>> you know, it was so interesting because s fellow candidates did not want to attack him during the debate, right? but the manchester "union leader" is ready on day two or day three to do it. >> "union leader" will keep it fun and feisty. i'm guessing governor romney will not send al gore a thank you card. "the arena starts right now. good evening. i'm eliot spitzer. welcome to the program. tonight, an urgent question, just how bad is our economy? one answer came from the ailing stock market today. the dow plunged almost 180 points and it has lost more than 7% of its value in the last two months. there's another powerful indicator of just how bad things are in the american economy. but it's not happening here.

it take a look in the streets of athens, greece. riots as more than 20,000 people masked in the streets. protest became violent regarding cutbacks. the greeks continue to struggle with crushing debt. they're in a desperate and perhaps doomed fight to avoid default. police used tear gas to repeal protestors. a frightening scene. what does it mean to us? a lot. another bailout for greece has far-reaching implications in a global economy and the stock market knows it. a default for greece could trigger other european economies to go under. it's all very scary. but perhaps the biggest threat to us is simple. it boils down to one word -- jobs. i'll have more on this in a moment. first, a look at the other stories we're deal driling down on tonight. pakistan. we got bin laden. but now pakistan's intelligence

service is rounding up the people who helped us get him. i'll ask a former cia officer, is this revenge? and america under siege. a new wave of cyber attacks threatens to crash our systems, from power grids to banks to national defense. edie hill asks an expert, is this our next pearl harbor? then, are we at war in libya? a group of congressmen say of course. president obama says no. so now they're going to court. now, for more on our top story, what's keeping the u.s. economy from turning around? jobs, jobs, jobs. we all know that. almost 25 million americans are unemployed or underemployed. all say that number again. almost 25 million americans either not working or forced to work part time. my guest tonight knows a whole lot about jobs and the american economy as vice chairman of general motors, bob lutz has

been at the top of the auto industry. in fact, he helped turned the industry around. he talks about that in his new book "car guys versus bean counters." bob lutz, welcome. >> good to be here, eliot. thank you. >> congratulations on an amazing career. let me come to that, when things got bad you needed to fire people. recently when things are bouncing back, gm is beginning to hire. >> thousands. >> thousands. good news. as a ceo, someone who makes these decisions, what data, what policy would you look to to get you to start hiring again? >> it's basically a question of supply and demand. the u.s. auto industry has regained its competitiveness, thanks to exchange rates moving in our favor, restructuring the companies, getting rid of a lot of debt it, getting rid of the health care obligation. where for the first time in 30 years the american automobile business is globally competitive

and producing the best cars in its history. and as demand expands and market share xpandzs, you have to add jobs for extra shifts and added plants. >> to some of us this sounds like econ 101. demand. that means hire more. i want to go back to the presidential debate the other night where everybody was talking about cutting taxes. which is more significant to you as a ceo, taxes being cut or demand going up? because this is -- >> first of all, i have to point out i was never a ceo except of a battery company. i'm vice chairman. i never actually held the steering wheel. but i would say, if it i were to -- looking back at the stimulus package, the sort of $800 billion, i would have done that, rather than the way the administration did it in various social programs and highway construction, alls useful but

doesn't really create jobs. i think i would have done a major portion of that in it middle classes and even upper income tax cuts. give the money to the people and let them spend it the way they see fit and let the market drive the spending behavior. >> tax cuts designed to get consumption into the economy. >> exactly. absolutely. >> in other words, you're talking about getting money to consumers because we have a demand crisis. >> yes. that's basically, as people -- and we are not going to work our way out of this. you know, i'm as much in favor of fiscal responsibility as anyone else, but with we're not going to work our way out of this by adding taxes on people who make over $200,000 a year. because those are the people who, through their lifestyle, create jobs. you start raising taxes on the moderately wealthy, as my dad always used to say, in a country where there are rich people, there are unfortunately also poor people. in a country where there are no

rich people, there are only poor people. you try to make the rich people poor, and you are going in the wrong direction. >> we'll circle back in a moment. i want to come back to the bailout and stimulus. but i want to come back to something more basic. you have a fascinating critique in this book of what went wrong. you've got to study what went wrong to change it. >> of course. >> some of your energy you focus on the executives. what was wrong with the executives in their perspective? >> i think we got off on the wrong foot after the heyday post-world war ii when we had incredible excess demand and pent-up demand from world war ii when we couldn't produce cars. japanese competition was practically unknown, german only at the high end, couple thousand cars a year. and we felt like we not only had the best team on the field but we owned the football. and so we got into the habit of, instead of trying to do great

new products and take risk and innovate, it it was felt that the way to create shareholder value was avoid risk, do the cars where they're just good enough, shave a little out of the cost to improve the margins. and it was all a financial cost optimization exercise as opposed trying to do great new products that excite the consumer. >> am i oversimplifying this, seemed to me you're saying the entrepreneurial spirit was ripped out of the country. >> and the willingness to take risk. >> and putting back in mbas who just studied numbers. >> i will tell you the automobile industry -- i used to say at chrysler, there's -- i have both bad news and good news. the bad news is the average guy at gm has 20 points of iq on the average chrysler executive. now the good news, the average gm guy has 20 points -- i mean, gm has some of the absolute from

a standpoint of iq and analytical capability smartest people i've ever come across. and they can't make decisions and many of them have no common sense. >> because they're too bound by numbers. >> total left brainers. no imagination, no ability to see the whole picture. >> and you say the focus was no longer on customers. and what was going to make the customer happy and loyal and dedicated to a brand. >> it was cars instead of being seen as a holistic object that would trigger lust or desire to buy were broken down into a series, infinite series, of submetrics like percentage of parts reused from the prior model and all kinds of dimensions, numbers of cup holders and so forth. and all of these subobjectives were pursued and somehow at the end of the day, if you did all that, you assumed you would have a great car. not! >> and the person who stands in opposition to all of this, the sort of epitome of what an executive should be, is steve jobs. >> exactly. that's why i use him as a

shining example of a great businessman, a person who has a personal vision of what the -- is thuz yass tienthusiastic abo product, is willing to take risk to create new stuff, a fan tass tick innate feel for what turns people on. and probably will make some mistakes. >> if you take risk of course you always make mistakes. quickly, time running short, you also say the unions got the company in trouble and way the management gave too much away when it shouldn't have. >> yes. it was sort of a symbiotic process, and the assumption when we really gave away health care and retiree health care was all of the analysis pointed to continued growth and moderate health care escalation. >> let me come back to a question about today. you said you're coming back, but the bailout worked for gm. >> the bailout absolutely

worked. >> it was the right thing to do. >> it was the only thing to do. now there's second-guessing, should have done a normal chapter 11, should have taken months, should have had private dip financing. these people forget the banks were out of money. there was no financing. >> i know you're not a political sort by nature, but why is there such political opposition right now to something so manifestly worked and brought back a whole sector of the economy? >> well, to tell you the truth, i'm a free market republican by trade, but i get off the boat with rush limbaugh and glenn beck and everything when they criticize the bailout. they're even criticizing the chevy volt now as a product of the obama administration. hello, i thought of that in 2006! i think what this is is an unfortunate tendency to use whatever is available as a lever against the obama administration. good, bad or indifferent. and the auto bailout was absolutely -- and it's worked. look at all three companies. they're profitable. >> my view, don't want to put

words in your mouth, they don't understand that sometimes the government has to step in and do things that the private sector simply can't. >> absolutely. when the banks are out of money, the private sector is gone. >> we're out of time. bob lutz, thank you so much. a great book, read an excerpt from it on our web site. "car guys versus bean counters." thanks so much for that conversation. coming up -- planned parenthood, guardian of women's health or subsidized abortion provider? we'll look at the embattled organization. ♪ machines have a voice. ♪ medical history follows you. it's the at&t network -- a network of possibilities... committed to delivering the most advanced mobile broadband experience to help move business... forward. ♪ pure... and also delicious. like nature valley. granola bars made with crunchy oats and pure honey. nature valley -- 100% natural.

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in tonight's "american issues" segment, are we seeing the beginning of the end of abortion rights in this country? today a third it state has voted to cut funding to planned parenthood. north carolina joins indiana and kansas in stripping the country's largest family planning provider of government funds. in three other states, they're on the verge of doing the same. this on the heels of the vicious war when republicans risked a government shutdown to cut federal funding to planned parenthood. tomorrow we'll speak with an abortion rights opponent, someone who agrees with the move in north carolina today. first, tonight joining me here is president of planned parenthood. thank you for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> here's what i don't understand. it it's kind of a political question. 65% of the public supports government funding for planned parenthood.

>> correct. >> over 50% of the public sue ports abortion rights either in all cases or most cases. so why have you been playing defense for the past two years? >> well, i don't think we've been playing defense at all. planned parenthood is the largest planning parenthood in the country. women continue to come to us no matter what for services. we provide family planning, cancer screenings. and unfortunately these moves by the legislatures in indiana and north carolina are really targeting those services that women need to stay healthy. >> but to come back to the issue of whether you are playing defense, it seems to me that nor a number of years the issue of abortion rights to a certain extent had taken a step back from the political arena. there wasn't in day-to-day battle either for funding or about litigation about what defined the parameters of abortion rights. we're back to seeing it in had the political arena. is it just a presidential year so it's raised? >> i thought we saw a rightward

shift in the voting in november. what the voters really wanted to see as a result of those elections is people going back to work. they were frustrated bt economy. unfortunately the result has been these legislatures are attacking women and women's health care. that's not what the american people want. as you said yourself, more than two-thirds of the american people believe planned parenthood should be able to provide services to women, particularly the preventive care we're known for. >> there was no question watching the republican presidential debate couple of nights ago. most of the focus was on economic issues. when the social agenda issues asked, a uniformity across the board, overt hostility in abortion rights. are you finding any support within the republican national agenda for choice abortion rights? >> we're finding support for planned parenthood by republicans and democrats across the country. in the united states senate, five senators of the republican party voted in support of planned parent hoodz being able

to provide sefkss. i think it's a political miscalculation, elle yot. i think they are playing politics with women's health care. when you talk about -- we're not even talking about abortion here. the moves by these legislatures and efforts by the u.s. congress were to eliminate access for women to get access to lifesaving breast cancer screenings, pap smears and birth control. the american people don't want that. >> you make an important point. some of the battle obviously relates to funding for abortion services but that's already illegal. >> right. the hyde amendment has prohibited federal funding for abortion for decades. really what's at stake is whether or not women in this country and 3 million women who turn to planned parenthood each year will continue to be able to come to us for birth control as well as cancer xreengs. >> you have a budget of about $1.1 billion of about 363 million comes from government sources. >> roughly. >> you're talking about 363 from 1.1 billion total. what you say is what percentage

of your services total relate to abortion? >> 97% of our services are preventive care. about 3% of our services are abortion related. >> by preventive care, you mean what? >> everything from -- we provide birth control to 2.5 million patients each year. we do 830,000 breast exams, about a million pap smears and we provide sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment, 4 million tests each year. >> your assertion is 3% of your procedures relate to abortions. >> that's exactly correct. and, in fact, i think what's important -- and some of our -- some folks self-described pro-life members of convict gresz support planned parenthood. they said the most important thing we can do in the country to reduce the need for abortion is to make sure every woman in america gets access to high-quality affordable family planning. that's what planned parenthood does more than any organization in the country. >> let me ask you the hard question. 3% of your services do relate to abortion. you get about a third of your budget from government services.

how do you make sure that the money you get from government doesn't go to those services which is prohibited by the hyde amendment? >> it's prohibited. we report like -- we work like every other hospital in america. every other medical provider. and we ary imbursed from the federal government exactly for the services we provide. again, i think -- i'm glad you're raising this point because what's really important, as you look at the state of indiana where governor daniels just signed a law that would prohibit women in indiana from going to planned parenthood, not for abortion services but for birth control, for lifesaving cancer screenings. >> accepting the ban they're trying to put in place would expand way beyond abortion sefkss, here's my question, the 3% figure i think is a little unfair. you provide 11 million visits with people coming into planned parenthood each year. only about 360,000 are abortions. so 360,000 is only 3% of the 11 million, but really that takes up more than 3% providing an abortion is a bigger procedure

than simply giving somebody a test and certain other regards, right? the 3% is really more than that in terms of your total services provided. >> well, we are very transparent about all the services we provide. what's -- i think what's really important here, what's at issue, is not abortion services. what's at issue here and what these laws are preventing is women from getting preventive care. again, for many people they would say the real crime in america is, we see 3 million patients for -- 2.5 million for birth control every year. there are millions of women in this country who need access to affordable family planning can't get it. women are struggling. they write me every day say, i'm just trying to make ends meet. i can't believe the state legislature or u.s. congress is going to tell me i can't get where i've been going to planned parenthood for years for my preventive care and birth control, they're telling me now i can't go to the health care provider that i trust with my

health. >> you're saying you're no different than any other hospital that provides the full array of medical services. just like you were prohibited for using government money for abortions. >> absolutely. i mean, really, i think -- i think the reason we're seeing such outrage around the country from men and women, republicans, democrats, is this is really going to the heart of health care. i think of the state legislators in north carolina, i wouldn't want on my conscience voting against access for women that could help detect early breast cancer and get women care. that's what we're talking about. >> cecile richards, thank you very much. we'll hear from tony perkins of the family research council tomorrow, on the other side. is our military involvement in libya unconstitutional? some congressmen are threatening to take the president to court to find out. stay with us. back and better than ever! right now, go to priceline for a sneak peek at recent winning hotel bids to find where you can save up to 60% on hotels. * we'll even email you other people's winning bids, so you'll know what price to name. *á

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turning now to the rules of engagement. did president are obama do an illegal end run around congress when he sent u.s. troops to bomb libya? at least ten members of the house say he did and they're taking him to court to prove it. the obama administration is arguing the president has clear constitutional authority to address, quote, such limited military operations abroad. massachusetts congressman mike cap juan know, a democrat is bringing suit against the president. one of the many. i spoke with had him a short time ago. congressman, thank you for joining mess. >> happy to be here. >> you're trying to do what no member of congress has ever succeeded in doing, which is to get a judge to tell the president to pull our forces out of combat. why do you think it's going to work? >> i'm not sure it will. i just know it needs to be tried again. war and peace the most important

thing we do down here. i think the constitution is pretty clear. i think it's very clear that only congress has the power to declare war. for me, that's kind of paramount above all else. there's really no other issue that is more important. >> now, you know of course that the war powers act notwithstanding it has been decades since a declaration of war has been issued or voted upon by the united states congress, and presidents have routinely taken us into combat with ambiguous congressional support. so what argument are you going to make to the court to have the judge decide in your favor and tell the president to pull our troops back from libya? >> i think in this case it's even more clear than in most. i mean, at least in iraq, though i voted no, congress at least was on record with something saying it's okay. in this particular case, congress wasn't even asked. and in my opinion this make it's a cleaner case. hopefully a court will find its way clear to at least answering the question. >> now, you have bipartisan support for your litigation. guring to go to court. you have republicans and democrats, as i understand it

it. joining us in this effort. am i correct? >> that's right. this is a nonpartisan effort. for me, i'm a strong and early supporter of president obama. this has nothing to do with him. i think he's a good president. but i think on this particular issue he was wrong. for me, it's not even about libya. it's about the next war and the next president, whatever might p happen tomorrow. i think it's critical this issue be answered. >> now, the issue which you keep referring to is whether or not the president, without congressional power, authorization, can continue having u.s. forces in a combat zone in the midst of hostilities for more than 90 days. the white house is saying the hostilities in libya don't fall within the purview of the war powers act resolution. do you buy that argument? >> no, i don't. but i'll be honest with you. it's not even the war powers act i hang my hat on. it's the constitution. i think the war powers act in and of itself is already a compromise giving any president 60 to 90 days to come to congress. i think the constitution is clear that only congress --

doesn't even mention the president -- has the authority to declare war. and i know that some people may want to split hairs on the declaration of war. but when i think you're shooting missiles at a sovereign country, i don't see it defined as anything other than war. >> let's put the litigation aside for a moment and the battle over the power that the president might have or not have unilaterally to take us into the libyan combat. do you think that we are doing the right thing there as a matter of pursuing a humanitarian mission? >> based on my knowledge, no. that's an individual upopinion, not a congressional one. i don't think the united states has obligation across the world to police the world or get rid of all bad dictators. the world would be better off without gadhafi. democracy is a good thing. the people of libya deserve that if they can get it. but i don't think it's the united states' role to bring it everywhere. because if we do that, what's the difference between that and syria or that and yemen or that and the next country? i just think it's an

inappropriate role for the united states. but i also think it's a fair point to have a discussion on in congress. let congress make the decision. >> congressman, thank you for joining us. >> thanks. >> so is the congressman's lawsuit valid? when we return, i'll ask one of the nation's keenest legal minds. is president obama violating the constitution? don't go away.

president obama says our involvement in libya is consistent with the war powers resolution. our next guest says it's not that easy. with the administration's position is defensible. walt ar dellen jir is one of the top attorneys, former solicitor general and white house adviser. he joins me now from washington. walter, thank you so much. >> good evening, eliot. >> the white house is arguing today, after they've been sued or are going to be sued by congress, that we're not really at war in libya, we're not really in the midst of hostilities. does that argument even pass the smell test? of course we're at war. how can they argue that? >> well, i this the question whether we're at war in the constitutional sense requiring a declaration of war, that question is easy. for half a century we've held that, although only congress can declare war, the president can

use military force, can deploy the worldwide military that congress has given him into hostile situations without a declaration of war because it's not war in terms of the scope and duration. the harder question is on the war powers resolution, which requires the president to remove u.s. forces after 60 days -- it can be extended to 90 days -- of involvement in hiostilities. the question is, is this hostilities within the meaning of the war powers resolution. the word "hostilities" of course encompasses sending bombs into the other country. when you look at the purposes of the resolution, it was to make sure that, first of all, u.s. forces were not put at risk of being subject to hostile fire without congressional approval and secondly that we didn't commit u.s. forces into a foreign country in a way that made it difficult for congress to come along and to extract them. neither of those purposes is

relevant here. >> walter, let me jump in. you are making a brilliant appellate argument, as per your reputation, the smartest lawyer in the nation. but as a common sense level, let's go back to what the constitution was supposed to do. clearly a balance between the executive authority as commander in chief to send forces in defense of the nation. on the other hand, congress said, only we can declare war based upon the scope, the duration, factors you just argued about. but here we are approaching that 90-day threshold in libya, and the white house is saying it's not even within the scope of the definition of "hostilities" when we are bombing, we have covert cia operatives on the ground, we are dropping expensive bombs, smart bombs, aircraft flying over libya. would you really want to argue to an inquisitive judge that that does not constitute hostilities within the war powers act? >> listen, that's a difficult question, but the president's position is consistent with what administrations have done for at least the last 36 years.

starting in 1975, the administrations have said that hostilities must involve serious risk of attack on u.s. forces. that's not present here. i think that's a debatable proposition. obviously some bombing would trigger the war powers resolution, but here when you're talking about not committing u.s. forces beyond easy retraction by congress, you don't need an exit strategy when you're not even in the country. >> just a point of inquiry, so our viewers understand, how many decades has it been since a declaration of war was voted on in congress? >> i suppose the last one was world war ii. >> right. weaver talking decades without congress exercising that constitutionally mandated power. and i think everybody knows, whether it's korea, vietnam, the middle east, we have obviously fought in several protracted wars. so is it fair to say that the war powers act notwithstanding the congressional power to declare war has basically

disappeared and the president has air owe gaited to himself the power to deploy our military forces as he deems appropriate, despite some mattering by congress on the fringes? >> no. and this is a very important point. i don't want anyone to think that we can just say that the obama administration has ignored the war powers resolution. the central provision of the war powers resolution that we not commit u.s. forces, generally we're thinking of ground forces sent into a combat situation, a sustained combat situation, without congressional authorization. that 1973 provision has never been violated. and i don't think one should cavalierly assume it's been violated here, when the nature of our involvement doesn't even involve a physical intrusion of ground forces into the country where we're operating under a humanitarian mandate where the nature, scope and purposes are quite limited to humanitarian purposes. i it think it's, by no means,

clear that the war powers resolution is a dead letter. it will still, i think, ought to constrain presidents. >> let me jump in briefly with another issue here that is certainly raised. even though this is really an ongoing battle between the congress and executive over who can make this determination, the judiciary, am i right, has never interposed itself and said to the executive, you must withdraw troops? the judiciary is hesitant for all the obvious reasons to do that. >> they never have and they never will. the court will hold this is a political question, not for the judiciary. this is for the president and congress to resolve. there's nothing to stop the congress from saying, we want you to stop the bombing. you don't even have to extract u.s. forces. >> walter, let me interrupt and add one thing in the waning seconds. perhaps a footnote issue in the constitutional magnitude. we're talking about expenditures so far of over $700 million, soon to be $1 billion. the president has basically said, unilaterally i will spend

that money. usually congress has to authorize that. does that weigh in the balance? >> you know something i don't know, which is this isn't part of the funds actually already authorized for the department of defense. and remember you can't isolate this from the war on terror. we are doing something our european allies who are with us on the war on terror care very much about, helping to stabilize the situation in libya, across the waters from italy and other european countries. >> walter, thank you so much. i think everybody now sees why you're viewed as such a spectacular lawyer. fantastic argument. coming up, we got bin laden. now pakistan is rounding up our sources and arresting them. is this how allies should behave. of at&t and t-mobile would deliver our next generation mobile broadband experience to 55 million more americans, many in small towns and rural communities, giving them a new choice. we'll deliver better service, with thousands of new cell sites...

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that's how i got a 4-star hotel on the beach in san diego for half price. ♪ h-o-t-w-i-r-e ♪ hotwire.com now from our covert operations file, troubling news about the people who helped the cia and navy s.e.a.l.s catch and kill osama bin laden. turns out right after the raid pakistan arrested several of them. what does this mean for u.s./pakistan relations and for the future safety of our sources on the ground? joining me now is former cia officer peter brooks. welcome, peter. >> thanks for having me. >> before we get started, i want to show you a fascinating exchange. senator patrick leahy is quizzing defense secretary gates about our relationships with supposed allies like pakistan. take a listen. >> how long do we support governments that lie to us?

when do we say enough is enough, secretary gates i'll start with you. >> well, first of all, i would say, based on 27 years in the cia and 4 1/2 years in this job, most governments lie to each other. that's the way business gets done. >> do they also arrest the people that help us? >> sometimes. >> when they say they're allies? >> sometimes. >> not on -- >> and sometimes they send people to spy on us and they're our close allies. >> and we give aid to them. >> that's the real world that we deal with. >> peter, that was a more stark and open and honest critique of the relationship we've got with our supposed allies than you normally get certainly at a budget hearing. but let me ask you this. isn't it really one step beyond the norm of smoke and mirrors -- i ask you this, you're a spook i think i can call you that, being in the cia for years -- what normally happens for them to

affirmatively arrest our sources of information? >> this a very troubled relationship. i think secretary gates was quite frank. you can tell he's leaving his job at the endz of the month and doesn't need to worry too much about diplomatic niceties. but the fact of the matter is, i wouldn't necessarily call pakistan an ally. that's a very strong term. they're a partner and they're a problematic partner for us. i'm having a hard time finding any good news in the relationship recently. what we had hoped is they would actually investigate how osama bin laden had been in that country for five or six years in abbottabad and maybe longer in pakistan. instead, they rounded up a bunch of people they're calling informants. we still need to know more about the story. how were they able to wrap them up so quickly if they were actually yfants? the cia will never acknowledge they had informants there. we still need to know more, but it's not at all helpful when we have a real war on terror and real fight in afghanistan we're facing. >> you're so right about your observations. the first question that occurred to me is, how did they know who

to arrest? >> right. >> if these were our very secure dark sources for such critical information, how did they know who had been giving this to us? either there are leaks on our side or they knew more than they're letting on. either one is a troubling conclusion, isn't it? >> well, there's a couple of possibilities here, eliot. one is that some of them are scapegoats. maybe this is for domestic convict sums in pakistan saying, those americans can't do what they want. we're going to grab some people. of course we may have shot ourselves in the foot by giving so much information out about the raid in the days just after it happened. for instance, i have to applaud the cia for having a safe house in abbottabad near osama bin laden's compound, a great piece of technical trade craft, of spy trade craft. but the fact off the matter is, the general public didn't need to know that. now the owner of that house who probably didn't know he was renting 0 a house to a cia operation may be in a lot of danger. the real ramifications here are,

our people outside of pakistan or in pakistan, other possible informants going to work with the cia in the future to our benefit if they feel like they're not secure? and so this is something that's really troubling. it's not just about the u.s./pakistan relationship. it's about all our clandestine relationships around the world. >> peter, i disagree with you on one little thing. i think he must have known it was the cia or u.s. government agency because it's the only time rent was paid on time. i think he was happy for the good tenant. go back to world war ii, the old poster that said loose lips sink ships. we saw it from secretary gates and general petraeus shortly after the happiness, the euphoria after the raid, too much was said. is a general conclusion. now i think somewhere in the white house they're saying, you know, we may have cost ourselves five operatives or allies, friends in pakistan. are they going to change behavior because of this? >> i certainly hope so. i was critical of them in an article in the "new york post." i said, this is not the grands standing we need. we may put the feamilies or nav

s.e.a.l.s in danger if people find out who they were. our operational tactics for our military, our s.e.a.l.s, our cia. we trotted out before the public when they didn't need to be. the details of the operation were irresistible. even i was very interested. we didn't need to tell people about it because this isn't the last time we'll have to undertake a raid like this. it's not a good idea and any administration has to be careful about talking about these very, very sensitive operations. >> but to come back to the underlying core facts, this has to define a new low for the relationship between the isi, the pakistani secret intelligence agency and the cia. even though we probably know there are people here feeding information to foreign intelligence agencies, if they're partners not allies as you point out, we're not going to will fully pick them up and interrogate them and charge them unless the relationship is so fraught that you're just presuming you're not going to work together anymore. >> it's a poke in the eye of the

u.s. government and of the cia. the other news is that the fact that we supposedly gave them some information about a bomb making factory that was making ieds being moved into afgh afghanist afghanistan. when the pakistanis moved on this of course the facilities were supposedly empty. somebody had been tipped off. the problem here is that we're both in this fight. pakistan, the government in islamabad is as much in the crosshairs of the extremists and terrorists as the united states is. if things go bad in afghanistan, it hurts pakistan. pakistan is riding this extremist tiger. when they get off, that tiger may look at theoid rider and they may have a problem. >> peter brookes, thanks. coming up, edie hill looks at another undeclared war. >> a tweet went out tonight that said tango down cia.gov. a group of hackers have brought down cia web site. leon panetta, cia director talked about the threat from cyber warfare and the security threat being our next pearl harbor. we'll take a look at how serious

the problem is. >> fascinating stuff. don't go away. we'll be right back.

tonight, hackers shut down the cia's public web site. they relentlessly target the military, defense contractors and the highest levers of government. it's grown so extensive it is now seen as a national threat. how serious? this is cia director leon panetta testifying before a senate committee last week. >> i've often said that there's a strong likelihood that the

next pearl harbor we confront could very well be a cyber attack that criminpples our pow systems, our grid, our security systems, our financial systems, our governmental systems. this is a real possibility in today's world. >> joining me is mark rash, a cyber security expert and director of csc, a security and privacy consulting group. thanks for being here. >> thank you. >> amazing. we were working on this story because the senate had been hacked into twice in the past week, again today. all of a sudden the cia.gov web site goes down. same group claiming responsibility, director panetta saying this is a serious problem, the cyber warfare. you investigate these things. how serious is it? well, these particular attacks are examples of what we call hacktivism, trying to make a political statement by taking down a public web site, kind of like spray-painting the cia's wall. it's serious they were able to

get in and shut it down, but it didn't impact the core functions. but most of the government agencies are under what i would call continuous probing by foreign governments, by hacker groups and others. so they're under almost continuous warfare. >> not just the government groups. i think we focus on the government groups. however, what about the boeings, the lockheed martins, the defense contractors, the faa, the people running our electrical grids? those are the companies and the organizations that we sometimes don't think about, and they have been attacked just as much. i think boeing says it is attacked on a constant basis and lockheed martin said a hack into another company's security company's web site had allowed hackers to get into lockheed martin as well. >> that's right. it goes well beyond that. it's not just government and defense contractors. it's virtually every commercial entity. the trick here is to have the kind of security that isn't bolted on after the fact. to build system that's are more secure, to have people who are

trained on how to respond. and basically have security as part of your culture. >> so they hack into these systems. what can they do? how bad can it get? >> oh, it can get devastating. the core, keys to the kingdom can be held on computers and computer networks. not just personal information and credit card information but we're talking about taking over the power grids, taking over -- >> could they shut down a power grid? could they shut down air traffic control? >> in theory, if the systems haven't been designed with the kind of reduntd answercy they need to be designed with, you could do almost anything. >> director panetta when he was talking about this perhaps being our next pearl harbor, he said that we need to take defensive and this is the quote, aggressive measures to deal with it. what does that mean? what do aggressive measures mean? >> there l a couple of things. don't just defend yourself and put p up walls. you want active surveillance, you want to learn what the threats are, who's trying to baek in and why. >> we're trying to hack into other people's systems to figure

out if they're hacking into ours. >> actually, monitoring them. >> that's a nicer term. >> monitoring hacker groups, monitoring the threat environment, figuring out who's trying to break in and why. but also new technologies, what types of tools and techniques they're using and how they're trying to break in. >> this is how serious it is. the white house established a cyber security group and they said, we're going to come out with a cyber strategy. they say that, based on what someone does, this could rise to the level of declaring military action against a person. or a country, i should say. how do you determine if an attack is coming in from a person in a foreign country versus a foreign government? and i think we all know that china has been predominantly the country that most other governments accuse of trying to hack into their security and government systems. >> well, you have an equal problem of an actual act of war that poses as a cyber fraud or an attack or cyber fraud that looks like an act of war.

so the real thing to do is just analyze the attack and see what you can find out. if i'm really going to be planning an attack against the united states, i don't want it to look like an act of war, i don't want it to point back to me. >> exactly. look, you do this to us, and it may be a last resort, but we'll take military action if we need to. how do you know for sure a country is targeting you and you're going after the right person. >> you don't know for sure. you need a certain level of certainty. if you're going to be bombing a foreign country, you have to have a level of certainty that they're responsible for acts of war against you. >> now, the military has released a couple of things they are doing to try to be proactive in this. they said that they are now capable of putting markers into the security systems of other countries that would activate a virus i guess if they felt it was needed. do we really do that? >> well, there's a whole group

of tools in warfare. this is almost terrell am of science fiction. if you were to ask somebody, what would you want to do if you were going to war in cyberspace, you could come up with thousands of things. >> it's hard to differentiate between what they'd like to do and what technologically you can do. >> there's a lot that can be done. >> it sounds like computers really could be the next major threat. >> well, cyber warfare may be the component of the next war. it's all going to depend on who our adversary is. but at some point, war will be conducted not just on the ground and not just in the battlefield but also at home and in the cyber battlefield. >> mark rash, thank you for being with us. >> thank you. we will be right back after this.