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Parker Spitzer

Extreme Politics; Touring North Korea's Secret Nuke Site; Containing North Korea

Aired November 24, 2010 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KATHLEEN PARKER, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening. I'm Kathleen Parker.

ELIOT SPITZER, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Eliot Spitzer. Welcome to the show.

Coming up, we'll talk with the nuclear scientist who just toured the newly discovered nuclear facility in North Korea and called it jaw dropping. And it is. The alarming details in a moment.

PARKER: Plus, a great American poet. What you say? A poet? Well, he just won the National Book Award and he's fascinating, so stick around to meet him.

SPITZER: Yes. I read poetry all the time. But you know what, Kathleen?

PARKER: I knew you were a poet at heart.

SPITZER: Yes. Beneath this exterior. But --

(LAUGHTER)

SPITZER: I can't even say that without laughing. But you know what? There is a tragedy out there we got to talk about. It is the death of decency in American politics. We're going to talk with Bob Inglis. He is a very conservative congressman from North Carolina, your home state.

PARKER: Yes.

SPITZER: Not my political cup of tea but a decent guy. A thoughtful guy. And you know what? He was defeated by the fringe. The fringe is saying to folks who are anywhere near the middle, if you won't say anything, do anything, throw any weapon at the opposition party, we're going to vote you out. And it's too bad.

PARKER: You are singing my song, Eliot. I've been talking about this for months. Writing about it. You know, the GOP, the Republican Party, now has this sort of purity ideal pushed by the Tea Party. If you're not 100 percent conservative, then you're not good enough to be in office.

And you know Bob Inglis is conservative. He got a 93 percent rating from the -- you know, the whatever the conservative union is that measure --

SPITZER: American Conservative Union, I think it is.

PARKER: There you go. They rate them according to their votes in Congress, and he -- he's practically got a perfect score. But you know what he wouldn't do, he wouldn't call President Obama a Muslim. He wouldn't call President Obama a socialist. He wouldn't say he was born in the country, because he said, you know what? He was born here. He was born in Hawaii.

So the guy is a rational conservative, as I like to call it. And, you know, rational doesn't win anymore.

SPITZER: Well, even I will admit there are a couple of rational conservatives out there. And they want to talk about facts and compromise and do smart things. And when you see a Bob Inglis being pushed out of the Republican Party, what's left is the fringe.

And then when you get the fringe here and whether or not it's the fringe on the other side compromise becomes that much less possible. And you just worry about the tough issues we've got to deal with.

PARKER: Yes.

SPITZER: Will there be rational voices, decent voices, willing to have that serious conversation?

PARKER: Well, I mean he's one of those rare Congress people that now wants to find solutions to problems rather than scapegoating, rather than demonizing, which is --

SPITZER: Right.

PARKER: -- the main thing that we've witnessed in the last political year.

And, you know, I agree with you, Eliot. It's a tragedy.

SPITZER: But you know what's interesting? Part of this image that he has of what politics should be grew out of what he went through when he was, in fact, going after President Clinton and going after was the right term. He was one of the prosecutors I think of President Clinton --

PARKER: Yes.

SPITZER: -- when he was in Congress a bit earlier. But I think he went through that and said, you know what? This isn't good for our souls, it isn't good for our politics, it's not what democracy is about. And he is the sort of person you want in politics, even if you disagree with him.

Anyway, now let's meet our headliner.

Congressman Bob Inglis of South Carolina is a conservative but he believes that, you know, he lost the Republican primary in part because he wasn't extreme enough.

SPITZER: Congressman, thank you for joining us.

REP. BOB INGLIS (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: Good to be with you, thanks.

SPITZER: Sorry about the outcome of the election, but let me ask you this question. You ran into the buzz saw of hard right politics. What lesson do you take from that about the future of our political structure?

INGLIS: Well, I think what's going to have to happen is at some point is we're all going to have to pick up the mirror and look in it, take a real honest hard look at ourselves, and say we have found the problem. And the problem is us.

I believe that America's best days are still ahead. That's Ronald Reagan conservatism. Right now what we got going is a populism that's not really like the conservatism of Reagan.

Reagan was an optimist. This current populism is more of a -- it's all gone to the pot, the country is done for. We'll get through that. And we'll get back to optimistic conservatism. We've just got to get through this unfortunate period.

SPITZER: You know the way I often would one say it, Congressman, is anger is not a governing principle. And you're right, there's a lot of anger out there. It doesn't help you answer the problems.

You talked about the structural problems of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, things that in the out-years we simply can't afford.

What do you think the Republican leadership from Congressman Boehner on down will be to the ideas floated by, you know, the Budget Deficit Commission from Allen Simpson and Erskine Bowles? Will there be a consensus that forms around that or not?

INGLIS: I certainly hope so. And you know we've got great leaders on this that will be in the House. People like Paul Ryan of Wisconsin who will be the chairman of the Budget Committee. He's got a great plan -- strategy for dealing with it.

But that plan is going to require some real honesty. Especially from people who are current recipients of Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security. And those folks are the ones that seem to me most angry at this moment. And their anger may, in part, be because they're aware that they are, in fact, dependent on the government for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

And so if -- if Paul is to be successful, Paul Ryan is to be successful, what we've got to do is have leadership aimed at consensus there and saying, listen, let's take that an honest look in the mirror. We're going to get to the solutions but it's going to take all of us figuring out that something has got to change. PARKER: You have actually said that in your dealings with the Tea Party contingent in South Carolina, you have been -- you know, one of the problems was that you refused to call President Obama socialist. You actually told constituents to turn off Glenn Beck. That got you in a good bit of hot water. Can you tell us about that?

INGLIS: Yes, you know, really, if you boil it right down, what it's a lot about is just the sense that I didn't join in the real bitterness toward the president. You know, I don't call him a socialist because he's not. I don't doubt where -- that he was born in Hawaii because he was.

I don't call him a Muslim because he says he's a Christian. And I didn't say anything about death panels because there weren't any death panels in that health care bill. So I believe you're going to lead a credible conservative movement, you've got to start with credible information.

And if you try to sell people on this scapegoat and say it's the president's fault that we've got a structural deficit, well, how could that be? He's been in office two years. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security have been around for decades. So how could it possibly be his fault?

The reality is, the president is a handsome, articulate, brilliant fella. I just disagree with him on a lot of policy issues. But I don't need to join in this hatred of the man. What I need to do is just say, we have better ideas.

I'm a conservative with better ideas. And I can serve the country by presenting those ideas and being credible, not attacking him. But, you know, it's -- remember, Bill Clinton said one year at a prayer breakfast, the most violated commandment in Washington, D.C. is the ninth. "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."

And I think there's an awful lot of that going on right now.

PARKER: Can you give us an instance where you actually felt pressure to do that, to turn on the president and say things that -- you know, to bear false witness, in other words?

INGLIS: Yes, for example, I had a breakfast gathering about 25 people there. The guy stands up and he says, the president is so unpatriotic, he doesn't even put his hand over his heart when the national anthem is played or when the pledge is recited.

And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, I know what I need to do if I want to win this primary, I'm supposed to say, well, what do you expect out of a socialist? Or, you know, somebody not born in America.

But I just couldn't, wouldn't. And so I just said, you know, that's just not true. I've been with the president. I've seen him put his hand over his heart. It's just not true. The man is a patriotic American who loves the country, loves his wife, loves his kids. Afterwards, they -- and I went on to say, but I just disagree with him. But after this a Republican operative came up to me and said, don't give him that.

SPITZER: You know --

INGLIS: That he's a patriotic American.

PARKER: Don't give the president that?

INGLIS: Yes, and of course I'm thinking, how are we going to get to these hard things? Like I was just complimenting Paul Ryan on having a great plan for fixing Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security.

How are we going to get to that if we're embroiled in this mosh pit where we maul each other about whether he's a socialist and a secret Muslim and a whatever? When what we should be saying is, listen, you disagree with him. We conservatives have better ideas that will really work. But we don't need to attack him as a person and we don't need to drag the country down in all that negative kind of -- disastrous kind of mauling of one another.

SPITZER: One of the things that is disconcerting to many of us I think is that there seem to be climate change deniers in leadership positions now in the Republican Party and we just wonder if there's going to be any (INAUDIBLE) there and any hope for con fronting what is a very real economic and scientific problem.

INGLIS: Well, I think we're pressing the pause button here for a while on climate change legislation.

But the problem is, even if you think the climate change is a bunch of hooey, what everybody needs to understand is this. China is not pressing the pause button. They're pressing the fast forward button. And so we're going to wake up after a couple of years and we're going to realize, Jiminy, China is on down this road and they're planning on selling that stuff to us.

This can be another American century if we get with it and say we're going to be the people that creates that new technology. And we're going to make the free enterprise system work in that way. That's the key to this, is making sure the free enterprise system actually works.

Currently, it's not working because all the costs aren't in -- aren't in on petroleum and coal. If they were, then these alternatives would be viable. So that's what a shift, an attack shift does. When you reduce taxes somewhere else, shift it on to pollution, then the result is you make it so that it's an all-in comparison.

PARKER: Well, Congressman, as a South Carolinian, I just want to say I think it's sad that you will not be going back to Washington in January. You're exactly the kind of voice we need there.

But before we let you go, what are your plans for the future? INGLIS: Well, I don't know exactly. Can I give out a phone number and see if --

(LAUGHTER)

INGLIS: There might be somebody out there interested.

PARKER: Absolutely.

INGLIS: So -- I hope there's an opportunity for me in that alternative energy sector. That's what I'm very excited about. It's -- it would be exciting for me to move from something I've loved, which is being in Congress, to something I could love even more, which is actually delivering products to customers.

That's the -- that's what's available to us as entrepreneurs across America. It's available to us as a country. If we just get this good policy in place.

PARKER: All right, Congressman Inglis, a great conversation, thanks so much for joining us.

SPITZER: Still ahead, we're taking it to the streets and PARKER SPITZER with the Doobie Brothers performing right here in our studio coming right up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PROF. SIEGFRIED HECKER, LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL INSTITUTE: The problem comes from the fact of the dual use nature of those facilities, so either that facility, if reconfigured, then could make, you know, perhaps enough fuel for one or two bombs a year.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SPITZER: Now the man who has been where no other westerner had ever been before, the new nuclear facility in Yongbyong, North Korea. In fact, no one even knew the facility existed before he was taken to see it just this month.

PARKER: Professor Siegfried Hecker is among other things the former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. The most important U.S. nuclear research facility. And he joins us today from Los Alamos.

Welcome, Professor Hecker.

Thank you very much, Kathleen.

SPITZER: So, Professor, let's begin with this simple question. How did you end up being asked to visit this facility in North Korea? Why you? Why now? What did you see?

HECKER: I've been there at Yongbyong three times before this particular visit. And this was actually my seventh visit altogether to North Korea. So I had established a relationship with both the North Korean government officials but especially with their scientists at the Yongbyong nuclear center.

So I think they felt comfortable. If they were going to send a message about their facilities, they felt comfortable sending that with me.

PARKER: Well -- but clearly -- clearly, you were not expecting to see a facility of this kind. Can you describe it to us? What happened when -- I mean, you walk in the door, what did you see?

HECKER: So yes, when I put in my request as to what I wanted to do and what I wanted to see, I actually asked to see the uranium enrichment facility because for the first time in 2009, they said we now will develop uranium enrichment and then they said we've been successful.

So I said well, if you've been successful, so next time I come to Yongbyong, why don't you show me the facility? So I was hoping to see uranium enrichment facility but I thought I would see, you know, antiquated, sort of starter kit of centrifuges. And instead, what I saw was just absolutely remarkable and, quite frankly, stunning.

PARKER: When you said you walked in, expecting to see something rather elemental -- elementary, and instead you saw what? I mean, can you describe it for us? What did the room look like? I mean, is it -- was it -- are we talking about "Star Trekky" or what?

HECKER: Let me start outside the facility because this is a building I had been in before but it looked different. And one of the ways it looked different, it was clean, it had polished granite steps leading up to a second floor close to the control room. And then they pointed me in the direction of two observation windows which looked down over a high bay area.

And when I looked down at what I saw at the high bay area, my jaw must have just dropped, you know, several inches, and that is, I saw hundreds and hundreds of clean, modern-looking centrifuges lined up in doubles, in three rows across this facility, and eventually we were told that actually what they had in this high bay area was 2,000 centrifuges.

So instead of seeing, you know, perhaps a few dozen old centrifuges, I saw 2,000 modern centrifuges plumed up and apparently ready to go. And they claim that they were operating at the time, but that's too difficult to know when you're separated and insulated nationally, in essence, from the facility itself.

PARKER: So what -- were you looking at a power plant or a weapon factory?

HECKER: That facility, if reconfigured, then could make, you know, perhaps enough fuel for one or two bombs a year. Or if a facility just like that is built some place else and duplicated, then you could use this facility, make reactor fuel. Use another facility to make bomb fuel. That's the concern.

PARKER: Well, so is this one of a kind or are you afraid there may be others like it?

HECKER: So we don't know that for certain. However, they did not start even the building reconstruction of this facility until April 2009. That's when they expelled the international inspectors and the U.S. technical team that had been in there.

And they probably spent the first six months or so just doing the reconstruction of the building or perhaps even more than that. And so they were able to move in, in less than a year 2,000 centrifuges and get them operating.

That's simply not doable without having done it some place else before. So we know for a fact that they must have done it some place else before. And my own guess, and I always had thought, that they had been doing centrifuge technology research for the last 30 years or so.

We just never -- or I didn't expect them to be this far. So they must have been manufacturing, acquiring the materiel, the components, and then manufacturing them, and getting to work some place else for many years.

So whether they took all of that and moved it to the new facility, or have another one that's located, that we simply don't know.

PARKER: Well, even though you specifically asked to see this, they obviously didn't have to show you, but it sounds like they were rather proud of it, proud to show you this facility. Why do you think they wanted you to see it?

HECKER: Well, what they showed me, first, actually, was the experimental light water construction site. And they wanted me to see that, I believe, in order to explain to the world this really is an experimental light water reactor.

And the fact that they showed it to me now, I believe, was so that in a couple of weeks' time, the overhead imagery would have been able to tell that they're constructing a new reactor, and the rest of the world most likely would have thought it was going to be another plutonium-producing reactor, such as the one that they have next door, but that's currently dormant.

So by bringing me there, showing me the light water reactor, they can actually get, you know, verification of the fact that they're doing light water reactor technology. Now, once you do that, then the automatic suspicion is, one also must do enrichment, so where is it? So they decided to show it to me.

And what's quite remarkable, now that we know where it is, it's just absolutely amazing. When you look at the overheads, this new building is more than 100 meters long, and instead of all of the gray drab roofs that you see at the Yongbyong facility when you look at the overheads, this one has a bright blue roof.

And so it's almost like they painted a bull's eye on this facility, and said, you know, here's a new facility, you know, come and look at it. And so what they did is they asked me to come and look at it.

SPITZER: When you looked at the centrifuges, when you looked at the entire structure they had built, was there any way for you to determine where this technology came from? Was there any signs in terms of the type of equipment that you'd seen this before in either Chinese or Pakistani labs or any sum such?

HECKER: You know from anything I've seen, that there's no Chinese connection. At least there's no Chinese government connection. From looking at the past research of looking at their procurement efforts and also their people traffic efforts, to me at least at this point, the finger points most directly at Pakistan.

And in fact we know President Musharraf in his memoir actually said that A.Q. Khan gave the North Koreans a starter kit and he also said there have been North Koreans at the Khan Research Laboratory, and there are many of those kind of those reports.

So there's no question that there has been a significant Pakistani/North Korea collaboration over the years. Again, I just didn't expect, or most analysts didn't expect it, to have gone this far because they still needed to get all the materiel that's difficult to acquire.

PARKER: OK, Professor Siegfried Hecker, a fascinating conversation. Thank you so much for being with us.

HECKER: You're welcome.

SPITZER: Thank you.

HECKER: Thank you both.

PARKER: Thank you.

HECKER: You and Eliot, thank you.

PARKER: Still ahead, we're taking it to the streets on PARKER SPITZER with the Doobie Brothers performing right here in our studio coming right up. We'll be right back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PARKER: How afraid should we be? How nervous should we be?

JAMIE METZL, FMR. CLINTON NATL. SECURITY COUNCIL: Why, we should be afraid just because we don't know that much about North Korea's rulers but they are erratic and they're also desperate.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SPITZER: With North Korea's brazen provocations testing the world's patience, what options do President Obama and Asia's powers have right now?

PARKER: And joining us to discuss the fallout from the revelation of North Korea's modernized nuclear facility is Jamie Metzl. He's a former member of Bill Clinton's National Security Council who was at the DMZ between North and South Korea just last week.

SPITZER: Jamie, let me ask you this one. Just in the past week, two unbelievable provocations from North Korea. First, they bombed South Korea, killing civilians. And second, they intentionally released this story about their new nuclear facility, which raises all sorts of concerns.

Make sense out of this for us. Why are they doing it? What does it mean?

METZL: North Korea is a country in a completely desperate state. Their economy is in free fall. They don't have enough food. Their government is weak and it's controlled by this very domineering group of small number of people, and they're desperate.

And not only that, the United States has put forward this policy with our South Korean allies to say well, we're going to -- we're not going to reward bad behavior. When you are serious about the nuclear proliferation talks and getting rid of your nuclear weapons, let's come and have a conversation.

And so things are getting worse and worse and North Korea is realizing that their weakness can become a strength. Because South Korea has so much more to lose than the North does, that if the North has provocations like this, it forces the rest of the world to say, wait, hold on a second, if we do nothing, this could get worse and worse and worse, and so what's the cost of paying you off to get you to behave?

PARKER: Well, let's talk about that. Does this aggressive action from North Korea indicate that the U.S. should change its policy?

METZL: I don't think it should, but there are people who are making that case. It's like a child who's misbehaving. And so you're in the supermarket and your child wants something, and your child starts screaming, you say no, we're not going to reward bad behavior.

And then the child really starts screaming. You say, wait, we don't want to reward that kind of behavior. And then the child starts grabbing things and throwing them and -- and you say -- you know what do you say?

SPITZER: You talk with your kids.

METZL: I wish I did. (CROSSTALK)

PARKER: This is quite a different tantrum, though, I mean they're killing people. And, you know, the revelation that North Korea has these thousands of centrifuges.

METZL: Right.

PARKER: And can have this -- has this amazing capability, as just an ordinary citizen, I'm thinking, OK, this is terrifying.

METZL: Yes.

PARKER: And yet the State Department says this is not a crisis.

How afraid should we be? How nervous should we be?

METZL: Why, we should be afraid just because -- I mean we don't know that much about North Korean's rulers, but they are erratic and they're also desperate. And these are guys -- people say, well, can't there be some kind of evolutionary progress in the North Korean regime?

But that's really difficult because when you have this level of oppression, either you're in power or you're dangling from a tree. And these guys I think know that. And even when they've experimented with little bits of opening in the past, they've recognized that that was going to challenge their authority.

And so they have these tools and they have proven themselves willing to use it. Are there red lines that are far out in the distance like a major attack on Seoul? There may maybe, but we really don't know, and I think we have to assume the worst case scenario because we really don't know that much of who we're dealing with.

Right now, there's a political transition, a power transition, father to son, in North Korea. That creates a lot of instability. And so we have to be cautious. And I think that we should be afraid.

PARKER: And how much is the son like the father? Is he just as irrational and just as unpredictable?

METZL: Well, nobody knows.

PARKER: Nobody knows.

METZL: Is the answer. But the father in some ways is irrational and unpredictable but in some ways it's crazy like a fox. I mean these guys have really no negotiating power and out of thin air they have created incredible leverage with their nuclear tests, with these increasing levels of provocation that force the international community to say, hey, wait a second, stop.

And then what can we give you to stop? And so there have been deals and deals where the international community says, all right, if you stop there, we'll give you food, we'll give you money, we'll give you even reactors. And that's the challenge, is do you buy them off or not? And if not, at what level of action by them and provocation by them do you say, hey, wait a sec?

PARKER: What if we pursue the metaphor of the unruly child?

METZL: Right.

PARKER: There's never any stopping, right? They're never satisfied once you give in.

METZL: Yes. It's true.

SPITZER: I want to come back to the centrifuges, another potential risk.

METZL: Yes.

SPITZER: And we don't yet, as you say, no. We don't understand what North Korea has militarily, how its delivery systems will function. One of the other aspects of this is where did they come from. Is this technology from China, which would reflect Chinese intentions?

METZL: Yes.

SPITZER: Or is it possibly from Pakistan, which is in a way equally disturbing. They're supposedly an ally. What do you make of this?

METZL: The answer is yes and yes. China, Pakistan, North Korea is what pretty much is the path that most people agree that this nuclear capability and knowledge traveled.

SPITZER: And isn't it deeply disconcerting that this technology would come from Pakistan, which, as we know, harboring Al Qaeda, the ISI, their intelligence service is undermining us with respect to our efforts in Afghanistan. How do we deal with supposed allies who are doing all of these different things simultaneously?

METZL: Well, that's a huge question. This transfer of technology happened a little while ago. It happened under the A.Q. Khan network that you, Eliot, know a lot about. And this is a huge question. The United States were close allies supposedly with Pakistan and yet our forces in Afghanistan are in many ways at war with Pakistan or Pakistan's proxy in Afghanistan. The A.Q. Khan network is the largest nuclear proliferator in the history of the world, so it's a big troubling question.

SPITZER: One last question --

METZL: Yes.

SPITZER: -- which I just have to ask. You're on the National Security Council.

METZL: Yes. SPITZER: This has been a horrendous week for our intelligence in the sense that we find out we are negotiating with an imposter.

METZL: Right.

SPITZER: And now we find out North Korea has this remarkable facility that came out of nowhere supposedly. What does this tell us about our inability to know what is going on out there in the hostile world?

METZL: Yes. It's really concerning. I mean, our intelligence community is great. It's first rate. It's the best in the world. But there are times when we miss things and we make mistakes. And certainly in a situation like Afghanistan, where it's just -- we can talk about this another time, it's a total and complete mess. In North Korea, where we don't have that many assets and we -- who knows what we have on the ground? There are limits to what you can learn through satellite technology. There are big gaps in what we can do. And with all of these dangers proliferating around the world, really, coming back to it, you say, Kathleen, it's frightening.

SPITZER: Yes. Jamie, thank you for a fascinating conversation.

PARKER: Thanks for being with us.

METZL: My pleasure.

SPITZER: Happy Thanksgiving.

METZL: Stay with us.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TERRANCE HAYES, NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER: When you think about the earliest work, the very first book, you know, "Dreams of My Father," and when you think about the lead-up to becoming president, I felt like there was a bit more shapeliness to the speeches and a bit for shapeliness to the language that he was giving us. And that's why inspired us.

SPITZER: More personal perhaps?

HAYES: Yes, yes, for sure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SPITZER: Tonight in the "Culture of Politics," our guest is not a politician but a poet. Then again, he believes the two professions have something in common.

PARKER: Terrance Hayes was born in Columbia, South Carolina, a place close to my heart. Of his work, another poet, Cornelius Eady, praises the unblinking truth-telling just beneath his lines. The open and generous way he takes in our world. Not bad from another poet. His latest collection, "Lighthead," won the National Book Award for poetry last week. Welcome, Terrance.

TERRANCE HAYES, NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER: Thank you. It's great to be here.

PARKER: It's great to have another South Carolinian.

HAYES: Sure. That's rare. Especially in New York.

PARKER: Especially a poet.

SPITZER: I'm surrounded by two wordsmiths here.

HAYES: Yes.

SPITZER: Pulitzer Prize winning, you know, columnist. You just won this huge award for poetry. I was just, you know, a mediocre politician.

HAYES: I think you've done pretty well.

SPITZER: Well, that aside, you think poetry and politics actually have something in common. In this day and age, how does that work.

HAYES: They have quite a bit in common. I think if you're just trying to convince people that you're worth being heard, that's something that all artists run into, poets run into it, the sort of shape of language and what is it that you want to tell people that make them interested in your message? And, of course, I think that's something that politicians deal with often. How are you going to shape a message? How are you going to engage people?

PARKER: Terrance, poetry has kind of a stigma attached to it. It always -- you know, it seems more and more viewed as something that takes place in coffee houses or in fit circles. How do we make poetry more popular? How do we bring it back?

HAYES: Well, it's interesting because if you're a poet, it's pretty popular.

PARKER: Yes.

HAYES: So it's an insular world but there's so many insular worlds. So I'm very pleased with the number of people that I engage that are reading poems and thinking about poems. In particular, even with this prize, the love I received from so many people suggest that there are people reading and there are people that care about what we do.

PARKER: Do we have any politicians who are poets?

HAYES: Oh, there's an interesting question. We have politicians who are writers, I mean, including our president. But I don't know about politicians who are poets. You know, no one knew I was a poet for a long time so --

SPITZER: Not literally poets but are there any politicians whose use of language is so eloquent that you look at them and you say they could have been a poet? They write with a grace. They write with a sensibility that you think borders on artistry?

PARKER: Sometimes you hear a great speech and you go, now that was poetry.

HAYES: Abraham Lincoln.

PARKER: There we go.

SPITZER: That's a dismal statement of the last 150 years of our politics.

HAYES: It might be a reflection of the culture. I mean, our general relationship with language has changed. And so someone that thinks about it as a kind of material to shape is, you know, it's sort of a rare thing.

SPITZER: How about President Obama? Certainly some of his speeches is --

HAYES: Oh, yes.

SPITZER: He gets high praise for his use of language.

HAYES: Absolutely.

SPITZER: That only because he's being compared to other politicians, or do you read them and say they actually are crafted the way an artist would?

HAYES: For sure, yes. Absolutely. I think he's a writer. And that's one of the most exciting things about having him in office, is to have someone who seems to be literary, which is sort of different from being a writer.

SPITZER: OK. I don't want to suggest we set you up with that but, OK.

HAYES: Yes. Sure.

SPITZER: We have our first literary president. Everybody is saying at the same time his communication with the public hasn't worked, so how do you square those two?

HAYES: I have an opinion about that. I mean, I think when you think about the earliest work, the very first book, you know, "Dreams of My Father," and when you think about the lead-up to becoming president, I felt like there was a bit more shapeliness to the speeches and a bit more shapeliness to the language that he was giving us. And that's what inspired us.

SPITZER: More personal perhaps? HAYES: Yes, yes, for sure. But I think that there was a sort of response to that, where people thought, you know, it's just rhetoric, it's just inspiring people, which baffled me because I think that, you know, action grows out of language. It grows out of the expressions that he gave us.

SPITZER: Is poetry perhaps a voice of dissent? We've had this conversation with another artist who was on the show who basically said that when you have an oppressive government --

HAYES: Right.

SPITZER: -- artists are the voice that rises up because other forms of -- other voices are perhaps pushed back.

HAYES: Sure.

SPITZER: Is poetry, can it fill that void?

HAYES: I think it does. I think that most people have a sense of dissension in them. And it just so happens that the people who can, again, shape the message in the most effective way become our artists. And I think that's one of the relationships between, again, poets and politicians. So it is a voice of dissent but it's mostly because, you know, maybe writers and artists know how to craft the message more than them being individuals who have that message.

PARKER: Terrance, you write a poem about Katrina. And we're going to is you to read it for us.

HAYES: The mouth is where the dead who are not dead do not dream. A house of damaged translations. Task married to distraction. As in a bucket left in a storm, a choir singing in the rain like fish acquiring air under water.

Prayer and sin. The body performs to know it is alive. Lit from the inside by reckoning. As in a city which is no longer a city. The tongue reaching down a tunnel and the teeth wet as windows set along a highway, where the dead live in the noise of their shotgun houses. They drift from their wards like fish, spreading thin as a song, diminished by its own opening. Split by faith and soaked in it. The mouth is a flooded machine.

PARKER: Wow. Just a few words. Great feeling. Great, amazing images. It's what poetry does.

HAYES: Thank you.

SPITZER: You know, I got to say, I was in a profession, a lot of words, little meaning. You're in a profession, few words, much meaning.

PARKER: Yes.

SPITZER: I applaud that.

HAYES: Thank you. Thanks a lot.

PARKER: Terrance Hayes, thank you so much for being with us.

HAYES: It's an honor to be here with you two.

PARKER: We appreciate it. Thank you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SPITZER: Special holiday performance tonight. The Doobie Brothers are here. For four decades, The Doobie Brothers have been recording albums, performing live on stage to adoring audiences. Now a new album, "World Gone Crazy."

PARKER: All right, Tom and Pat, you all are from the original group. Tom, please introduce us to the whole band.

TOM JOHNSTON, THE DOOBIE BROTHERS: I'd be happy to. On your far left over there, playing keyboards, Mr. Guy Allison. Back here on drums, Tony Pia. Over here on base and vocals, John Cowan. Right here, the man you just mentioned, Mr. Pat Simmons.

SPITZER: Love the hat.

JOHNSTON: John McPhee on guitar and vocals.

PARKER: So formal. Oh, my gosh. Well, welcome, everybody. And thanks so much for coming. Listen, you guys have been together 40 years, longer than most marriages. How do you do it? Who wants to go first?

PARKER: Pat in the hat.

PAT SIMMONS, THE DOOBIE BROTHERS: The music has kept us together. I think we love to play music and we have a great -- a great band and we're still friends. You know.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's the best part.

PARKER: Maybe marriages, less talking, more music.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely. Absolutely.

JOHNSTON: On the road for a while and go off.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And we just don't know any better.

SPITZER: Good lesson to the rest of us. Look, this new album you got a song from your very first album called "Nobody." Why are you re-releasing it? What's it about? Tell us about the song.

JOHNSTON: It was Ted Templeton (ph) who was the producer of the album. It was his idea. He produced basically most of the albums The Doobie Brothers have done. And that was on the very first we ever did. And he always felt that it didn't get its full desserts and wanted just to give it another shot. So we went in the studio, tore it apart and put it back together and it does sound way better than it did back then.

SPITZER: Pat, one of the things you guys have all been involved with over the years is helping out our veterans. Tell us about it, why you care so much and what you do.

SIMMONS: Well, we've been involved with veterans programs for a number of years. Probably, gosh, 30 years maybe. We just -- you know, we come from that generation that, you know, Vietnam was our war and we always felt -- you know, we were fortunate that we were able to, you know, we didn't serve but we were -- we were there while it was all going on and when the guys were coming home. We had so many friends. And we kind of decided a long time ago that we would be involved in, you know, kind of bringing the guys back home and helping guys to, you know, reincorporate into society. And with all that's been going on the last few years, it's even more important. So we've, you know, we've been allied with a number of veteran groups.

SPITZER: You know, I just want to say thank you to you guys for that. Like everybody else, no matter what you thought about the war, you want to stand there with our troops when they got home and take care of them, help them, let them know how much we appreciate it, everything they did. So thank you, guys, for helping out in that way.

SIMMONS: Such an important thing to do.

SPITZER: Absolutely. Absolutely.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're happy to do it.

SPITZER: Thank you.

PARKER: All right, hear hear. Well, we're going to hear "Nobody" from the new album in just a few minutes. But first, let's get a mood set with the classic favorite from the album, the 1973 album "The Captain and Me" playing their hit song "China Grove," The Doobie Brothers.

THE DOOBIE BROTHERS, "CHINA GROVE": When the sun comes up on a sleepy little town down around San Antone. And the folks are rising for another day around about their homes.

The people of the town are strange. And they're proud of where they came. Well, you're talking about China Grove Oh, China Grove.

Well, the preacher and the teacher. Lord, they're a caution. They are the talk of the town. When the gossip gets to flying. And they ain't lying. When the sun goes falling down.

They say that the father's insane. And there's Missus Perkin's again. We're talking about the China Grove. Oh, China Grove.

But every day there's a new thing coming. In praise of an oriental view. The sheriff and his buddies with their samurai swords. You can even hear the music at night.

And though it's a part of the Lone Star State. People don't seem to care. They just keep on looking to the East.

Talking about China Grove. Oh, China Grove.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, I'm Tom Foreman. We'll have more of "PARKER SPITZER" in a moment. But first, the latest.

Officials in Haiti say Sunday's presidential election will go on as planned, despite the cholera outbreak that has now killed more than 1,400 people. Some presidential candidates had urged that the election be postponed.

A jury has convicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on money laundering charges. Sentencing is set for next month. He faces a maximum 99 years in prison for money laundering and 20 years on a conspiracy charge.

Tonight on "360," a potential weak point in airport security. Why some people who have the greatest access to planes don't get screened at all. We are keeping them honest.

You're up to date on this Thanksgiving eve with the latest. "PARKER SPITZER" is back right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SPITZER: We're back with The Doobie Brothers.

PARKER: The any new album is called "World Gone Crazy." This next song is from that album. It's called "Nobody." Here once again, The Doobie Brothers.

THE DOOBIE BROTHERS, "NOBODY": Evil ways of practice may surround you. Calling on your inner core of life. But your father was just a complex man of business. And your mother merely portioned out your fright. But run the risk of a sudden loss. You got no mama to bear your cross beside you. Uh huh, uh huh. As midnight angels shine their wings. And time begins just build a wall around you.

Nobody, nobody going take my love away from me. Nobody, nobody going take my love away from me.

Setting out on a voyage down to Jenner. I've given all I've got to help the cause. Need a place just to settle out my pressures. A place where you and I can sit and pause. So I can see the sky at night. Without a fear of hidden light to blind me.

Mm, mm. And so you see the path is clear. And changes will be swayed around me. Yeah.

Nobody, nobody going take my love away from me. Everybody is going to say this. Nobody, nobody going take my love away from me.

PARKER: A big thank you to The Doobie Brothers.

SPITZER: Thank you, guys.

PARKER: Thank you.

SPITZER: Good night from New York. "LARRY KING LIVE" is next.