don't think about, and they have been attacked just as much. I think Boeing says that it is attacked on a constant basis and Lockheed Martin said an attack into -- a hack into another company's security company's web site had allowed hackers then to get into Lockheed Martin as well.
RASCH: That's right. And it goes well beyond that. It's not just government and defense contractors. It's virtually every commercial entity. And the trick here is to have the kind of security that isn't bolted on after the fact. To build systems that are more secure, to have people who are trained on how to respond. And basically have security as part of your culture.
HILL: So they hack into these systems. What can they do? How bad can it get?
RASCH: Oh, it can get devastating. I mean, the core, keys to the kingdom can be held on computers and computer networks. Not just personal information and credit card information but we're talking about taking over the power grids, taking over --
HILL: Could they shut down a power grid? Could they shut down air traffic control?
RASCH: In theory, if the systems haven't been designed with the kind of redundancy that they need to be designed with, you could do almost anything.
HILL: Director Panetta when he was talking about this perhaps being our next Pearl Harbor, he said that we need to take defensive and this is the quote, "aggressive measures to deal with it." What does that mean? What do aggressive measures mean?
RASCH: Well, there are a couple of things. First of all, you don't just want to defend yourself and just put up walls. You want to have active surveillance. You want to learn what the threats are, who's trying to break into you and why.
HILL: We're trying to hack into other people's systems to figure out if they're hacking into ours.
RASCH: Well, actually, monitoring them, monitoring hacker groups.
HILL: That's a nicer term.
RASCH: That's right. Monitoring hacker groups, monitoring the threat environment, figuring out who's trying to break into us and why. But also new technologies, what types of tools and techniques are they using and how they're trying to break in.
HILL: Well, this is how serious it is. The White House established a cyber security group and they said, we're going to come out with a cyber strategy. They say that based on what someone does, this could rise to the level of declaring military action against a person. Or a country, I should say. How do you determine if an attack is coming in from a person in a foreign country versus a foreign government? And I think we all know that China has been predominantly the country that most other governments accuse of trying to hack into their security and government systems.
RASCH: Well, you have an equal problem of an actual act of war that poses as a cyber fraud or an attack or cyber fraud that looks like an act of war. So the real thing to do is just analyze the attack and see what you can find out. If I'm really going to be planning an attack against the United States, I don't want it to look like an act of war. I don't want it to point back to me.
HILL: Exactly. So how do you -- and you're saying, look, you do this to us, and it may be a last resort, but we will take military action if we need to. How do you know for sure you're going -- a country is targeting you and you're going after the right person?
RASCH: You don't know for sure. You just have to have a certain level of certainty. If you're going to be bombing a foreign country, you have to have a level of certainty that they're responsible for acts of war against you.
HILL: Now, the military has released a couple of things that they are doing to try to be proactive in this. And they said that they are now capable of putting markers into the security systems of other countries that would activate a virus I guess if they felt it was needed. Do we really do that?
RASCH: Well, there's a whole panoply of tools of what are called offensive cyber warfare and defensive cyber warfare. So, you know, this is almost in the realm of science fiction. If you were to ask somebody what kind of things would you want to do if you were going to war in cyberspace, you can come up with thousands of things.
HILL: It's hard to differentiate between what they would like to be able to do and what really technologically you can do.
RASCH: There is a lot that can be technologically done.
HILL: But it sounds like computers really could be the next major threat.
RASCH: Well, cyber warfare may be the component of the next war. It's all going to depend on who our adversary is. But at some point, war will be conducted not just on the ground and not just in the battlefield but also at home and in the cyber battlefield.
HILL: All right. Mark Rasch, thank you very much for being with us.
RASCH: Thank you.
HILL: We will be right back after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: Thank you for joining us IN THE ARENA. Good night from New York. "PIERS MORGAN TONIGHT" starts right now.
