Transcripts For CSPAN C-SPAN Weekend 20090817

and the congress, which legitimately wants to see progress. that is an absolutely legitimate thing, and we have spent a great deal of time talking to members of congress and reaching out to groups, never in this configuration. this is unique for us, but to talk about this, and so far, it seems to me that people understand how critically important this is. do we need to show progress? of course. we cannot make these investments without having some demonstration that they have results, and that is why i said earlier i do not want to confuse input and output. you have seen input today, and we have answered your questions about what is going on on the ground, but we are very mindful of the fact that we need to show that all of these programs you have heard about today, frankly unveiled in this manner for the very first time, have to produce results. maybe john will invite as back in one year, and you can hold us to account, but i will leave that to him. im. that is an open invitation. let me close by noting that when richard began his remarks he noted he was aught our launch event for the center for american progress. he said he hadn't been invited back. i reminded himj#u we had invite him back many times nor private consultaons but it's sometimes dangerous to give him a microphone. but the real reason was we were waiting for a tremendous encore waiting for a tremendous encore event and i want to tha -- him and his colleagues for presenting the many components going into the strategy here. it's a very challenging context in which to work and we loork -- look forward to seeing what happens next week during the elections. you have a standing invitation to come back and report on how we're operating against the metrics and objectives that you laid out today. so thank you very much for being here. thank you, john. [applause] >> up next on c-span, an egyptian newspaper publisher talks about the middle east process. and then a look at gm's new electric car, the chevy volt. and then a woman speaks about recovering her father's remains. >> tomorrow, san young men discusses how president barack obama is handling the process. and then jim martin and health care proposals. and philip alcabes on questionable health practices. washington journal live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> this fall, enter the home to america's highest court from the grand public places to those only accessible by the nine justices. the supreme court, come in the first sunday in october. >> how is c-span funded? >> the u.s. government. " i don't know. i think some of it is government raised. >> it is not public funding. >> probably donations. >> i want to say for me, for my tax dollars. >> alice c-span funded? -- how is c-span funded? -- in-line tuesday, president barack obama will welcome president mubarak of egypt to the white house. it is his first trip to washington in five years. as a tribute, the discuss the arab-israeli peace process. hosted by the middle east institute, this is just over one hour. >> it gives me great pleasure to welcome our speaker to be discussing the arab-israeli peace process and the steps that need to be taken to achieve a comprehensive peace. i first that our speaker back in 2001 when i was reporting for npr and i would go to egypt. much to my pleasure, he gives great sound bite switches 30 seconds of great content. that is a wonderful treat for a radio journalist. he is more than just a great sound bite maker, is a great intellectual thinker and has written extensively on the middle east process as well as on the politics and economics of the region he is currently chairman of the board of the newspaper which he joined a month ago. prior to that, he was director of the center for political and strategic studies. he held that position for quite a few years. he is the founder of the international alliance for arab israeli peace and has been a research fellow at harvard university and a visiting fellow in foreign policy studies at brookings among many other positions. he is visiting us from cairo on the eve of president mubarak's meeting with the president on monday and we are very likely to have him with us today. before we began, just a few housekeeping matters. this tuesday, we are hosting an international crisis group. he will be discussing the report about tensions between kurdistan and the iraqi government. his paper just cannot last month and it provides an excellent analysis of what he believes the new territorial all lines are in iraq. then on and wednesday, our pakistan study center is hosting a discussion with the former head of the university. i hope you can make those talks next week please join me in welcoming our speaker. [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you all for coming this afternoon. i have the impossible mission of telling you what is going on. most of the audience has been in the business of the arab-israeli peacemaking in the past decades. but the key for answering this question or trying to answer this question lightly or wrongly, is to call the moment what it is. after the end of the camp david talks, in the summer of 2000 and then what followed with taliban negotiations, we have had violence which is a testimony of one of the lows of the arab- israeli conflict. if you do not make peace, you make war. we are enabled. the arab-israeli conflict never failed to be innovative. we got a war and we have tanks and planes crossing and counter crossing and you get suicide bombing on the other hand which uses a certain kind of violence to try to press on the other side your views. you have everything between. in between, we have things like as block which is a state actor. they are running the business of the conflict. so, we have a moment and i would call it the barack obama moment. that is because it is what actually triggered. people talk about what is to be done. he is probably the first american president to decide that he is going to solve the conflict. throughout his campaign and after the campaign, he said that the first day, he started calling president mubarak and started making and in boy. the signals were there. every american president i know, the first few months, they are shying away from the arab- israeli conflict, including bill clinton. even president carter if we came back to 1977. but that is a president who came and said i'm going to head-on into that problem and solve it. it was not something separate from his general approach domestically or internationally. he is dealing with iraq and medical care head-on. he has quite an umbrella about dealing with such problems. in a way, he is credible. he is not doing that to show anything, he is interested to get to the bottom of this and get it into a conclusion in a reasonable amount of time. now, what he is going to do and what he has been doing in the last few months, i must be very frank with you that i found to stories, one in cairo and one in washington the one in cairo goes as follows, that president barack obama started listening to everybody and after coming down the islamic world with his wonderful speech in cairo, now he is proceeding to have the final listening for all the leaders of the region and after that, he will formulate a kind of a framework. people calling a peace plan. it will come out sometime in the fall in september or october. i do not know how much the president will be tied up in the middle east, but he will say that this is his plan. this plan should be negotiated between the parties. that is a vision in cairo and that is what president mubarak is here. he is here while this plan is in the making and it is important to consult with a close american friend and ally. that is the story from cairo. the story from washington is quite different the story from washington, from the people that i talk to, there is nothing related to a plan or revision there is the issue of the settlements and normalization. barack obama the administration wants to create the environment for renegotiation or a peace process. something which is contrary to what we know where we have been told before, that the administration is seeking peace agreements, not a peace process. even instead of haggling over the peace agreements, we are haggling over the sentiments -- the settlements. and the normalization issue. i just read an article by a friend of mine. his name is [unintelligible] . he says that the israelis and add -- arabs are like two feuding families and a small village area is really a village. the big guys of the families decided marriages and that would and the conflict. the came into the marriage, try and find that it is very difficult. what will happen to the inheritance? so, why don't the boy is -- the boy and the borough did together in a lovemaking sessions and is where we will make normalization faster. people said that that can happen, but there is premarital sex in europe and north america, but not in the middle east. the whole thing came into haggling again. there were all these things related to normalization. the advice of said that they need to get to the contract and to forget about normalization and the marriage and to get into the contract. the advice, hear, is the idea that officials want to build 400 units here or go into that unit there, the essence every peace process ends in a process. the process is always a challenge by other people who are planning to disrupt the process this is probably a kind of rocket that may come some time or any kind of violence that may come here or there will actually lead to disrupting the whole process and then we start all over again. is it possible to do that or not? i do not know. i feel that somehow, the issue of normalization and settlement are both points word they cannot ignore. they're trying to make it to the minimum. that is to create something that is enough for the domestic politics on both sides. for this really is to have a step, it leads to the completion of the 400 units that are already under construction. on the other side, to have a forum in which the arabs and israelis can get together and would called normalization. we would come down to the realization of making the contract. that is the kind of scenario that seems plausible to me. but, i guess if it gets this way, to look particularly on a light of president mubarak to washington. i guess it is not enough. it is too light. in order to keep the arab- israeli approach in that direction alone i think it got to be much more strategic. they got to be much more strategic to keep that scenario that i just made about syria. syria is an important part of the game so began got to be too comprehensive. syria got some of the cards whether anybody liked it or not. the syrians have been helpful in the past few months. it has been helpful on the cease-fire. the level we have now could not continue without the syrians. there were negotiating and they wouldn't have been without the syrians. the way the lebanese elections, and how nice it was, it could not have been without the syrians. the syrians are expecting a kind of war. they would have a part of the process as well. in the wider circle, is also important. not only is the arab-israeli conflict related in american eyes, from a general strategic situation, it is deteriorating in many ways since september 11. we have the war in iraq and afghanistan and other wars in the region. i am saying that the strategic situation is mainly because of the increasing number of states in the region. we have states like somalia and iraq. it is very ominous. i guess i am not feeling enough in cairo or in washington the detection of the earthquake that is taking place there. the launch of terrorists coming from afghanistan and pakistan, it is the piracy situation. if you add all that together account then you have a very ominous and threatening situation. that, in a way of the arab- israeli conflict also makes it much more important than any time before. people might say that the middle east was always dangerous. i believe it is dangerous because we are faced with this situation that we never faced before. we are faced with this situation in which danger comes from what people call out of state actors. we do not know. we have a dense and we see the headlines. we have what action of terror that happened and which we have a linkage between somalia and sudan. this kind of network together terrorists, organized crime as well as state-sponsored terrorists. we have quite a mix of international threat. the last group of cells that we discovered in egypt, they were called his bilal. it is really an international group. there are some europeans and arabs together. there were connections that went to toronto and to somalia and there were threats related to the arab-israeli conflict. partially in dealing with other issues like the suez canal and the maritime pieces in the red sea. we have a general situation that needs attention and as such, and going into the israeli conflict is extremely important i guess present a bomb realized this. i hope that he will not get into the kind of draft of the side shows that will take a lot of effort. it bans with finger-pointing he did that worry did not do that. we get back to extend show issues and they say that one of the conditions is that it is a condition of his role as a jewish state. as far as anybody concerned. this is an islamic state of iran and it is a business of iranians to decide what the name of the country is. to ask other countries to the nine this, these issues come. when you want to increase that or raise the level or the ceiling of negotiations, you bring things related to identity and to god and to religion and that is capable of spoiling anything positive. i will stop talking. thank you very much for listening [applause] >> we have a lot of journalists here today, so let's begin with questions from the press. >> i wonder if you could talk about the reconciliation between fought, -- a moss and make some predictions coming out of the congress where that might go and what we might expect over the next six months. >> well the negotiations between them was not easy. imus say you have to classify it into the internal dynamics of the negotiations themselves. they are affecting those that are negotiating. there was about six issues and i don't remember all of them. both sides were differing throughout the negotiations. the general principle was that the palestinians would go to election next january and they will decide once more who is going to lead them into the letters creations for into war. weather is them or homosporous it goes to the people to decide. the purpose of that is to make the road map for this one. here comes the second issue. it is about what you call a government which i don't know what it is in arabic. it is kind of a consensus kind of government. it is used in many of the media as a military kind of a government. what was talked about was to have a government that was agreed upon by both sides. there were independent palestinian personalities and it would take the palestinian people to the road. there are others that are related. what to do with that on both sides. there was also the victims of the past that had a few months of clashes. all of that is an agreement about the glitches are held by them in order not to come to silent. the existing business of diplomacy and putting heads together has already been successful. i moss has been in the syrian position. what the syrian position is allowing pommells to do is to come and talk and refrain this time of small issues that will delay them coming to a conclusion. the egyptian strategy is an important part of the big beast that i'm talking about. it is to talk to the palestinian situation it was supported and sent a delegation to the conference. we use whatever influence we have over the different factions to make the conference successful as such, but the egyptian approach is to come to that reconciliation there is no objection for mass to be an objection in the opposition. but not to have a veto power in what it will be if the negotiations are kept. there is another approach suggested. that kind of view i think was not pursued. >> using to be saying that president mubarak will be urging, but maybe i am extrapolating. will he be urging barack obama to move towards a final stage peace talks more rapidly and do you think he has a plan for that? >> there is a lot of details about the scheme. there is a word that everybody used which is that we know how this sentiment will be. this kind of mysterious word about something that we know, we know in the heart that we have something. that is how we understand it. so, president mubarak, that will be using the parameter for an agreement. he is not coming to urge president of, -- president barack obama. they met at the g8 in london. i guess that they talk on the phone. the idea, from what i know, is that they talk in a sense of partnership. a general change in the chemistry of the idea is that there will be ready to listen. but, as i said, what i hear from washington and you probably know more, it is not quite ready for that. still, there is some time for more talking on the normalization in the settlement issues. there are too important pillars for confidence-building. anything else is my own opinion. all confidence-building attempts to build a big lack of confidence. >> in the back? >> i work for a newspaper at the united nations. in your initial remarks, you spoke about -- what did i do with this? i am terribly sorry for that. you mentioned about two different stories regarding what is happening in the middle east. we see what is happening now. you have any explanation -- do you have any explanation as to why egypt sees a d.c. -- the peace process in a way that is different from the official u.s. policy? you mentioned them as failures states. -- as bill your state's -- as failure states. they don't need to go through this catastrophic situation. thank you. >> for that discrepancy, i guess it could be about how much to emphasize. when two sides talk about an issue, i usually think of the united states as looking for peace. it is a matter of emphasis. it is a feeling of asking if you can go now. here, it is a matter of speed, urgency, and emphasis. that is my interpretation. it is a completely different story. it is valid concept. i guess that both countries can do that, but what they can do is probably not very much. when countries go to failure, they go through very complex process. that is what i think we should do. i guess there is a necessity to work out repercussions if that happened. that would be threatening to maritime routes and to egypt and national security. i guess that is something that we should pay attention to. then when we come to the moment, if we cannot prevent that, i wonder what anybody can do. they revive the idea of two yemeni states. that is if the south bricks down from the north. all of those abilities are there. what i care about is actually how to realize that there is a dangerous and serious problem and we have to account for the day after. we could wake up and find piracy in africa and that piracy is increasing. then we decide how to deal with it. i guess we ask how to do that. i think that they do with such situations. >> >> let me first welcome you to washington dc. the title of the israeli peace process, i think that there was a point of view. it is like trying to find a black tie in a black room that has no c-span.org [unintelligible] in the first place. it does not seem to be going anywhere. the israeli people, their military power, does not want. it showed in the last election. you had an excellent overview of the problem surrounding the region itself. you did not talk about the agenda in the united states, which is more than full. therefore, far as that is concerned, it is born to be on the back burner. this adds another dimension. i do not really see any hope unless you can outline some thing for the future. >> thank you very much for your kind words. i beg to differ with you. i don't know of any time that the arab-israeli conflict was not within an environment that was seriously bad. if i came back to 1977 when the biggest breakthrough happened, we have an america that was totally demoralized. we have the reemergence of what was called the second cold war. there were a number of countries going to the left. we have a very difficult cold war. there was recession and inflation. it was double digit. in the middle of all this, it happened. i think there are possibilities in the middle east. it depends on how much she really work on it and if you're ready to take risks. that is why i call the d barack obama moment. you then figure how much the american administration decided that it was going to use military force can teach people how to be democratic. all the rest of that previous a ministration. there would be a new menu. it would be based on dialogue and there is no mention in the military force even when it is used. we may differ on this, but you have a different language. you have more influence on the human cultural interaction between different adversarial sides in the region. in differing with you, i would say to give it a shot. i agree that there are more disappointments in peacemaking in the middle east than a feeling of having a positive feeling. let us not forget. we had the gulf war and then we had madrid and oslo. what happened in the past 20 years was the bad guys were much more skillful and much more clever and much more determined than the good guys. i am a believer that there are some good guys this time. as much as to date yourself and other people, you cannot keep it going on. you have to keep trying because there are people who are trying to rekindle that all the time. all of us who are building settlements and those who are making the violence, it makes it more deadly. we do not have the luxury. they make peace, and then you have to wonder about gaza. in a political scenario, some of the tunnels are used to smuggle both ways. we are involved. we would be better to be involved in the sake of peace. >> in the front here? >> i was interested in the internal workings of egypt and in particular, given the external and internal threats, would you be able to give an assessment of the egyptian defense industry? what economic issue do you see that would lift the economy in egypt and as a side note, how do you do hiv reporting? >> >> those are two subjects that i do not know anything about. i can give you something on the economic side. egypt was touched, like all countries in the world with an economic crisis. and they used the foreign money for currency earnings. the was because of the suez canal. we have quite an injury, there. luckily, we made a kind of reform on our banking system so we do not have any bad debts. the business model was not that mature to suffer from what was suffered here in the united states. i give the mix of the stimulus package and there are excepting lowering the growth of the country. in a way, it ended up with a reasonable outcome. a growth rate of about 4.5%. that is the glorious, but it was not negative. i guess there are signs that things are positive. in terms of the market and in terms of the real-estate business. there are a lot of numbers. next year will probably be better. >> by the way, this water is for you. >> if i understood you correctly, you talk about the group of suspects with international connections. you said it was beyond the arab- israeli conflict. what is the issue with the suez canal? >> of the issue with the canal is that there is an infrastructure for using force. my interpretation is expecting, at certain moments, the confrontation of israel or the united states or both of them and they were putting the groundwork from egypt to us -- to upper egypt in order to respond. if you make a military scenario, if someone attacked a in irani and -- and ron int facility, they have a number of choices. the to do in iraq or in the gulf region. it depends on the appreciation of the american power distribution in the region and what they think is an intentional fallout against iraq. i guess that was an iranian network to build an infrastructure. to use it in the time of confrontation, if it came at any time, and to help the palestinians because it is one of the assets that is used in a much larger kind of adversarial relations in the region. >> if you could say your name and affiliation. >> i am an egyptian american and had lived in washington for the last 40 years. you mentioned the story from cairo. you mentioned the story from washington. how about this story in jerusalem? especially with the presence of the new kingdom, the call him the king of spain. what is the story in jerusalem? >> what i said the story from cairo, that is because i'm coming from there and washington because that's where i am. the story from his trial -- of the story from israel, you would need a few israelis to explain it. i guess the israeli view is trying to get everything and before you start anything. the story in israel is that we are into a conflict that will continue for a long period of time if we can keep the status quo were everybody is kong, then israel will be fine. you'll find a variety of people who read the israeli press and commentators here in the united states that say israel will never find a better than at this time. things are, and the economy is not doing badly. there is no suicide bombing. that is a good time. the catch on that story is that there was never the kind of calm. so, we have got to keep in gauging the other parties. that is my guess. for the israeli strategy, it is how to handle the a bomb -- the barack obama moment. if the barack obama moment was used, i guess there would be faced by hard choices. as such, are you talking about yawp -- netanyahu? it is not known about the idea of separation. that would be pressured to come up with some ideas of how to do with the real settlement or they will have to face the israeli people. israelis and palestinians support the clinton parameters. it is enough of a majority. picking up on what this gentleman said, that we are now also involved in domestic issues that there would not be any support for dealing with the middle east, like to take a counter argument and say that it is the fact that we are so tied up and not interested in foreign policy that it might be the moment at which the forces would otherwise be against settlement in this country. it can i get the attention. suppose the egyptians an area known occurred and somehow or other, there was some official statement from the united states that it supported what everybody seems to think of if there ever is a final settlement weren't has to be. what do you think the impact of that would be on israel and palestine? >> prediction is the nightmare of any analyst. i wish that i could tell you that we would live happily ever after. i guess there is a possibility there. a possibility for the region to take one of the major issues out of the picture and get involved in another kind of business. if i understood you ride, if egypt comes, it is not only egypt. it is a number of arab countries that take the lead. if the united states is a big country for if i guess that taking steffes will not fix that, it will be taken to other higher levels. there is a proposition to take it to the security council and, with the resolution. it could be very difficult for people of israel to ignore that. if we look at the history of the arab-israeli conflict, is controlled by different external resolutions. it was to all the partitions. you will see all the regional powers over the conflict. i do not see this time as an exception. if there is an international concept that says that that is the only way to do that, but you have to make concessions. it would really be at the heart of the national dream. the israelis have to talk about taking off the whole jewish dream about the holy land. it would come to an end. we're not talking about the jewish state as much with it -- as much as we're talking about the israeli state. we're believing that the homeland -- it would come to the middle of the dream. in order to take the pain of that moment, and deal with the future of live -- rather than dealing with the past, and dealing with an entity that would be in there, there would be the need for countries like the united states, france and russia and china, i guess it would be very important. >> i have been ignoring the side of the room. >> following up on tom's question, what will be the repercussions of an attack in iran and would affect the domestic situation in egypt? >> i will start the answer from the end. there was a little anger. but that will be in it. much more important than eternal -- internal reaction, it is not a small country. it is an established state aside from the revolutionary character. it is a pillar. i guess it would be heard a big earthquake that is very difficult to handle. look at the repercussion of iraq and creating or getting into the shi'ahs, it spread to terrorism in jordan and lebanon. enron will be iraq 10 times over. i think we would have a strong central government and would have allowed to fight back with and saudi arabia and some of the things i referred to. want to start that game, then all targets are open. certainly, there will be targeted for shooting as well. >> and you have not regarded the elephant in the room which are the refugees. without resolution of the displaced person problem, isn't that a show stopper? if we put it off too much in the distance, then we lead to a possible compromise which may upset all the other previous agreements? >> there is no one issue of the israeli arab conflict is easy. the issue of jerusalem and the issue of settlement and the issue of refugees, they are all very delicate ones. settlements are not only buildings, and jerusalem is touching all the religious -- religions. i am not going to stand here and tell you that there are not different formulas worked out. . the boy remained the opposition of the palestinian people. they would either have no deal and wait for a better day or they will come into an agreement because the refugees are not all refugees anymore. there are kids that are into their third generation. so, there are major questions. that will be another point of view. that would be a second refugee status. if the refugees come from jordan, they would be a second- rate citizens in israel. this is a choice that the palestinians have to make. if they give so much a chance, the that or it will pass. i guess that the bill clinton can david is a moment that has passed. that was in 1995. the momentum was kept in the past. are we going to fast this time? i hope the leaders, that is their business. once you do not seize the moment, was it for? . . let's introduce you to our first guest from detroit. it is the line director from general motors for the chevy volt. please tell us about the volt. guest: good morning, susan, everyone. general motors is very proud of the progress made with the volt, general motors electric car which is destined to hit the marketplace in a little more than a year. we have handled all the challenges previously associated with electric cars -- ranging, charging. it will give you for the emission-free miles, then if you want to go longer we have an on- board engine generator that allows you to go hundreds of miles more. it is a car that we believe as a chevrolet americans can follow- up with to be a primary car. host: my producer and i have been having a discussion because of that conversion long distance to the gas engine -- whether to call this an electric car or a hybrid. what is the correct terminology? guest: when you look at the department of transportation data and see how many miles people drive on a regular basis, 70% drive at your than 40 miles. for those people if they plug in only once per day will be an electric car all the time and there will not use any gas. for an average person that probably saves about 500 gallons of gas per year. host: so, what should we call it? electric or hybrid? guest: we call it an extended range of electrical been that it becomes a battery-electric car if you take the other thing out. host: we want to take phone calls from viewers about this. we will learn more about what it might do for general motors and its health of raw. what are executive saying about the prospect of this car in restoring economic health for the company? guest: the show volt is about the future. this is a car -- the chevy volt -- it is a unique, no one else has stated that they can or will do this. we will be a technology leader. elector drive and general motors technology will lead the way. host: what is the process from today until it shows up and share rooms? guest: we're going through painstaking means to test the battery. we will go to dedication in michigan that will be the battery-assembly plant. the car and battery pack are made in america. we are doing the finishing touches to make certain we have our production tools ready. and that we have tested the battery pack and that will last 10 years, 150,000 miles in the car. it will probably also have a life after the car. host: when will it be insurance? guest: november 2010. stay tuned for a lot of activity during 2010 with the focus on cars, culture -- we will expose this car to customers across the nation to get their feedback. to make sure that the volt will be a delight. host: how much of the car will be made in the united states? guest: we do not have the exact figures, but the assembly plant is in detroit. the battery plant is in michigan. all of the engineers really are headquartered in the detroit area, as well as some support from global resources. it is also a jobs plan. when you look to the future will police the in additional 300 billion bugles on the planet. we need such a solution. host: do you know what the pricing will be yet? guest: we typically priced cars a couple of months before we launch them. the wonderful thing about a chevy will it is its value proposition. it goes beyond the price tag. think of it as the government giving us $7,500 of the tax rebate off the top of the prize. electricity probably costs 2 cents per mile. that is compared to an equivalent gasoline car at about 10 cents per mile. we expect many other stakeholders who really wanted the electric drive to work. we think many of those will help. maybe you get free electricity or free home charging unit. in the end, i think it will become quite a value for consumers. host: and some of your discussion this week there were some questions raised. first with pricing -- suggestions in the media are that the car would be possibly priced in the area of $40,000 and the concerns are about competitiveness with the japanese name plate cars coming in at about $12,000 up to $15,000 less. guest: as i indicated, the price will be reduced by $7,500 a due to the rebate. hypothetically, if the reports are correct at $40,000, it is more like $30,000 car, and probably less. there is nothing comparable with that volt. there's not a mass-market, high- volume car. even the electric battery cars have limited range and take a long time to charge. sometimes it is only a two- seater. but this is a four-seater, sold around the country, and is wonderfully fun. green cars do not have to be born. this goes from zero to 60 m.p.h. in 9 seconds. our vice-chairman likes to say that it will allow you to burn rubber, but not fuel. host: let's take your phone calls, beginning with mike in wyoming. caller: the question i have is, in the wintertime out here in wyoming we may get 20 below zero, even 35 below zero. how good does that better redo in wintertime situations? have you tested that there really? guest: mike, that is a great question. some of our friends in canada are used to the engine block heaters. the simple answer is that if you have the capability to put it in and a standard 120 volt outlet, and it charges overnight. if you keep it plugged in, we use some of the energy that we peel off the grid and keep the battery condition. if you are not plugged in, the other beauty and the way it is designed compared to other battery electric cars, is that we do have been in on board that in emergencies and low temperatures the engine can be started. this really is a car that we want everyone to be able to buy, not a niche car, monta $100,000 car. host: how is the moral of your team? guest: i think busy people are pretty happy, especially when you are busy on something very exciting. we have this breakthrough technology. we are quite inspired by it. we get a lot of comments from people, passers-by who are rooting for us. they believe we can do this. host: our next call comes from motor city, detroit, on the independent line. caller: good morning, i am so proud of what general motors is doing. i am so proud of our president barack obama because i remember when president kennedy was taken up the challenge. we can meet any challenge. the challenge that general motors is meeting could in a few short months -- 200 miles for the gallon, we do not have to look for excuses. gm will go back to the top again, and with the experience and skills we have here in the detroit area, i just think it is a brief moment for america. the whole world is watching. thank you, sir, for your hard work. guest: george, thank you some much for your support. we're working on a card that will be a breakthrough, transformational, really exciting. the battery is a powerful story. we developed the battery to last 10 years. this can help us capture renewable energy. let's store the energy from wind or sun and store it. we are excited host: your biography says if you have been a line director for general motors for 11 years. can you tell us how long ago the work began on volt? guest: i was lucky to get tapped on the shoulder. one of the original challenges was let's do the electric car again. we have a wonderful history. we learned a lot from a technological perspective. i have been working on this 24/7 since the beginning of 2006. we have a spirited, dedicated team who thinks there will make a difference. host: the development of the battery, the essential ingredient, was it done all with private money, or whether government grants involved? guest: for the most part with the blood, sweat, and tears of general motors employees. recently, a vice-president joe biden came to detroit to announce that general motors was one of the recipients of the grants, specifically associated with the plant in brownstown. we have not had the technical capability in this country to the bettors. but in china, japan, korea and have developed that through funding through their government. we're pleased that our government understands the power of this battery storage. general motors has taken the next step beyond. who better to help develop its and have it as a core competency than to motors? host: the next question comes from minnesota on the republican line. caller: hello, i have canadian grandchildren and i am concerned over in windsor help it will it affect that plant. those people were hurting, too. how will it affect the canadian side as far as that future of the electric car and the plant? guest: the chevy volt will also be sold in canada. interestingly enough we get a lot of support from an engineering firm in ontario. we have a wonderful facility also in ontario. it is awfully cold there. it relates earlier -- to the earlier question from our friend from wyoming. we're pleased to be partners with canada for cold-testing and the like. we're hoping that the volt will create jobs not only in michigan, but beyond, from the perspective of being the hub of electrification. windsor is not far from detroit. there are so many wonderful and talented people in canada. we would like to create more jobs even for them. host: we're getting a number of questions from twitter and by e- mail. here is an example. guest: great question. much discussion about future activity around smart grid, how to manage the challenges. our grid is a patchwork. many regional grids that we must tie together and coordinate. the volt which charges on your standard alleged charges overnight. between six and eight hours. foremost, that will occur when they are sleeping. during that time frame the grid is underutilized. we have enough capacity always to handle needs during august when it is so hot, so in the midterm is a good thing to utilize that capacity available at night. the other beautiful thing is when these batteries are all plugged in we know that we will push for other green technologies. this battery is an asset that can be used to collect that energy. you will see more in the news when some of these smart greed d.o.e. grants come out. i think that will be addressed ahead of time. when some of this small grid money comes out. guest: it all depends on the price of your electors the plan which varies over the country. -- price of electricity which can vary. it probably would be about the fourth or fifth most consuming a plant in your house, the equivalent of an average electric water heater. we anticipate the consumption, probably increases 15% to 20%. but the off-peak rates for electricity are much less. probably a 10% increase in your letter bill. for many people that is maybe $150 per year, compared to saving 500 gallons per gas. we're possibly talking about thousands of dollars of savings using electricity compared to a gasoline-powered host: car next is chattanooga, tenn., on the line for democrats. caller: good morning, how are you, tony? i'm wondering about the repercussions of the car and if there has been in a discussion of ad solar panels to its roof? is it a small engine like a lawn mower engine? what are we talking about here? guest: danny, both precautions. solar cells our technology we are very bullish on. we believe they need to be part of our future. we are looking at lots of studies, one of the near-term challenges is, as you know this battery is very expensive. in the new technology, the early prices generally come down over time when you get more suppliers and competition. your engineers and scientists get smarter and execution. the solar panel is something you'll not see when it is first launched. after rob, this is a chevy and people expect that everyone can afford it. but we do see the opportunities forsolar panels elsewhere in the system. sometimes when a yourvolt is plugged in outside, could be positioned appropriately. we have thisrange-extending future. it is different from any of the vehicle. i can go hundreds of miles more when i need to. this is a small, 1.4 liter, 4- cylinder block engine. it is an engine that we have today and we sell hundreds of thousands globally. that means the cost is down. in the future we anticipate the bright new generation will have new ideas. they will create a smaller, more efficient engine. maybe even a small motorcycle engine. as those batteries get better we can create even more battery power with every car and displace gasoline. host: here in "the new york times" there was this reader,. -- this reader comment. do you see the industry going towards a different standard than mpg? @@@@@@!)j@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ r@ @ @% and even if it is a 30 mile per day level, 60% of the country drives less than that. it would be disingenuous if we said that the fuel economy is infinity. it takes real-world, real- customer driving data and says there will be people who get more than230, and people who get less, but allows customers to compare a metric they are trained on for many years. this is different from a 30 mile per hour car. final point, ultimately we need to go to cost per mile. that is a customer metric everyone can understand. it is 2 cents per mile volt. the equivalent is 10 cents per month. if gas goes up, that will become an even higher number. host: west virginia, on the republican line mike. caller: first of all, i want to congratulate you on the car. the technology is great, but i have questions. what are the replacement cost for the batteries? suddenly come how will the subdue in mountainous areas? three, why should we be on the force of the $500 if it is the panacea that you say it is? -- suddenly, how well does it do in mountainous areas? guest: that was number three, what was o #ne caller: i cannot remember the area. host: we have taxpayers on the hood, the mountainous area, and what is the third? caller: basically, i am more concerned with the costar replacement for the battery? guest: that was it. let's begin with the batter one. i want to focus on what consumers need to know. chevy volt battery is designed to last in the car for 10 years and 150,000 miles. when you see comparative battery-powered cars that is the first question you should ask. what is your battery performance target? second, what is your performance goal? it will be an eight-year warranty. the replacement cost is not something you must worry about for quite some time. it could even be beyond that at 10 years. that is longer than most of your other components. this is our level of confidence. we like to kick around and say that the battery is like a fifth passenger. we treat it so well. we not fully charge and this charge the battery which is tough on it. we do everything in our power to extend its life so that you do not have to deal with the larger replacement cost. second question, this with the area of the tax credit. like all new technologies if you are interested in stimulating them so that people will adopt them, they require some help. some weather the plasma and screen tvs, cell phones, we see how they have changed over time. they were very expensive at first. we commend the obama administration for the jump start they have given this technology. it has existed in the past. it is not out of the ordinary. third question, mountainous areas -- remember we have both a battery pack and an engine on board. so, when you need totax the car a bit, our motor power is 111 kilowatts. that is the equivalent of a 150-horsepower engine. it is designed to be an everyday car. host: not much time left. here are two questions, one by twitter. you have talked a lot about the advantages of city drivers. guest: one of the things really nice about the volt is that the recharge time is relatively modest. if you have a 240 volt outlet like your dryer, this is a less than 3-hour charge. general motors will do a great car. this is where we are hoping that plug-in ready communities will help out. others will help to support allowing people toplug in. we have a wonderful innovation, the electrical grid which is going through transformation. host: the last quick question comes from brian in vancouver, british columbia. caller: good morning. i am fascinated with the volt, but i heard what i hope is just an awful rumor. that the volt will not be released to your canadian chevy dealers at the same time it is released in the states. i hope that is not true because i want my name number one on the list. i am anxious to get one. guest: well, we appreciate your interest in the car. we hear so many people who are inspired. we have to deliver on the promise. the car will come to canada. it will come to vancouver, but like a lot of introductions it has to be rolled out over time. it will be by region. it will begin in the united states. there are 3000 different electric utility companies. as such, plugging in the car, making it reliable and giving customers confidence is very important. so, it will come to canada. but it will be in the u.s. a little before them. you need to keep an eye on the vancouver olympics. you might see a jolt from volt there. host: we are out of time, but we're getting all kinds of questions about the mechanics and other questions of the car. i am wondering if your website has a place where people can get their questions answered? guest: there are a number of different ways to do this. our ceo fritz henderson has opened up a line of communication. . . from the national history museum in new orleans this is 50 minutes and under. >> a funny thing happened on the way to the museum. i was in washington, d.c. earlier this week to attend the congressional reception held by the gold star wifes in honor of legislators, congressmen and others who had helped increase benefits for the families of servicepeople who had served in iraq and afghanistan. and while shmoozing around the crowd i found myself-looking man wearing a navy uniform. i gave him my business card and began telling him my story, very abbreviated. he said, "stop. i know this story. it's in tom brokaw's book." which it is. but i was absolutely astonished that this man, admiral mike mullen who's the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, would know my story. telling this story is so difficult for me to tell so i ask for your patience if i stumble. until relatively recently on my lifeline my father was just one of among many of more than 78,000 american servicemen still missing from world war ii. on june 9th, 1999, a flag-draped casket carrying his remains was borne on a hearsh-drawn caisson to its resting place at arlington national cemetery. he was buried with full military honors that includedded a flyover by four a-10's in the missing man formation, the wing man spiraling away symbolizing the lost pilot. when the planes rode above us i was literally pulled out of my chair it was so powerful a tribute. it was appropriate for my father to be honored by these modern version of the p-47 thunderer bolt. for the events that led to that day began more than half a century earlier. i am the only child of second lieutenant george phillip gaffney jr. who at 23 went missing in his p-47 on march 11th, 1944 in new guinea. my mother was six months pregnant with me when the telegram arrived two weeks later. having seen planes crash at one of her husband's training sites, she had no illusions about his having survived. as far as she was concerned. m.i.a. was k.i. a. mother spent that night in grief with family and friends, having labor pains, fearing she would lose her baby as well as her husband. but born i was. a fatherless child, 104 days later on june 2 2nd, the day f.d.r. signed the g.i. bill into law. i am a war orphan as declared by congress with truly-inspired legislation known as public law 634 or the war orphan education assistance act of 12956. it made me eligible -- of 1956. it made me eligible for benefits like those my father would have had if he had come home from the war and gone to college. it allowed me to go to college and begin a lifelong career in teaching and learning. my life has been shaped by the consequences of war and a loss of a father whose absence has always had a presence, by the word "nonrecoverable remains." but then the brutal reality of world war ii left more than 183,000 american children fatherless. my story, "journey of the heart" is a story of do you ever of homecoming of miracles and healing and of love. my parents who had gone together four years after high school were married on august 13th, 1944 in tampa, florida. it was a friday. shortly after they were sent to that is where i suspect i was -- to stall la has see and then onto -- tallahassee and then on to georgia where my father went into fighter training and waiting to be calledded into active duty. this is a picture of my mother and father on the -- on sunday the go down and watch the pilots take and take rides. but my mother suspected she was pregnant at this point and opted not to get into the planeãh@ @ my mantra, "my father was a fighter pilot who went missing in the war before i was born. i never knew him." whenever i thought about the man who was my father i became extremely frustrated that there was no information, that i would never know what happened, that it was a problem i could not solve. i spent most of my life wondering if he had been taken by natives or had amnesia and was wandering the world looking for me. one day i saw a young man in uniform standing on the corner and desperately wanted to ask him if he was my father. but at eight, i was too shy. for years i felt guilty about not saving my father that day. when i was very young i had a brown light radio that had belonged to my father, the kind with all the tubes in the back. i'd turn it on and listen to the static and try to hear his voice. occasionally i'd ask my mother about him. she would disappear for a few minutes and return with an old brown leather, battered suitcase. she'd talk about him and show me his letters and the personal effects returned after he had gone missing. at some point i made a conscious decision not to think about him anymore. it was too painful. so i just pushed it down. my grandmother ed that hated the japanese. they had taken her only son. i always wondered if i should hate them, too. not too many years ago a friend invited me for dinner saying there would be a special guest who it turned out was a japanese buddhist monk who spoke no english. we sat on the floor facing one another. and i stared at him wondering if i hated him. suddenly i realized he may have lost someone in the war, too. perhaps his own father. i felt a tremendous weight lift from my shoulders. and at that moment we made eye contact for the first time. my mother remarried several times, seeking love and security. i eventually had four younger half-brothers. and my first stepfather, floyd maine, died when i was nine from wound he had received 10 years later. her last husband was a bomb ba dear on a b-17 that was downed during the first raid -- in august 1943. he spent two years in a p.o.w. camp. world war ii was a member of my family. ity had an awkward relationship with my father's parents. they searched my face for their son. i felt self-conscious and unsure of how to behave in their presence. i saw grandma gaffney for the last time in 1970. as i turned to leave him he asked if i had ever heard from my father. it broke my heart to tell him no. it was a desperate question from a dying man, it remains as the saddest moment of my life. in the early 80's, i watched ain't view on ""nightline"" with a brother and sister their early 20's who is father, a fighter pilot, had gone missing in vietnam. i thought about them intently for days until suddenly it hit me. "that's me i emotionally disconnected i had become from my life's story. while packing for a move in 1985, i went into the baseman and my eyes fell hard upon the old leather suitcase. i don't know how it -- how or when it had come into my possession, but it had always been there in the back of the closet or up in the attic. i opened it and for the first time i had an emotion that i understood. i was enraged. i was really angry that i would never know that he would never come back. i wondered why i should keep those things anymore. my children certainly weren't going to want them. i began throwing things out. i kept some letters. but when i held the medical and dental records and a document called the missing air crew report or mac rel i hesitated. i decided to keep them just in case. but i sent the letters back to my mother saying i couldn't carry the burden anymore. then something happened that changed my life forever. while preparing to go to work in september 199 3, i heard the words "-- come from the television in the other room. i ran and saw a young woman being interviewed by joan lunden on good morning america. janice olsen described her research regarding world war ii aircraft wrecks in new begin northeast. she held an i.d. bracelet that had been found by villagers at a wreck site. it was from a b-25. and was in the mountains, the owen stanley mountains of new guinea. she turned to an elderly woman seated next to her and gave her the bracelet. she was the wife of the copilot and was still wearing an identical bracelet. they find wrecks and remains in new guinea? i had to keep turning up the volume on the television because i absolutely could not believe what i was hearing. was that the crack el of static penetrating the long dark silence it meant for me? i'd been told i was courageous for taking this journey but there was only one act of courage on my part. it was placing that first call to janice with my heart pound out of my chest. i knew it would be my only chance and i had to go for it. it was a moment when you know things will never be the same. i found myself unexpectedly launched into a search for the father i had never known. i felt as though i had entered a stream and was being carried by a swift current. there was no turning back. janice reminds me of my first questions, "could my father still be alive? could he have been taken by natives or have amnesia? she gently explained that given the terrain, time and the traditions of war, it was improbably. my quest then was to know all i could about the man in the picture and to resolve those lifelong questions surrounding his disappearance. janice guided me through a search for documents and explained the meaning of those i had. the missing air crew report was the lodestone. i'd like to show you. the macr describes the mission. the weather conditions, names of the pilots in formation, who last spoke to the air crew, his words and his demeanor. the factory stamp numbers on the engine and all guns aboard are listed and they're right here. the b-47 had four, 50 caliber guns in the forward edge of each wing. at that point i didn't know a b-47 from a 747. there is a second page to this document which is a narrative. and it describes who last spoke to my father in this case and what he said. he described having been in a dog fight. he was very nervous. he thought that his plane had been hit and he asked to have it examined. they did and said that it was ok and put on a full load of fuel. he took off at 2:50 in the afternoon for a 20 minute flight over the mountains back into busev in the macram river valley but he never made it. i asked mom to send the letters back to me. and when i reread them for the first time and saw my father's words on march 10th describing the mission for the next morning i silently cried out "don't go." janice told me about the army's identification laboratory in honolulu. it is the world's foremost foreensic laboratory for skeletal identification. they send teams consisting of mortuary specialists, anthropologists and engineers who conduct archeological dig on sites throughout the world including new guinea. i wrote to johnny webb, the deputy commander, asking if they had ever found anything related to my father. he responded that regrettably they had not. i became a regular correspondence and he became a very patient man. how could i have imagined what was to come. along the meandering paths of my journey i found my father's squadron, the 41st, and began attending their reunions and calling them all my fathers. i found his childhood friends and family i had never known. although both my father and i grew up in madison, wisconsin, i found a man living a couple of miles from me in connecticut who was a member of our father's class, 43 g at eagle's pass, texas. 43 g means july, january would be a. i borrowed memories and images and began to find the missing pieces of me. i was insatiable. i hadn't known my heart was so empty and my need to fill it so great. i started my journey my placing ads in military magazines and found a man named george p. gaffney. and on march 11th, 1994 which was the 50th anniversary of the day my father had gone missing, i was sitting home alone feeling really upset. it was a cold, drizzly day. i was by myself. and my son, my only son, was taking a flight that day. and i was very nervous. the phone rang. i picked it up. and a voice said, "hello, pa trish yeah, this is george gaffney." we had a wonderful conversation that really set me at ease. i learned how my father's disappearance had affected the entire family. a 100-year-old cousin went to her diary and pulled out a page marked march 5th, 1944 and gave me the page where she'd written the news of my -- when she heard the news of my father's disappearance. as my journey progressed, i felt a growing power in speaking my father's name. and i reclaimed what had belonged to me, something i had left behind when i married, my name. i am patricia susan gaffney, a fighter pilot's daughter. i proudly wear my father's silver wings. in a conversation with janice in 1995, she casually mentioned that she was thinking of going back to new guinea and that she had an extra first class ticket and she wanted to fly from los angeles to singapore and from there to new guinea. silence. janice? patricia? what followed was a mad scramble to get a visa and figure out how i could leave my job for a mon month. i -- told him about the incredible opportunity that i had but that i had to take an unpaid leave for a month. he casually put out his cigarette, went into another room. and when he came back he had a check made out for enough money to cover the rest of my trip to new guinea. when i protested he said, "i'm as close as you'll ever get to four father. and i want you to go." after 17 hours in the air, janice and i took a couple of days to catch our breath. two days later we flew four 7 1/2 hours through the night to new guinea. i awoke as we approached the airport in port moresby. as we disembarked we hit a wall of heat that took our breath away. we went to nadjab international airport that uses air strips laid by the world war ii army construction battalions. how could i ever have dreamed that like alice through the looking glass i would go to that place that had always been too far away in time and distance, that place where men went never to return? this is a map of new guinea, papua, new guinea. actually the land mass continues up here but this is the area -- this is indonesia. this is papua. this is port moresby, the dakota trail that you've heard of is right along here and bruno, which is the site of a tremendous battle is there on that coastline. we went to lei which you may know as the departure point for amelia earhart. it was the last place that she was seen. when i was in new guinea, i flew from lei to busev which is where my father was last stationed. and then to sidor. and that doesn't look like a very big distance. actually it's only about a 20 minute flight. but there is a very treacherous mountain range there called the finestairs. very deep canyons, very high, steep cliffs. and at this point in 1997 -- or 1995 when i went to new guinea, there were still 300 american aircraft missing in that area because. my father's mission that day had been -- as a fighter pilot he was flying -- he and his squad were flying cover for a bomber group that was going #m@@@@ @ @ first men to macon tact with the highland native people. and extraordinarily enough, they had a movie camera with them. and this is on film. it's now owned by the smithsonian institute and it's called "first contact." he's a very, very interesting person. so there i was, on mother's day in america, standing in the mythic place that had existed as a sheriffer behind my eyes. although i didn't really understand my actions until later, i performed a symbolic gesture, a ritual that would give my father a grave. i walked into the kunai grass that he described in his last letter to my mother written on the night before he disappeared. and there i buried a metal box filled with photos telling my father the story of my life, photos of his grandchildren, lisa and david, and symbols of love chosen by his three sisters and my mother, ruth. richard gave me the precise coordinates from his g.p.s. and i kept the key from the box. how could i have known i had paid the exact price demanded by the ancient gods of stone-aged men? then i turned to face the enemy, the mountains that took my father. richard showed me where he had recovered other sites in the mountains and the landing strips he had laid in the mountains at 45 degrees. you can't see them here, but there are a number of strips laid. they're very steep. you land going down and you -- i'm sorry. you land going up and you take off going down. and you've heard the term "bush pilots." there are a lot of pilots who fly in this dangerous area. a lot of young men from new zealand or australia who are seeking to upgrade their certifications, there are no roads in new guinea so the native people, villagers who want to take their produce to market fly on these small planes. so it's a very extraordinary place. still set back in time. we flew along the path that my father should have flown that day, and i tried to look at every tree in the jungle 10,000 feet below us. saying to myself, "dad dirks where are you? give me a clue." but finally i understand how planes can go missing. how could i ever have known i would fly over the lush green grave of the man in the picture? i went to sidor, the last place my father was seen. and i spent nearly two weeks in new guinea. i saw flowers growing, children smiling, rainbows, and felt es every day. i even -- earthquakes every day. i even had an offer from a villager to be his girlfriend. i respectfully declined. i thought a lot about life. what could have been my day dreams of sunday drives with my father and our place in the cycle of life. i watched the clouds descend on the finesterres every morning. in fact you could see a bank of heavy clouds up there in the morning. and as the heat increases during the course of the day, by noon this thick bank of clouds has completely obscured the entire range. it comes all the way down to the bottom so you can't even tell that there's a mountain range there. after my trip, mom came to visit me in connecticut. we went to lunch with -- whom she recognized when he and my father were in the fighter pool in thomasville. she looked at his photo albums of those days and found a picture of herself and my father. in fact, i had looked through those photo albums looking for a picture of my father but i missed it. i didn't recognize my own father. 18 months after our trip, janice told me about a philadelphia businessman, alfred hey began, who had gone to new guinea searching for the wreck of a b-25 piloted by his great uncle who was lost in 1943. his remains had been recovered. knowing he planned to return to continue his search, i asked him if he would search for my father's wreck site. he answered with a wonderfully simple "yes." i sent him the missing air crew report, just in case. and again, the mountains -- one of the reasons why there were so many aircraft missing in here as you can see the high cliffs and the very steep and very deep valleys here. at the time there were -- the maps were not particularly good. they did not indicate the correct altitude. so many planes like my father's flew into the mountains thinking they were higher than they were or that those mountains were lower. the daily clouds covered them. and while they used those clouds to escape the enemy at times they got in there and they couldn't get out. many times the bombers would fly into these valleys again to escape the enaround. and they could do nothing but crash. until 1975, papua, new guinea was under the governance of australia. and during that time there was a system of foot patrolmen who spoke pigeon language of the villagers. and there were outposts throughout the mountains. and the villagers would come in and tell the men that they knew of wrecks. but after 1975 that system no longer existed. it's very cold above 7,000 feet. in fact too cold for the villagers to live. so there are many wrecks above that -- above that altitude. and these mountains do go up to 15,000 feet. although it's only five degrees off the equator, there is a glacier there and there is also a known wreck there but it is too dangerous for the crew to go in and recover it. another problem was that from the tremendous harry martin in papua, new guinea the radios were not working so communication was very limited. and another problem was men like my father did not have a lot of training actually in flying on instruments. so once they got into a situation like this they really did not have enough training to know how to get out. northwesterly 1997, fred randomly chose the village of the swan people at the edge of the jungle of the finesterres to land his helicopter. richard leahy interpreted in pigeon asking the people if they knew of wrecks in the area in their hunting grounds. they described two wrecks, a four-day walk through the jungle. but it was 20 minutes by helicopter. the first wreck was a b-25 with the remains of nine men aboard. and they've all been repaid reated. ill and hampered by damaged equipment, fred left new guinea without going to the second site. but in june 1998, fred returned and found himself in a sanctuary filled in deep canopied jungle under the invisibility of thick white clouds that had sealed my father's fate. janice called to say i should know that fred and richard were on a site and although they'd found a b-47 the destruction was so complete they were unable to make further identification. they were, however, remains present. this first slide is -- this is the helicopter pad that the villagers laid. you can see how precarious that is. it's actually cantilevered over the ridge. and richard for six months richard flew food and supplies into the swan people so they would keep it clear because the growth there is so tremendous it would have been covered up within weeks actually. the swan people are the people who helped dig out the wreck. you can see that man up here who's trying to wedge it up is -- this is the engine. another man here. the plane had hit the side of the mountain, had slid down or because there are daily earthquakes there had been sort of forced down, was kind of wedged under an outcropping and was also at the head waters of two rivers. so it was deep in the clay. and the clay there actually the very cold and wet but it's not acidic. and it helps preserve remains which was very fortunate for us. and this is fred hagan, to whom i will be forever indebted. i called richard leahy in new guinea saying i wanted to know what they had. i received a fax back from him later that day warning me not to get my hopes up too high but that wreck was a b-47 and it was at the right address. i faxed back that it was way too late about the hopes. two days later fred was led to another wreck, 15 miles away. at the same time, i made a monumental discovery when i found the american world war ii other fans network online. in -- or fans network online. -- orphans. in one breath lest moment i learned i wasn't the only one. they all believed they were the only one. so ended the belief that had gripped my little girl heart. consider the chances of finding others like me just when i would need them the most. i had not told my mother about fred's discovery and she didn't know about the team that had gone in to recover the remains three months later. when the call finally came october 16th, that team had identified four, 50 caliber guns from the right wing of my father's b-47, i was stunned, caught between emotions. these are extraordinarily devoted, dedicated people who believe very, very strongly in the motto "until they are all home." they're also very educated people. and these are the four, 50 caliber guns that were found in the right wing. and this is a detail showing actually it's hard to see here but it is showing the numbers that are stamped on it that matched the numbers on the missing air crew i wondered, shall i laugh or shall i cry? i called richard in new guinea who picked up on the first ring. he said everyone there was ecstatic. because local people who had been involved in numerous recoveries had never before recovered the remains of a world war ii m.i.a. whose family, indeed daughter, was actively searching for him. usually what happens is a wreck site is found and remains, and once they're identified the family is notified. but this was a different situation. i called my contact at the central identification laboratory for confirmation and was told unofficially that it was true. p.n.g. 100 is gaffney. i asked, "does this mean i can tell my mother?" "yes," she said. then i wondered, how do i tell my mother? she answered after a couple of rings and i blurted out, "we found him?" she asked, "you found, who patty?" there was a short silence, a couple of tears, and then cries of disbelief. i announced the stunning news to my fellow members of awon in an online forum and soon heard from member michael osborn w said his father, an artillery battalion commander had gone missing in virtually the same place at virtually the same time. we spent many hours talking amazed to find someone else who had grown up knowing names like finesterres and sidor, the air strip from which both of our fathers had taken off on the time he disappeared. he said his father had gone missing in a l-4, which is a military equivalent of a pipe ever cub, the only l-4 to go missing in new guinea. and again, it's difficult to tell, but this is the l-4 being off-loaded. this is a ship and men standing up here. the coastline. and this is sidor. the l-4 is being off-loaded. and on the wing we could see the numbers which would be very, very important. this photo came from the national archives and was taken by the signal corps during the war. johnny webb called to say that they had found two teeth among my father's remains. and they needed medical and dental records to assist in the identification. they needed the very dental records i had kept. i offered to carry them to hawaii, but they agreed to accept a copy. i arranged to be my father's official escort home. and i was the first family member ever to escort a repatriated army servicemen. i went to the central identification laboratory in hawaii on june 22nd, 1999 where i met the members of the team that had recovered and identified my@@@@@@@@@ @ @ @ @ r r grandparents did not live to share this with me and my mother. this was taken on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary. many family members have told me that my grandmother was never the same after losing her son. to defeat depression she began painting and became quite accomplished. for me those paintings represent a direct link to my father. finally, i escorted my father to arlington national cemetery where he received the honors he so deserved. there surrounded by family, friends, and my new family of war orphans whose loving arms were securely around me, the flag that had draped his casket was placed in my arms. i left him there among his brethren in that hall lowed place. -- hallowed place. he was not forgotten, my father. how could i ever have known that i would have a place to go with flowers in my hand and pride in my heart, my lifelong questions answered, to contemplate my journey of the heart? i've had to forgive myself for throwing things out from that suitcase and accept it as part of my journey. i think anger was a healthy and reasonable emotion for me to have. of all the loving things that have been said to me, i will always hear one voice above the others. -- smith, a member of the 41s 41st, choked back his tears to say, "patricia, i'd like to think that had it been me my daughter would have gone to look for me and bring me home." by the way, finesterres translates from the french to "end of the earth." very appropriate. but that's not the end of this story of love. mike osborne and i continued to correspond by phone and e-mail. mike described how he had been in contact with the central identification laboratory, hounding them to search for his father's wreck. for 20 years he'd poured through records and maps and knew with certainty that airplane was somewhere within a 20-mile circle. in december 1999, 18 months after my father's wreck had been found, i was looking back through the photos and notes sent to me from new guinea by fred and richard. i saw a footnote on the report they had sent to the center of identification library that said "found what appears to be a l-4". a l-4? wasn't that the kind of plane that mike's father had disappeared in? i raced to the phone and tried to call him. after many frantic attempts, i got ahold of him and gave him the news. he immediately contacted johnny webb and set into motion the very process for his father in february 2000, mike called to say he'd been notified by the central identification laboratory known as phil. but the site had been located within that 20-mile circle and was deemed recoverable. later that day, -- sherry, mike's wife of 30 years passed away. someone said "the lord giveett and the lord takeett away." later that month the remains of the pilot, second lieutenant francis trutalsky and his passenger, the commander of the 121st -- were recovered. a jeanology company was recovered to find relatives to get d.n.a. samples in order to segregate the remains. mike was adopted by his stepfather, dr. don osborne and his name had been changed when he was seven years old. now he decided to do what i had done, take back what belonged to him. michael robert kindig is major earl robert kindig's son, his only child. michael was about five years old here. in october 2001, major earl kindig was buried with full military honors at arlington national cemetery within view of the still smoking pentagon. his burial had been postponed for weeks because of 9/11. i had planned to attend and meet mike for the first time but i had broken my arm a few days earlier and i was unable to attend. at the end of october 2002, mike and i finally met face-to-face as an american world war ii orphans network conference in missouri. after four years of long distance correspondence. i invited him to have thanksgiving with me and my family at my home in new haven, connecticut. when he arrived, unbeknownst to me he had a diamond ring in his pocket, one he purchased the morning after he got home from the conference. of a transcontinental relationship, we were married at yale university on june 28th, 2003. my name is patricia gaffney kindig. i bear the names of both of our fathers with immeasurable pride and it's reinforced every time i write or say my name. i moved to michael's home in denver. between us we have five children and nine magnificent grandchildren! and i'd like to introduce my husband, michael kindig. [applause] >> i might point out to you that that map that shows all dots going back and forth represents premiere executive status with united airlines. [laughter] >> in a six-month period of time, that's what i achieved. i had the kind of job at which i could do that. and two and three times a month i was flying back and forth between denver and laguardia and then taking a bus up to new haven. it got to the point -- >> i'm sorry. >> it got to the point -- >> is it on? >> is it on? >> it got to the point where t.s.a. agents and flight attendants recognized me on-site. t.s.a. agent one would say, "mike, are those new boots?" because he'd been the one who'd examined them on a previous trip. my father was major el robert kindig, or duke as he was known, long before a certain motion picture actor. >> not on? >> nope. >> thank you. >> before a certain motion picture actor had adopted that name. he was regular army. having graduated from iowa state. and at that time he was the only regular army inductee into the armed forces. he was offered the opportunity to become a second lieutenant in the marine corps and he reluctantly turned that down because he had plans to get married. and at that time the marine corps would not permit junior officers to be marine -- or be married rather. and marriage was very much on his mind. the circumstances of his disappearance were almost, dare i sacks come cal. the circumstances of warfare in new guinea were near stone age. for instance, because the equipment -- and patricia made reference to the damage that was done to all of the radios -- he was trying to direct fire missions with 155 caliber artillery on the japanese on gabutobon ridge. and to accomplish that because he had no radio he would scribble them out on pieces of paper, stick them in a coke bottle, fly back over the artillery batteries, drop them and then fly back and make corrections. this went on and on and on until he finally disappeared in the macr 18-miles southeast of saidor, new guinea. i might point out to you that this device is most assuredly not mine. i rose no higher in the armed forces than e-4 in the marine corps. this rank insignificant knee yeah in fact was found with -- insignia was found with my father's remains. he was wearing this the day he was killed. this represents one of the couple might have had. right after we were married we took the train down to washington to pay our respects to our respective parents -- or respective fathers. now, this one on the left was there. the one on the right was not there. and was a source of considerable consternation to both of us. because he's been buried 18 months prior. my wife leading the way, she sort of chugging up eisenhower boulevard, if you know arlington, and we had a terse conversation with the deputy commander of arlington. and two weeks later, this stone was erected. the good news was -- is that patricia had conspired to have the word "we speak your name" on her stone. and that was the only one -- to my knowledge it still is -- with one exception. the only but because of the delay, i was permitted to have the same words engraved on my stone. . 35,000 people could have their loved ones returned to them. people say it's done, let's move on. that was not the contract with our fathers, that was not the contract with me when i joined the marines. we were told, "should you die, we'll bring you home." we have that obligation to 78,000 families, 35,000 of those families we could fulfill that contract, and with that i'll turn this back over to patricia. if you have any questions. >> we're going to do a q&a at the end, and i'm almost there. >> i'm sorry. >> a service principal officer of the american world war ii orphans network was found by ann bennett nix whose father was killed in the italian campaign in april 1945 -- in fact, he served in the same division -- or regiment as bob dole. a-1 has office space in the american legion headquarters building in indianapolis but in fact it is a volunteer-run national organization, a 501-c3 and we have members scattered throughout all 50 states and we have someone in iraq, as a matter of fact. -- a-1 attempts to locate world war ii orphans and works to honor our fathers' service and sacrifice. the greatest service we provide is a sense of family. we communicate through an online forum, a quarterly newsletter called star regional and national conferences. three years ago a book was published about a-1 by the turner publishing company and there are copies here on the table. i spent two years editing the book that has more than 500 entries. the book is in your book store and it's here on the table. we wish to express our profound gratitude to janice olson, alfred hagen, johnny webb, tom holland, who is the director of the forensic laboratory in hawaii, the villagers of new guinea and all the dedicated men and women of the central identification laboratory who helped bring us a sense of peace. thank you for the opportunity to tell our story to you and to speak our father's name. appreciate it. i would like to tell you that c-span is present here and they are recording this. we would love to have questions and answers if you are interested. i would like to point out, again, that the books are on the table and you are welcome to take one of them. there is a binder there. you are welcome to look through, but please leave that behind. there are brochures and if there are any questions, we would love to answer them. yes. >> 35,000 -- >> hang on just a second. >> she's got a -- >> the 35,000 -- is that the right end? the 35,000 that you mentioned, are they still lost? or do you know where they are? >> the 35,000 that michael mentioned are lost. they are considered m.i.a.'s. they are mostly air crew and they are mostly on south pacific islands. some are in the water, and they do have the capacity to find them. i also have a paper here that has a number of websites on it for for sohi, for jpac. i recommend that you google richard leahy -- a fascinating person -- and some recommended reading for you like tom brokaw's book and a couple of other things. michael's father fought in the battle of buna, which was a really bloody, bloody affair, early in the war, and there is a book that's also recommended there called the boys of ghost mountain -- >> "ghost mountain boys." >> sorry, it's just come out and we're both reading it now. this is just under an hour. >> ladies and gentlemen, welcome to beautiful key west, florida. and the seventh annual truman legacy symposium sponsored by the little white house in key west and the harry s. truman presidential library in missouri. we're delighted to be here at the little white house and we're appreciative of the support we've received once again harry s. truman little white house foundation, the state of florida and historic tours america, which has been a long-time -- over a decade, really, supporter of the truman little white house and has been with us since the beginning when we started these symposia on the presidency of harry truman. i would like to especially recognize the good work in organizing our program today by bob walls, the director of the truman little white house. it's always a delight and a pleasure to work with bob and his excellent staff who do such a great job of maintaining and interpreting this wonderful historic site, the little white house in key west. this is the seventh annual is symposium that we've conducted here in beautiful key west. each of these conferences has explored an aspect of truman's presidency and how his presidency impacted the decades in american history that followed his term in office. we've explored national security, immigration, the environment, civil rights, middle east policy and the recognition of israel. next year, about this same time, in may, we will conduct our eighth symposium and we'll focus on the legacy of harry s. truman's far-eastern policies. it will coincide with the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the war in korea. all of the papers of these programs of published by the truman state university press. we're delighted with that partnership as well. the first four volumes are now in print. three more will be in print within the next several months so we're getting ourselves caught up on that publishing adventure, and are pleased that we've had this support from our sister academic institution in the state of missouri, the truman state university. this year's program will explore truman's relationship with congress, often seen as a very contentious and difficult relationship, and our speakers today will have a lot to say about truman, and congress, and the legacy that the united states inherited from his presidential years. it's my pleasure now to introduce a gentleman who represents the truman family, and i should say the truman family, beginning with harry truman himself, has had a great affection for the presidential library, a great interest in the library, and have worked hard to make the library in independence, missouri an important resource for american scholars and a place where school children and the general public can learn about american history and the democratic process. with us today is the honorary chairman of the harry s. truman library institute, which is the private-sector partner of the truman library. this gentleman is also the eldest grandson of president harry s. truman, so please join me in welcoming to the podium clifton truman daniel. >> thank you, mike. welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the seventh symposium, always a good reason to come to key west, not that you really need a reason to come to key west but i have been enjoying these for seven years now -- i've goten up to the point where i can come down twice a year now. i've worked it out where we have to do a fundraiser for the symposium before we do the symposium and i think we need to do two fund-raisers next year, the first two preferably in the dead of winter, because i live in chicago. my wife gave me my wake-up call this morning to make sure i got over here in time. i said "how are things in chicago?" she said "there is a frost warning." it's may. come on. so she said "it's nice and hot down there." yes, it's raining but it's hot. i'm looking forward to this. my grandfather's legacy with congress was, of course, a mixed bag, and a fun story all around the give and take, we were talking about a story i tell about my grandfather that doesn't have anything to do with him and congress but i think illustrates his feeling toward congress, and i love this story and i'll tell you that story and then i'll introduce don. grandpa retired in 1953 and had no secret service protection. ex-presidents didn't get secret service protection in those days. they didn't even get a pension. he had his army pension, $111.96 a month, that's all he had to retire on and he had a retired kansas city police officer named mike westwood who took care of him and drove him around, but you could go up to the former president's house in those days -- there wasn't anybody -- the gate wasn't locked. the secret service had built a fence around the house, a five-foot steel fence in the 1940's when he was president but when grandpa retired they just handed him the key and said "see you, you're on your own" and a man drove by the house one morning and got a flat tire. he didn't not where he was. there was no sign that said "harry truman's house." there is now but there wasn't in 1953. the man walked through the front gate, up the steps and rang the bell and grandpa answered the door. the man said "i've got a flat. can i use your phone?" grandpa said "yeah, sure." the man called the garage from the phone in the front hall and the garage told him "it's going to take us 15 or 20 minutes until you can get over there." the man said "i'll wait by the car." grandpa had him sit down in the living room and they sat down and talked for 15 or 20 minutes, got along just fine. the wrecker pulled up front and he said, "thank you for the hospitality, it's been nice talking to you. grandpa said "nice talking to you too." the man got halfway down the steps and stopped and turned around and said, "you know something? and i hope you won't take offense at this, but you look a hell of a lot like that s.o.b. harry truman." and grandpa just smiled at him and said, "i am that s.o.b." that's kind of how grandpa got along with congress too. they would get along just fine for a while and then there would be the name-calling. the chairman of our event today, donald a. radiosey has been historian of the united states. he's a frequent commentator on congressional affairs on c-span and national public radio. he's the author of eight books including reporting from washington, history of the washington press corps" which don tells me included a little about my late grandfather, clifton daniel, "washington correspondents" more likely with dad, that book won the organization of american historians richard w. leoppold prize, don has edited the closed-hearing transcripts of senator joseph r. mccarthy's investigations. ladies and gentlemen, donald r. richey. >> thank you. i appreciate that, and i want to welcome you, also, and to thank the truman library and the truman white house here for being such gracious hosts for this meeting and to ray geselbrecht for arranging everything and for the panelists. wasn't hard to twist their arms to get them to come to key west both because of key west and because of harry truman, people still like to talk about truman and i think there is a lot of value in truman, these days as a new administration is beginning there has been talk about franklin roosevelt and the hundred days. truman gets mentioned by presidents as they're leaving office especially if they're leaving office with low standing in the public opinion polls, they start talking about harry truman all the time because they want you to know that history will probably remember them better than you folks do right now and there is a great hope that their representations will -- their reputations will follow truman's trajectory, and today we'll talk about some of the reasons why truman is so well remembered today. it's a little disconcerting to me to realize that we're celebrating this month harry truman's 125th birthday and the reason it's disconcerting is i was involved with the celebrations in congress of his 100th birthday, we had a joint session of congress and where we also at the smithsonian institution had a series of speakers about truman's great decisions. there were six speakers, each one on a decision that truman had made and i was the chair of that symposium, and at the very end of the symposium one of the panelists, one of the -- i mean, the audience raised his hand and said, "i don't understand," he said, "all of you people like truman, you have nothing but good things to say about truman." he said "i was alive during truman's administration. none of us liked him when he was president." he was flabbergasted. one of the panelists responded by saying, "when truman was president he was judged by his predecessor. since he's been president, he's been judged by his successors and he looks better all the time." in that spirit, mike devine asked me goin by giving an overview of how presidents from truman to obama have worked with congress so we try to place him into the more modern historical context before we then begin to talk about specifically what was going on during his -- his own administration. c-span recently did a poll of historians and political scientists and journalists of american presidents, and harry truman ranked fifth out of all the presidents of the united states -- a very high ranking. ahead of every one of his successors in the white house. the network was very concerned about this -- this not being a subjective poll and so instead of just being a popularity rating they asked us to break everyone down into 10 categories. one of the categories was relations with congress so it seemed an organizing device on how presidents have ranked according to the way historians see them over time, and in terms of truman's relations with congress, actually, that was one of his lowest scores and he came in 16th in that category. behind eisenhower, kennedy, johnson, ford and reagan. without casting aspersions on the judges, since i was one of the judges in this case, i will say that there is some contradiction between truman's high overall score and his low score in terms of his relations with congress because he placed his highest priorities on foreign policy issues -- everything from the marshall plan to u.s. membership in nato, which all required congressional approval. so his accomplishments as susan hartman mentioned were highly successful in the areas where he wanted ám@@ @ @ @ @ rh@ @ @ @ @ as well? presidents have been courting congress ever since george washington invited members of congress to weekly dinners on a rotating basis, but by the 20th century, the chief executive of the united states had also become the chief legislator and also the chief lobbyist, and we measure presides by their legislative scorecard -- how much they got passed, how much they vetoed, how many of their nominations got through, exactly just what did congress give them in response. president johnson used to argue that presidents and congress worked in different clubs, they worked on different cycles, congress liked to work in slow increments, the president of the united states had to get things done fast and that required pushing congress faster than it wanted to go. also, it's quite clear that the president of the united states is not a prime minister, and has no relation in some respects to the political majorities in congress. it's quite frequent in modern times that a president of one party is faced with a congressional majority of the other party which complicates greatly the effort to try to get anything done. even when truman had democratic majorities which was for six of his eight years as president, he found it very hard to get his legislation through because there were really four political parties in congress. there was a very conservative southern democratic party as well as the liberal democratic party and the republican party was similarly divided between its liberal and conservative wings, and a conservative coalition in many ways dominated the congress during truman's presidency. his experiences highlighted a political truism -- that some presidents come to office with a full tank of gas and others start out on empty. and that means they have to work all the harder to get anything through, and i think after 12 years of depression and war, harry truman arrived in the presidency with an empty tank of gas in 1945. franklin roosevelt, his predecessor ranked third in the c-span poll, first in congressional relations which is interesting because his congressional relations were best during his first term when he had a huge, very supportive majority in both the house and the senate, but after 1937, with the failed court-packing case roosevelt got very little out of congress in terms of domestic legislation and in fact from 1937 on, democrats steadily lost seats in congress. between 1937 and roosevelt's death in 1945, democrats lost 92 seats in the house and 19 seats in the senate. they had a majority, but it was a very slim majority by the time truman came in. the president's congressional relations didn't begin or end with harry truman but in many ways he was an important transitional figure in this field. truman set out to regularize a lot of the things that franklin roosevelt had done on an ad hoc basis and that's why political scientists refer to truman's presidency as the institutionalized president -- that he was trying to depersonalize much of what roosevelt had done and set up mechanisms for dealing with it. he continued roosevelt's weekly meetings with the leaders of congress but he also established the first regular congressional liaisons in the white house, although his successor, dwight eisenhower, usually gets the credit for this. getting anything done with congress requires a lot of persistence and a lot of patience, a lot of listening, a lot of patronage concerns, a lot of the local parochial issues that congress is concerned about that could overwhelm a president's time, and truman assigned much of this to his appointment secretary, matt connolly, but in the second term connolly found this johannesburg to be overwhelming and he appointed two legislative liaisons. these are the first recorded legislative liaisons in the white house, josive finney, the navy's liaison in the senate and claude mailon in the house. until that point, the cabinet officers were dealing with congress directly as opposed to the white house. they did the leg work for the administration and that allowed truman's top policy people to focus on the larger issues rather than having to worry about appointments to west point and the other concerns that congressmen are always talking about with members of congress. connolly's main function was to keep all of these issues off of truman's desk essentially and so he foisted them off onto 15ey and mailen. in his oral history, finney said truman made it clear that he would be the quarterback and i would be the ballcarrier and i think that description is a good, apt description of the style of truman's working with congress which falls somewhere in between what political scientists have referred to as the designed chaos of franklin roosevelt and the structural purity of dwight eisenhower who followed truman. what i'm going to do now is give you capsule summaries of each of the presidents since truman and how their relations with congress matched against truman's. eisenhower on his way to korea after the election in 1952 was accompanied by his old friend, general persons who had been liaison to the congress while eisenhower was chief of staff and persons convinced eisenhower he needed a legislative liaison office in the white house, and eisenhower created this position, essentially gave a title to the functions that truman had already put in place, and to show the continuity, persons asked joe 15ey if he would continue in his -- joe fee ny if he would continue in his job. feeney said no, he wouldn't do that so persons hired brice harlow to be the leg man on capitol hill and eventually in 1958 harlow became eisenhower's top congressional liaison person, in many ways considered the model congressional liaison man. eisenhower actually had a much less ambitious legislative agenda than harry truman did. his main objective in a lot of ways was to scale down all the ideas that were coming out of congress, in some cases to block them from happening. eisenhower stands eighth in the c-span poll. that's below truman and below john kennedy overall but ahead of both of them in his relations with congress. and the reason for that was summarized by the journalist william s. white, who said it was clear within a few months of eisenhower becoming president to "every adult observer in washington" that the president had struck a tacit understanding with the democratic leadership in congress that he would not try to undo roosevelt's new deal and truman's fair deal if the democrats protected him from the far right wing of his own party that were attacking things of his foreign policy at that time and so the democrats supported eisenhower on foreign policy and eisenhower did not disrupt the policies that were already in effect on the domestic side. bryce harlow used to regularly arrange for leaders of congress to come down for drinks with eisenhower at the white house, but they never publicized these meetings because these were not the republican leaders of the congress, these were the democratic leaders of congress, speaker sam rayburn and senate majority leader lyndon johnson. when eisenhower left office he was replaced by united states senator john f. kennedy. the question -- the riddle that washington faced at this point was why was it that a democratic president had so much trouble getting anything out of a democratic congress. richard stroud, who wrote that in 1963, described kennedy's legislative program as a shambles, and yet kennedy placed sixth in the c-span poll just behind truman overall but ahead of him in his congressional relations despite having one of the lowest percentages of bills passed by congress in the 20th century. kennedy was advised at the beginning of his presidency by richard neustadt who had served in the truman administration in the bureau of the budget and who was then a harvard professor and told him he needed to place a high priority on his congressional relations, and so that's why kennedy right away appointed one of his top political aides, larry o'brien to be his chief congressional liaison and patronage person. he elevated the title and he let it be known in washington that larry o'brien was the man to go to -- that he had the president's ear. kennedy told o'brien that he wanted him to be particularly aggressive in this, and he said, "i don't recall in my 14 years in the congress that either the truman or eisenhower or anyone on their staffs ever said one word to me about legislation," and kennedy wanted more interaction between his administration and the members of congress. the legislative liaison people knew their best asset was kennedy's personality, his ability to interact with members -- they had him constantly holding coffee hours and receptions. by o'brien's count, kennedy held 2,500 separate meetings with members of congress during the first year that he was president of the united states, but these were all soft-sell sessions. it was o'brien who did the arm-twisting, not kennedy and despite all these efforts, kennedy encountered legislative gridlock. critics grumbled that he just couldn't get anything done. kennedy's defenders argued that after a while his administration figured out how to deal with congress and actually his track record improved, and by the time his administration was so tragically cut short he had improved his relations well over his first year and kennedy himself said "it's true they rejected half of what i asked but if i only asked for half as much they would have only given me half of that" so he had to keep pushing congress at the time. the most telling remark that kennedy made was that while he was a member of congress, the presidency had seemed all-powerful. when he became president, for the first time he realized how influential congress really was in the system, and that's because the world looks different if you're a single member of the 535 members of congress versus the president as opposed to the president facing the congress as a blockand how influential congress is in either promoting or defeating a president's program. kennedy's successor, lyndon johnson, had none of his reservations about asking people for his votes. i did an oral history with senator george smathers, the senator from georgia and he said whereas kennedy couldn't ask something to do for him johnson had grown up asking people to do things for him, he would say "i'm counting on you, old pal, you've got to help me," he said kennedy couldn't do that, eisenhower couldn't do that, i don't think truman did that very well but that's the way johnson got things done. now, lyndon johnson ranks 11th in the c-span poll but he ranks second in the congressional relations after franklin roosevelt. johnson worked hard on his congressional liaison activities. he was supermajority leader during his time in office and his personality and his persistence have a lot to do with that but he also is the beneficiary of an enormous landslide election in 1964 which brought in a lot of sympathetic votes in congress, and larry o'brien argued that for practical purposes was passed on election day 1964 because it added 40 new members of the house of representatives who were ready to support johnson in ways that they had not been ready to support kennedy. so even johnson knew that -- even with that big victory, he had a short timetable, that he was going to get most of his program through in his first year and then after that things were going to get harder to do, and that's exactly what happened. johnson's legislative track record fell off especially as the war in vietnam became the major issue of his administration. lyndon johnson made himself readily available to members of congress but members of congress said that seeing -- it took an act of god to see richard nixon. nixon kept congress much more at a distance. i've talked to some of his congressional liaison staff and they have been listening to lyndon johnson's c-span conversations that c-span radio has been playing and they said they can't imagine what it would be like to work for a president who knew where a bill was in the subcommittee and wanted to call the chairman of that subcommittee to twist his arm a little bit. richard nixon approached things not as a majority leader but as a lawyer. he liked legal briefs, he liked them to check off boxes and they would form his legislative programs that way. he would call members of congress for foreign policy issues and defense issues. he really didn't like calling them for issues that he wasn't as concerned about. he would call them, eventually -- he was very sensitive about his power of persuasion, and after the vote was taken, he wantsed a check list of all the members and how they voted to see if the people he called actually voted his way, and obviously he must have stewed about it if they didn't in the long run. nixon came to office whout a majority of his party in congress -- the first president in a century to come that way. initially, he was going to work for b)paagkdrr@ @ @ @ @ the percentage, support he had in congress from 74% in 1969 to 66% by 1972 and 43% by 1973. when nixon was ranked in the cspan poll he was 27th overall in terms of his relations with congress, at which actually is pretty good. but he ranked lowest in moral authority. by contrast, gerald ford, his successor, ranked highest in moral authority and in his relations with congress. gerald ford spent his entire adult life in congress. he'd been on the house appropriations committee. he had been the house minority leader, vice president of the united states. from a congressional perspective, he was an ideal president and bryc bryce harlow admired ford and said he knew all the techniques for measuring congressmen and their likely responses. he was familiar with the buttons you needed to push in any particular situation. but unlike lyndon johnson, who was super majority leader, ford approached the presidency as a super minority leader. that is where his position had been all those years and his party was in the minority. he saw his role essentially as stopping the democrats from enacting their programs. he used veto enormously. he was overwritten more times than any other president since truman. there was not a period in which a productive period. he saw his role as stemming the tide at that point. so when a democrat came back into the white house in 1980, the democrats in congress thought, at last, we will have a president who can steer through the congressional gridlock we have been through under nixon and ford. within a few months members of congress were complaining that jimmy carter never learned how to drive in washington. jimmy carter won the presidency by being an outsider, which was fine politically, but not great politically once you are in office to get cooperation from congress. he had thought he was going to lead by rationale decisions, rationa rational and morale virtues, but no substitute for experience. it is clear carter knew he wasn't getting along well with congress because in his memoirs, he titled one chapter "my one week honeyman with congress." members of congress used to complain when you got a letter from jimmy carter, it was always dr. congressman, not dear joe. carter placed 25th on the cspan poll and 32nd in terms of his human aggressional relations. an interesting split in the carter years was that from truman on, presidents organized liaison around people, you cover the southwest, the northeast, you cover the far pacific west. you talk to those people on a daily basis and you cultivated them. even when you didn't need their vote, you talked to them and heard their complaints to bring back to the white house. carter didn't like the people-oriented liaison. he reorganized the system to an issue liaison. it makes sense, except that you didn't get to talk to members of congress until you are having trouble in that area. and you were not cultivating them on a regular basis. after carter's administration, the people who handled the roles legislatively considered this the wrong approach. carter, a lot of missteps in his administration, one of which most famously was the sequoyah, the presidential yacht frch. it it had been used to court figures. you took them to mt. vernon, watched them lower the flag and play taps. you got back on the boat, had a few drinks, went back up the river. it was a great time for the president to talk in an intimate setting with members of congress. jimmy carter sold the boat. it was too much like the imperial presidency. he lost a lot of opportunities he might have taken advantage of. he also moved the congressional liaison office out of the west wing of the white house and into the executive office building across the street, which is essentially sending them to siberia. now it is true they got more space, but they lost prestige, they lost the connection to the white house and that became quite clear in the administration. early in carter's administration, probably the most telling moment of his administration was when he called in western senators to tell him he was planning to cut out most of their favorite water projects from the budget. water is a critical issue. and carter dispensed with his staff and personally went down the list. he knew every project they were canceling. he had reasons for doing this. instead of impressing the members of the senate who were there, he just convinced them that he was out of his depth and didn't know what he was talking about and these issues were more important to them than to him and they weren't about to let him get away with this. carter did have to back down on half of the projects, which made him look weak in return. a senator from nevada was in the meeting. when he left that meeting, he went back to his office and called ronald reagan. he had been reagan's campaign manager in 1996. he told reagan to leave his options open because he had just met with a one-term president. well, the advantage of following after someone who is perceived to have done everything wrong is that no matter what you do by comparison it will look better. that was ronald reagan's advantage when he came into office in 1981 n. fact, reagan began his administration with a series of legislative accomplishments that unexpected at the time that had a significant effect on national economic priorities. it defined his presidency, regardless that he couldn't keep the record up in the next eight years. reagan moved the congressional liaison office back into the white house in the east wing, where it was closer to congress. at least they had more prestige, even if they had less space. he had well seasoned congressional liaison team. they were savvy, had been on capitol hill for a long time and they gave him little cards every morning to make calls. reagan loved to make calls to members of congress. one card they gave him was about a conservative democrat from georgia. "he never received a call from carter during his presidency." reagan wasn't calling him for specific vote, but setting him up for future votes. reagan loved doing this. in fact, during his first 100 days he met with 467 of the 535 members of congress. he overdid it actually because his liaisons realized that unless a member of congress got a personal call they felt like the president didn't care about a particular issue. in any case, reagan's congression al liaison said it was a gift to work with a president that wanted to get along with congress. he was short on details, but long on genealogy. tip oneel, speaker of the house, politics stopped at 6:00 to have a drink together. he would call o'neal and say, tip, is it 6:00 yet? his coattail brought in the first republican majority in the senate in 26 years and they were so grateful they gave him a process known as reconciliation, which hadn't been used much to that point, but swept reagan's tax program through early in his administration and established his reputation. one other thing about ronald reagan, we think of him as an actor. he is the only labor union president to become president of the united states. he learned to negotiate as president. jimmy carter would ask for something, get most of what he asked for and publicly lament what he lost. reagan would take a strong position, negotiate, cut the deal, split the difference and declare total victory, which is how labor union presidents tend to operate along the way. that is one reason why i think his standing in approximate terms of his relations with congress was probably higher in some respects than he deserved, but recognizing that initial burst of activity in his administration. his successor, george h.w. bush came in on empty tank of gas. reagan drained the tank. the iran-conttrascandal had had happened. democrats held mat jority during bush's pez denseresidency. hoo he vetoed republicans and tried to keep his vetos from being overridden. you have legislative gridlock during the four years of bush's administration. the various political scientist james sunquest pointed out the problem was not congress blocking bush's programs because there really wasn't much of one. bush ran a passive presidency in terms of legislation and lacked what he said was the vision thing. the defining moment in bush's administration took place in the summer of 1990 when leaders of the administration and leaders of the congress met at andrews air force base to come up with a budget plan. they did and the democrats supported it and the republicans and the house led by newt greengrich opposed it it. it it made bush look weak and contributed to his defeat in the election of 1992. bill clinton came to office promising to create bipartisanship with congress, new era of bipartisanship and yet we remember his administration as one of the most divided politically in the recent history. the lines grew tighter during his administration. some of of this had to do with his first tactical decision with congress. senator daniel patrick monahan was chairman of the finance committee. he advised the clinton administration to tackle welfare reform before they tackled healthcare. wale fare was broken and needed to be fixed. not everybody knew there was a problem with healthcare, but not everybody knew the problem or the solution. he thought the path of least resistance was to go through welfare reform. the clinton admin stragsz was afraid that would -- their base, more support on health issues and they chose health and lost big. as a result, they lost the majority in the congress and that changed the nature of clinton's relationship. the peculiar thing about clinton's relationship is that the worst they got with congress, the stronger he appeared in the polls. he was able to poach many of the best ideas that the republicans had and stand up against their least popular programs. he eventually did get welfare reform through, which drove the republican party wild at that stage. it was their plan, but he got the credit for it. of course then came the famous federal government shutdown in 1995, which the public blamed congress for rather than the president and so clinton's public standing increased enough to re-elect him in 1996. the historian steve gillian has written a book about clinton indicating in clinton's second term they were reaching an accord to get over the partisan divide and perhaps it would have been more productive second term expect for the monica lewinsky scandal, which ended in clinton's resignation. clinton is ranked among the below average presidents. in the cspan poll he ranked 15th overall and 19th in congressional relations and that is probably by 2009 he was being compared against his successor. in the cspan poll george w. bush ranked 36th among 44 presidents. he left office with majority of the americans telling the gallup poll history would judge him as a poor president. but bush has advised us not to mis-underestimate him. [laughter] >> despite his coming in second in the public polls in 2000 and facing a senate that was 50/50, bush actually got most of his initial legislative program through, including a tax cut that was larger than the one he promised while campaigning. he got two war resolutions passed in congress. he got prescription drug benefits for seniors, no child left behind and energy legislation he asked for. new republic recently said whatever the substantive merits of the agenda, passage represents impressive ffeat of leverage. >> daschle pointed out he had a personality and ability to work one-on-one with members of congress. he was good at making them feel comfortable and he personally lobbied with democrats for the tax cuts. daschle said, you know, you got a call from the president of of the united states and that had a powerful impact on members of congress because it constituted a patriotic invitation to do something for the good of the country, coupled with the implicit fact there are more things a president can do for you in approximate your home state if he chooses. so bush was remarkably successful in his first six years. there was a certain quid quo pro between bush and his party in congress. the number of oversight investigations that had taken place during the clinton year dropped off precipitously during the bush years and president bush did not veto a single bill in his first six years as president. now this it has the consequence of allowing earmarks to flourish and eventually capped by the infamous bridge to nowhere, which contributed to president bush's party losing the majority in 2006 and really ending his legislative agenda. now we're at the start of president barack obama's administration. he enjoys strong standings in if the polls, solid majority in congress and a national sense of peril that has helped him pull together the legislative and executive branch, although not the two parties within the legislative branch. president obama is the first president in a half century to come directly from the congress into the white house. he has put together a staff that is getting very good records in washington for being able to call in members of congress and convince them to come onboard. president obama is by nature a synthesizer and he initially sought bipartisan support, but the house republicans voted unanimously against his initial stimulus plan. the white house switched then to strategy within the majority party and there's some statistics here that just have to throw out to give you an idea what is going on. it takes 218 votes to pass anything in the house of representatives. the democrats had 255 members right now. 51 of them come from marginal seats and are identified with the blue dog conservative faction. that means to get anything through, the democrating party has to negotiate between their liberal and their blue dog wings. the reality is that the house republicans have lost most of the marginal seats. members mostly in state districts right now and they feel little need to compromise. steve schmidt who helped run senator mccain's campaign doubted there would be little bipartisanship bought "there is few house republicans that worry about the middle of the ele electorate anymore." he is compared to ronald reagan and he has pointed favorably toward the way reagan change tradjectory of america and he did that fundamentally because the country was ready for it. i think that explains why the president has balanced his lobbying with congress with his going out to reach -- to gain public support for his programs. well, to summarize these remarks about all of these presidents, six of harry truman's successors in the white house had some congressional experience, four had not. looking at the presidents from truman to obama, i don't think that there is any guarantee that having served in congress actually gets you a better relationship with congress. eisenhower and reagan score higher than kennedy and ford did. there are a lot of other factors other than personal relationships at work. one is the constitutional system. congress is a separate branch. it was never going to be a rubber stamp for any president of the united states and face it, there is perpetual struggle built into the system. except in dire emergencies, a president can't expect congress to walk in lock step. presidents have got clear objective, diligence, persisten persistence, willingness to listen, willingness to make personal overtures, willingness to extend political capital and a savvy liaison staff. they have to balance deference to congress with toughness and willingness to veto. they have to rally public opinion to convince congress that theirs is the right position to be supporting. the shift in political fortune have also had an impact and i'm sure the panelists will talk about some of this, but the political parties are entirely different from the time when harry truman was president. when harry truman was president there was nover more than four republicans in the house from the south. today there are 72 republicans from the south. it is a different republican party they are dealing with. the moderate center, which used to be the place to work out compromises, his shrunk and that is creating difficulty. presidents had to revise strategy to meet this had. and a president can't count on his party being in the majority. truman, kennedy and carter found having majority of your own party didn't help in some respects. it was legislative success. it was the internal nature of the parties that make a difference. i thought when i was looking through the material on this, one of the most astutely comments came from approximate a british newspaper correspondent, henry brandon, who covered roosevelt to reagan and summed up with the observation: some presidents come to power at the right time. harry truman came to power at a really tough time, a critical juncture in it american history. he faced considerable obstacle necessary winning support. in retrospect looking at his record against the other presidents, his relation with congress matches up fairly evenly with many of these others. he deserves credit for building bipartisanship and foreign policy and for proposing substantial domestic legislation even if they went against the prevailing sentiments of the time. barack obama has come to office under more fortuittous political circumstances and therefore has higher expectations for what he's going to accomplish. he is going to need to register substantial legislative accomplishments if he wants to measure up to harry truman in the next cspan poll. thank you very much and... [applause] >> as the healthcare conversation continues, cspan's healthcare hub is a key resource g. online and follow the latest tweets, video ads and links. also keep up to date with healthcare events like town hall meetings, house and senate debates, even upload your opinion about healthcare with a citizen video. the cspan healthcare hub at cspan.org/healthcare. >> our history coverage continues with 1996 interview with ronald mcdonald, who served as doctor in the u.s. army. she was captured by iraqi soldiers and held for eight days as prisoner of war during the persian gulf war. this is about 40 minutes. >> i'm rhonda cornam, and i was captured on the 27th of >> i'm rhonda cornum. >> tell me about certain details around your capture. >> as it turns out, it it was the last day of the war. i was with apache unit of the 101st and we were being very successful, hadn't lost an airplane, hadn't lost anybody and we had blown up a lot of stuff, so we were feeling fairly jubilant, so it was about mid afternoon and we got a call -- got a call on the radio saying "do you have the doc on board?" that's me. he said "yes." and he said "do you have all our stuff?" i'm thinking somebody got hurt. "we have all our stuff and we have gas" and he said there is this f-16 pilot that was shot down, he has a broken leg, we got his coordinates and can you get him?" we thought that was a great mission. we've practiced a lot but we've never had to go get anybody, we've hauled back prisoners and hauled back guns, we've never hauled back any americans so we took my blackhawk and two apaches and went whopping up to get this guy. unfortunately, the same guy that is shot down his had f-16 shot down my blacawk, and so we crashed. very quickly. it was a bad wreck. we were going about 140 and it blew the tail off the helicopter. there were eight people on board. five people were killed in the wreck, and the three of us that were left were captured. >> what was going through your mind in the crash? you pretty much know that capture is imminent? >> when you crash in a helicopter you pretty much think you're going to be dead, and so the first thing i thought as i was recovering, i suppose, from this crash, i guess i was knocked out, was i think i'm dead. this must be one of those after -- out-of-body things. when i had the guys come over and try to stand me up, i thought i guess i'm not dead after all so i was a p. o. w., which -- you know, is better than being dead. >> what was the initial treatment like? >> initially, they took my helmet and weapons and took off all the stuff, and unfortunately for me i had two broken arms and i was shot during the crash and i had a dislocated leg, so it was -- i certainly was no threat, i couldn't move anything, hardly. it was painful. i don't think they were particularly malicious, but they weren't particularly careful either, and so getting thrown around and kicked around in the back of a pickup truck is painful when you've got a bunch of dislocated bones, so it was not like we are when we capture people. >> your situation from some respects was difficult is that you were an iraqi female prisoner of war, something americans had to deal with at least on the level -- i say that at andersonville for p.o.w.'s. >> there have always been women who were p.o.a.'s and i was say it was a much more big deal to the american media than it was to either me or the iraqis. >> was there a point in saying what particular point that you didn't like -- you know, i'm a female p.o.w.? did that make any difference to the iraqis? >> not really. i've always been female, that never entered into it, and i didn't think they would treat me particularly differently, and they didn't. >> tell me the different areas that you worked in that -- where they have specific names or -- >> right. that first day, they captured me and they captured sergeant dunlap and they dragged us to a bunch of different bunker and interrogated us, finally found somebody to make a decision and they sent us to prison which was about 30 minutes away by truck, and that was in basra, and it was -- didn't seem very military, but it was sort of a half-underground real -- probably a county jail or something -- normal prison-type thing and we were in solitary confinement when we were there. the next day, they took us to what they said was some kind of reserve military facility in basra. we were there all that day and one night and the next day, and that next night they loaded us up on a bus and that was the point that we found -- we had stemeris, the third guy from our wreck who was hurt, and as it turned out they also captured captain andrews, who was the guy we were going to pick up and so they took us all -- the four of us to baghdad. we got to baghdad the next morning, we first went to some military facility -- we were always blindfolded everywhere you go so you don't know exactly where it is but some military facility where there was a bunch of military people, they interrogated us all again there and split us up and the injured people got taken to the rashid military hospital, and i spent the rest of my time at the prison ward, i guess, at the rashid hospital, and they took stemeris there and some other person there who i don't know, and then after -- i guess three or four days there, they took all of us to whatever prison that the rest of the prisoners had been kept in and that's where they gave us the yellow p.o.w. costumes and eventually the next day after that i guess took us to a hotel in downtown baghdad where we got turned over to the red cross. >> do you feel%@@@@@@ @ @ @ @ @) >> i had had a briefing about the geneva convention and that i was supposed to be treated differently because i was a physician. i didn't take my geneva convention card with me so that was irrelevant in my life and theirs. i wanted to be treated just like one of the guys and that is how it happened. >> tell me about the interrogations. >> actually they were fairly benign, as i have read about and talked to other people about getting interrogated. like i said, it was the last day of the war and by then they realized it was over. the ceasefire was called the next morning. so i don't know what they were hoping to gain. they didn't beat on us. i think they realized by then they were going to have to give us back and giving back dead or broke bone p.o.w.s would not help them at all. when we got together, they had captured troy and they had me, i think next. i think they thought i was dead and i started moving around and they came and got me. they threw me down next to him and there is this big 13 or 14 guys with guns pointing at you. you are looking at each other trying to think of something positive. i was happy to see another american. i didn't know this guy from adam. he was an infantry guy and i was a doc. he said, good morning, ma'am. good morning, dunlap. i saw his shirt. it was amazing how quickly all the differences go away. and the very important thing like you are on the same side and you are the only two friends you have in the world right then. the rest of the world disappears. there is just you and whoever you are with. it was a very comforting thing. i would have to say for both of us. yeah, it was awkward, having to have some 20-year-old guy help you go to the bathroom and get your clothes on and off is not comfortable for anybody. but i would rather him than one of them. so he took good care of me and i'd say he thinks the same thing. >> of course you are here with us today. what has happened to sergeant dunlap? >> after several years he got out of the service and he is interesting enough a prison guard in illinois. i guess turnaround is fair play, kind of thing. >> do you stay in touch? >> we did the first several years and we still call once in a while. you know, when you get back and after -- and you are all better and back in your normal job, the differences reappear. he's still 20. i was still 36. he's still in the infantry, i'm still a doctor. the things we had in common that binds you together during the war, they frequently aren't there anymore. and so you have the shared experience, but i would do anything for him, actually. but we don't have a lot in common. there were two things that were most important in my mind. the first one was, surely this guy could do better than this bloody, broken-armed woman. and the second thing was that i hoped sergeant dunlap doesn't do anything stupid. and luckily for him, he thought the same thing. he said, "i would like to defend this lady but it would be stupid, they would shoot me and she would still get molested," so good judgment there too. getting physically or sexually molested is -- is a bad thing. but in the ultimate scheme of things, it's -- it's not nearly as bad as getting wired to the talk man like teco or getting your bones broken or your eardrums pounded out or all the things that are pretty much unrecoverable. so in the hierarchy of bad things, it's less important. now, that's not to diminish its importance in our society, but as a p.o.w. experience it's -- it's unpleasant, and it's unprofessional for them to do it and i'm sure that we don't when we capture people, but -- but it's -- you know, it's not the worst thing that's ever happened to anybody either. >> what are your feelings that you referred to earlier involving the attention damp -- what were your feelings once you gained your freedom and realized -- >> they were excited about me being female and being captured. so i thought if they were going to make a big deal out of it, then it was a good -- as these things go, it was a good thing. i thought i would be a good -- a good model for what happens when women get captured -- nothing different than what happens to guys. they come home, they get better, they go back to work. so i mean, you've got to find something good about all these bad experiences and that's the one -- that i think we've pretty well demonstrated that -- that it's not different. >> what about medical treatment during your time as a prisoner of war? >> the medical treatment i got while i was in baghdad was as good as they could provide to anyone, i feel very confident about that. the orthopedic surgeon who took care of me there, in fact, had already been to -- he was trained in the west, he -- he had already given talks, for example, at the mayo clinic -- the guy is well respected, and very professional, and certainly took care of us as well as he would have taken care of any of his people. now, we're in a hospital that doesn't have much medicine, only hads electricity about three hours a day, didn't have normal suture materials like you would normally use, didn't have a lot of things so we got as good as there was. i didn't get any until i got there so i can't speak much about that but about the third day i was there i got taken to a field hospital and i got my arms -- at least -- they weren't set like where they were supposed to be, but at least they put them in slings so they stopped moving which was a vast improvement. >> you had -- >> i had displaced fractures on both sides, and it was pretty painful. the arm came out to here and went down on both sides. it hurts a lot. but -- you know, pain is one of those things that -- if you can't do anything about it, you might as well just dissociate yourself from it and forget about it and -- >> how about rations? food while you were a prisoner of war. can you describe that? >> well, it was not very frequently forthcoming, and part of that may have been my fault -- you know, if you can eat -- i couldn't eat very fast because somebody had to feed me. the food -- while we were in basra was quite good, actually, rice and lentils and tea and stuff. in fact the food in baghdad was pretty good, there wasn't very much of it, and it was only if you happened to be there at a time that they happened to have food available that you got any, so there were a couple of days we were either traveling and we just didn't get any, but it was pretty good, actually -- that's pretty good after six months of m.r.e.'s, so pretty good is a very relative term. >> m.r.e.'s -- >> most things are good -- m.r.e.'s are pretty good for a -- are ok for a week or two but -- >> did you ever have any contact with the civilian population? >> the only contact i had with civilians was while we were in basra, for some afternoon we were in this room that had bars on the windows but -- but glass on the other side, and there were people who's-who were unhappy and we were glad when the guards closed the curt curtains. damp basically a lynch party had come to take us out of there, i guess they were tired of getting bombed and were blaming us and that they had defended us and whether that was true i don't know, so the only -- the only experience i had with civilians was that other than that, we were just in jail the whole time. >> while you were a prisoner of war, did you receive any -- any information about what was happening in the war? >> the only thing that happened -- on the -- on the bus ride to baghdad, captain andrews stood up and said, "the war is over." i thought "how does he know that? he's been captured the same time i have." whether he was told that because he somehow knew it or whether he was saying it to somehow psychologically do something to them, i don't know. the only other thing -- i got no information -- there was radio on all the time but it was all in arabic so that was not really helpful. but when i was in -- when i was in baghdad, the surgeon did say to me -- he said, "i can do your definitive repairs here but i think you will get back to the states in time to have it done there" and that was his only hint that "negotiations are ongoing and you are going to leave" so i thought that was -- i thought that was pretty subtle but pretty helpful. >> did you get a chance to see other prisoners of war from other nationalities and make any kind of comparison maybe the differences? >> the only person -- i saw some brits. we got captured with some brits and one italian and one kuwaiti. they were all in the same boat we were. i don't think there were any differences that i -- surely none that were obvious to me. >> on any given day, what you do, how you get through each day? >> i sang. if you tried to talk to somebody else they would yell at you but they didn't seem to mind me singing, and when i was in baghdad, i decided -- i mean, i had read the same books from ex-p.o.w.'s that anybody else has so i thought it's time to get in shape and get some kind of program. -- by this time i could get in and out of bed by myself so i started walking triangles in my room from -- sort of two corners and across. not much. you sing every song you know, you go through every musical you remember. we didn't stew -- we didn't try to communicate with each other particularly when we were there. i guess because by the time we were there we were almost to get out. >> was there any communication at all? >> i knew about how -- like sergeant stemeris was the only person that was there where i was and they would tell me about him, there was professional courtesy, go and talk to him and tell him what they were planning and it was a good idea so it wasn't really a big issue for us, i think it was much different for the people who were at the other prison but for the people -- as it turned out, there was some other guy and -- and i think he must have been a brit -- who was in this prison ward and he never said a word -- never sang, never made a noise, never anything, the only reason i know he was there is that they loaded three of us on to leave, so -- so i had no way of knowing he was there. i knew stemaris was there and i didn't know this other character was there at all until we left. i would probably have tried to communicate with him had i known who he was. he told me about hearing my singing. >> heard a little bit from different people and i would say several referred to the british and when it comes to humor. were you -- how much of a part did you -- >> oh, sense of humor is absolutely vital to -- to getting through these kind of experiences. successfully, i guess. and -- the humor really came out, i guess, afterwards when people were talking about what happened to them, and for example, we were in prison and they asked me, "why are you doing here?" and i said "i'm a doctor and i do search and rescue." he said "are you going to rescue anybody?" he said, "no, we were just training." they asked sergeant dunlap what he was doing there," and he said, "i came to kill saddam hussein." judgment did not win out that day, and they pounded on him. but it was a funny story, nonetheless. i think he must have felt guilty that he didn't break any bones in the wreck so he was going to try to make up for that when he got captured. >> how much did the vietnam war -- knowing what p.o.w.'s endured there -- or the fact that -- a lot of the p.o.w.'s from vietnam are unaccounted for, how much did that bear on your experience? >> well, it had -- i certainly was aware of it and i think the bearing it had was on how the whole war was conducted and ) @ the conditions -- >> which in fact, >> i think the vietnam anna pou experience unfortunately for them, but fortunately for us east as much of an impact on the leadership as it did on us -- you know, the peons, they said "we may make mistakes but we'll make new mistakes" and they certainly didn't make any that we could see. >> what can you say objectively that being a p.o.w. had on your family? >> well, ultimately, not very much. i would say at the time, certainly they were sad that i was missing, they didn't know i was a prisoner until i got released, they were told -- first of all, most people on our wreck were told that their service persons were dead, so then when it became obvious i wasn't dead, at least they couldn't find the body, they said "we know she's not dead but we don't know where she is" so i think it just -- i don't know, i guess i think my family was pretty well prepared for it, my husband was in the gulf, my daughter had been in the -- my daughter -- i had been in the military ever since she was two, so she expected me to go and then when this happened she was sad and she hoped i would get back and we weren't -- we did a lot of things -- we did more things together for the first year or two when i got back but after that -- i thought it made no difference to her at all, and then i realized the only piece of memorabilia that she had hanging in her room -- other people put up t-shirts, she put up the p.o.w. flag. maybe it did have some. >> tell me about actually being -- whether you were held a day or more -- >> that's a wonderful thing and i have to say i have been really happily surprised that like the vietnam guys have just welcomed us into their fold, and they spent a lot more time than we did, certainly -- they spent years and we spent at the most 30 days. but the lessons you learn are the same because the fears are the same, the fears are that you don't know howing long it's going to last and y don't know if you're going to get out and those are the same fears whether you have to have them every day or whether you have them only for a short time. it's pretty exciting. you just don't hardly want to believe it. i remember flying back from -- from baghdad, and where -- we're in a swissair jet, we're feeling pretty good but we're still in iraqi air space and i know i was thinking, "there is some poor gupper down there who doesn't know there is a truce and he's going to shoot down this airliner," you just know, and so you just have -- it takes a while to -- to believe it. you have to really kiss the ground kind of thing, and it has to be your own ground, and i remember we got back to the states -- spent a couple of days in washington, and then they flew us back to florida because i was going to get my surgery, actually, in florida, and we have a farm in florida, and so we dropped us off at eglund, dropped me off, and i said "i just need to go home," so we borrowed a car and drove out to our farm. i just needed to go -- actually see it was really still there because it had been a long time, and then i felt like i was home and i went back to the hospital and got fixed. >> i'm sure there is the debriefing. >> yeah, we got debriefed by -- we got debriefed on the boat -- they took us all to the mercy for a while first and then they hauled us back to washington some weeks later and we got another round. >> were are you told how to react once you got back or what you could talk about, what you could not talk about? >> no. not at all. >> how much did you talk about your experience initially compared to now? any different? >> no different. i talked about it more early on i suppose because more people asked. then when i sort of got reintegrated to what i do, i do surgery and i do -- i do research, and so there is much less time being spent being an ex-p.o.w. but it's a unique experience, and so when people ask to hear about it, it's one of those things it's better to learn vicariously than it is to experience it so i do -- i've gone to the air force academy antalked there, and i've gone to the marine mid-level -- whatever their version of air command staff college is and i've -- gone to the war college, i've gone to a lot of places and talked about this sort of thing. the only criticism i heard was from medical people who don't think that a flight surgeon should have been on the aircraft going to pick somebody up. well, that was in the war plan, that was in the medical annex of the war plan, that was doctrine. whether or not they agree with it is really irrelevant to whether i should be there. that was sort of the duty description. and so -- you know, i think certainly had -- had i not been there, and had they gotten somebody and had they done badly, then i would have felt very guilty, so since i sort of live a life of guilt avoidance, so i think i did the right thing and i really don't care what anybody else thinks. >> do you think being a prisoner of war has that or will be -- will change anything or help change the mindset? >> i think it already did. i think the fact that we now have women flying combat aircraft is a direct result of everybody used the excuse, "they might get shot down and captured before that" and they said "yeah, they might" and "so what?" they might get run over going to work too but we let them go to work so i think it had a direct and positive impact, yes, and i had several people who voted on that thing to say that that had a direct and positive impact on their decision. >> in your book, it mentions that one day you felt particularly proud to be in the army when you were getting word to go -- to go overseas, someone had phoned washington and asking about -- i was trying to remember now. >> i remember the story. >> the main thing in combat was we have a war going on. >> surely we have something more to worry about than the sex offure doctors. >> can you tell us about it? >> there were some people who didn't think i should go at all with the unit because i was female and it was a combat unit, and i went because the unit commander asked for me to go because it isn't -- it isn't a physician that is fill -- it isn't a position that is filled unless we go to war, battalion has an empty slot in it that gets filled when you deploy, he had a choice of anybody he wanted, he thought -- because i had known the guy, i took care of him when he was in apache training and i knew all the people basically that were in his unit, he thought his unit would do better if i went and i thought that was pretty cool, and he thought that at the end, so i guess it was pretty cool. >> what was the worst thing about being a prisoner of war? >> the very worst thing is worrying about what your family thinks happened to you. and you recognize that and then you stop thinking about it because that is very destructive, because you can't do anything about it, so you hope that they get word that you are ok, and then you think about stuff you can work on, like you think about your health, you think about eating, you think about escaping or you think about something. dunlap and i even discussed afterwards about our various opportunities to escape, and -- and there had been one on the truck. we were getting shot at, so all the guards left, and he thought about running but he said "what am i going to do with this lady one leg?" one leg and no arms, you're not going to go anywhere so we didn't do it then and we thought about it again, we were together a little bit in basra, we've got civilians outside who are hating us and we have the same problem -- we have a blond army guy and a -- and a broken female p.o.w. there is just no way you're going to wlend in. -- there is no way you're going to blend in. so we thought about it but we didn't do it. >> do you feel like the experience you went through changed you? >> i think my basic personality is the same. i think it changed me in that it is much -- i get irritated much less easily. when you have a really significant experience happen, then the minor irritations of life are much less important. you sort of think, "well, what are they going to do? send me back to baghdad? no." so it just doesn't matter. i think you focus on things thar important and you learn to -- just not let yourself get worked up about things that aren't. that's how i felt about it, anyway. >> if you had it to do over again, is there anything you would change? >> there was a marine helicopter -- there was actually a marine f-18 who was clearing a path for us to go in and get this guy. i probably would hope that we would have awacs directing us that route and we would have gone in, gotten the guy and walked back, but given that we didn't do, that no, i think i would do everything again -- i would certainly go -- i would go again. >> a couple of things. camaraderie. part of that camaraderie as a p.o.w. talk about the grief that you want to -- about five years or so later -- >> five-year anniversary. >> just talk about -- >> camaraderie is -- it was very interesting, you know, when the red cross got us in baghdad and they had very nicely got this whole hotel set aside for them, they had gotten us each a private room -- they had gotten the hot water hooked up and everything and it was very nice of them but the last thing in the world after have been in solitary confinement for the last month is to be by yourself so we used two of these 20-some rooms and it was like a big slumber party and everybody told stories about getting shot down and it was very -- it was very military and it was -- it was like -- it didn't really happen to anybody, it was like telling stories about someone even though it was happening to you. i think people always do that. but it was very interesting, and we got to the bet and people did the same thing. now you've got the guys from unit -- every unit that had been in the war sent one member from the unit over to the mercy to hear what happened and get reintegrated and bring their stuff, and they may have been a little shocked that we weren't more, i guess, reverent about all the bad things that happened but once you have survived it, it didn't -- it's not bad anymore. so we were -- you are very different. you have had this very intense, shared experience that you can't really describe unless you have it. and we were really close right then. once again, here we are five years later, people have -- you know, changed jobs, changed units, changed spouses on a few of them, had more kids, gone back to school, gotten out of the service, whatever they have done, so it's i a much less -- it's a much less intense thing now. it's still a big part of your life when you get together but it's not the only thing that's part of your life. >> i was thinking about yesterday after hearing some interviews, and it kind of went through my mind that it seems like you think of vietnam, you think of what the p.o.w.'s went through, the physical and mental abuse but it almost seems like in the gulf war it was such just an overwhelming quick -- so to speak, victory for the united states it seems like they missed all the glory with the big victory it almost seems like the p.o.w. story is is not as well known -- we hear all the stories about how bad the abuse and everything was. >> i don't think about it at all. i don't see any reason to dwell on the bad things. i really don't. i don't see any reason to dwell on -- it's kind of like -- it's kind of like being in a hospital. we don't dwell on the 2% of cases that don't go well. so there is no -- there is nothing really to be gained by that. i don't think gunfire the p.o.w.'s feel bad that people aren't still weeping about their bad experiences. they're certainly not. >> someone did comment -- we received a comment that it feels like people think, hey, you know, you went through it, now just forget about it," know what i mean? that doesn't pass or are you still -- something about -- is it something that -- that goes -- i'm sure it doesn't go away but -- >> no, but it doesn't -- you don't need to dwell on it. it's kind of like a lot of other things in your life and you certainly don't need -- you know, i mean, i talk about it because people ask, i don't talk about it when they don't.

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