house plans to do about iraq. it begins at 12:30 eastern time. we thank you for watching aljazeera america. i'm del walters in new york, "inside story" is next, and you can check us out 24 hours a day by going to aljazeera.com. . >> the news that millions of old g.m. cars had faulty ignition switch threatens to take the shine over the new general motors and it's new ceo. the news has only gotten worse and the company more successful. that's the inside story.

>> hello, i'm ray suarez. the information so far is pretty damning. millions of g.m. cars were built with an ignition switch that could easily be flipped off while the car was in motion. people driving was killed by this defect and people had known this was a problem for years. the reorganized pulled back from the brink g.m. was an american success story money was cheap to barlow, and there was a new ceo at the helm, mary barra. would this terrible news that a cheap and flawed part that had taken lives. the company posted strong sales in recent months. even with the drip, drip, drip of revelations of terrible decisions made in the last

decade. ignition switches, jiggled keys and the g.m. new and old on the program. mary barra went to capitol hill to face more questions about the recall of g.m. cars. >> this is not another business challenge. this is a tragic problem that should never have happened and must never happen again. >> barra testified in april and said she would no more after g.m.'s internal investigation was complete. that report by attorney antone valucas is a scathing indictment of the g.m. culture. >> it's extremely thorough, brutally tough and deeply troubling. it paints a picture of an organization that failed to handle a complex issue in a responsible way. i was deeply saddened and disturbed as i maid the report.

we have made a number of decisions, 15 individuals identified in the report are no longer with the company. >> i do say that the culture had a reason why this recall took so long. >> the report talks about the so-called g.m. nod and the g.m. salute. an arms crossed gesture that signaled that employees would not share bad news with superiors. >> do you think it was only 15 people who did this g.m. nod and salute? >> no, i think there were a number of people, committees, who were on the committees. >> thank you. >> as members drilled into the specifics about who knew what, when, and the details about the switch problem that is linked to 13 deaths and 53 accidents. to date only 177,000 have been repaired. 7%. >> the story in the "new york times" yesterday or today people talk about receiving multiple post cards

you got to come in and get your car fixed. people would say i tried but they don't have the part available for me. are we going to hear less of those stories? >> i think we should. we're starting another line next week. >> there were also questions about pending litigation and settlements. barra deferred details but said the compensation process would begin august 1st. the hearing coincided with a new recall of 3.4 million cars. it's a separate ignition problem with a different set of vehicles. representative fred upton of michigan read an e-mail from a g.m. worker whose 2006 impala stalled when the key fell out. >> quote, i think this is a serious safety problem especially if the switch is on multiple programs. i'm thinking big recall. i don't like to imagine a customer driving with their kids in the backseat and hitting a pothole in rush hour traffic.

when was the recall in the '06 impala announced? >> i believe that was-- >> two days ago. monday. >> mary barra was named ceo of general motors in january. she lethe the company five years after it emerged from bankruptcy. as barra navigated the ignition switch recalls and attempts to change the culture at the company, news from the production line is good. g.m. sold more cars and trucks last month than any may in the last seven years. >> what we know now in the decision making of a manufacturer, the victims of those decisions and saving the brand all considerations with the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of americans hanging on the outcome. g.m. is our focus on this edition of inside story. joining us for that conversation alan cam, former senior

enforcement attorney at national highway traffic organization. and laura christian whose daughter died in a car from g.m. did you hear anything today that you thought, finally more truth is coming out? >> absolutely not. i really didn't expect to hear much today. i read the report. and again it was an internal report. i'm looking forward to seeing what doj has to say about it. >> do you understand, can you say today that you understand any better what happened internally that led to that part being in that car that led eventually to your daughter's terrible death? >> well, i really can't. i

understand there was incompetence involved but i believe it went higher and i want to know. >> alan cam you've been watching this profession for a long time. what did you see in the lucas report and the testimony about the relationship about regulators, internal oversight and the various ways a company figures out it has a problem and in response to it . >> in an adversarial posture rather than a partner candidly disclosing information. the valukas report not surprisingly tries to pin the blame on mid management rather

than an cover up and not implicating the senior executives who hired him to do the report. >> bingo, that's a transaction that should have set off a lot of bells if the system was working properly this is the way it should have gone instead. were there things that you saw knowing the way these--the time lines go on these investigations where you saw g.m. doing something that was bound to bite it in the end? >> several instance where is they crewed up approving a part that did not meet it's own specifications, and then approving a part but not changing the part number. there were instances like that. but in the broader sense the culture was to try to save money rather than doing costly recalls.

was it the parts that convinced g.m. to stand pat with its parts even though it found it had a problem. >> some of its documents indicated that. an official in charge of the cobalts who was looking at internal investigation was reported to have closed the investigation because he said it was a business decision that the piece cost would be too great. it would cost more money to pay warrantcy claims than $0.50 or $0.90 to replace the defective piece in the vehicle. >> what is the mood now? is everybody watching, waiting to see what happens next? >> in some ways in terms of watching the company, i have to

say that there is still a lot of a lot of unanswered questions yet to be answered. for example, i take mary barra to her word. i have no reason to doubt her when she said january 30th was the first she had heard of it. it is impossible for me to believe that her predecessor did not know. the chief counsel of the company didn't know this was around the corner. there were people at the company who knew well before mary barra knew that this problem was out there. i suspect that's what the doj investigation may get closer to. who knew, how high up did that

knowledge go in terms of mary barra's predecessors, dan ackerson, whittaker, rick wagoner, henderson, the ceo that is preceded her. very difficult to believe that they didn't have some sense of this liability hanging out. >> david, from what you know about how companies like this work is there a place where the feedback starts to pool up? you know, there was anecdotal information coming back from dealers, coming back from maintenance shops, coming back from consumers themselves who said these kinds of things were happening. if you get a letter from carol in illinois and hollywood, florida, does it start to accumulate somewhere, where somebody reasonbly high up the food chain knew they had a problem of a similar sort with vehicles up the product range? >> there are plenty of opportunities for information like that to pool up.

you have to understand the proper handling of that information and the tracking of it has to do with the tread act that was passed, you know, in the early 2000. in the aftermath of the ford explorer firestone tire recall and all of those cases. one of the things of the doj, whether or not there was criminal activity in purposefully letting that information pool up in a way that it wasn't acted upon properly. i've watched this company closely for 30 years, and i am in full agreement with the investigator who said it was the culture of the arms folded and the nod, and that nobody at general motors--believe me, the same thing existed at ford. but it is absolutely true that

delivering bad news has gotten you nowhere at general motors. there is that culture. there was a contributing factor that somebody needs to get in there and find out where that information was pooling up, and who knew that it was pooling up. it was a cultural of minimizing recall rather than maximizing the public safety and the safety of their product. that is a big difference. mary bar ra is committed to changing it to more of a public safety product safety culture. >> we asked general motors to join our conversation today and they declined. they gave us a statement.

we're going take a short break. when we come back we'll ask how g.m. moves forward from here. what it with do to repair itself internally, and does it remain as >> guns... >> there are two to three million guns in a population of only 8 million people. >> ...and gun laws... >> after those laws came in, there have been no more mass shootings... >> how different countries decide... >> their father had a gun... their grandfather had a gun... >> who has the right to bear arms? 5 days: guns around the world a primetime news special series all next week

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should juvenile killers serve life without parole? >> the didn't even ask for the money they just shot him. >> horrendous crimes committed by kids. >> i think that at sixteen it's a little too early to write him off for life. >> should they be locked away for good? >> he had a tough upbringing but he still had to have known right from wrong. >> two weeks ago i spoke about this report. i told our team about the actions and inaction uncovered in the investigation were inexcusable. i also told them while i want to solve the problems as quickly as possible i never want anyone associated with g.m. to forget what happened. i want this terrible experience permanently etched in our

collective memories. this is not another business challenge. this is a tragic problem that should never have happened and must never happen again. >> welcome back to inside story. i'm ray suarez. that's g.m. ceo mary barra before the house sub committee investigating g.m. recalls. we're continuing our conversation now on general motors then and now, and alan, is it credible to you that people fairly high up the food chain didn't know this was happening? >> i share david's skepticism about that. it reminds me of the movie " "casablanca" i'm shocked there is grabbing goin gambling going on here. they're shocked that this was going on below them? i find that hard to believe.

>> the decision of a wide range of models over a the years. >> i believe there were others on the loop with it. >> laura christian, you say you weren't satisfied with what you heard on that score in today's testimony. >> absolutely. and as to the question whether mary barra actually knew. she was asked when she knew the first time, her response i have taken as carefully crafted. she knew about the cobalt in january 31, 2014, but my question to her is when did you know about the saturn ion or any of the other cars on the stalled platform. >> she was not asked that follow-up question. >> no, she was not, and i'm hoping someone does. >> there are other bites at the apple. she'll be appearing before other hill committees. >> absolutely. the senate is planning on calling her, we believe it was the first full week in july, the second week. we'll see.

>> alan, once a fault like this is recognized, and both sides of the table, yours at ntsa when you were there and the companies, both sides agree there is a problem. what is supposed to happen? >> well, the law that ntsa administers that requires a manufacturer to initiate a recall when it determines that a safety related defect exists, and the agency has interpreted that requirement as meaning that a manufacturer violates the law when it should have, but failed to initiate a recall. and here the evidence is pretty overwhelming that a good ten years ago or so that general motors should have initiated a recall. >> we're talking about millions of cars now. yet, g.m. can't mix millions of cars now. and most americans are not in a position to simply pull over to the side of the road and park until they can.

is this another p.r. debacle in the wings? >> it definitely is a p.r. debacle. to my knowledge the only measure that makes any sense that you can do until the ignition switch can be replaced until they can make enough new ones is to take all the keys and things off of your keys so that basically all you got in the ignition is a single key. and so you have to make sure all of that information gets out. there is liable to be people out there who weren't paying attention. there is liable possible people out there who don't speak english. there are all kinds of scenarios for people to not get that information. so yes, i mean, even when the car is recalled sometimes it takes a long time for the information to reach those owners, especially if the car has been sold two or three tim times. >> 13 deaths including your

daughters. 54 crashes at least that we know about. perhaps many more. is the company, even after what we know that we know, is it responding fast enough. >> no, there was a mother that found me a month ago. her son die april 27th of this year. i'm sure we'll have more. it's a tragedy and g.m. needs to adjust those numbers. it's not 13. i personally have found and people have found me 165. >> that will be interesting if we start to take a broader accounting of this and the stories start to spread, the damage perhaps is not even being tabulated correctly. we're going to take a short break. when we come back we'll talk about the future of general motors, the future of the recalls, and how to put this story right. this is inside story.

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>> welcome book inside story on al jazeera america. we're discussing general motors. the old g.m. and the new g.m. under the leadership of mary barra with the recalls separating the old and the new it's a daunting challenge. still with us, allan kam. david kiley covering the automobile industry, and lawye laura christian, whose daughter amber rose died hyped a car in 2008. you heard laura speculate widening numbers, widening investigations. today a new suit was brought against g.m. by people who own g.m. and fear loss of their resai resale value as a result,

and their wide ly egregious conduct has so tarnished the vehicle that no one would pay the price they did. is there still a lot more damage that can be done by this? >> first of all, i want to separate the two kinds of litigation. one, i do think there is going to be a certain amount of scrutiny to find out if the defect of the ignition switch was , in fact, the cause of the death. that's an investigative process that has to be carried out. as far as the suits that you mentioned i've seen this many, many times. this is opportunistic litigation by class action lawyers who see blood in the water. they're trying to create a case

that in the end will probably, you know, compensate in very small amounts of money a great number of g.m. product owners but enrich the lawyers themselves a lot more. >> i think toyota got over $1 billion that they had to pay out to people who said well now my toyota is worth less because of all this bad publicity. >> i mean, there is something to that, but you're talking about the reason the number is so big there is because there are so many vehicles out there on the street. each owner would get a very small amount of money. part of the issue here is not so much--and you can't measure it because g.m. is keeping up it's sales very well right now despite all the bad publicity. one of the ways they do that is through discounting and rebating, and when do you that when the car is sold it has an

effect on the back end of the resale value. so there is a connection to be made. all i'm say something that each individual owner of a g.m. car would wind up realizing very small amounts of money. those are the kinds of lawsuit that are meant to enrich lawyers, not individuals. >> laura christian, in the final analysis we can't make you whole for the loss of your daughter. what do you want? what would signal good faith from g.m.? what would tell you that they really want to fix this to the degree possible? >> well, some of it is really out of their hands. what we want for families is not specific to g.m. we need legislative change. we need to remove the maximum cap that they're allowed to fund. we need to pass the 2151, that would give meaningful data. data put in the right hands of

advocates and hopefully ntsa themselves my prevent catastrophes like this from happening. >> allan kam, you still consult on auto safety. you heard what laura is asking for. is that possible when we're trying to regulate any industry. >> the national administration has proposed to congress to increase the maximum silver penalty that ntsa could impose, and i think that's directionally correct, but in the context of general motors making $100 billion a year and having $30 billion in reserve, that's still a rather modest number. >> this ten-times higher figure is a bee sting for them? >> yes, it's sort of a nuisance value. maybe it's gone from a rounding to a bee sting. if there were criminal

ebbs employer, that is another thing. if they could go to jail then i think it would be a game changer. it would not be a question of 10 t $0.10 to $0.15, it would be i could go to jail. i can't use the corporate jet. that would be the game changer. >> thank you for helping us still this story. this is the end of this edition of "inside story." thanks for being with us. the program may be over but the issue conditions. log on to our phase book page or send us your thoughts on twitter. our handle aj inside story am or reach me directly on twitter @ray suarez news. we'll see you next time on "inside story." in washington, i'm ray suarez.

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