that. does it for now. thanks for watching. we'll see you again at 11:00 eastern for another edition of 360. smerconish starts now. good evening. i'm michael smerconish. it's a milestone of the worst kind. it has now been four full weeks since the 239 souls aboard flight 370 vanished into mid-air. an entire month and not a single piece of debris has been found. tonight, though, for the first time we can show you pictures of the missing plane, photographs taken by aviation buffs over the past several years. cnn.com has the story behind them. you can see all the photographs there. they show the jet lifer taking

off over rome, on a runway in amsterdam, on the tarmac in johan johannesburg. it's a ghostly reminder everything ordinary can morph in an instant. today's search has just gotten under way with 13 planes and 11 ships all looking for the aircraft. sophisticated sonar equipment has been brought in. time could not be more urgent because the pingers on the plane's black boxes likely have only a couple of days of battery life left. there's also some major news out of fort hood tonight. the father of one of the injured soldiers told cnn affiliate wlbt that the shooter specialist ivan lopez's stopped by the base's personnel office to pick up a leave form shortly before his killing spree but was told to pick up the form the next day. he later returned to that office, and he opened fire. that father's son was hit four

times. lopez's family released a statement today, his father saying quote my son must not have been in his right mind. he wasn't like that. tonight we'll drill down on the mental health issues in the military with a couple of people who know a lot about it. one a forensic military psychiatrist, the other a retired brigadier general and psychiatrist who was part of the crisis team that responded to the 2009 massacre at fort hood. first i want to begin with the search for mh 370 now more urge end than ever. investigators say they've narrowed the search zone but the area they're targeting is at best an educated guess. one question i've been wondering after so many weeks, does the law of diminishing returns come into play? my first guest is a former fbi agent who was worked on several big airline disaster investigations, including twa 800, the 9/11 attacks, and the egyptair suicide crash. there was a report this week

that the 227 passengers have all been cleared by the malaysian investigators. is it reasonable that they could have been cleared in that amount of time if the process was handled competently? >> i think it would normally take just a little bit longer to do a thorough search. like any investigation of all of those individuals, you can go deeper and deeper and deeper. so it all depends on what they call a clearance for these individuals that they had been cleared. how deep did they go? did they just do a basic criminal check? did they do an intensive check on telephone records? did they do an intensive check on the travels of these individuals? so it all depends on what they consider that these passengers have been cleared. >> what would you consider cleared to mean in fbi speak? >> so in this type of investigation, initially we will probably just do a basic search. and then when this mystery is going on for as long as it has we will do further checks, including e-mails, telephone

records, travel records, relationship issues, all of these things would be deeply looked into the more time we have. 227 passengers, that's a lot of people. they're from various different countries. and i'm sure every country has their own ways of doing these investigations. >> do the odds of solving a situation like this, a mystery like this, necessarily diminish with the passage of time? >> well, what happens is with any investigation of this caliber, the longer the time goes on the more difficult it becomes. so there are cases where you get to a point where there's just no other investigative leads. so what you do at that stage is you go back. you do a more thorough investigation of things that you've already done. in an international investigation like this you go back to the various governments and in diplomatic fashions find out what they did, what information have they shared with you. and in this particular case, was

the information that they shared with you accurate? i have been in international investigations where we felt that the government was not giving us everything they had. so therefore, you push and you go higher levels if you need to to make sure you're getting the information that you need. >> i want to also bring in arnold carr, a sonar expert and president of the american underwater search and survey. arnold, i have questions well beneath your pay grade. gps, radar, sonar, pingers. please differentiate the meaning of these terms in this context. >> well, gps is primarily used to really locate and know where you are or know where the plane is. and that was one critical thing that was missing on the plane, good radar contact and gps down to the end, wherever the end was. as far as sonar is concerned, sonar, side scan sonar in

particular, allows you to really sweep and map the bottom fairly thoroughly. you can do this out to several kilometers each site. a matter of range in where you do it is more of a matter of the size of the target. but you could do a kilometer each side in searching for this aircraft down on the bottom. >> the sonar. sorry. go ahead. >> yes. the pinger is a great instrument and it's helped us a lot. we put divers in the water to find the recorders, the black boxes, the divers using tracking in on the pinger have been able to essentially step on the recorder before they even saw it. but a pinger is short range. and as we well know, limited time. >> as you've just made reference i think to this fact. there's a great deal of discussion tonight about how the battery life of those black boxes emitting the pinger is a very short time period if at

all. there's some question as to whether the batteries were properly serviced. you need to be in very close proximity. so at the depth where presumably this plane might lie in the indian ocean, that wouldn't seem to be the most effective means of finding it. >> i would think not. usually the process goes first stage is use the radar and gps data off the plane if you have it. and also look for debris, which they are doing. and then you hind cast on the debris. then you go into phase two which you may really look at a tightened area for a debris field. then phase three is when you are really going in looking for the pinger, the tail section, and whatever with the pinger and the recorders would be. >> arnold, are there unique challenges that are posed by the indian ocean? >> very. it's the remoteness of it, the irregularity of the bottom. if the pinger is hidden behind a

hill, for example, or a mountain or a legit could mask the ping that it would emit and even some sections of the plane could do that. the other problem you have in that area is right now it's the advent of winter. so your functional time, efficient time at sea is going to be limited down to maybe several days, a week. >> foria eunice, arnold carr, thank you very much for your expertise. searching for the truth of flight 370, could an insecure cockpit have left the flight vulnerable? and trying to understand the shootings at fort hood. i'm talk to a member of the crisis team from the 2009 rampage. could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.s everybody knows that. well, did you know bad news doesn't always travel fast? (clears throat) hi mister tompkins. todd? you're fired.

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you're looking at a picture of thin steel bars in front of a cockpit door that's a security measure that doesn't yet exist in american airliners. but some say that it should. in fact, they say it's long overdue. nearly 13 years after 9/11. and that's our unfinished story tonight. malaysian investigators said this week that all 227 passengers on flight 370 have been cleared of any wrongdoing. that does not include the 12 crew members. the truth is, we don't know and we may never know if someone who didn't belong in that cockpit broke into it four weeks ago tonight. malaysian airlines say it has increased cockpit security in the wake of flight 370, but my

next guest says they're still far behind u.s. airlines in this respect. captain john barton is a pilot for a major airline, also a legislative representative of the airline pilots association, alpa for short. mr. barton, let me begin as a matter of fact by discussing alpa. alpa today released a press statement. they called for several improvements. two things they did not call for. they did not call for increasing the two-hour recording capabilities. nor did alpa call for cockpit placing of cameras in cockpits. can you speak to those two issues? why not increase the length of time that would be recorded from the two hours? >> well, mike, obviously you know i've been working legislative issues with the coalition families and ellen sarasini on the hill. but those two issues there, wouldn't a video camera in the cockpit or increased video or voice recorder time would not

have any more answers to this situation that happened with malaysia air. so i don't know why we want to increase the recording devices that are coming from the airplane already when we can't find the airplane. >> but if there were real time transmission of data, presumably there'd be no mystery right now. we might not know where the plane exists, but we'd certainly know what brought about the circumstance. >> yeah. i agree with that. i don't think that any of the video recording equipment would be real time in the future if they did go to that type of a system. but there are so many reporting parameters that can be sent from airplanes that apparently malaysian airlines did not have that alpa spoke about that in their press release also. so the bottom line is when it comes back to it is, the work that we've been doing has been

to secure the cockpit. and one thing that we definitely know is that someone could have gotten into the cockpit in less than two seconds. and that's the -- >> john barton, you've flown a 777. i want to make sure the audience appreciates that fact. for the rest of us we're on the outside looking in trying to understand a subject about which you have plenty of expertise. in what ways, sir, are the malaysians not up to snuff with regard to u.s. standards? >> well, one of the things that was disturbing that we found out that in the past ten years, pilots had taken people into the cockpit. at first to most american pilots they were shocked that someone would be brought up to the cockpit during a flight. for over 25 years, u.s. regulations have not allowed us to do that. so that was kind of a shocker. but then it wasn't when we found out that they had no procedures on that. we don't really know what their procedures are for protecting the cockpit when the pilots have to come out of the cockpit.

we know that they allowed one pilot to be alone in the cockpit, which we don't do. two people are always on the flight deck when someone leaves. and we don't know what their procedure's for and they're not going to tell you because it's sensitive information what they do when that flight opens. in the united states we have a flight attendant standing in the aisle, a cart with flight attendant behind it, and of course the secondary barriers which ellen sarasini and the airline pilots association have been fighting for on the hill. >> time again we've watched the two left turns, map that comes up, the plane's route, two turns it presumably made. as someone experienced flying a 777 what do you make of of that? >> it's obviously strange. something's wrong. either the pilot initiated it or someone from outside the cockpit got in and initiated it.

it's definite that someone actually made the airplane do this. they could have done it two ways. they could have put information into the computer to make the plane fly in that direction, or they could have just simply turned the heading knob in the direction that they wanted to go. >> john barton, thank you for your expertise. we appreciate >> it thank you. the fort hood shooter had never been in combat, so why was he undergoing diagnostics for ptsd? and should a baseball player tell his wife to schedule a c-section around the season opener? [ male announcer ] this is kevin.

to prove to you that aleve is the better choice for him, he's agreed to give it up. that's today? [ male announcer ] we'll be with him all day as he goes back to taking tylenol. i was okay, but after lunch my knee started to hurt again. and now i've got to take more pills. ♪ yup. another pill stop. can i get my aleve back yet? ♪ for my pain, i want my aleve. ♪ [ male announcer ] look for the easy-open red arthritis cap. you're an emailing, texting, master of the digital universe. but do you protect yourself? ♪ apparently not. when you access everything, you give everyone access to everything about you. but that's ok. while you do your thing... [ alert rings ] we'll be here at lifelock, doing our thing. watching out for things your credit card alone can't. [ alert rings ] and relentlessly protecting your identity. get lifelock protection and live life free.

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time for headlines redefined. the headlines that got the story half right. first up from the "new york times" today, new jersey's largest newspaper announces big staff cuts in reorganization. this is a story about "the star ledger." it unfortunately announced the cutting of 167 jobs, and 40 of them were in the news room. there have been a lot of stories like this about newspapers across the country. it pains me to read them, and not just because i'm a sunday columnist for "the philadelphia entire enquir enquirer" myself. these i say represent a threat to investigative journalist. the star ledger has done terrific work on bridgegate, the controversy that still surrounds the christie administration. i say that no amount of blogging is going to make up for the loss of good old-fashioned investigative journalism that keeps the politicians honest. so the way i would have writ then headline, we need these guys to watch those guys.

number two comes from "the "washington post"" senate committee okays release of cia torture report. there was a 11-3 vote yesterday. senate intelligence committee to release information from this report that's been secret thus far about harsh interrogation methods. 500 pages are apparently what we'll see from about 6,000 pages. i'm sure there are going to be a lot of redactions. some people think we'll get to the heart of whether water boarding worked. and i don't think so. the report was produced exclusively by democratic staff members. and the republicans are already beefing about the conclusions. saxby chambliss by way of illustration says "the report is a waste of time." and so the headline i'd have written for this story, "vote is over. debate will never end." the last headline, we got to deal with this from tmz. boomer esiason, "pro athletes

shouldn't take paternity leave. i'd get a c-section before the season." he wouldn't but presumably his wife would. you know this by now, right? mets second baseman daniel murphy missed two games out of a 162-game schedule because he wanted to be with his wife during the birth of their son. along comes boomer esiason on a radio talk program wondering allowed why did he need to be with his wife and miss work. he went off the rails saying essentially why count she have a c-section? maybe there could have been a debate about the missing of work. but when he referenced having an elective surgery so he could play baseball, it was of for boomer. i was there for all of mine. i have to say it's as many of you know, a once in a lifetime opportunity. to boomer's credit, i'll say this. he issued a real apology, not one of these fake apologies which says, to the extent i've offended somebody. he knows he offended people. he manned up, he apologized.

having said all that, here's the headline i'd have put on the story. "father knows best." how secure is fort hood really? i'll ask the brigadier general who was on the crisis team after the 2009 shooting and why one veteran believes soldiers today suffer more mental health issues than those who came before them. across america, people like basketball hall of famer dominique wilkins, are taking charge of their type 2 diabetes

with non-insulin victoza. for a while, i took a pill to lower my blood sugar, but it didn't get me to my goal. so i asked my doctor about victoza. he said victoza works differently than pills, and comes in a pen. and the needle is thin. victoza is an injectable prescription medicine that may improve blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes when used with diet and exercise. it is not recommended as the first medication to treat diabetes and should not be used in people with type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. victoza has not been studied with mealtime insulin. victoza is not insulin. do not take victoza if you have a personal or family history of medullary thyroid cancer, multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if you are allergic to victoza or any of its ingredients. symptoms of a serious allergic reaction may include swelling of face, lips, tongue or throat,

fainting or dizziness, very rapid heartbeat, problems breathing or swallowing, severe rash or itching. tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. serious side effects may happen in people who take victoza including inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis) which may be fatal. stop taking victoza and call your doctor right away if you have signs of pancreatitis, such as severe pain that will not go away in your abdomen or from your abdomen to your back, with or without vomiting. tell your doctor about all the medicines you take and if you have any medical conditions. taking victoza with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. the most common side effects are nausea, diarrhea, and headache. some side effects can lead to dehydration, which may cause kidney problems. if your pill isn't giving you the control you need, ask your doctor about non-insulin victoza. it's covered by most health plans.

there are still many questions regarding the fort hood shooting. and once again we're evaluating the way in which we care for our returning veterans and the struggle with ptsd. last night i shared with you the fact that one in five veterans has symptoms of a mental health disorder or cognitive impairm t impairment. one in six veterans who served in iraq or afghanistan suffers from substance abuse. i was talking about this today on my radio program when i got a call from veteran. he identified himself as chris from ft. bragg. he was responding to my question that asked whether there was something different about soldiers who have served in say iraq or afghanistan as compared to those who served in vietnam,

korea or were part of the greatest generation. or i wondered do we just know more about mental health and things like ptsd today? this caller said there's no difference between the soldiers that serve today and those who served in the past conflicts, but what's changed, he said, is the ability of soldiers to interact with civilians far removed from the battlefield in real time. in other words, in the past soldiers confronted with the atrocity of war relied on their colleagues who were facing the same obstacles and it helped harden them as they reassured one another that any necessary killing was justified to save one another's lives. their behavior was viewed through the prism of war. today he said it's different. my caller argued that nowadays the first thing that soldiers do after a mission is e-mail family or even skype. and the immediacy of their communication with civilians means that they process what they've done in a different context, and that impacts the way that they perceive their own

behavior. maybe if the greatest generation had twitter feeds they would have been impacted in a very different way. i thought it was an interesting perspective as we try to make sense out of fort hood for the second time in five years. let me welcome someone who has expertise in the matter. that would be dr. thomas griereg, a retired navy psychiatrist. he's done a lot of research on stress in military populations. doctor, let me begin with you by asking your response to the question of is there something different about the soldiers today, or if those members of the greatest generation were put into the context of today's conflicts would we find the same outcomes? >> i think there is something different about the soldiers of today. it is an all volunteer army. of course, during world war ii the majority of people were vote tears but others were drafted. the duration of the conflicts is also different. the number of deployments and the duration of time in combat is much greater during the last two conflicts than during world war ii.

so there's a combination of perhaps greater resilience but also greater stress and over a longer duration. >> doctor, i understand from your research that you get quite different findings when soldiers are permitted to report anonymously on symptoms of ptsd as compared to those circumstances where their identity is known. can you speak to that issue? >> yes. in the last few years, about halfway through the war, maybe a third of the way through the war they started doing something called post-deployment health assessment which is a brief screening for depression, ptsd and suicidality along with sub staps abuse. we did a study of soldiers returning from one deployment and found that when they completed that form which they knew would be reported to medical authorities, and then we took aside half of those soldiers and had them complete the same questions anonymously, the endorsement rate of ptsd and depressive symptoms was twice as

high when they knew it would be reported and someone would be asking about those issues. >> based on what you know of this case as it's still unfolding, i recognize we're all in the outside looking in, but what apparent stressors do you see in this presumed shooter? >> well, you're right. we know very little about him. what we do know or a number of significant factors, though. one is that he apparently came onto the active force later in life than most soldiers would have. he was in his early 30s as an e 4 probably taking orders and having to serve under soldiers who were senior to him in rank but much junior in age, and being told that he could or couldn't do certain things. so certainly that would take a toll. we also know that he had recently moved from fort bliss to fort hood, and that for the first month or so he was not with his wife and young child and that they had only recently

joined him there. i understand from today's news conference that he had been requesting leave permission and had been essentially told that he could not get that at the time that he wanted it, and also that there was a similar period of time back in november of last year when he had requested leave relating to the death of a relative and thought took several days to get that leave approval. so a number of overall stressors as well as current stressors. >> how did the mental health resources available to members of the military compare to those available on the outside and available to the civilian population? >> actually i think access is much better. everyone is clearly covered under the military's medical system. but the question of stigma is also present. so soldiers, sailors, marines, all know that it could have an impact on their career if they sought mental health treatment. so it's a mix. the availability is physically

there, but the culture may be such that people are reluctant to access it. >> i want to bring in brandon webb, a form u.s. navy s.e.a.l., editor of softrep.com a web site for news about the special ops and intelligence communities. he joins me now by phone. brandon, of what significance to you the fact that apparently mr. lopez sought out treatment? >> well, you look at the law enforcement led by the fbi has done a great job over the last few years about raising awareness and training in regards to these active shooter incidents. and to me this just points out that we really need to up the training for the mental health industry and the professionals to help them identify their early warning signs here. here's a guy that sought out help and was on medication within months of doing that, went out and purchased a firearm. so i'm just a little bit shocked at how none of these warning

signs triggered any red flags with anybody. >> in other words, the fact that he was seeking some level counselling, you're wondering why would that have triggered a process where he couldn't have access to the firearm. >> exactly. i think the base security should be commended. that policewoman who stood up to the gunman, that takes a lot of guts to draw down on somebody you know has taken the lives of several people. so i think she should be commended as well. >> brandon, have you noticed a change in the culture in the service with relation to ptsd in the post 9/11 world as compared to the pre9/11 world? >> yeah, absolutely. it's a lot -- culturally it's a lot more acceptable to seek treatment after a combat deployment to get some counselling. i think it's important to point out that many active duty military come back with mild symptoms of ptsd and go on to lead very productive careers in the military and outside of the

military as well. but it's become much more acceptable, and people can still have a career. whereas before 9/11, seeking any type of help would be a potential career ending. >> how much of an impediment is the stigma that is applied to ptsd? i was speaking to dr. greiger a moment ago. he was saying that when there's anonymous reporting you get a far different finding than you do if the identity of the soldier or sailor is known. is it a concern on the part of those who are serving that if they report there are going to be a whole host of complications and therefore they keep it to themselves? >> i actually think today, in today's military, inside the military people are not as afraid to come forward and seek counselling in regards to ptsd. most of that in active duty folks that i speak to. actually their biggest fear is that this stigma is created in

the media and elsewhere that these veterans as they're transitioning from active duty to civilian life that there's this stigma that they're damaged goods. when personally i run a media business. and i hire veterans, because i know they're leaders, they can think on their feet and make incredibly tough decisions under extreme amounts of pressure. so i think that we have to also look at the positive sides of these transitioning veterans as well. >> dr. greiger, brandon webb, thank you both for your expertise. my next guest called fort hood a stressful environment when he was part of the team that investigated the 2009 shooting. he'll explain. why and if you think lawyers are villians, the next story is going to change your mind. [ male announcer ] how can power consumption in china, impact wool exports from new zealand, textile production in spain, and the use of medical technology in the u.s.?

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>> i've been told lopez came in, and he shot the first guy he saw and killed him and then turned the gun on my brother.

and he was shot four times. >> that was armetra otis on "the lead" earlier. her brother sergeant jonathan westbrook was discharged from the hospital today. she says he's doing well. sergeant carlos lazaney, timothy owens, sergeant danny ferguson. danny's fiancee said he was shot while trying to hold a door shut to stop the shooter. today authorities say they now believe an argument between ivan lopez and his fellow soldiers rather than a medical condition may have sparked the shooting. we do know that lopez was getting treatment for psychiatric problems and was being evaluated for ptsd. we want to be careful to point out that most soldiers with ptsd obviously do not turn into murderers. but once again, a horrible tragedy on a military base has put the issue of mental health back on the table.

joining me now is dan corbin, the mayor of killeen, texas. also dr. steven zanakas, a retired brigadier general and a psychiatrist who went to fort hood in 2009 as part of a crisis team. doctor, what did you find in 2009 through your work as part of that crisis team? >> fort hood was undergoing a lot of stress. they have two divisions. they're one of the largest in the world. 45 to 50,000 soldiers. they were deploying repeatedly to the combat theaters in iraq and afghanistan. and there's just a really fast pace and a lot of pressure that was put on the soldiers and the leadership. and you could tell how it was permeating through all the elements, all the layers after the installation. >> i've heard time and again in the media it referred to as a small city. but a small city with a lot more stressors than you would find in

the civilian population. >> absolutely. and young people and facing the duties that are put on them, and they're very dedicated. but they're trying to make a living, and the families are trying to make a living there. take a soldier like specialist lopez, he's an e 4, makes 28,000 a year, has to live off post, has a young daughter, i think, a young child, a wife may or may not be able to find employment. tees are these are a lot of pressures on a family. and as i understand he had been married before and had two children in puerto rico that he was trying to support. so it's difficult for them. and a lot of stress on them just to make do every day. >> mr. mayor, with the world now focused on your community, what is it that you'd most want

people to know about the area that you think they might not be understanding? >> well, i think a lot of people may not understand that we have over 41,000 soldiers here. and as the doctor said, these young men and women had been deployed numerous times to combat in iraq and afghanistan. they're remarkable people. they are part of the 1% who volunteer to help defend our country. and as a result of that, they do not like to admit that they have any weaknesses when they return from combat as one of your other guests said. they may not be totally honest with regard to the emotional stressors that may affect them. and that is natural for people who are soldiers. they don't want to admit any weakness. but they are -- they have such strength of character, they're remarkable people who -- we are so happy to have them be a part of our community. >> doctor, it's been reported that within the last month there

was some level of a psychiatric evaluation done of the presumed shooter. if you were to speak to the physician who carried out that level of review, what would you most want to ask? >> what i really want to know is, how often was he seen after that? how much contact was there? and did he have the opportunity to come back when he needed it? and if he was really in a situation feeling like he was in crisis. because i think that's what we've got to think about. we've got to understand how we take positive moves to identify who might be in crisis, who might be dangerous, and let them know that if they're feeling like they are going to harm themselves or somebody else there's a safety net there. and there's a place where they can reach out and get help. and that's really what's important here when we think about how to make a community like fort hood keep it safe.

because it takes several initiatives here and opportunities and leadership to have all that available to the soldiers, knowing that they're under all the stress that they've been handling for several years. >> doctor, what happens as a practical matter if i'm a soldier and i'm diagnosed with ptsd? for example, what happens to my salary? what happens to my retirement? what happens to my ability to continue to serve in the military and be promoted? >> if you've got the diagnose us and you're in treatment and you can perform your duties, really it's fine. there are really no problems with it. the problem at this time is that the army is downsizing. and i think they're going to discharge over the next several years 100,000 soldiers. so now there is a different spotlight on the soldiers about

being able to sustain their level of performance and not have any medical problem, not just ptsd but not have any problem that at all interferes with how they do their job. and of course, there are fewer resources. both in the medical area as well as across the board. so it's really -- it's a perfect storm in some ways for unfortunately these kind of incidents. >> mayor corbin, i understand that earlier today, sir, you visited some of the wounded at a local hospital. will you tell me about that? >> yes. i attended to the remaining two wounded at darnall army medical center. they were there with families. they showed remarkable strength and courage and a commitment to get well and rejoin the force. it was really wonderful to see how close the family support was and how good their morale was in the face of this -- i don't want

to go into any detail about their injuries, but one of them is going to be there for quite awhile recovering. and his wife is so strong right there with him. and they're being well taken care of. they say they're getting world-class medical treatment, and they're anxious to get well and rejoin their units. >> mr. mayor, again this has touched off a debate about access to firearms on bases. do you think there are any changes that are necessary to compensate for what just took place? >> well, i've heard lieutenant general milley, the commanding general at fort hood, talk about that in some detail. and the thing that concerns me is since november 5th, 2009, and wednesday, there hadn't been any shootings on fort hood where anyone had been killed or hurt. if half of these soldiers had handguns that they carried with them, i just wonder how many

shootings there would have been on post between november 5th, 2009 and now. so i don't know if we're going to do a grand experiment and try that and see how it works. i'm sure the i'm thur sure congress will look at the issue, as well. >> thank you to both of you. we appreciate you being here. trial lawyers often get a bad rap. i should know. i am one. but i want to tell you a story about a hero legal team that succeeded in bringing to light a fatal flaw after the government failed to do so. but first, i want to introduce you to another kind of hero. a young woman taking on a big problem for her small community, residents and farm workers in california's green valley. they can't afford food all around them. sarah ramirez is bringing wellness to people who desperately need it. take a look at her story and go

to cnnheroes.com and nominate a hero that you know. >> pixley is a small community located in the central part of california. rich area, yet people who live and work here are hungry, are impoverished. some are working in the fields that feed the entire country, and then they don't have the resources to support them and their health. it's heartbreaking. you can't just watch that and not wonder is there something more that we could do? what we do is we glean from backyards. today we're looking at a glean of about 6400 pounds and that's incredible. my husband and i grew up in pixley. my parents, they worked in the

fields. i had family members who died at very young ages due to chronic diseases like diabetes. looking at these issues of poverty and obesity, we were trying to figure out how to provide resources for our community and our home. we also have a component in our garden that's a you-pick area. if your household needs fruits and vegetables. we really try to teach how to use what we're growing. >> peach and cucumber. >> i want to grow old and i want to grow old in a healthy way, and i want that for everybody. >> oh, look. could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.s

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thinking about it. ken and beth melton were my guest on tuesday night talking about the loss of their daughter, brook. it happened four years ago this week. brook was a nurse. it was her 29th birthday. and four days prior, her 2005 chevy cobalt shut off while she was driving. she lost control of the power steering and her brakes. then had the car serviced at the dealership. they returned it to her saying all was fixed. then or her birthday, she was traveling on highway 92 in palding county, georgia. it was a rainy night, she was driving 58 miles an hour and there was a collision. the accident report said she lost control of the car. she wound up in a creek and she died. her parents, the meltons, hired a lawyer. the lawyer hired experts who were able to determine that the key had slipped from the on position to the accessory position three seconds before the accident, which would have shut off her power steering and brakes just like it happened

four days prior. in their lawsuit, it was revealed that gm was aware of the program, even before the car was sold to brook in 2005. was wasn't the problem fixed? well, a 2005 memo cited by lawmakers said it was because redesigning the ignition switch would have cost 90 cents per car. there's still much to determine, but the reason mary barra, the ceo of gm just testified this week, begins with the meltons and their search for truth. and the sleuthing of an engineer named mark hood, hired by their lawyer. it was hood who pierced together that the original part from brook melton's car did not bought store bought replacement despite the same identification number. among the questions that need to be answered is not only why gm failed but why did the national highway traffic safety administration fail, which regulates auto safety? both in 2007 and 2010, nhtsa

failed to pursue complaints about nondeployment of airbags in gm cars. this case demands accountability from gm and also from the government entity responsible for the automaker's oversight. we know what we know today only because of the melton's pursuit of justice, their willingness to file a lawsuit. our civil justice system, it's often maligned. but it remains a great check on our free enterprise system. often it serves as a more vigilant force than the government itself. whether it's nhtsa being slow to enforce the recall of defective cars, the s.e.c. not reigning in wall street, the fda in delaying taking products off the market like vioxx. so here's a thought -- the next time a jury duty notice arrives, instead of thinking about how that service can be avoided, instead consider the power,

consider the importance of the civil justice system. think about mr. and mrs. melton. thank you for watching. i'm michael smerconish. i'll see you tomorrow morning at 9:00, regular time. our whole new show will be ready to go. a special report with don lemon starts right now. >> this is a cnn special report. the mystery of flight 370. i'm don lemon. we have breaking news. at this moment the australian ship ocean shield is towing the u.s. navy's pinger that can detect picks from the plane's data recorders in water as deep as 20,000 feet. the ship will have a travel -- have to travel very slowly at a speed of 1 to 5 knots. but it can search around the box. the black boxes could go silent as soon