>> done a terrific job, and i want to congratulate you on that. i also want to congratulate you, mr. carter on this book. i read it in about 36 hours. i came to one conclusion after i finished this book. this guy, should be president. a little too late to come back. would you like to come back? >> i think we could make an araunjment. >> thank you for your time. i enjoyed it. president and mr. carter. ac360 starts right now. >> we begin tonight keeping them honest with breaking news. 360 has learned this waw not the first time that the costa concordia steered so close to shore. the cruise line not only knew about the route but approved it. the company that owns the ship said the accident was the result of a rogue decision that the captain and only the captain made. we learned the previous close call happened back in august.

we have video, this is the video of the incident in august taken from the shore. the cruise line said the ship was a safe distance from the coastline. lloyds lip said it was dangerously close, closer, in fact, than it came on friday night when it hit the rocks. here is new satellite imagery of the wreck. look how big it is against the coast, just a massive, massive ship. the search for nearly two dozen was suspended when the wreckage began shifting. really dangerous for the rescue divers. a dutch salvage team has arrived to offload diesel fuel. also, today, we got our first look at an interview that the concordia captain, schettino, did a day after the grounding. in it, he maintains that the rock he hit was not on the map. >> i don't know if it was detected or not, but on the nautical chart it was marked

just as waiter at some 100 to 150 meters from the rocks, and we were about 300 meters from the shore more or less. we should not have had this contact. there were more than 4,000 people and you were able to rescue everyone. the captain is usually the last one to abandon ship. what happened, captain? >> we were the last to leave the ship. >> last night, we showed you why that simply is not so. his own phone calls to the coast guard from the life boat during the evacuations is truth enough. his story has changed since the interview. he's saying, you might want to sit down for this. he said he somehow tripped and fell into a life boat. not kidding. tripped and fell into a life boat, got stuck in the life boat along with the rest of his senior officers. as for the rock he hit, we got the first up close look at it,

and it, too, is breath taking. there are rocks and well water locations on the standard navigation chart of the area. you look at the images, the size of the rock that is embedded still in the hull of the ship, unanswered whether the captain thought his ship was farther out to sea and clearer of the rock than it was which is why the lloyd's list story is intriguing. they track ships and they show the course taken on friday was not a new course. friday night as it tried to skim by the island right along the coast. the concordia's cheap stewart could wave to his family and friends on shore. that's the whole reason they got so close. now, according to lloyd's sat like tracking. this is the course it took on the 14th of august. the crossing point in the middle of the screen where concordia hit the rock. it came win 230 meters or two football fields of the island at one point. neither course is anywhere near the route that concordia and other cruise ships take which is art out to sea.

monday, cruise line ceos blamed friday's grounding on the captain. the closesh point on the voyage, closer than this voyage up until

>> so we think it's reasonably accurate. when the court case comes, anderson, there's a lot of debate about precisely where the vessel was. and you mentioned earlier about what kind of maps they were using. >> and, adam, regardless of what the ship has done or not done in the past, the responsibility for what the ship does, where it go goes, ut matly still lies with the captain, right? >> absolutely lies with the captain. of course he's got a marketing

responsibility. this is a cruise with thousands of people who paid lots of money. and he knows ahead of time where he's taking that ship, what kind of entertainment he's going to lay on, what kind of places he's going to visit. it's down to him whether he executes on all of that. and certainly in august, as was discussed, that was sanctioned. there's an interesting aspect. if he believed that the route that was taken then was satisfactory to take again, then that's going to lie right at the center of who is to blame for this dreadful accident. >> and a lot of the blame, liabilitiwise, is going to rest on which maps the captain was or was not using, right? >> up to a point. the question is was the vessel fitted with the right equipment and the right maps for him to do siz job. i think you're going to see a lot of debate about that. there's half a billion dollars worth of asset lying there on its side in the ocean. that's a huge amount at stake,

not just the civil liabilities, but also the cost of the ship and who pays for all of that that's at stake. so there's going to be a lot of very focused debate around the detail of this which makes the suggest by the company a very, very quick and fast suggestion, anderson, that the captain was at fault without any hesitation at all. a little surprising. >> adam, i appreciate your expertise. >> i want to speak to what it was like aboard that ship and some of them may well be representing passengers in legal action. on the phone is georgia ananias who was one of the last passengers to leave the concordia. in the first part, he represented cruise lines, including carnival, which owns koes that. georgia, you are obviously out raged at what happened. i'm so glad you are okay. what's your reaction when you hear that according to satellite tracking data, the same ship was

taken dangerously close to the shore, basically the same route, back in august? >> i'm shocked. but now after the experience, i am not surprised. there's so many blatant lies that have been going on, that doesn't surprise me anymore. >> and we're showing you infrared images which we just got yesterday of passengers actually crawling over and trying to get down off the side of the ship. those are nighttime images taken with infrared. you and your husband and your two daughters, you were stuck on that ship for five hours. what was that like? >> there were four times we thought we were dying. we said our good-byes to each other and we just said, you know, there's so many things. >> what was it? take me to one of those moments where you felt you weren't going to make it? >> well, one of the moments, i

had time when the ship was listing and we had to climb up and pull ourselves up onto a stairwell. and another couple turned around and gave me their baby and said take my baby. and i held a three-year-old and i was holding on and the ship was moving and i was afraid the child was going to go down the stairwell. i knew. i looked at my husband who has been in the navy and he said this is it. and i handed the baby back to the parents and said be with your baby. >> wow. what is -- what is that like? i mean, to be with your family -- i mean, i just can't imagine this. >> it's an out of body experience. it's everything you'd see on the titanic and worse. it was just unbelievable. that was one incident. there were four incidents in that five and a half hours. and not one person from the ship assisted us. there wasn't one officer. we got on a lifeboat that wouldn't function. we were all thrown against the wall of the ship.

we crawled down under -- to try to get on the underside of the ship because they said on the other side, we could get a lifeboat. and at the time, the ship shifted again and we were thrown back. we had to crawl back out. we had to climb a 20 foot ladder. blood falling down from everywhere. the real heroes were the other passengers on board. we had to go through crates of things. and then we get to the top of the ship and we're up there with about ten people, the rest of the people left the ship. you see coast guards and flashing lights. and you think they're coming for you. the next thing you know, they're taking somebody from the bridge and air lifting them out and we're standing there with our lights flashing and yelling save us. save us. >> you saw them air lifting someone from the bridge out and the passengers were left? >> yes. >> and when you hear -- the captain now claiming that he tripped and fell into a lifeboat and got stuck in the lifeboat for an hour, does that make any

sense to you? >> absolutely ridiculous. it's insulting to us. insulting to the people that died and went through five and a half hours. >> what a lot of people don't understand about these cruise ships is the ability to actually sue is very, very limited, especially if the ship hasn't been in a u.s. port. the ticket contract, which is apparently a legally binding document, it's posted on the web site. it specifically states that any legal action has to take place in the courts in italy, in genoa, right? >> anderson, you make a good point. the remedies of every passenger is really governed by that document. we printed one out and it's eight pages of about 8 point print. this is print that is much finer than newspaper print. and i seem to have lost my ear

piece. but the right passengers do have rights and remedies. it's just that the rights and remedies are governed by this. in this particular case in this particular cruise line, the rights and remedies are to bring a claim in genoa, italy, only because this particular cruise did not touch a u.s. port. but there are rights and remedies. and the rights and remedies are different for other cruiselines and other cruises. >> so if you're on a cruise that does not go into a u.s. port, you can't sue in the united states? >> no, that's not true. that is true with regard to costa because costa happens to be based in italy. and, so, the ticket contract does provide that. for example, with carnival cruiselines, no matter where the accident is and no matter where the cruise is and no matter where the passenger lives, you must sue carnival cruise lines in miami, in federal district court in miami.

a lo a lot of people don't know this. >> under maritime law, aren't there very small numbers that you can actually -- the ability to win a large sum of money, you really don't have that ability under maritime law; is that correct? >> no, that's not a hundred percent correct. i'm sorry to disagree with that. but if -- okay. here's what's real. if the cruise does not touch a u.s. port, yes, there are limitations which apply. and that's called the athens convention. and that's on the ticket. if the cruise does touch a u.s. port, there are no such limitations. and let me just tell you what there is an exception to the athen's convention. there are exceptions. and one exception is if there is intentional conduct. and so in this case, even though you have to bring actions in genoa, italy and, you know, that can be done. and we are working with italian lawyers. but even if you bring an action in italy, if they raise this

athens convention, certainly this exception will apply here. >> right. >> i mean, the captain of the vessel, we've heard this incredibly one of the most touching accounts of what happened, one of the most powerful accounts is that woman that just recounted what happened. i mean -- >> let me bring you back. let me bring georgia back in. georgia, how was it that you were finally able to get off that ship? >> we went up the 24 foot ladder and there was hardly any of us left. one of the camera photographer from the ship and another german man had a rope. and we had to scoot on our hands and knees all the way to this rope. and then we had to go down from deck -- i want to say 7, 8, 10, i don't know which deck it was at the time. and then we had to shimmy ourselves all the way down. and it was like, you know, a chain. if one of us would have slipped or fallen, then everybody would have gone down. so we were there.

and as we got there, we thought we're going to get a lifeboat. and what ended up happening is the water started to shift. so we had to try to time it to save our lives. and we had to jump on to the lifeboat. i and my younger daughter, cindy, we jumped to the top of it. and we hauled another german lady that was with us. and my husband and other daughter jumped out again. >> and, again, time after time in these kind of indents, we see strangers reaching out and saving other strangers. as you said, a lot of credit goes to them. georgia, thank you so much for being with us. i'm so glad your family is save. jack, thank you as well. we're on facebook, google plus. follow me on twitter twitter, @andersoncooper. crews suspend rescue operations. they're suspended because of the danger factor. and we have amazing video, the work the divers have been doing despite the risk.

we're going to talk to butch hendrick a little bit after this break. andrew sullivan, president obama's accomplishments as he sees them and why as that controversial title reads, "are obama's critics so dumb?" a title stirring up a lot of controversy. let's check in with aisha. >> high school students in up state new york want answers. they want to know why a dozen teenage girls at the same school suddenly developed a mysterious condition that looks a lot like te ret syndrome. dr. sanjay guta has the story when 360 continues.

our breaking news tonight, word that not only did the "costa concordia" come dangerously close to disaster at least once before, the cruise line knew about it and approved it. that happened last august. we've also learned through precision tracking information from the shipping journal "lloyd's list" that on that occasion, the "concordia" came much closer to danger than the cruise line claims. 230 meters, not 500. in short, friday's disaster

might just as easily have happened last summer. again, about two dozen people right now remain unaccounted for. as we said, underwater rescue and recovery was suspended today because of dangerous conditions. we've been talking about how dangerous this is for the divers for several nights now. as you can see in this kind of video, getting around the inside of an ocean liner is tough, even under the best conditions. that video, by the way, newly released by the italian coast guard. there is more, and to an expert eye, it shows just what these divers are up against. we're joined by veteran rescue diver, butch hendrick. he's been guiding us through the rescue operations all week. he joins us again. butch, what surprised you most about this new video of the underwater search and rescue mission? >> the thing that surprised me the most, anderson, was the amount of visibility they have. i was not expecting them to have that much visibility. >> and what do you attribute that to? is it not very silty down there? >> well, they're midwater at that point, so they're not on the bottom where they have the silt, but the water conditions

are just very clear. they've got good 50 to 100-foot visibility, while they have light. >> and good visibility, that would seem like a very good thing, correct? >> yes. having good visibility is definitely a good thing, because it allows them to be able to work a whole lot of that ship quite freely, especially, you know, reducing the ability to get disoriented. >> at one point in the video, i see something that looks like lines that are in a "y" shape formation. are those like the lines that you used tuesday night on this program when you dove inside the wreck to basically mark your course? >> i believe they are. i was looking at the "y" point of that. you see the way they're connected, and they're using, obviously, a larger diameter rope. we used a little rec reel, but yes, i believe that's exactly what they are. they're setting up to be able to get in, get out, and move product, or move items in and out along those lines with them. >> we can also see the divers

using a sledgehammer. that's the kind of tool that you would use underwater in these circumstances? >> it's not the tool i would use, it's what they're using. i would actually try and use, if you watch video that i'm sure you have on fdny, new york city fire department, the officers carry what's called a hallogen tool. it's about 28 to 32 inches long. it has a pry bar, a very large hammer side on it with a claw. it's a multiusable tool, and you can use it well with two hands. that's what i would be having my guys use. >> it's got to be tough for the divers, who are obviously invested in trying to recover people from this, to have to suspend operations. >> it's a point where they've decided that now they have to -- they're probably setting up lines, getting ready for the salvage company to come in. and yes, it's very difficult for the men to say, just one more dive. just one more dive.

but at some point, the dives are over for now. >> and how long might they be suspended for? or is that undetermined, because you've just got to wait on the conditions? >> the conditions aren't bad. i think they're probably going to lay tracer lines slowly. they're going to work one compartment at a time. and then they're going to be deciding how are they going to salvage, if they're going to try to actually float this ship. >> butch, again, i appreciate your expertise. coming up tonight, "raw politics." a controversial "newsweek" headlines asks, quote why are obama's critics so dumb? that's on the cover of "newsweek." andrew sullivan wrote the article that's inside. he didn't write that head liner, but he wrote the article. he argues that the president will outsmart all his critics who cannot see that he's using a long game strategy. i'm going to speak with andrew sullivan about that and republican strategist bay buchanan. it's an interesting conversation. also ahead, a medical mystery in new york state. this is incredible. 12 girls from the same high school all apparently have come

down with the same kind of tics, including uncontrollable twitching and stuttering. it's unclear what's causing it. it looks like tourette's syndrome. we're going to hear from some of the girls and we'll talk to dr. sanjay gupta. [ monica ] i'm away on a movie shoot and it hasn't been going exactly as planned. cut. cut! [ monica ] i thought we'd be on location for 3 days -- it's been 3 weeks. so i had to pick up some more things. good thing i've got the citi simplicity card. i don't get hit with a fee if i'm late with a payment... which is good because on this job, no! bigger! [ monica ] i may not be home for a while. [ male announcer ] the new citi simplicity card.

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in "raw politics" tonight, the "newsweek" cover story about president obama that has everyone talking. it's not hard to see why, looking at the headline. the cover asks "why are obama's critics so dumb?" the article was written by columnist andrew sullivan. i'll be talking with him in just a moment. in the article, he argues that

the attacks on the president from everything from job creation to health care policy are, using sullivan's words now, empirically wrong. he says the president has already been very effective and that he's playing a long game. joining me now is "newsweek" columnist, andrew sullivan. his website is andrewsullivan.com, and also joining us, bay buchanan, republican strategist and senior adviser to mitt romney. wow, this has gotten a lot of attention, andrew. there you are, writing your blog, and then this happens. >> kaboom. >> first of all, the headline on the cover of "newsweek," did you write that? >> no. i found out monday morning. >> so you in your article are not saying that all of obama's critics, left and right, are dumb? >> not at all. i just say i think they're wrong, in my view, they're wrong, and here's why. and i make a pretty reasonable, i hope, fact-based argument for that. i love to have a disagreement about it, and i'm beginning to have that with people, but you won't find the word "dumb" or "stupid" in any of the text of the piece. >> essentially your argument is that president obama, sort of

unbeknownst to his critics on the left and the right, has actually been waging kind of -- his version is more long-term. how so? >> i think from the very beginning he talked, and i think you could tell from the beginning, he was planning on eight years, rather ambitiously, rather than four. and part of that is also due to the scale of what he inherited. the month before he became president, the united states was losing 750,000 jobs a month. now, i don't think you can blame him coming into that kind of recession for all the jobs that have been lost, say, in the following year. i think that was baked in the cake. what you can judge him on is whether the policies that he put in action within a year made a difference? and yes, they have. we've been growing. we've been growing now for two years. not at a fantastic rate, but 200,000 jobs a month. >> where is this long game? because a lot of his critics will say, look, he handed too much over to congress, to let them decided how to go about things. you see in his --

>> the president isn't the congress. and he had to do it so quickly, the only way to get it through congress, because it was an emergency stimulus, because the economy was doing that, the global economy, he just said, it's better to get thus down now than have it perfect. so it was flawed in many ways, but a third of it was tax cuts, which the republicans will never tell you. they will never tell you that over his first term, he has cut taxes aggressively. they will never tell you that he's actually cut medicare. they'll never tell you a whole bunch of things that he done, that republicans used to support, including his health care plan, which is based on the individual mandate, heritage foundation, mitt romney, and free market exchanges for health care insurance policies. that's also a right-wing idea. so the idea he's this radical lefty, just not true, i don't think. >> bay, what about his argument about president obama waging a long game? do you think he's -- because andrew's coming at this from a conservative viewpoint. andrew is conservative, perhaps, i think you would agree with that, although i'm not sure. but that's -- he's coming at it from that viewpoint. do you think he's giving obama too much credit? >> yes.

listen, if he's -- andrew makes his case, it's all about long-term, and we've seemed to have missed exactly what obama's all about. all i have to say is that if these reckless deficits he's running up, if the uncontrolled spending, if 25 million unemployed or underemployed americans is part of obama's master plan, then maybe rush limbaugh is right. maybe he is trying to destroy america. this is all that's happening under obama. >> no. >> i like to believe he's completely clueless and he doesn't know what to do, and that's what's happened here. >> the vast majority of the unemployment, which is long-term, stem from that recession, which began in 2007 and was intensified the in 2008. i don't see anything that obama has done that has made that worse. if you look, once we got out of that hole, at the end of the bush administration, if you go into 2010, this is after the first year, you'll see there's been growth in jobs. and so the policies can be defended and should be defended. what i can't understand is why obama doesn't defend them in this way?

it seems so straightforward. >> ezra klein saying you've actually defended the obama administration better than the administration has defended. >> well, that's very kind of him. but i think also, knowing obama, and watching him, he -- this is his strategy. he waits. he allows himself to be knocked around the ropes, written off, and then -- >> but you're giving him credit in this article for things which a lot of people point out that he doesn't even verbally support, gay marriage, for instance. >> because obama, from the beginning, if you look to him and read him said, look, i'm not a dictator. i'm a community organizer. a community organizer tries to build a consensus, opens up and reveals his opponent's hand, then tries to get a deal. that's his entire m.o. that's what he did in chicago. that's what he's always done. and if you look at the way he's done this, the way he's set up the republicans, for example, in this election, i think you'll see, he's going to win this election quite handedly, because he's framed the arguments the

way he wants to. >> you know, andrew, i hope he keeps setting us up like he did there in 2010, and he got completely walloped, the democrats did, in the off year election. you can make a case, and i agree with you, going into that first year of his administration, a lot of things were happening that he couldn't control. they were set in place before he was there. but then in the opening days of 2010, and he was there for a while, going into his second year, the economy's percolating almost 4%. it slows up a little bit, he talks, though, he takes great credit for the big, the what he calls is going to be recovery summer. they're all excited over there at the white house. and things go straight downhill to where we're looking at less than 1% growth in 2011. he has to take responsibility for that. the recovery was there. his policies impacted it and we lost the kind of growth and the strength and the movement we were on. he changed the direction. >> i don't see where policies of his slowed the the recovery. what ones did? >> the huge, outrageous spending. the kind of -- >> spending actually helps growth in the short-term.

it may be wrong in the long-term, but spending actually helps -- if you look at somewhere like italy, where they're cutting and cutting and cutting and seeing they're growth go down and down and down and their debt go up and up, he's avoided that debt trap, which is important. >> but he ran it up, that deficit. he runs it up and runs it up until it unnerves the market. it unnerves americans. >> he didn't run it up, bay. because in a recession, your revenues collapse. and revenues are currently at 50-year lows. of course you're going to have a deficit. the hard thing is to run a deficit in boom times. that's what your party did, adding $5 trillion to the debt under bush. $5 trillion. even the most expansive understanding of what changes obama will have brought bring t to something like $1 trillion in extra debt. i think that's too much too, but compared to bush, this guy is a fiscal conservative. >> andrew, thanks. >> you're so welcome. >> bay, thank you very much. >> sure, glad to be with you. a new "time"/orc international poll out tonight

shows mitt romney with a ten-point lead in south carolina. gingrich is closing the gap. romney at 33%. gingrich's at 23%. santorum's at 16, ron paul at 13, rick perry at 6. it is coming down to the wire in south carolina. watch the debate tomorrow on cnn starting at 8:00 right here on cnn. we'll have an additional "360" from south carolina right after the debate tomorrow at 10:00. still ahead tonight, a mysterious illness striking 12 teenage girls at the same school around the same time, causing them all to develop strange tics. what could be causing it. sanjay gupta reports on that. also, a major winter storm pummeling the pacific northwest. we'll show you who's getting hit the hardest. look! the phillips' lady!

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tonight, a bizarre medical mystery. what could possibly have caused a dozen teenage girls at the same high school in upstate new york to suddenly develop a mysterious condition that looks and sounds a lot like tourette's syndrome? their symptoms began last fall. stutters, uncontrollable movements, verbal outbursts. at first the girls didn't realize others were going through the same situation. now they're demanding answers together. here's jason carroll. >> it's very, um, heartbreaking to me. to be honest, i, um, knowing that, right now i can't do what i love. >> thera sanchez was a cheerleader, an honor role student, and as a senior in upstate new york, well on her way to planning her college future when she woke up from a nap last october, everything changed.

>> i couldn't stop stuttering. >> the stuttering had -- i mean, it took over, you know, really contorting on the left side of you know, with her mouth and her neck. >> reporter: doctors told thera her condition was brought on by stress and she would get better. but once the stuttering ended, it soon gave way to uncontrollable twitching. and this goes on all day long, thera? >> yes. all day long. >> reporter: this video was taken in the hospital in mid-october by thera's mother, soon after she brought her daughter in for twitching. it was on that day that a nurse told her thera wasn't the only one that had been brought to the hospital with a condition. >> she had said, not to alarm you, you know, but somebody needs to contact somebody, because you're the fourth girl in the week to come in with us. >> reporter: in all, health officials say 12 girls from le roy junior/senior high school had exhibited similar symptoms. they were fraught different grades and some didn't know each other, but many did, including

thera's friend, lydia parker. >> the last time i went to a neurologist, they said they're not sure and they'll keep looking into it, but besides that they haven't told anyone anything. >> reporter: hundreds of parents met with health officials who said tests showed no evidence of any environmental factors at the school. more tests ruled out infection or communicable diseases. what is going on? aldoctor who has evaluated 11 of 12 girls say it's conversion disorder. >> what happens is there traditionally is some kind of a stressor or multiple stressor that provoke a physical reaction within the body. this is unconscious. it is not done purposefully. and it's almost like thinking that the stress wells up in your body and it has to come out in some way, shape, or form. >> reporter: dr. jennifer mcgive couldn't say why the disorder typically affects women. or why it would happen in a group. thera doesn't think stress

triggered her condition and her mother worries whether time is on her side. >> she does not have time for "i feel" or guesswork or anything like that. she's deteriorating. >> i don't think this is the in my head. i -- i don't think i can wake up from a nap and this just happened. >> reporter: until doctors can do something, thera says she hopes one day she'll just wake up and be herself again. jason carroll, cnn, le roy, new york. >> well, today a state health department officials released the results of an environmental test done at the girls' school. they all came back clean. and what makes this story so baffling, all 12 girls were apparently healthy before the tics started. some parents have wondered whether gardasil, the vaccine that prevents against hpv could be the cause. that hasn't panned out either. i talked about all of this with chief medical correspondent, sanjay gupta. sanjay, i find this story just bizarre. the fact that these girls could have the same symptoms in the same school, but so far, it seems like no real explanation. what factors have the state health department ruled out?

>> well, they're looking for commonalities between all of these girls. we know they within the to the same school, but they're in different grades, they're not necessarily friends with each other. they don't all participate in the same activities. so, you know, those commonalities really weren't there as a starting point. then they start looking at things the girls may have been exposed to, air quality, some sort of environmental exposure. and they brought people in who were independent to the school to test, and they didn't find thing that could cause these sorts of symptoms. and then they look at things like medicines, vaccines, the gardasil vaccine, and they said that wasn't a causative factor. they start to tick off the list. so in the end, the answer may be not knowable for sure. they don't have a definitive answer, ever. >> how do they know that the gardasil vaccine is not at the root of this? >> well, simply because not all the girls got the gardasil vaccine. and this was, you know, a prominent theory. a lot of people saying, look,

gardasil could have caused side effects like this and this is something they explored, but simply, anderson, there are girls who had these symptoms who did not get the vaccine. >> there are also been reports that the girls are being treated for stress and a health official told us their symptoms are getting better. can stress, though, cause these kind of symptoms? >> there's a specific sort of pattern of diagnosis in this situation. they look to see, does someone exhibit the specific symptoms? tic-like symptoms in this case? did these symptoms perhaps -- were they proceeded by stress? if you take away the stress, do the symptoms seem to get better? but mainly, i'll tell you, anderson, in medicine we call it a diagnosis of exclusion, meaning that after you have ruled out everything else, you're left with this as the probable answer. >> i've also seen this been referred to as mass hysteria? it's possible they're faking it or it's possible -- what does that mean, mass hysteria? >> when they talk about mass hysteria, it's a lay term. people refer to a mass psychosis as well. what i will tell you, though, and this is important, is that

there are very good ways to determine if someone is faking something. you know, i think that's going to be the conclusion a lot of people jump to when they watch this. there's good ways to figure out if someone's faking it. in this case, they say they are not faking it. i mean, the girls really experience this, and we're getting to the point now, anderson, in the brain you can see changes as a result of this that you can measure. they don't do this widespread yet, but this is something that's coming down the pike. >> how severe are the symptoms? when i think of tourette's, i think of stuff from movies of people yelling obscenities or having tics? >> these types of tics, they can be quite significant, and some of the girls have talked about it quite openly, and it is -- it's shocking, i think, at least startling to watch them. but i will tell you, observing and hearing about these girls, you see sort of a wide range. and you know, so some have much more severe symptoms than the others, where they're literally having uncontrollable body movements and they utter involuntary words.

but others have much more mild symptoms, and you know, i wonder, as well, anderson, if there's people at the very low end of the spectrum in the school, if you really started to examine all the girls, if girls have really mild symptoms that they haven't told anyone about. so it could be a little bit further ranging than just this dozen or so girls. >> interesting. sanjay gupta, thanks. >> thanks, anderson. >> i wish them best. we'll continue to follow that. up next, winter storms pounding the northwest coast of the united states. the heaviest snowfall in decades for the area. plus the giggle fit that landed brad pitt on the ridiculist, see for yourself. coming up.

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çtooowill be giving away. passafree copies of the alcoholism & addiction cure. to get yours, go to ssagesmalibubook.com. a winter storm is making for treacherous travel conditions in the pacific novrt west tonight. seattle got about four to five inches of snow. high elevations in washington state got over two to three feet. there were flood warnings from northern california to washington. the obama administration has rejected the controversial oil sands pipeline saying the 60 day decision didn't give enough time for a full review. the plan called for a 1700 mile long pipeline to carry crude oil from canada to the u.s. gulf coast. republicans say the president is killing thousands of jobs. a major development in syria.

this youtube video shows a crowd chanting thanks to the free syrian army. activists say those opposition forces now control the town, not government troops, but remain on the out skirts of the suburb. a 360 follow to your officials tells cnn the obama administration sent to iran about this threat to block the strait did not ask for negotiations but suggested a direct channel of communication. news of the letter came after the pentagon released this video of two incidents earlier this month showing iranian speedboats coming close to u.s. vessels. and the world's largest emerald is hitting the auction block in canada. according to the cbc, the massive 57,000 caret gem is about the size of a watermelon and appraised at about $1.51 million but could sell for a lot more money. >> i should think sold from

charles ton, south carolina, talks to the authors of the real romney. >> anderson, we're going to be focusing in on a lot of thing that is matter a whole lot to mitt romney. we're going to get the certified results tomorrow morning. it is possible that rick santorum actually won. we have an exclusive report on that. and, also, mitt romney's tax returns. you all know he's worth more than $200 million. well, anderson, there is one thing in there that may be legal and may be completely standard. in fact, it is. but it's really unfair. we'll get to the very bottom line, break down those taxes to explain one big issue from mitt romney and some of the wealthiest americans, a tax loophole that needs to go away. back to you. >> coming up, brad pitt gets a massive case of the giggles at work. hard to believe. never heard of that kind of thing happening. the ridiculist.

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sometime for the ridiculist. the only thick that's really ridiculous about it is how quickly it elevates your mood. it's making the rounds online. it was taking during the filming of money ball. he's trying to make it through a scene. take a look. >> well, that's only the beginning. all we know is he's in the

scene. every time pitt looks up at him, he cracks up. frankly, it doesn't really matter because brad pitt's laugh goes on for three whole minutes. here's just some of the highlights. >> now, this isn't the first time we heard the cable news network. check out this clip from a scene in the late '80s called showbiz today. he's talking about getting a part on the tv show, "dallas".

>> i think it sounded like there was a jazz funk band behind him. that was the most entertaining brad pitt clip ever seen on cnn. i'm kind of surprised that a professional couldn't keep it together. it's not all that difficult to stop laughing when you have a job to do. >> never going to live that down. the 360 staff is never going to let me forget that until the day i die. listen, i know, i'm a journist. i know i giggle like a 13-year-old girl meeting justin bieber for the first time. i like to