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Parker Spitzer
President Obama Meets With Chinese President Hu Jintao; Interview With Pima County Sheriff Dupnik
Aired January 18, 2011 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KATHLEEN PARKER, CO-HOST: Good evening. I'm Kathleen Parker.
ELIOT SPITZER, CO-HOST: And I'm Eliot Spitzer.
PARKER: Right now in Washington, Chinese president Hu Jintao is at the White House for a very small, very private dinner with President Obama. Also at the table, Secretary of State Clinton, national security adviser Thomas Donilon and their Chinese counterparts. The dinner kicks off a two-day visit with very high stakes.
SPITZER: It will all look carefully choreographed, with lots of polite smiles and photo ops, but beneath the pomp and circumstance, we are witnessing an historic jousting match. On one side, a superpower that has dominated the world stage for decades. On the other, China, an emerging powerhouse poised to try to wrestle away that superpower title. We'll have more on the summit in just a moment.
But first, here are the big questions we're drilling down on tonight. Does Osama bin Laden now realize he made a grave tactical error when he attacked the United States on September 11, 2001? Perhaps the world's greatest authority on al Qaeda has surprising new evidence on this question.
Also, disturbing new information from the scene of last week's deadly rampage in Arizona, gunman Jared Loughner's every action captured on surveillance cameras. Does this new evidence blow his chance for an insanity defense?
And our lead story tonight, the visit of China's president. Does President Hu Jintao's visit mark the beginning of the end for America's reign as the world's sole great power?
PARKER: As Hu Jintao's visit begins, China is clearly aware that many Americans fear it, the sheer size of the country, its awesome economic power, its increasing military might. So right now in Times Square, in the middle of Manhattan, China is trying to ease American mistrust. The country has produced a 30-second commercial that is playing continuously on gigantic neon screens 300 times a day, and also right here on CNN. Like China itself, the ad is big and colorful. Take a look.
(VIDEO CLIP) SPITZER: The image campaign is obviously meant to show Americans that China is just like us. According to a Chinese government Web site, it's also part of a five-year plan to, quote, "promote vigorous development and prosperity of socialist culture." But can we expect the same feel-good vibe in the official meeting this week?
Here with the latest is CNN's senior White House correspondent, Ed Henry. Ed, thanks for joining us. Looking at -- Ed, give us the latest, if you would.
ED HENRY, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, sure, Eliot and Kathleen. I mean, it's really interesting because you talk about the vibe and the kind of the good spirit that they're trying to promote publicly. In private -- you know, they're having dinner right now, the two presidents in the residence. They're in the old family dining room. And what's significant about that -- it's a very small, intimate stating. It's not like the State Dining Room, where they have these official dinners. We'll see a big, lavish state dinner tomorrow night.
Instead, this is kind of the small, intimate setting where they can really get down to business, go over some of these tough issues, like the trade imbalance, the U.S. push to get some currency reform in China, and also the push for human rights changes in China, as well.
And so what I'm told from senior U.S. officials is that behind closed doors right now at this dinner, President Obama's plan was to take the tone -- make it very tough, very direct with the Chinese president, make it clear he wants to see some changes.
But tomorrow, when they come out for this joint press conference in public, it's going to be very nice. And that's because they realize that you can't sort of make the Chinese look bad in public. It will backfire. It will get you nowhere. And so what they want to do is try to put this pressure on behind closed doors. But in public, we'll see a much different diplomatic dance -- Eliot, Kathleen.
PARKER: Well, Ed, speaking of that, Vice President Joe Biden greeted President Hugh (ph) at the -- Hu -- I'm sorry -- at the airport today. How do we interpret this? Do we read anything into the fact that it wasn't President Obama himself?
HENRY: No, I mean, I think we're going to see President Obama obviously having dinner right now with President Hu at the White House. Tomorrow, he and the first lady will be welcoming the Chinese president for the official state visit and the state dinner, as well. And Vice President Biden is someone this president relies on, you know, for a lot of national security challenge, not just dealing with China, but Iraq, Afghanistan, et cetera.
I think the other thing, when you take a step back, what senior U.S. officials are really trying to make the point -- and I think we'll hear this from President Obama in public tomorrow, as well -- is the fact that while there's sometimes fear in the U.S. about, Boy, China's rising so much, they're taking over -- you know, U.S. officials like to point out the U.S. economy, even though it's been struggling, is still three times larger than China's. And the fact of the matter is that China only holds U.S. liabilities of about 1.2, 1.3 percent. And so this idea that China is buying up all our debt, they're taking over -- this Obama administration believes that's wildly inflated. Sure, the U.S. has economic problems, but that a lot of this is being sort of inflated and hyped up and is not really true, Eliot and Kathleen.
SPITZER: Well, Ed, nonetheless, a lot of the conversation about China does relate to dollars, trade, job losses. And what struck me about tonight's dinner is that you see the security officials there, Secretary of State Clinton and the national security adviser, not Tim Geithner and the Treasury folks who deal with economics. What do we read into that? Because that, frankly, kind of surprised me.
HENRY: Well, that's a good point. I think where you're going to see -- Treasury Secretary Geithner, I can tell you, has been heavily involved behind the scenes. Tomorrow, he's going to have a very public role. Tonight is maybe a little bit more about national security. You'll remember Defense Secretary Bob Gates was just in China last week having some of these high-level discussions. They'll continue that tonight at the White House.
But I think you're going to see a sharp turn to the economic focus tomorrow for a number of reasons. You're right, the U.S. wants to deal with some of these trade imbalances, number one. But number two, they also want to deal with intellectual property. I mean, you still have piracy as a huge issue in China that is really impacting U.S. industries. You have Hollywood upset about the movies that are just taken over there with no regard for the intellectual property, and also software that's just stolen. And so the bottom line is U.S. officials say, Look, China has serious laws on the books, but they don't enforce them.
SPITZER: Look, Ed, for all the reasons you just articulated, I would have thought tonight, at the first critical meeting, as a matter of the imagery of the summit, the White House would have wanted Tim Geithner there to read the riot act to President Hu, to say, You know what? You're not living up to your treaty obligation. You're stealing our intellectual property. You're buying up our companies. This game is over. Even if he didn't say it at the dinner table, I would have expected them to want to be able to say he had said it. And what we're seeing now is just a conversation, I presume, about aircraft carriers and the China Sea, so I'm a little surprised about that.
HENRY: Yes, well, I mean, look, Secretary Geithner was out there publicly last week and gave a speech outlining some of the points you just made. Maybe he could have reinforced it even more, obviously, if he were at the dinner table tonight. But I can guarantee you, you're raising some good points that the White House is fully aware of, and they're going to be talking about that tomorrow.
PARKER: All right, Ed Henry, stay right there. We want to bring you back in a moment to continue the conversation. But first, we want to take a look at China's meteoric economic rise and what it means for our own bottom line. SPITZER: Joining us now to break it all down, our own in-house authority, Christine Romans. Christine is going to give us a lot of numbers and charts. You know I love those numbers!
(LAUGHTER)
SPITZER: Let's see these numbers, what it all means, Christine.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, HOST, "YOUR BOTTOM LINE": All right, this is what it means. The last three decades, China has transformed itself into an economic powerhouse. It's growing on average 10 percent a year, while the U.S. slowly shakes off the great recession, growing at around 2.6 percent. The U.S. is still the economic superpower. Ed Henry is right. China's economy is just one third the size of the U.S.
But China's population is some four times bigger, that population one of the reasons China has become the factory floor to the world, among others. It overtook Germany last year as the world's largest exporter. It overtook Japan to become the world's second largest economy. And depending on who's forecasting, it'll overtake the U.S. economy in size by 2020 to 2030.
You're going to hear a lot about currency diplomacy. China's currency is undervalued by anywhere from 10 to 40 percent. That favors Chinese manufacturing. Imagine the competition between the now-awakened sleeping giant, China, and a mature superpower, the United States. Imagine it as a 100-mile race. China is already at the 40-mile marker, the U.S. at the starting line.
China is also America's banker, $895 billion in T bonds. It has a cash hoard of almost $2.9 trillion. It's using that money every day to build its economy, invest in its infrastructure, modernize its military and scour the globe for natural resources. U.S. slowly shaking off a great recession at the same time.
PARKER: All right, Christine, can this administration do what others have failed to do and get China to play fair with currency?
ROMANS: Many say they absolutely have to. We're writing the pages of history right now, and this administration has to go where others have failed. The question is, do they have the chops to do it? And can they do what other administrations, the past administration, as well, could not do, what Hank Paulson couldn't do, and others? The Chinese only do what is in the best national interests of China. Make no mistake. And it's in the best national interests of China to proceed as it is right now.
SPITZER: It's not just a question of chops, it's a question of leverage. I mean, if you think about it, the trade deficit with China last year, about $260 billion -- they have this huge cash hoard that you just talked about. What leverage do we have? And they're using this money to buy everything up. Talk about what they're buying and the strategic impact of that.
ROMANS: Well, the leverage that we have is that we are their biggest customer. And while they are also our, you know, big investor, they want to make sure their investment to going solidly. How are they spending that money? Natural resources. They're going around the world to some countries that, frankly, are not our friends, and they are signing deals with other countries to secure their own natural resources. They are spending on solar technology, on renewable energy resources, also on traditional, you know, fossil fuel fields.
They're doing just about everything -- oh, gosh, I mean, I could go down the list, huge, massive investments in their own infrastructure so that they can be the powerhouse of the future.
SPITZER: And it goes beyond that. Just in today's papers, two enormously important deals, one with GE about airline technology.
ROMANS: That's right.
SPITZER: So they will now begin to make airplanes, one of our last remaining exports that actually turns a surplus for the country. They will compete directly with Boeing. They're buying it from GE. And batteries -- so you talk about clean tech. They're buying up the technology of the future. So how are we going to compete against that?
ROMANS: Look, they have a great deal of money to do this. I mean, we talk about the reserves. We talk about how much money they have. And the irony is, is that the American middle class felt more rich for how many years because of cheaper products they could buy overseas? We borrowed money from China...
PARKER: So we could buy their stuff.
ROMANS: ... so we could buy their stuff, and now they're using those dollars to invest in China. And the United States -- many people in the United States are worried that if we don't make the right steps now and make sure that both countries are moving together forward this century, that it will China's century and not America's.
PARKER: Christine, is it fair to say that we, in our gluttony, in our greed, in our...
(LAUGHTER)
PARKER: ... to buy things have essentially sold our own middle class down the road?
ROMANS: I don't know if the middle class were given the choice, if they knew that by buying so many consumer products (INAUDIBLE) so many companies -- I mean, I think this is -- I mean, what do you -- I mean, I think that this was something that happened without anybody really -- the middle class, at least, really knowing that it was happening to them along the way. And now the, you know, horse is out of the barn.
SPITZER: This is the flattening of the earth. Globalization technology almost made it inevitable when they became a capitalist country.
But anyway, let's bring Ed back in to the conversation from Washington. Ed, we know the president wants to appear to push hard against President Hu on these crucial issues. Where do you think he thinks his leverage is, so that he can push back on everything from trade to intellectual property theft to human rights? How does he see his leverage?
HENRY: They see two areas. One, the point Christine made, which is great, which is that we're China's biggest customer. That does give the U.S. at least some leverage. The second point may not be as clear at face value, which is the fact that while currency manipulation in the short term seems to really help China, what U.S. officials say in private is, Look, it's also driving inflation through the roof in China right now. You see wages, the cost of goods are just going sky high right now. And the U.S. believes China can't sustain that long term, and so they're going to have to reform the currency, whether they want to do it or not, just for their own economic survival. So that's one point.
Secondly, you're right, though, we've got to be skeptical that when the U.S. continually says, Look, we're going to be really tough in private, but in public, we've got to be nice, we've got to be nice because that's the way you do this -- we're not behind closed doors with them. We don't really know how tough they're being.
But in fact, there is a point as to why the U.S. has to be careful about how hard they push, and that's the fact that we have to remember, President Hu is supposed to leave the stage in 2012. And so he's thinking about his legacy. He's not going to burnish his legacy by giving in to President Obama on human rights or on trade on our currency. He's going to help his legacy if he digs in his heels and gets tough with the U.S. That will be read very well back home. And so we've got to be careful not to push too hard, or it might backfire.
SPITZER: But Ed, let me ask you this, and also Christine. What China has done recently is make a huge investment in Europe, as well. They have basically bailed out the euro and gone to the European nations and said, You can count on us to take care of your potential bankruptcies. And so they are building bridges to Europe just as much if not more than to the United States. How does that play, and what does that mean economically?
HENRY: Well, I mean, look, you're right. I mean, they're pouring money into Africa right now, as well, all around the world, using their cash advantage. There's no doubt they're doing that. But I think the other point to think about is the fact that after he leaves Washington, President Hu is going to go to Chicago. And the reason why he's going to do that, he's going to visit an auto parts plant where China's been investing money right here in the United States, creating U.S. jobs.
Clearly, this is a PR offensive, as you mentioned, the ad at the top of the show, where they're trying to say, Look, you know, Chinese investment doesn't always have to be bad, it could actually mean a net growth of U.S. jobs. But the fact of the matter is, that auto parts plant is probably a drop in the bucket compared to the jobs that have gone over to China, or gone overseas in general. And so that's a very tough case to make right now when the U.S. has such stubbornly high unemployment.
ROMANS: And tomorrow, you know, they're going to meet with big business leaders, a lot of different folks from a lot of different industries. And one thing that I think that business is very interested in is this intellectual property issue. Why can't the Chinese get control of what is rampant intellectual property theft? Why can't it -- system of laws be a little more mature and more favorable to the innovators and the people who are coming up with good ideas and starting businesses? And what you hear from business leaders a lot is that if the Chinese could go after intellectual property theft with the zeal it goes after democracy protesters, they would be a little more pleased about that.
SPITZER: But here's the interesting thing. If you look at who's going to be at that lunch tomorrow -- Steve Ballmer from Microsoft is going to be there.
ROMANS: Right.
SPITZER: He cares deeply about intellectual property. But Jeff Immelt from GE is going to be there. China is becoming his biggest customer.
ROMANS: That's right.
SPITZER: He just signed this deal with them to sell them and give them access to the best aerospace technology in the world. And so in a way, he is giving away -- not giving away, he's selling it, but taking their money to give them the technology...
(CROSSTALK)
ROMANS: ... very concerned about this because they -- you know, what the Chinese want from us -- the Chinese say, We can narrow our trade deficit if only you would sell us more of the things we want, like very high technology, aerospace things, things with military applications. And that -- you know, that's something that concerns people who are worried about someday being on the other side of China perhaps in the South China Sea.
PARKER: You know, Christine, obviously, the Chinese plan way ahead. They've got this ad campaign going as part of a five-year plan. And you know, I wonder if we are our own worst enemy, in a sense, because we measure things in terms of two and four-year political cycles. The Chinese think of things in terms of decades and centuries.
ROMANS: You're right.
PARKER: Can we really compete with them when we're constantly checking -- holding ourselves back by these political campaigns?
ROMANS: Isn't that what leadership is supposed to be for, you know? I mean, you hope for leadership in Washington that could look beyond two years and four years, and especially when you have such a disciplined kind of approach in China to how it's trying to build its own -- its own economy and to -- to actually -- stability and harmony within their country is paramount, and that's what everything comes down to there. Here, it's all election cycles, isn't it.
PARKER: Yes.
SPITZER: All right. Ed Henry, Christine Romans, thanks for being with us.
When we come back, Arizona shooter Jared Loughner in cold blood. New surveillance captures his rampage moment by moment. What the tape tells us. And the recall effort threatening Arizona sheriff Clarence Dupnik. We've got him here coming right up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: New details today on that deadly shooting rampage in Tucson, chilling surveillance videos from cameras in the Safeway store. They clearly show the entire sequence of events, every action by Jared Loughner, every one of the shots he fired. According to "The Washington Post," the tapes capture Loughner shooting Representative Gabrielle Giffords in the face at point-blank range, just two to three feet away. Moments later, he turns on U.S. district judge John Roll, killing him.
What we didn't know was that the judge was shot as he tried to help another victim, Giffords's aide, Ron Barber. Earlier, Loughner is shown talking to a store clerk in the Safeway and seen putting sound-muffling earplugs in before he begins the attack. The footage, now in the possession of the FBI, is expected to be used in court.
PARKER: As of today, nearly 400 law enforcement officials have interviewed hundreds of potential witnesses, trying to understand what exactly drove Loughner to such violence.
Meanwhile, a recall campaign against Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik is gaining momentum. Dupnik ignited a firestorm after the shooting when he called Arizona a mecca of prejudice and bigotry.
Sheriff Dupnik joins us from Tucson. Welcome, Sheriff.
SHERIFF CLARENCE DUPNIK, PIMA COUNTY, AZ: Thanks for inviting me.
SPITZER: Well, it's always great to chat with you. First, one of the things that has been, obviously, a topic of conversation is gun laws and whether or not somebody like Jared Loughner should have been able to walk into a store, get a gun, get a clip with 31, 33 bullets in it. What are your views on that? Do you think we could tighten up these laws in a way that would, you know, still protect, you know, what a lot of people like you view as 2nd Amendment rights and yet somehow keep guns out of the hands of people like Jared Loughner?
DUPNIK: Well, I happen to be a gun proponent, as a matter of fact. I'm not being painted that way. But I believe that what we have in our society generally, and especially in Arizona, which probably has the most lax gun laws of any state in the union, is that we've just gone too far. When the assault rifles ban expired, the extended magazines went back into effect. And our lawmakers are saying today that they don't intend to do anything about that. And from my point of view, we've just gone too far.
We have a piece of legislation that's in the current legislature now which would allow concealed weapons by students and teachers on campuses, college campuses. And it's just -- it's getting insane. It's getting irresponsible. There's just no limit. When it comes to the issue of, should Jared Loughner have been given a gun, any state in the union, I think, legally would have been forced to sell him a gun.
DUPNIK: Sheriff, your community has been through a great trauma, and you have caught a lot of flak yourself for describing rhetoric as having contributed to this environment and people you called flame- throwers. Well, a new poll just released today show that Sarah Palin's favorability has dropped to 38 percent. Do you feel at all vindicated by your criticism of the flame-throwers?
DUPNIK: You know what I said, I felt. And I was very, very angry at the time. But I have believed that for years, and I think that millions of Americans also believe that what's going on in our country is not good for our country. I think most Americans are simply fed up with the way politicians are behaving in our country. It's all about, We need to be in power. We don't care really what's best for America.
SPITZER: You know, Sheriff, I could not agree more with everything you've just said. And I don't want to cause you any more difficulty in addition to the -- I agree with you wholeheartedly about the gun control position, about what we could do that would be reasonable. Who is behind, given how sensible what you're saying is, the recall effort that's targeted at you? And what motivates it? What's going on here? Because I think what you're saying right now captures what most people are thinking.
DUPNIK: Well, I think, who benefits from lack of gun control? And I think it's probably the NRA and the gun industry.
DUPNIK: Well, sheriff, it sounds like you've become something of a convert in the wake of this incident because, as you said, you are pro-gun. And the last time we spoke, you said you didn't think it would really make a difference to have more gun control laws in place. So have you changed your mind?
DUPNIK: Well, I don't think that gun control's played much of a role in what happened Saturday, with the exception of these extended magazines. You know, he had 32 rounds that he expended at the scene. And he was capable of firing 90, which he had in his possession. If you had a police officer at the scene, you had a security officer at the scene, based on what we know occurred, they couldn't have prevented the first shot, at least, or probably the next 30 shots. We might have had a gunfight involving the police officer. But unfortunately, that's what's happening in America. But we can do and should do and will do a much better job of trying to protect our politicians, who I think are so very vulnerable when they come home because they don't have any protection. And I think we need to do a better job.
SPITZER: I want to come back, Sheriff, to your comments about sort of lowering the level of the rhetoric and the vitriol that's infused our politics recently. Are you hopeful, over the last couple of days -- and obviously, the president gave such a powerful speech when he was out in Tucson to that very point. Do you think that the public is now saying to politicians on both sides, Tone it down? And will that have an impact over the next couple weeks and years?
DUPNIK: All I can say is I certainly hope so, with all my heart.
SPITZER: Well, we certainly share that sentiment. Sheriff Dupnik, thanks so much for joining us.
DUPNIK: Thank you.
DUPNIK: Coming up: Was 9/11 the beginning of the end for al Qaeda? Our next guest, Peter Bergen, knows more about the terrorist group than anyone, and he seems to think its days are numbered. Talk about provocative. We'll ask him about it when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: It's almost unimaginable, but 2011 marks the 10-year anniversary of both the 9/11 attacks and the war in Afghanistan. That war's now the longest running in American history, with no end in sight. So all these years later, do we really have any idea who Osama bin Laden is and what he really wants?
Here to answer those questions, an al Qaeda expert who is one of the only journalists to have ever interviewed Osama bin Laden.
DUPNIK: Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst. His new book is "The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and al Qaeda." Welcome, Peter.
PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Thank you.
DUPNIK: So just to get to the point, what is the threat of al Qaeda today, and where is it based?
BERGEN: I think the threat is much attenuated. They never lost existential -- their capabilities, they have some. I mean, if 253 have blown up over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, I think it would have dealt a pretty crippling blow to the Obama presidency. It would have had a transformative effect on global aviation, tourism, international business. So, you know, if they get one through, it's potentially somewhat a big deal but it's not existential or anything close.
SPITZER: But you also in your book say that there are four critical reasons that Al Qaeda is doomed even within the Islamic world. First, what are they then let's discuss what that means.
BERGEN: Well, most importantly, they're killing Muslim civilians and that's the principle -- for a group that presents itself as defending Islam, the fact that most of their victims are Muslim civilians is not impressive. And this is why they're now understood in the Muslim world. Support for Al Qaeda, bin Laden, suicide bombing is cratering in country after country because many of the victims are Muslim civilians. Also, Al Qaeda does nothing for -- they're not Hezbollah. They're not providing social welfare services. Also, they are -- you know, they've made a world of enemies which is never a winning strategy. And they won't engage in all the politics. So all those things taken together suggests economic, you know --
SPITZER: And others within, even the jihadist community share your critique?
BERGEN: Yes, that's one of the sort of surprising things is, you know, bin Laden's former religious mentor and also the people that you fault with in Afghanistan, they're tried against him very publicly, and it's very hard for Al Qaeda to respond to that. These are major religious figures. These are serious jihadi war heroes, and so they sort of said nothing because its critique really undercuts their appeal.
SPITZER: OK. So given all that --
BERGEN: Right.
SPITZER: -- here is my critical question. Why are we in Afghanistan, then? If they're doomed to failure, their base within the jihadist community is dissipating, people don't like them, why do we have to risk American lives if they're going to destroy themselves anyway?
BERGEN: Well, I mean, that self-destruction could take a very long time if it's not an assisted suicide. Right? I mean, we need to help that process along. I mean, their ideology is not -- you know, is doomed but they could go on for a century. You know, they were doing pretty well in Afghanistan before 9/11. They were attracting thousands of recruits from around the world. They're around this parallel state of actually the Taliban. We need to prevent that. It's a counter-sanctuary strategy that we're engaged in.
PARKER: And you don't think we need to get out of Afghanistan anytime soon. You see us there --
BERGEN: No. I think the biggest underreported story of this year is President Obama's decision to stay in Afghanistan to December 2014. Imagine if a Republican president said we're going to be substantially in Afghanistan for another four years. I mean, the liberal side of the Democratic Party would be going nuts. And, you know, it doesn't fit with the narrative about Obama. That's why people haven't processed it.
PARKER: Right. Well, let's talk about bin laden for a minute.
BERGEN: Yes.
PARKER: You paint a portion of him in 1997 which is the very first television interview of him. Let's look at the clip of that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OSAMA BIN LADEN (through translator): The U.S. government has committed acts that area extremely unjust, hideous and criminal through its support of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian, and we believe the U.S. is directly responsible for those killed in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq. Due to its subordination to the Jews, the arrogance of the United States regime has reached the point that they occupied Arabia, the holiest place of the Muslims who are more than a billion people in the world today. For this and other acts of aggression and injustice, we have declared jihad against the U.S.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PARKER: So that was 1997. What -- how important is bin Laden today and is he still more than a figurehead? Is it still important for us to capture him?
BERGEN: I think, you know -- first of all, for the victims of 9/11, it's obviously very important and I think for America to sort of put an end to this sort of conflict. That would be a way of saying this is kind of over. But the other -- you know, not to compare bin Laden to Hitler, but, you know, Al Qaeda is an organization when you join, you swear a personal oath of allegiance to bin Laden just as when you joined the Nazis, you swear a personal oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. This group is led by a charismatic leader. There are no replacements. I mean, there are people who will replace him but nobody is, you know, quote unquote, "stature." So eliminating him will be very useful.
SPITZER: Here's what I still don't get.
BERGEN: Yes.
SPITZER: Because you said we're in a counter-sanctuary strategy in Afghanistan.
BERGEN: Yes.
SPITZER: And yet Al Qaeda, according to the head of CIA is more in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They're going to Somalia and Yemen. So where does that take us? Does that logic then take us into a military intervention in these other countries?
BERGEN: I don't think it's necessary in these other countries. I mean, but, you know, on the Afghan/Pakistan border, Al Qaeda's embedded in a major insurgency and we have to destroy the insurgency in which Al Qaeda is embedded. That's not true in Yemen or Somalia.
SPITZER: And from your knowledge of Al Qaeda, do you think they're more fearful of us being in Afghanistan or more fearful of the drones that we use even without 100,000 of our troops in Afghanistan? Which has done more harm to them, both within the jihadist community and their infrastructure?
BERGEN: Well, I mean, they'd like to have Afghanistan back. And they're also quite frightened of the drones that are attacking them in Pakistan. But, you know, I do think these are either-or categories. If we weren't in Afghanistan, they would come back. The Taliban would come back from the southern part of the country and they would bring Al Qaeda back with them.
PARKER: One of the most interest things to me in the book is your description of the bureaucracy of Al Qaeda. They have rules for everything from the size of furniture to vacation schedules and --
BERGEN: Right. Well, (INAUDIBLE) the pre-9/11, you have Al Qaeda -- they had a vacation policy that's more generous than CNN's vacation policy. You know, it was a highly bureaucratic organization. That structure was sort of destroyed in the post-9/11 environment. And so this group that ran a parallel state in Afghanistan is now very much on the smaller size. It is located in the tribal regions of Pakistan. But, you know, it's not the first murderous organization in history that was highly bureaucratic.
PARKER: True. It's a fascinating read. It's a great book.
BERGEN: Thank you. Thank you.
PARKER: Hope it does well.
BERGEN: Thank you.
SPITZER: All right. Peter, thank you so much for this conversation. We will come back and continue. You can read an excerpt from Peter's primer on all things Al Qaeda, "The Longest War," on our Web site, CNN.com/parkerspitzer.
PARKER: Later on in the show, a revolutionary plan to cut health care costs by up to 50 percent. The case for treating the so-called super utilizers coming up.
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SPITZER: One of the brightest lights of the greatest generation, that's how President Obama remembered Sargent Shriver, the brother-in- law of Jack and Bobby Kennedy who died today at the age of 95.
PARKER: Robert Sargent Shriver served five years in the Navy in World War II. After working for Joseph Kennedy in Chicago in 1953, he married Kennedy's daughter, Eunice, and served as a campaign manager for her brother Jack's presidential run in 1960.
SPITZER: When Martin Luther King was jailed in Georgia, it was Shriver, a champion of civil rights in Chicago who convinced the young candidate to phone King's wife to offer support. After JFK was elected, he gave Shriver a new job, launching the Peace Corps, a volunteer organization dedicated to peace around the globe.
He served as Richard Nixon's ambassador to France. And then in 1972 was tapped by presidential candidate George McGovern as his running mate against Nixon. In 1994, President Clinton awarded Shriver the Medal of Freedom.
PARKER: In recent years when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, Shriver's daughter, Maria, made it her personal cause. He died surrounded by his family. In a statement, they said Sargent Shriver, quote, "lived to make the world a more joyful, faithful and compassionate place. We pray that his spirit and example will guide us as we accept the challenge of living as he did."
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SPITZER: On Capitol Hill today, House Republicans move one step closer to repealing President Obama's controversial health care reform. With the vote scheduled for tomorrow, GOP critics continue to blast the bill as, quote, "job stifling and cost increasing." Of course, how to pay for health care in any form has legislators on both sides of the aisle scratching their heads.
PARKER: But consider this. In one community, just one percent of patients could be responsible for up to 30 percent of health care costs.
Atul Gawande is a surgeon and staff writer at "The New Yorker" magazine. His article in this week's issue details a revolutionary approach to slashing medical costs.
Dr. Gawande, welcome.
DR. ATUL GAWANDE, "NEW YORKER" STAFF WRITER: Thank you for having me on.
PARKER: That's a great article. Fascinating. You describe a situation where a small percentage of patients consuming enormous amount of resources and you used Camden, New Jersey, as an example. Describe how that can happen.
GAWANDE: Yes, it's true everywhere across the country that health care costs tend to be in hot spots. One percent of the population accounts for 30 percent of health care costs and that's true in almost every one of our communities. Five percent account for 60 percent of the costs, which is to say that the sickest people are the ones who use the most resources.
PARKER: So how bad can it get? What kind of medical bills can just one individual bill rack up in a year, just as an example?
GAWANDE: So I tell the story of a family physician who started looking into this in Camden, New Jersey. And he found the most expensive patient there in their community had cost $3.5 million over the course of about five years.
PARKER: Wow.
SPITZER: Well, Doctor, as you said, this is -- your diagnosis is accurate across the entire medical delivery system where people with multiple diagnoses are the ones responsible for this enormous percentage of the cost. So what is the answer from a cost delivery perspective as somebody who's both a doctor? And as you obviously are worried about cost, what do you do to confront this?
GAWANDE: Yes. I mean, I had it as much of a puzzle as anybody else had. But what I started looking for is what are people in communities actually doing where they're bringing costs down? And what you find now over and over in experiments being seen across the country is people who are looking at it kind of the way crime reformers look at it, go to where the highest crimes are, in this case, go to where the highest health care costs are and put your resources there. So they worked on lowering the cost of the sickest people in the population. And what they recognize is that the people with the highest costs, who are in the hospital months at a time or in and out of emergency rooms, sometimes hundreds of times, are getting the worst care. And good care can really change not just their outcomes but improve their lives and lower their costs.
SPITZER: But what you mean by good care is not just better result in each procedure but a much greater process of intervention by the medical system so that you have a primary care physician who goes to them and monitors what they do, make sure they take their meds, make sure they're staying on their insulin if that's the issue. That type of managed care had a dramatic impact. How do you implement that?
GAWANDE: Yes, I mean, here's the revolution. It is places like this experiment in Camden, New Jersey, by a doctor or in Atlantic City, New Jersey, or right here at home where I'm from, Boston, where what people have done is create primary care for patients who are only focusing on those who are the most expensive and saying our job is figure out how to reduce the likelihood they'll use the emergency room, reduce their likelihood of needing to go to the hospital. And that means that you target if they have coronary artery disease and diabetes, you work on keeping them on their drugs, making sure they quit smoking, being able to catch their problems that are starting to fester before it lands them in an emergency room. And that's not usually what we're equipped to do as doctors with only 20-minute visits as our main mechanism of helping people.
PARKER: Well, in so many of the cases you described, some of the patients who are in the greatest need were also people who simply were not capable of taking their medications in a responsible, consistent way. And so part of that intervention involved in some cases a social worker or people who were just on call to take questions and that sort of thing. How practical is that? I mean, can we nationalize something like that?
GAWANDE: Yes. I mean, you know, they've started making it practical. The thing is, you know, the problems here defy our ideologies. These are patients who do have behavioral issues. So, you know, this doctor, for example, found that those topmost expensive people, his patient number one was 560 pounds. He had alcohol and smoking and drug use problems. But he also had severe congestive heart failure, need for technologies that would keep him alive as well as behavior change. And it was a team approach, recognizing that just a 20-minute visit with this kind of complex patient was going to just mean he lands back in the hospital over and over and over again.
Well, three years of work with this patient, nurses, social workers, meant that they were able to reduce his cost by well over 50 percent and make him healthier.
PARKER: So in reducing that cost, was it cost-effective when you take into consideration all the intervention and the medications that he had to take and whatnot?
GAWANDE: Yes, it easily could have been that you spent just as much effort and it takes more medications and it was not cost effective. But now, they've shown in multiple efforts now that they are able to make it cost effective.
A program in Atlantic City with the casino workers union and the hospital ended up for a group of about 1,200 patients who represented the top five percent of the people in that union. Their costs were able to lower 20 percent, including taking into account all of the extra care they were getting. Their focus was on keeping them out of the hospital, keeping them healthy enough to get better and better. They lowered their smoking rate 60 percent, but they also made sure that they took their medications and got proper care when they needed it.
SPITZER: To bring your conclusions back to the current bill or the bill that was passed by Congress last year, does that bill create pilot programs to try what you're describing in communities around the nation?
GAWANDE: Yes. You know, the way to think about it is, did the bill say, OK, this has to deploy? You know, top down Washington says, every community has to do it exactly this way? The answer is no. These are innovators on the edges who are creating brand-new ways of providing medical care that's better than our current health system. The bill provides billions in incentives so that these doctors who I mostly describe are almost saints. They're altruists who haven't been paid to do this kind of work but now are seeing incentives in legislation that starts to turn that around so that you can imagine whole communities of doctors who get really, really good at this.
SPITZER: All right. Dr. Gawande, thanks so much. A hugely important insight. It is exactly what we saw in New York and we're trying to figure out where all New York State's Medicaid dollars were going. So thank you so much.
PARKER: When we come back, China's Hu Jintao is at the White House tonight for a private dinner with President Obama. But is he there as a guest or a conqueror? Stay with us.
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SPITZER: Tomorrow and tonight's private dinner behind them, the hard work of the Chinese state visit begins. The leaders of the world's two largest economies are going to discuss trade, currency, North Korea and other issues.
PARKER: Joining us to talk about all of this is Jamie Metzl, executive vice president of the Asia Society. Jamie will meet with the Chinese president tomorrow at a lunch with Secretary Clinton and Vice President Biden.
Welcome, Jamie. That's a big deal, huh?
JAMIE METZL, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, ASIA SOCIETY: Well, thank you.
PARKER: You're going to represent us well, I hope?
METZL: I'll try.
PARKER: Well, what do you think is going to be on the top of the president's agenda when he sits down with the Chinese president?
METZL: This is a critically important visit. The United States' relations with China have deteriorated rapidly over the last year. We all know the names of these incidents, Google, Cheonan, Yeonpyeong, the J-20. You could go on and on and on. The South China Sea, rare earth minerals, you can spend all of our time talking about these things.
Both of these leaders need to start to turn this relationship around. It's such an important relationship. So on President Obama's agenda, first, jobs, jobs, jobs. Growth in the American economy. The American people are starting to worry about globalization, trade relations with China and President Obama needs to push for greater U.S. access to the Chinese market, more Chinese investment here. He needs to push now for more intellectual property protection for U.S. and other international corporations and others inside of China and obviously the currency issue is critically important. It's hard enough for low-end producers to compete with China. But if China's currency is undervalued at 20 to 40 percent, that really will kill everybody else -- a lot of the other low-end producers around the world.
SPITZER: Here's the problem I see with all this. The agenda is exactly what the agenda was when the president went to the G-20, when we went to South Korea to negotiate the South Korean trade treaty with South Korea. He's come back empty-handed so far.
METZL: Right.
SPITZER: Why is the dynamic, why is the negotiating leverage that he brings to the table any different now? So why should the Chinese give him anything more than they've given him in the past which is virtually nothing?
METZL: Yes, two points. I was in Korea at the time of the G-20 and it was really disappointing because President Obama went with a medium hand and we, the United States, played it very, very poorly. It felt like China was playing chess and we were playing checkers. And if you go back before then when President Obama visited China in 2009, that trip was a disaster. And all of the images were set up by the Chinese to put us in a very poor light.
What's different now are two things. One is the U.S. government has really gotten its act together on its China strategy. You've seen over the last week, you saw Secretary Gates in China making some very strong focus statement, then going to Japan after visiting China. You saw Secretary Geithner, Secretary Clinton. It's clear finally that the United States has a message. And what it is is that on one hand, the United States needs to get its act together. But on the other hand, we have very clear expectations for what we want China to do and what we need China to do.
And the second thing is that the United States provides a lot of global goods that because we've provided them for so long, everybody takes them for granted. And the rest of the world is starting to think about what would it mean if America stepped back.
SPITZER: But even in that context, even after those speeches by Secretaries Geithner and Clinton, wonderful speeches, very well- structured, laid out our position. In the past few days, China has said very clearly that the dollar is the reserve currency is a relic of the past.
METZL: Yes.
SPITZER: They don't seem to be responding to this with anything more than OK, you guys are very nice but you're living in the last century. What has changed from their perspective so they're going to say, yes, we're going to change our currency valuation or stop stealing your intellectual property the way they have been for the last couple of decades?
METZL: I think the United States is finally saying, if you continue to do these things that you've been doing, if you have an undervalued currency, if you steal our intellectual property, which I feel is an even bigger issue than currency, there is going to be a cost. Secretary Geithner mentioned reciprocity. If you want to have access to our market which China needs and it's very important for China's future growth plans. So they can't stay as a low-end producer. They need to have access to our high-tech market. They need to have robust trade with the United States. They can no longer take that for granted.
Ten years ago, 20 years ago, it was about how we can try to coax China into the international system. Now China is already there and the United States is going to hold China to a much, much tougher standard.
PARKER: Quick question.
METZL: Yes.
PARKER: Do they trust each other? The president --
METZL: No.
PARKER: No. METZL: No. And that's one of the problems. The two presidents don't really trust each other. They don't have a strong personal relationship. The two countries are divided. And even though our two countries have a lot of differences, we're going to need to figure out how to work together for this to be a peaceful century.
SPITZER: All right. Jamie Metzl, thank you so much for being here. Fascinating conversation. Represent us well tomorrow.
PARKER: And thank you for joining us. Good night from New York. Stay right here. "PIERS MORGAN TONIGHT" starts right now.
