amendment. so i would have to say. >> you have actually given us a little insight already, but how did your experiences affect you as a person? . .

>> i have an opportunity to do things with my bride. we go to football games or we go motor homing. and you try to be as normal as possible with all the security considerations. and i like that. i miss that part of life more than anything else. that i can't just walk around. anonymously anymore. i really truly miss that. but i think, though, the way it's really changed me is that you really -- even talking tonight i'm very, very reluctant to have a strong opinion on something without having briefs or opinions to read and think through. it slows you down. because you know, this job is --

it's easy for people who have never done it. [laughter] [applause] at what i've found in this job is they know more about it than i do. [laughter] >> especially if they have the title law professor. but it also is easy with people who know what they think before they've thought. [laughter] they know how they are going to come out and which position is the right position. for the rest of us who have to decide and who want to live up to that oath to do it the right way, it is a little bit -- it is a lot harder. and it requires that you not have these strong, uncounseled stakes in issues that are going to come before you. so you're reluctant to dig in on

these big things that are happening in our society until you've had a chance to think them through and to -- you've got a case before you. so that's the sort of the long way of saying it slows you down a little bit. >> how does someone who takes out the garbage and loads the dishwasher balance people's freedom with their need for security? >> you know, that balance is in the constitution. i don't have to make those policy decisions. and i think what happens is that you can get in these jobs and you can think suddenly that you have more authority than you're given under article iii of the constitution. i don't think we are entitled to do that, simply because we're judges. i think if anything, the job

requires you to take on a more humble approach to judging and to be willing to say, "i have no authority to make those decisions." you know, you take -- i remember when i first went on the court we had a couple of cases involving hatian refugees. and my own views early on, unformed and new at judging at that level, was that i thought that these people should have an opportunity to come into our country. but that wasn't a decision for me as a judge. so it was enormously difficult to balance that limitation with what i wanted to do. and over time you learn how to do that properly. but it is a discipline that when -- even when you think strongly

about something, you have no authority to make some of those decisions. so the balance is struck in the constitution and in the laws that we have. and my job is to figure out as best i can what those balances are. and that is imprecise, i admit. but it has the benefit of being legitimate as opposed to saying "i have because i'm in a robe i can make up a new balance because i think the world has changed." that's not my job. that's what you elect people for and that's what you vote for. you don't assign that role to a new regal institution up at the supreme court. [applause] >> the next question is, how does your faith or your world view impact your role as a supreme court judge? >> well, first of all, i don't even know what a world view is

anymore. you know, you think you have things figured out when you're young and then as you get older you figure, oh, my goodness, all that's wrong. i think the more you learn -- i think the more reluctant you are to say i've got it all figured out. some of this is beyond me. but as far as your faith, i think that it really gives content to the oath that you took that you took an oath to do a job right. you know, i hear people say they ask questions like, such as, "what do you want your legacy to be?" what do i know? i'm not going to be here anyway when you have a legacy. but the point is that we're not in the job to establish a legacy. we're in the job to live up to an oath and to do it right. and that -- i think faith gives content to that. because you say "so help me, god."

and the other thing is that there's some tough cases. there are some cases that will drive you to your knees. and in those moments you ask for strength and wisdom to have the right answer and the courage to stand up for it. but beyond that, you don't -- it would be ill legitimate, i think, and a violation of my oath to incorporate my religious beliefs into the decision-making process. and i don't think that that is appropriate. so i don't do that. it's more personal. and it really helps me to do the job the right way and to do it properly. [applause] >> thinks as a person, how has your personal philosophy changed at all from law school to the present? >> wow. well, in law school i didn't

have one. i was just trying to graduate. you know, in law school you really don't know a whole lot. you learn substantive due process. you try to figure out what emanations from the numbers are. you take your torts classes and your ucc class and you do your best. and i think what happens is you grow up. i mean, you've been a judge. when you begin -- it's one thing to learn a case. it's another thing to use that case to decide another case, to decide the fate of someone. those are two entirely different endeavors. you know, and this could be totally wrong. it may be totally apocryphal but i'll say it anyone. recognizing that i disclaim whether it's accurate or not but it makes the point. there are many people who think that because they know a theory

about law, that that's the same thing as actually judging. you've done both. you know the difference. it is up harder to do the judging part than to talk about it. so someone said to me that a great basketball player -- and they used michael jordan at his prime -- had been criticized by a sports writer who really knew basketball. and someone went to michael jordan or some other great player and said to him, "this reporter criticized you, this sports reporter. what do you think of that?" and his response supposedly was, "tell him to suit up." [laughter] >> those are two entirely different endeavors. playing the game and knowing about the game. so i think that that whole process of learning a judicial

philosophy -- my judicial philosophy is to try to discern the intent of the framers in constitutional cases, and in statutory cases the intent of the legislature. and to try to keep my personal views out of it completely. as best i can. does that make sense? >> sure. >> thank you. [applause] >> this one may require two answers. but do you feel that american people and government adequately uphold the constitution today? [laughter] >> yeah. we'll move on. [laughter] >> that's what we do every day. let me move on from. that i know that trick, brian. [laughter] >> i didn't write it. [laughter] >> you know, i don't know. i can't judge. i disagree with people about

their approaches but i really -- my concern about our fellow citizens is a more quantifiable or observable concern. and that is how few people actually take the time to know what's actually in the constitution. and that's what's so admirable here, that these -- that the opportunity to learn about the declaration, the founding documents, our framers, et cetera, are all being made available to teachers, it's being made available to young students, it's reinvigorating that sort of civic connection. so i think that whether or not i agree with how people come out, it's not the point. bull rather that this is an opportunity for them to learn more about that great document. and it's right here that you already have it and you're had thousands -- tens of thousands of teachers who have gone through this program. you have access to this program

probably on the web and through -- you have 31,000 young people participanting in this great essay. that is teaching them about it. and once they have that tool and they have that understanding they could make up their own mind. and then we can respectfully disagree as people who are civil and also civic-minded. >> judge napolitano, this is going to be the last question. we're running low on time so please offer the last question at this time. >> justice thomas, where do our freedoms come from the consent of the governed or do they come from our humanity? jefferson's listening. [laughter] >> i think jefferson felt that our freedoms were transcend end. and that we were -- they were inherent rights. and that we in order to be

governed we were willing to give up some of those rights. so i don't think -- i tended to agree with ronald reagan when he said it. and i think he was simply paraphrasing jefferson. our freedoms do not come from the government. the government comes from us. [applause] >> with that, though, i know they're trying to stay on time. i'd like to say, judge napolitano, i've seen you quite a bit. and you've always been such a pleasant, respectful man and intelligent. and i appreciate that. and i always enjoy your commentary. i'd like to thank brian. i met him as a student at georgetown. 19 years ago when i was on the court of appeals. and i'm proud of what you've done. and as i've said, juan williams i will admire until i draw my

last breath for not because we always agree but because we do agree on what's important, the good things and the right things. and to each of you i want to thank you all for being here. you know, we get in the city and we can get full of ourselves. but in the end, we are human beings trying to do the right thing and pass something precious on to the next generation in the best way we know how. and that is these wonderful things we have in our country, our country and our founding documents. so thank you all for being out here. and i appreciate you. [applause] >> you can watch this program again or other recent america and the courts programs at c-span.org. just click on america and the courts under the c-span series link. and join us for america and the courts saturday evenings at 7:00 eastern on c-span [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

>> this is c-span, public affairs programming courtesy of america's cable companies. up next our history programming begins with the daughter of a m.i.a. world war ii pilot. and then a symposium on president trueman's working relationship with congress. and later an interview with a doctor in the u.s. army who was captured by iraqi soldiers during the persian gulf war. >> patricia gaffney kindig was born in 1944 shortly after her fighter pilot father was declared missing in action. during this discussion she talks about how his remains were recovered from the 1990's. from the national history museum in new orleans this is 50 minutes and under. >> a funny thing happened on the way to the museum. i was in washington, d.c. earlier this week to attend the congressional reception held by the gold star wifes in honor of

legislators, congressmen and others who had helped increase benefits for the families of servicepeople who had served in iraq and afghanistan. and while shmoozing around the crowd i found myself-looking man wearing a navy uniform. i gave him my business card and began telling him my story, very abbreviated. he said, "stop. i know this story. it's in tom brokaw's book." which it is. but i was absolutely astonished that this man, admiral mike mullen who's the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, would know my story. telling this story is so difficult for me to tell so i ask for your patience if i stumble. until relatively recently on my lifeline my father was just one of among many of more than 78,000 american servicemen still missing from world war ii.

on june 9th, 1999, a flag-draped casket carrying his remains was borne on a hearsh-drawn caisson to its resting place at arlington national cemetery. he was buried with full military honors that includedded a flyover by four a-10's in the missing man formation, the wing man spiraling away symbolizing the lost pilot. when the planes rode above us i was literally pulled out of my chair it was so powerful a tribute. it was appropriate for my father to be honored by these modern version of the p-47 thunderer bolt. for the events that led to that day began more than half a century earlier. i am the only child of second lieutenant george phillip gaffney jr. who at 23 went missing in his p-47 on

march 11th, 1944 in new guinea. my mother was six months pregnant with me when the telegram arrived two weeks later. having seen planes crash at one of her husband's training sites, she had no illusions about his having survived. as far as she was concerned. m.i.a. was k.i. a. mother spent that night in grief with family and friends, having labor pains, fearing she would lose her baby as well as her husband. but born i was. a fatherless child, 104 days later on june 2 2nd, the day f.d.r. signed the g.i. bill into law. i am a war orphan as declared by congress with truly-inspired legislation known as public law 634 or the war orphan education assistance act of 12956. it made me eligible -- of 1956. it made me eligible for benefits

like those my father would have had if he had come home from the war and gone to college. it allowed me to go to college and begin a lifelong career in teaching and learning. my life has been shaped by the consequences of war and a loss of a father whose absence has always had a presence, by the word "nonrecoverable remains." but then the brutal reality of world war ii left more than 183,000 american children fatherless. my story, "journey of the heart" is a story of do you ever of homecoming of miracles and healing and of love. my parents who had gone together four years after high school were married on august 13th, 1944 in tampa, florida. it was a friday. shortly after they were sent to that is where i suspect i was -- to stall la has see and then onto -- tallahassee and then on

to georgia where my father went into fighter training and waiting to be calledded into active duty. this is a picture of my mother and father on the -- on sunday the go down and watch the pilots take and take rides. but my mother suspected she was pregnant at this point and opted not to get into the plane. this is the last-known photo of my father. mom went home in early november, knowing my father would be shipped out any day. she was two months pregnant with me by this time. she describes the last time she saw my father as he turn today say good by at the train station. my father was shipped out late in november, and on christmas day 1943 he found himself in papua, new guinea assigned to the 35th fighter group, 41st fighter squadron. he was sent directly to navgav.

this is the 41st symbol that he had, buzz saw. fate had intervened so i would know my father only as a sepia-to end man in uniform confined to a picture fame. his silence was deafening. whenever the subject of fathers came up, all i had to offer was, my mantra, "my father was a fighter pilot who went missing in the war before i was born. i never knew him." whenever i thought about the man who was my father i became extremely frustrated that there was no information, that i would never know what happened, that it was a problem i could not solve. i spent most of my life wondering if he had been taken by natives or had amnesia and was wandering the world looking for me. one day i saw a young man in uniform standing on the corner and desperately wanted to ask him if he was my father. but at eight, i was too shy.

for years i felt guilty about not saving my father that day. when i was very young i had a brown light radio that had belonged to my father, the kind with all the tubes in the back. i'd turn it on and listen to the static and try to hear his voice. occasionally i'd ask my mother about him. she would disappear for a few minutes and return with an old brown leather, battered suitcase. she'd talk about him and show me his letters and the personal effects returned after he had gone missing. at some point i made a conscious decision not to think about him anymore. it was too painful. so i just pushed it down. my grandmother ed that hated the japanese. they had taken her only son. i always wondered if i should hate them, too. not too many years ago a friend invited me for dinner saying there would be a special guest who it turned out was a japanese

buddhist monk who spoke no english. we sat on the floor facing one another. and i stared at him wondering if i hated him. suddenly i realized he may have lost someone in the war, too. perhaps his own father. i felt a tremendous weight lift from my shoulders. and at that moment we made eye contact for the first time. my mother remarried several times, seeking love and security. i eventually had four younger half-brothers. and my first stepfather, floyd maine, died when i was nine from wound he had received 10 years later. her last husband was a bomb ba dear on a b-17 that was downed during the first raid -- in august 1943. he spent two years in a p.o.w. camp. world war ii was a member of my family. ity had an awkward relationship with my father's parents. they searched my face for their

son. i felt self-conscious and unsure of how to behave in their presence. i saw grandma gaffney for the last time in 1970. as i turned to leave him he asked if i had ever heard from my father. it broke my heart to tell him no. it was a desperate question from a dying man, it remains as the saddest moment of my life. in the early 80's, i watched ain't view on ""nightline"" with a brother and sister their early 20's who is father, a fighter pilot, had gone missing in vietnam. i thought about them intently for days until suddenly it hit me. "that's me i emotionally disconnected i had become from my life's story. while packing for a move in 1985, i went into the baseman and my eyes fell hard upon the old leather suitcase. i don't know how it -- how or when it had come into my

possession, but it had always been there in the back of the closet or up in the attic. i opened it and for the first time i had an emotion that i understood. i was enraged. i was really angry that i would never know that he would never come back. i wondered why i should keep those things anymore. my children certainly weren't going to want them. i began throwing things out. i kept some letters. but when i held the medical and dental records and a document called the missing air crew report or mac rel i hesitated. i decided to keep them just in case. but i sent the letters back to my mother saying i couldn't carry the burden anymore. then something happened that changed my life forever. while preparing to go to work in september 199 3, i heard the

words "-- come from the television in the other room. i ran and saw a young woman being interviewed by joan lunden on good morning america. janice olsen described her research regarding world war ii aircraft wrecks in new begin northeast. she held an i.d. bracelet that had been found by villagers at a wreck site. it was from a b-25. and was in the mountains, the owen stanley mountains of new guinea. she turned to an elderly woman seated next to her and gave her the bracelet. she was the wife of the copilot and was still wearing an identical bracelet. they find wrecks and remains in new guinea? i had to keep turning up the volume on the television because i absolutely could not believe what i was hearing. was that the crack el of static penetrating the long dark silence it meant for me? i'd been told i was courageous for taking this journey but there was only one act of courage on my part.

it was placing that first call to janice with my heart pound out of my chest. i knew it would be my only chance and i had to go for it. it was a moment when you know things will never be the same. i found myself unexpectedly launched into a search for the father i had never known. i felt as though i had entered a stream and was being carried by a swift current. there was no turning back. janice reminds me of my first questions, "could my father still be alive? could he have been taken by natives or have amnesia? she gently explained that given the terrain, time and the traditions of war, it was improbably. my quest then was to know all i could about the man in the picture and to resolve those lifelong questions surrounding his disappearance. janice guided me through a search for documents and explained the meaning of those i

had. the missing air crew report was the lodestone. i'd like to show you. the macr describes the mission. the weather conditions, names of the pilots in formation, who last spoke to the air crew, his words and his demeanor. the factory stamp numbers on the engine and all guns aboard are listed and they're right here. the b-47 had four, 50 caliber guns in the forward edge of each wing. at that point i didn't know a b-47 from a 747. there is a second page to this document which is a narrative. and it describes who last spoke to my father in this case and what he said. he described having been in a dog fight. he was very nervous. he thought that his plane had been hit and he asked to have it examined. they did and said that it was ok and put on a full load of fuel.

he took off at 2:50 in the afternoon for a 20 minute flight over the mountains back into busev in the macram river valley but he never made it. i asked mom to send the letters back to me. and when i reread them for the first time and saw my father's words on march 10th describing the mission for the next morning i silently cried out "don't go." janice told me about the army's identification laboratory in honolulu. it is the world's foremost foreensic laboratory for skeletal identification. they send teams consisting of mortuary specialists, anthropologists and engineers who conduct archeological dig on sites throughout the world including new guinea. i wrote to johnny webb, the deputy commander, asking if they had ever found anything related to my father. he responded that regrettably

they had not. i became a regular correspondence and he became a very patient man. how could i have imagined what was to come. along the meandering paths of my journey i found my father's squadron, the 41st, and began attending their reunions and calling them all my fathers. i found his childhood friends and family i had never known. although both my father and i grew up in madison, wisconsin, i found a man living a couple of miles from me in connecticut who was a member of our father's class, 43 g at eagle's pass, texas. 43 g means july, january would be a. i borrowed memories and images and began to find the missing pieces of me. i was insatiable. i hadn't known my heart was so empty and my need to fill it so great. i started my journey my placing

ads in military magazines and found a man named george p. gaffney. and on march 11th, 1994 which was the 50th anniversary of the day my father had gone missing, i was sitting home alone feeling really upset. it was a cold, drizzly day. i was by myself. and my son, my only son, was taking a flight that day. and i was very nervous. the phone rang. i picked it up. and a voice said, "hello, pa trish yeah, this is george gaffney." we had a wonderful conversation that really set me at ease. i learned how my father's disappearance had affected the entire family. a 100-year-old cousin went to her diary and pulled out a page marked march 5th, 1944 and gave me the page where she'd written the news of my -- when she heard the news of my father's disappearance. as my journey progressed, i felt

a growing power in speaking my father's name. and i reclaimed what had belonged to me, something i had left behind when i married, my name. i am patricia susan gaffney, a fighter pilot's daughter. i proudly wear my father's silver wings. in a conversation with janice in 1995, she casually mentioned that she was thinking of going back to new guinea and that she had an extra first class ticket and she wanted to fly from los angeles to singapore and from there to new guinea. silence. janice? patricia? what followed was a mad scramble to get a visa and figure out how i could leave my job for a mon month. i -- told him about the incredible opportunity that i had but that i had to take an unpaid leave for a month. he casually put out his cigarette, went into another room. and when he came back he had a check made out for enough money to cover the rest of my trip to

new guinea. when i protested he said, "i'm as close as you'll ever get to four father. and i want you to go." after 17 hours in the air, janice and i took a couple of days to catch our breath. two days later we flew four 7 1/2 hours through the night to new guinea. i awoke as we approached the airport in port moresby. as we disembarked we hit a wall of heat that took our breath away. we went to nadjab international airport that uses air strips laid by the world war ii army construction battalions. how could i ever have dreamed that like alice through the looking glass i would go to that place that had always been too far away in time and distance, that place where men went never to return? this is a map of new guinea,

papua, new guinea. actually the land mass continues up here but this is the area -- this is indonesia. this is papua. this is port moresby, the dakota trail that you've heard of is right along here and bruno, which is the site of a tremendous battle is there on that coastline. we went to lei which you may know as the departure point for amelia earhart. it was the last place that she was seen. when i was in new guinea, i flew from lei to busev which is where my father was last stationed. and then to sidor. and that doesn't look like a very big distance. actually it's only about a 20 minute flight. but there is a very treacherous mountain range there called the finestairs. very deep canyons, very high,

steep cliffs. and at this point in 1997 -- or 1995 when i went to new guinea, there were still 300 american aircraft missing in that area because. my father's mission that day had been -- as a fighter pilot he was flying -- he and his squad were flying cover for a bomber group that was going from busev to wewac and bombing the air strip at borum. my father after the mission followed the coastline back down to sidor where he reported that his plane -- they thought his -- he thought his plane had been hit. i hired richard leahy. although i had no exact information when i went there, i decided to follow my father's presumed path which would have been from sidor across the mountains over to busov. i hired richard leahy, a private pilot to fly me to the now abandoned air strip at busev.

there are like four air strips there, a lot of weeds growing up. and i suggest very strongly that you google the name rich a very -- the name richard leahy. his father michael leahy was an australian, a gold seeker in the late 20s and early 30s. and he and his brother were the first men to macon tact with the highland native people. and extraordinarily enough, they had a movie camera with them. and this is on film. it's now owned by the smithsonian institute and it's called "first contact." he's a very, very interesting person. so there i was, on mother's day in america, standing in the mythic place that had existed as a sheriffer behind my eyes. although i didn't really understand my actions until later, i performed a symbolic

gesture, a ritual that would give my father a grave. i walked into the kunai grass that he described in his last letter to my mother written on the night before he disappeared. and there i buried a metal box filled with photos telling my father the story of my life, photos of his grandchildren, lisa and david, and symbols of love chosen by his three sisters and my mother, ruth. richard gave me the precise coordinates from his g.p.s. and i kept the key from the box. how could i have known i had paid the exact price demanded by the ancient gods of stone-aged men? then i turned to face the enemy, the mountains that took my father. richard showed me where he had recovered other sites in the mountains and the landing strips he had laid in the mountains at 45 degrees. you can't see them here, but there are a number of strips

laid. they're very steep. you land going down and you -- i'm sorry. you land going up and you take off going down. and you've heard the term "bush pilots." there are a lot of pilots who fly in this dangerous area. a lot of young men from new zealand or australia who are seeking to upgrade their certifications, there are no roads in new guinea so the native people, villagers who want to take their produce to market fly on these small planes. so it's a very extraordinary place. still set back in time. we flew along the path that my father should have flown that day, and i tried to look at every tree in the jungle 10,000 feet below us. saying to myself, "dad dirks where are you? give me a clue." but finally i understand how planes can go missing. how could i ever have known i would fly over the lush green grave of the man in the picture?

i went to sidor, the last place my father was seen. and i spent nearly two weeks in new guinea. i saw flowers growing, children smiling, rainbows, and felt es every day. i even -- earthquakes every day. i even had an offer from a villager to be his girlfriend. i respectfully declined. i thought a lot about life. what could have been my day dreams of sunday drives with my father and our place in the cycle of life. i watched the clouds descend on the finesterres every morning. in fact you could see a bank of heavy clouds up there in the morning. and as the heat increases during the course of the day, by noon this thick bank of clouds has completely obscured the entire range. it comes all the way down to the bottom so you can't even tell that there's a mountain range there. after my trip, mom came to visit me in connecticut. we went to lunch with -- whom

she recognized when he and my father were in the fighter pool in thomasville. she looked at his photo albums of those days and found a picture of herself and my father. in fact, i had looked through those photo albums looking for a picture of my father but i missed it. i didn't recognize my own father. 18 months after our trip, janice told me about a philadelphia businessman, alfred hey began, who had gone to new guinea searching for the wreck of a b-25 piloted by his great uncle who was lost in 1943. his remains had been recovered. knowing he planned to return to continue his search, i asked him if he would search for my father's wreck site. he answered with a wonderfully simple "yes." i sent him the missing air crew report, just in case. and again, the mountains -- one

of the reasons why there were so many aircraft missing in here as you can see the high cliffs and the very steep and very deep valleys here. at the time there were -- the maps were not particularly good. they did not indicate the correct altitude. so many planes like my father's flew into the mountains thinking they were higher than they were or that those mountains were lower. the daily clouds covered them. and while they used those clouds to escape the enemy at times they got in there and they couldn't get out. many times the bombers would fly into these valleys again to escape the enaround. and they could do nothing but crash. until 1975, papua, new guinea was under the governance of australia. and during that time there was a system of foot patrolmen who

spoke pigeon language of the villagers. and there were outposts throughout the mountains. and the villagers would come in and tell the men that they knew of wrecks. but after 1975 that system no longer existed. it's very cold above 7,000 feet. in fact too cold for the villagers to live. so there are many wrecks above that -- above that altitude. and these mountains do go up to 15,000 feet. although it's only five degrees off the equator, there is a glacier there and there is also a known wreck there but it is too dangerous for the crew to go in and recover it. another problem was that from the tremendous harry martin in papua, new guinea the radios were not working so communication was very limited. and another problem was men like my father did not have a lot of training actually in flying on instruments. so once they got into a situation like this they really did not have enough training to

know how to get out. northwesterly 1997, fred randomly chose the village of the swan people at the edge of the jungle of the finesterres to land his helicopter. richard leahy interpreted in pigeon asking the people if they knew of wrecks in the area in their hunting grounds. they described two wrecks, a four-day walk through the jungle. but it was 20 minutes by helicopter. the first wreck was a b-25 with the remains of nine men aboard. and they've all been repaid reated. ill and hampered by damaged equipment, fred left new guinea without going to the second site. but in june 1998, fred returned and found himself in a sanctuary filled in deep canopied jungle under the invisibility of thick white clouds that had sealed my father's fate. janice called to say i should know that fred and richard were

on a site and although they'd found a b-47 the destruction was so complete they were unable to make further identification. they were, however, remains present. this first slide is -- this is the helicopter pad that the villagers laid. you can see how precarious that is. it's actually cantilevered over the ridge. and richard for six months richard flew food and supplies into the swan people so they would keep it clear because the growth there is so tremendous it would have been covered up within weeks actually. the swan people are the people who helped dig out the wreck. you can see that man up here who's trying to wedge it up is -- this is the engine. another man here. the plane had hit the side of

the mountain, had slid down or because there are daily earthquakes there had been sort of forced down, was kind of wedged under an outcropping and was also at the head waters of two rivers. so it was deep in the clay. and the clay there actually the very cold and wet but it's not acidic. and it helps preserve remains which was very fortunate for us. and this is fred hagan, to whom i will be forever indebted. i called richard leahy in new guinea saying i wanted to know what they had. i received a fax back from him later that day warning me not to get my hopes up too high but that wreck was a b-47 and it was at the right address. i faxed back that it was way too late about the hopes. two days later fred was led to another wreck, 15 miles away. at the same time, i made a

monumental discovery when i found the american world war ii other fans network online. in -- or fans network online. -- orphans. in one breath lest moment i learned i wasn't the only one. they all believed they were the only one. so ended the belief that had gripped my little girl heart. consider the chances of finding others like me just when i would need them the most. i had not told my mother about fred's discovery and she didn't know about the team that had gone in to recover the remains three months later. when the call finally came october 16th, that team had identified four, 50 caliber guns from the right wing of my father's b-47, i was stunned, caught between emotions. these are extraordinarily devoted, dedicated people who believe very, very strongly in the motto "until they are all home." they're also very educated

people. and these are the four, 50 caliber guns that were found in the right wing. and this is a detail showing actually it's hard to see here but it is showing the numbers that are stamped on it that matched the numbers on the missing air crew i wondered, shall i laugh or shall i cry? i called richard in new guinea who picked up on the first ring. he said everyone there was ecstatic. because local people who had been involved in numerous recoveries had never before recovered the remains of a world war ii m.i.a. whose family, indeed daughter, was actively searching for him. usually what happens is a wreck site is found and remains, and once they're identified the family is notified. but this was a different situation. i called my contact at the

central identification laboratory for confirmation and was told unofficially that it was true. p.n.g. 100 is gaffney. i asked, "does this mean i can tell my mother?" "yes," she said. then i wondered, how do i tell my mother? she answered after a couple of rings and i blurted out, "we found him?" she asked, "you found, who patty?" there was a short silence, a couple of tears, and then cries of disbelief. i announced the stunning news to my fellow members of awon in an online forum and soon heard from member michael osborn who said his father, an artillery battalion commander had gone missing in virtually the same place at virtually the same time. we spent many hours talking amazed to find someone else who had grown up knowing names like finesterres and sidor, the air strip from which both of our fathers had taken off on the time he disappeared.

he said his father had gone missing in a l-4, which is a military equivalent of a pipe ever cub, the only l-4 to go missing in new guinea. and again, it's difficult to tell, but this is the l-4 being off-loaded. this is a ship and men standing up here. the coastline. and this is sidor. the l-4 is being off-loaded. and on the wing we could see the numbers which would be very, very important. this photo came from the national archives and was taken by the signal corps during the war. johnny webb called to say that they had found two teeth among my father's remains. and they needed medical and dental records to assist in the identification. they needed the very dental records i had kept. i offered to carry them to hawaii, but they agreed to

accept a copy. i arranged to be my father's official escort home. and i was the first family member ever to escort a repatriated army servicemen. i went to the central identification laboratory in hawaii on june 22nd, 1999 where i met the members of the team that had recovered and identified my father's remains. johnny webb accompanied me to the mortuary where i had requested to spend time with my fairs remains. howd could i ever have known that i would be able to reach over the chasm of forever that divided my father and me. when the plane landed in madison, wisconsin, mom was waiting for me. as we stood in the cargo area waiting for the hearse to arrive a worker asked if this was what he read about in the paper that day. he said he was an old army man. we wept and saluted my father's coffin. i brought my father back home to

my mother, hi children, grandchildren, community and family and friends who loved him and kept his spirit alive by speaking his name for 55 years. six of his childhood friends served as pall bearers in a service in madison, our hometown. 12 boys had gone to war. only one had not come home. i deeply regret that my grandparents did not live to share this with me and my mother. this was taken on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary. many family members have told me that my grandmother was never the same after losing her son. to defeat depression she began painting and became quite accomplished. for me those paintings represent a direct link to my father. finally, i escorted my father to arlington national cemetery where he received the honors he so deserved. there surrounded by family, friends, and my new family of

war orphans whose loving arms were securely around me, the flag that had draped his casket was placed in my arms. i left him there among his brethren in that hall lowed place. -- hallowed place. he was not forgotten, my father. how could i ever have known that i would have a place to go with flowers in my hand and pride in my heart, my lifelong questions answered, to contemplate my journey of the heart? i've had to forgive myself for throwing things out from that suitcase and accept it as part of my journey. i think anger was a healthy and reasonable emotion for me to have. of all the loving things that have been said to me, i will always hear one voice above the others. -- smith, a member of the 41s 41st, choked back his tears to say, "patricia, i'd like to think that had it been me my daughter would have gone to look for me and bring me home."

by the way, finesterres translates from the french to "end of the earth." very appropriate. but that's not the end of this story of love. mike osborne and i continued to correspond by phone and e-mail. mike described how he had been in contact with the central identification laboratory, hounding them to search for his father's wreck. for 20 years he'd poured through records and maps and knew with certainty that airplane was somewhere within a 20-mile circle. in december 1999, 18 months after my father's wreck had been found, i was looking back through the photos and notes sent to me from new guinea by fred and richard. i saw a footnote on the report they had sent to the center of identification library that said "found what appears to be a l-4". a l-4? wasn't that the kind of plane that mike's father had disappeared in? i raced to the phone and tried to call him.

after many frantic attempts, i got ahold of him and gave him the news. he immediately contacted johnny webb and set into motion the very process for his father in february 2000, mike called to say he'd been notified by the central identification laboratory known as phil. but the site had been located within that 20-mile circle and was deemed recoverable. later that day, -- sherry, mike's wife of 30 years passed away. someone said "the lord giveett and the lord takeett away." later that month the remains of the pilot, second lieutenant francis trutalsky and his passenger, the commander of the 121st -- were recovered. a jeanology company was recovered to find relatives to get d.n.a. samples in order to segregate the remains. mike was adopted by his stepfather, dr. don osborne and his name had been changed when

he was seven years old. now he decided to do what i had done, take back what belonged to him. michael robert kindig is major earl robert kindig's son, his only child. michael was about five years old here. in october 2001, major earl kindig was buried with full military honors at arlington national cemetery within view of the still smoking pentagon. his burial had been postponed for weeks because of 9/11. i had planned to attend and meet mike for the first time but i had broken my arm a few days earlier and i was unable to attend. at the end of october 2002, mike and i finally met face-to-face as an american world war ii

orphans network conference in missouri. after four years of long distance correspondence. i invited him to have thanksgiving with me and my family at my home in new haven, connecticut. when he arrived, unbeknownst to me he had a diamond ring in his pocket, one he purchased the morning after he got home from the conference. of a transcontinental relationship, we were married at yale university on june 28th, 2003. my name is patricia gaffney kindig. i bear the names of both of our fathers with immeasurable pride and it's reinforced every time i write or say my name. i moved to michael's home in denver. between us we have five children and nine magnificent grandchildren! and i'd like to introduce my husband, michael kindig. [applause]

>> i might point out to you that that map that shows all dots going back and forth represents premiere executive status with united airlines. [laughter] >> in a six-month period of time, that's what i achieved. i had the kind of job at which i could do that. and two and three times a month i was flying back and forth between denver and laguardia and then taking a bus up to new haven. it got to the point -- >> i'm sorry. >> it got to the point -- >> is it on? >> is it on? >> it got to the point where t.s.a. agents and flight attendants recognized me on-site. t.s.a. agent one would say, "mike, are those new boots?" because he'd been the one who'd examined them on a previous trip. my father was major el robert kindig, or duke as he was known, long before a certain motion

picture actor. >> not on? >> nope. >> thank you. >> before a certain motion picture actor had adopted that name. he was regular army. having graduated from iowa state. and at that time he was the only regular army inductee into the armed forces. he was offered the opportunity to become a second lieutenant in the marine corps and he reluctantly turned that down because he had plans to get married. and at that time the marine corps would not permit junior officers to be marine -- or be married rather. and marriage was very much on his mind. the circumstances of his disappearance were almost, dare i sacks come cal. the circumstances of warfare in new guinea were near stone age.

for instance, because the equipment -- and patricia made reference to the damage that was done to all of the radios -- he was trying to direct fire missions with 155 caliber artillery on the japanese on gabutobon ridge. and to accomplish that because he had no radio he would scribble them out on pieces of paper, stick them in a coke bottle, fly back over the artillery batteries, drop them and then fly back and make corrections. this went on and on and on until he finally disappeared in the macr 18-miles southeast of saidor, new guinea. i might point out to you that this device is most assuredly not mine. i rose no higher in the armed forces than e-4 in the marine corps. this rank insignificant knee yeah in fact was found with -- insignia was found with my father's remains.

he was wearing this the day he was killed. this represents one of the couple might have had. right after we were married we took the train down to washington to pay our respects to our respective parents -- or respective fathers. now, this one on the left was there. the one on the right was not there. and was a source of considerable consternation to both of us. because he's been buried 18 months prior. my wife leading the way, she sort of chugging up eisenhower boulevard, if you know arlington, and we had a terse conversation with the deputy commander of arlington. and two weeks later, this stone was erected. the good news was -- is that patricia had conspired to have

the word "we speak your name" on her stone. and that was the only one -- to my knowledge it still is -- with one exception. the only but because of the delay, i was permitted to have the same words engraved on my stone. . 35,000 people could have

their loved ones returned to them. people say it's done, let's move on. that was not the contract with our fathers, that was not the contract with me when i joined the marines. we were told, "should you die, we'll bring you home." we have that obligation to 78,000 families, 35,000 of those families we could fulfill that contract, and with that i'll turn this back over to patricia. if you have any questions. >> we're going to do a q&a at the end, and i'm almost there. >> i'm sorry. >> a service principal officer of the american world war ii orphans network was found by ann bennett nix whose father was

killed in the italian campaign in april 1945 -- in fact, he served in the same division -- or regiment as bob dole. a-1 has office space in the american legion headquarters building in indianapolis but in fact it is a volunteer-run national organization, a 501-c3 and we have members scattered throughout all 50 states and we have someone in iraq, as a matter of fact. -- a-1 attempts to locate world war ii orphans and works to honor our fathers' service and sacrifice. the greatest service we provide is a sense of family. we communicate through an online forum, a quarterly newsletter called star regional and national conferences. three years ago a book was published about a-1 by the turner publishing company and there are copies here on the table. i spent two years editing the book that has more than 500

entries. the book is in your book store and it's here on the table. we wish to express our profound gratitude to janice olson, alfred hagen, johnny webb, tom holland, who is the director of the forensic laboratory in hawaii, the villagers of new guinea and all the dedicated men and women of the central identification laboratory who helped bring us a sense of peace. thank you for the opportunity to tell our story to you and to speak our father's name. appreciate it. i would like to tell you that c-span is present here and they are recording this. we would love to have questions and answers if you are interested. i would like to point out, again, that the books are on the table and you are welcome to take one of them. there is a binder there. you are welcome to look through, but please leave that behind. there are brochures and if there

are any questions, we would love to answer them. yes. >> 35,000 -- >> hang on just a second. >> she's got a -- >> the 35,000 -- is that the right end? the 35,000 that you mentioned, are they still lost? or do you know where they are? >> the 35,000 that michael mentioned are lost. they are considered m.i.a.'s. they are mostly air crew and they are mostly on south pacific islands. some are in the water, and they do have the capacity to find them. i also have a paper here that has a number of websites on it for for sohi, for jpac. i recommend that you google richard leahy -- a fascinating person -- and some recommended reading for you like tom brokaw's book and a couple of other things.

michael's father fought in the battle of buna, which was a really bloody, bloody affair, early in the war, and there is a book that's also recommended there called the boys of ghost mountain -- >> "ghost mountain boys." >> sorry, it's just come out and we're both reading it now. fascinating. thank you very much for listening. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009]

>> this fall enter the home to america's highest court from the grand public places to those only only accessible to the nine justices. >> our history programming continues with a symposium on president truman's working relationship with congress. this was held at the former president's home in key west, florida, called the little white house. this is just under an hour.

>> ladies and gentlemen, welcome to beautiful key west, florida. and the seventh annual truman legacy symposium sponsored by the little white house in key west and the harry s. truman presidential library in missouri. we're delighted to be here at the little white house and we're appreciative of the support we've received once again harry s. truman little white house foundation, the state of florida and historic tours america, which has been a long-time -- over a decade, really, supporter of the truman little white house and has been with us since the beginning when we started these symposia on the presidency of harry truman. i would like to especially

recognize the good work in organizing our program today by bob walls, the director of the truman little white house. it's always a delight and a pleasure to work with bob and his excellent staff who do such a great job of maintaining and interpreting this wonderful historic site, the little white house in key west. this is the seventh annual is symposium that we've conducted here in beautiful key west. each of these conferences has explored an aspect of truman's presidency and how his presidency impacted the decades in american history that followed his term in office. we've explored national security, immigration, the environment, civil rights, middle east policy and the

recognition of israel. next year, about this same time, in may, we will conduct our eighth symposium and we'll focus on the legacy of harry s. truman's far-eastern policies. it will coincide with the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the war in korea. all of the papers of these programs of published by the truman state university press. we're delighted with that partnership as well. the first four volumes are now in print. three more will be in print within the next several months so we're getting ourselves caught up on that publishing adventure, and are pleased that we've had this support from our sister academic institution in the state of missouri, the

truman state university. this year's program will explore truman's relationship with congress, often seen as a very contentious and difficult relationship, and our speakers today will have a lot to say about truman, and congress, and the legacy that the united states inherited from his presidential years. it's my pleasure now to introduce a gentleman who represents the truman family, and i should say the truman family, beginning with harry truman himself, has had a great affection for the presidential library, a great interest in the library, and have worked hard to make the library in independence, missouri an

important resource for american scholars and a place where school children and the general public can learn about american history and the democratic process. with us today is the honorary chairman of the harry s. truman library institute, which is the private-sector partner of the truman library. this gentleman is also the eldest grandson of president harry s. truman, so please join me in welcoming to the podium clifton truman daniel. >> thank you, mike. welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the seventh symposium, always a good reason to come to key west, not that you really need a reason to come to key west but i have been enjoying these for seven years now -- i've goten up to the point where i can come down twice a year now. i've worked it out where we have to do a fundraiser for the symposium before we do the

symposium and i think we need to do two fund-raisers next year, the first two preferably in the dead of winter, because i live in chicago. my wife gave me my wake-up call this morning to make sure i got over here in time. i said "how are things in chicago?" she said "there is a frost warning." it's may. come on. so she said "it's nice and hot down there." yes, it's raining but it's hot. i'm looking forward to this. my grandfather's legacy with congress was, of course, a mixed bag, and a fun story all around the give and take, we were talking about a story i tell about my grandfather that doesn't have anything to do with him and congress but i think illustrates his feeling toward congress, and i love this story and i'll tell you that story and then i'll introduce don. grandpa retired in 1953 and had no secret service protection.

ex-presidents didn't get secret service protection in those days. they didn't even get a pension. he had his army pension, $111.96 a month, that's all he had to retire on and he had a retired kansas city police officer named mike westwood who took care of him and drove him around, but you could go up to the former president's house in those days -- there wasn't anybody -- the gate wasn't locked. the secret service had built a fence around the house, a five-foot steel fence in the 1940's when he was president but when grandpa retired they just handed him the key and said "see you, you're on your own" and a man drove by the house one morning and got a flat tire. he didn't not where he was. there was no sign that said "harry truman's house." there is now but there wasn't in 1953. the man walked through the front gate, up the steps and rang the bell and grandpa answered the door. the man said "i've got a flat. can i use your phone?" grandpa said "yeah, sure." the man called the garage from the phone in the front hall and

the garage told him "it's going to take us 15 or 20 minutes until you can get over there." the man said "i'll wait by the car." grandpa had him sit down in the living room and they sat down and talked for 15 or 20 minutes, got along just fine. the wrecker pulled up front and he said, "thank you for the hospitality, it's been nice talking to you. grandpa said "nice talking to you too." the man got halfway down the steps and stopped and turned around and said, "you know something? and i hope you won't take offense at this, but you look a hell of a lot like that s.o.b. harry truman." and grandpa just smiled at him and said, "i am that s.o.b." that's kind of how grandpa got along with congress too. they would get along just fine for a while and then there would be the name-calling.

the chairman of our event today, donald a. radiosey has been historian of the united states. he's a frequent commentator on congressional affairs on c-span and national public radio. he's the author of eight books including reporting from washington, history of the washington press corps" which don tells me included a little about my late grandfather, clifton daniel, "washington correspondents" more likely with dad, that book won the organization of american historians richard w. leoppold prize, don has edited the closed-hearing transcripts of senator joseph r. mccarthy's investigations. ladies and gentlemen, donald r. richey. >> thank you. i appreciate that, and i want to welcome you, also, and to thank

the truman library and the truman white house here for being such gracious hosts for this meeting and to ray geselbrecht for arranging everything and for the panelists. wasn't hard to twist their arms to get them to come to key west both because of key west and because of harry truman, people still like to talk about truman and i think there is a lot of value in truman, these days as a new administration is beginning there has been talk about franklin roosevelt and the hundred days. truman gets mentioned by presidents as they're leaving office especially if they're leaving office with low standing in the public opinion polls, they start talking about harry truman all the time because they want you to know that history will probably remember them better than you folks do right now and there is a great hope that their representations will -- their reputations will follow truman's trajectory, and today we'll talk about some of the

reasons why truman is so well remembered today. it's a little disconcerting to me to realize that we're celebrating this month harry truman's 125th birthday and the reason it's disconcerting is i was involved with the celebrations in congress of his 100th birthday, we had a joint session of congress and where we also at the smithsonian institution had a series of speakers about truman's great decisions. there were six speakers, each one on a decision that truman had made and i was the chair of that symposium, and at the very end of the symposium one of the panelists, one of the -- i mean, the audience raised his hand and said, "i don't understand," he said, "all of you people like truman, you have nothing but good things to say about truman." he said "i was alive during truman's administration. none of us liked him when he was president." he was flabbergasted. one of the panelists responded by saying, "when truman was

president he was judged by his predecessor. since he's been president, he's been judged by his successors and he looks better all the time." in that spirit, mike devine asked me goin by giving an overview of how presidents from truman to obama have worked with congress so we try to place him into the more modern historical context before we then begin to talk about specifically what was going on during his -- his own administration. c-span recently did a poll of historians and political scientists and journalists of american presidents, and harry truman ranked fifth out of all the presidents of the united states -- a very high ranking. ahead of every one of his successors in the white house. the network was very concerned about this -- this not being a subjective poll and so instead of just being a popularity rating they asked us to break

everyone down into 10 categories. one of the categories was relations with congress so it seemed an organizing device on how presidents have ranked according to the way historians see them over time, and in terms of truman's relations with congress, actually, that was one of his lowest scores and he came in 16th in that category. behind eisenhower, kennedy, johnson, ford and reagan. without casting aspersions on the judges, since i was one of the judges in this case, i will say that there is some contradiction between truman's high overall score and his low score in terms of his relations with congress because he placed his highest priorities on foreign policy issues -- everything from the marshall plan to u.s. membership in nato, which all required congressional approval. so his accomplishments as susan hartman mentioned were highly

successful in the areas where he wanted them to be. he had a large and ambitious domestic agenda which was less than successful, programs for everything from national health insurance to civil rights to federal aid to education and these areas were ahead of their times for the 1940's -- there was no national consensus behind these issues, and some of them are issues that we are still trying to get through congress. truman asked congress for a lot. he asked them for a lot. eisenhower, ford and reagan scored ahead of him in terms of relations with congress so should we credit presidents for asking too little from congress as well? presidents have been courting congress ever since george washington invited members of congress to weekly dinners on a rotating basis, but by the 20th century, the chief executive of the united states had also become the chief legislator and also the chief lobbyist, and we

measure presidents by their legislative scorecard -- how much they got passed, how much they vetoed, how many of their nominations got through, exactly just what did congress give them in response. president johnson used to argue that presidents and congress worked in different clubs, they worked on different cycles, congress liked to work in slow increments, the president of the united states had to get things done fast and that required pushing congress faster than it wanted to go. also, it's quite clear that the president of the united states is not a prime minister, and has no relation in some respects to the political majorities in congress. it's quite frequent in modern times that a president of one party is faced with a congressional majority of the other party which complicates greatly the effort to try to get anything done. even when truman had democratic majorities which was for six of his eight years as president, he found it very hard to get his

legislation through because there were really four political parties in congress. there was a very conservative southern democratic party as well as the liberal democratic party and the republican party was similarly divided between its liberal and conservative wings, and a conservative coalition in many ways dominated the congress during truman's presidency. his experiences highlighted a political truism -- that some presidents come to office with a full tank of gas and others start out on empty. and that means they have to work all the harder to get anything through, and i think after 12 years of depression and war, harry truman arrived in the presidency with an empty tank of gas in 1945. franklin roosevelt, his predecessor ranked third in the c-span poll, first in congressional relations which is interesting because his congressional relations were best during his first term when he had a huge, very supportive

majority in both the house and the senate, but after 1937, with the failed court-packing case roosevelt got very little out of congress in terms of domestic legislation and in fact from 1937 on, democrats steadily lost seats in congress. between 1937 and roosevelt's death in 1945, democrats lost 92 seats in the house and 19 seats in the senate. they had a majority, but it was a very slim majority by the time truman came in. the president's congressional relations didn't begin or end with harry truman but in many ways he was an important transitional figure in this field. truman set out to regularize a lot of the things that franklin roosevelt had done on an ad hoc basis and that's why political scientists refer to truman's presidency as the

institutionalized president -- that he was trying to depersonalize much of what roosevelt had done and set up mechanisms for dealing with it. he continued roosevelt's weekly meetings with the leaders of congress but he also established the first regular congressional liaisons in the white house, although his successor, dwight eisenhower, usually gets the credit for this. getting anything done with congress requires a lot of persistence and a lot of patience, a lot of listening, a lot of patronage concerns, a lot of the local parochial issues that congress is concerned about that could overwhelm a president's time, and truman assigned much of this to his appointment secretary, matt connolly, but in the second term connolly found this johannesburg to be overwhelming and he appointed two legislative liaisons. these are the first recorded legislative liaisons in the white house, josive finney, the

navy's liaison in the senate and claude mailon in the house. until that point, the cabinet officers were dealing with congress directly as opposed to the white house. they did the leg work for the administration and that allowed truman's top policy people to focus on the larger issues rather than having to worry about appointments to west point and the other concerns that congressmen are always talking about with members of congress. connolly's main function was to keep all of these issues off of truman's desk essentially and so he foisted them off onto 15ey and mailen. in his oral history, finney said truman made it clear that he would be the quarterback and i would be the ballcarrier and i think that description is a good, apt description of the style of truman's working with congress which falls somewhere in between what political scientists have referred to as the designed chaos of franklin

roosevelt and the structural purity of dwight eisenhower who followed truman. what i'm going to do now is give you capsule summaries of each of the presidents since truman and how their relations with congress matched against truman's. eisenhower on his way to korea after the election in 1952 was accompanied by his old friend, general persons who had been liaison to the congress while eisenhower was chief of staff and persons convinced eisenhower he needed a legislative liaison office in the white house, and eisenhower created this position, essentially gave a title to the functions that truman had already put in place, and to show the continuity, persons asked joe 15ey if he would continue in his -- joe fee ny if he would continue in his

job. feeney said no, he wouldn't do that so persons hired brice harlow to be the leg man on capitol hill and eventually in 1958 harlow became eisenhower's top congressional liaison person, in many ways considered the model congressional liaison man. eisenhower actually had a much less ambitious legislative agenda than harry truman did. his main objective in a lot of ways was to scale down all the ideas that were coming out of congress, in some cases to block them from happening. eisenhower stands eighth in the c-span poll. that's below truman and below john kennedy overall but ahead of both of them in his relations with congress. and the reason for that was summarized by the journalist william s. white, who said it was clear within a few months of eisenhower becoming president to "every adult observer in washington" that the president had struck a tacit understanding with the democratic leadership

in congress that he would not try to undo roosevelt's new deal and truman's fair deal if the democrats protected him from the far right wing of his own party that were attacking things of his foreign policy at that time and so the democrats supported eisenhower on foreign policy and eisenhower did not disrupt the policies that were already in effect on the domestic side. bryce harlow used to regularly arrange for leaders of congress to come down for drinks with eisenhower at the white house, but they never publicized these meetings because these were not the republican leaders of the congress, these were the democratic leaders of congress, speaker sam rayburn and senate majority leader lyndon johnson. when eisenhower left office he was replaced by united states senator john f. kennedy. the question -- the riddle that washington faced at this point was why was it that a democratic

president had so much trouble getting anything out of a democratic congress. richard stroud, who wrote that in 1963, described kennedy's legislative program as a shambles, and yet kennedy placed sixth in the c-span poll just behind truman overall but ahead of him in his congressional relations despite having one of the lowest percentages of bills passed by congress in the 20th century. kennedy was advised at the beginning of his presidency by richard neustadt who had served in the truman administration in the bureau of the budget and who was then a harvard professor and told him he needed to place a high priority on his congressional relations, and so that's why kennedy right away appointed one of his top political aides, larry o'brien to be his chief congressional liaison and patronage person. he elevated the title and he let it be known in washington that larry o'brien was the man to go

to -- that he had the president's ear. kennedy told o'brien that he wanted him to be particularly aggressive in this, and he said, "i don't recall in my 14 years in the congress that either the truman or eisenhower or anyone on their staffs ever said one word to me about legislation," and kennedy wanted more interaction between his administration and the members of congress. the legislative liaison people knew their best asset was kennedy's personality, his ability to interact with members -- they had him constantly holding coffee hours and receptions. by o'brien's count, kennedy held 2,500 separate meetings with members of congress during the first year that he was president of the united states, but these were all soft-sell sessions. it was o'brien who did the arm-twisting, not kennedy and despite all these efforts, kennedy encountered legislative

gridlock. critics grumbled that he just couldn't get anything done. kennedy's defenders argued that after a while his administration figured out how to deal with congress and actually his track record improved, and by the time his administration was so tragically cut short he had improved his relations well over his first year and kennedy himself said "it's true they rejected half of what i asked but if i only asked for half as much they would have only given me half of that" so he had to keep pushing congress at the time. the most telling remark that kennedy made was that while he was a member of congress, the presidency had seemed all-powerful. when he became president, for the first time he realized how influential congress really was in the system, and that's because the world looks different if you're a single member of the 535 members of congress versus the president as opposed to the president facing the congress as a blockand how

influential congress is in either promoting or defeating a president's program. kennedy's successor, lyndon johnson, had none of his reservations about asking people for his votes. i did an oral history with senator george smathers, the senator from georgia and he said whereas kennedy couldn't ask something to do for him johnson had grown up asking people to do things for him, he would say "i'm counting on you, old pal, you've got to help me," he said kennedy couldn't do that, eisenhower couldn't do that, i don't think truman did that very well but that's the way johnson got things done. now, lyndon johnson ranks 11th in the c-span poll but he ranks second in the congressional relations after franklin roosevelt. johnson worked hard on his congressional liaison activities. he was supermajority leader during his time in office and his personality and his persistence have a lot to do

with that but he also is the beneficiary of an enormous landslide election in 1964 which brought in a lot of sympathetic votes in congress, and larry o'brien argued that for practical purposes was passed on election day 1964 because it added 40 new members of the house of representatives who were ready to support johnson in ways that they had not been ready to support kennedy. so even johnson knew that -- even with that big victory, he had a short timetable, that he was going to get most of his program through in his first year and then after that things were going to get harder to do, and that's exactly what happened. johnson's legislative track record fell off especially as the war in vietnam became the major issue of his administration. lyndon johnson made himself readily available to members of congress but members of congress said that seeing -- it took an act of god to see richard nixon. nixon kept congress much more at

a distance. i've talked to some of his congressional liaison staff and they have been listening to lyndon johnson's c-span conversations that c-span radio has been playing and they said they can't imagine what it would be like to work for a president who knew where a bill was in the subcommittee and wanted to call the chairman of that subcommittee to twist his arm a little bit. richard nixon approached things not as a majority leader but as a lawyer. he liked legal briefs, he liked them to check off boxes and they would form his legislative programs that way. he would call members of congress for foreign policy issues and defense issues. he really didn't like calling them for issues that he wasn't as concerned about. he would call them, eventually -- he was very sensitive about his power of persuasion, and after the vote was taken, he wantsed a check list of all the members and how they voted to see if the people he called actually voted his way, and obviously he must have stewed about it if they didn't in the long run.

nixon came to office without a majority of his party in congress -- the first president in a century to come that way. initially, he was going to work for bipartisanship. he brought bryce harlow back into the administration to do congressional liaison. harlow's emphasis was on trust but of course he was working for a president who didn't trust anyone and who in return was not trusted by anyone, and so the harlow's relationship with nixon was not anywhere near as good as it was with eisenhower. within six months nixon decided harlow was not the route to go, that he was going to govern by trying to circumvent congress and confront congress rather than trying to cooperate with congress. we know how awful nixon's relations with congress became and you can track actually the percentage of the support that he had in congress from 74% on roll call votes in 1969, to 66%

by 1972 and 43% by 1973. when nixon was ranked in the c-span poll, he was 27th overall in terms of his relations with congress. which is actually pretty good, but he ranked lowest in moral authority. by contrast, gerald ford, his successor, ranked highest in moral authority and in his relations with congress. gerald ford had spent his entire adult life in congress. he had been on the house appropriations committee. he had been the house minority leader. he had been vice president of the united states. from a congressional perspective, he was an ideal president and bryce harlow admired ford enormously. he said, "he knew all the techniques for measuring congressmen and their likely responses, he was familiar with all the buttons you needed to push at any particular situation." but unlike lyndon johnson, who

was a supermajority leader, ford approached the presidency as a superminority leader. that's where his position had been for all those years and his party was in the minority. he saw his role essentially as stopping the democrats from enacting their programs. he used the veto enormously. he was overridden more times than any other president since truman, and there was not a period in which particularly legislatively productive period -- he saw his role as stemming the tide at that point and so when a democrat came back into the white house in 1980, the democrats in congress thought, "well, at last, we're going to have a president who can steer us through the congressional gridlock that we have been through under nixon and ford." but win a few months members of congress were complaining that jimmy carter never learned how to drive in washington -- jimmy carter won the presidency by being an outsider, which was fine politically to get into

office but not great politically once you're in office to try to get any kind of cooperation from congress. he had felt that he was going to lead by rational decisions, rational persuasion and moral virtues, but they were no substitutes for legislative experience. it's quite clear that carter knew that he wasn't getting along well with congress because in his memoirs, he titled chapter, "my one-week honeymoon with congress." members of congress used to complain that when you got a letter from jimmy carter, it was always "dear congressman" it was never "dear joe," he was always distant in his relations, that's one reason why carter placed 25th on the c-span poll, he placed 32nd in terms of his congressional relations. an interesting split in the carter years was that from truman on, presidents had organized their congressional

liaison around people. you cover the southwest. you covered the northeast. you covered the far pacific west. and you talk to those people on a daily basis and you cultivated -- even when you didn't need their votes you talked to them. you heard what their complaints were so that you could bring them back to the white house. carter didn't like the sort of people-oriented liaison. he reorganized the system to an issue-oriented so you're in energy and you're in environment and you're on foreign policy, which makes sense, except that you didn't get to talk to members of congress until you were having troubles in that area and you weren't cultivating them on a regular basis, and after carter's administration, the people who handled his legislative liaison concluded that that had been the wrong approach. carter -- a lot of missteps in his administration, one of which most famously was the sequoia -- the presidential yacht that from hoover until gerald ford had

been used to court members of congress on an evening basis -- you got 10 or 15 of them on board, you sailed them down the potomac river, took them to mount vernon, watched them lower the flag and play taps, you got back on the boat, had drinks, went back up the river, it was a great time for the president to talk in an intimate setting with medication of congress. jimmy carter sold the boat. it was too much -- with the members of congress. jimmy carter sold the boat. it was too much of the imperial presidency. he also moved the congressional liaison office out of the west wing of the white house and into the congressional office building across the street which is essentially sending them to siberia. now, it's true, they've got more space but they lost prestige, they lost connection to the white house and that became quite clear in the administration. early in carter's administration, probably the most telling moment of his administration was when he called in western senators to

tell them that he was planning to cut out most of his favorite water projects from the budget and, of course, in the west water is a critical issue. and carter dispensed with his staff and personally went down the list. he knew every project, he had reasons for doing this -- instead of impressing the members of the senate who were there he just convinced them that he was out of his depth and he didn't know what he was talking about and these issues were more important to them than they were to him and they weren't about to let him get away with this, and in fact, carter did have to back down on about half of these projects which made him look weak in return. paul laxalt, a senator from nevada was one of the senators who was in that meeting. when he left that meeting he went back to his office and called ronald reagan -- he had been reagan's campaign manager in 1976 and he told reagan to leave his options open because he had just met with a one-term president. well, the advantage of following after someone who is perceived

to have done everything wrong is that no matter what you do by comparison is going to look better and in fact that was ronald reagan's advantage when he came into office in 1981, but in fact, reagan began his administration with a series of legislative accomplishments that unexpected at the time that had a significant effect on national economic priorities, and that defined his presidency regardless of the fact that he really couldn't keep that record up in the next eight years. reagan -- the first thing he did was to move the congressional liaison office back into the white house, not into the west wing, he put them in the east wing but he said "that was closer to congress" on that side but at least they had had more prestige in that even if they had less space. he had a well seasoned congressional liaison team. they were savvy. they had been up on capitol hill for a long time, and they gave him little cards every morning to make calls. reagan loved to make calls to members of congress, and one of the cards that they gave him was

about a conservative democrat from georgia. it said, "he never received a call from carter during his presidency. a presidential phone call will do much to solidify the congressman's support of the administration on future votes." so reagan wasn't calling him for a specific vote but he was setting him up for future votes. reagan loved doing this -- in fact, during his first hundred days he met with 467 of the 535 members of congress. he overdid it, actually, because his liaisons realized after that that unless a member of congress got a personal call from the president or went to the white house they felt like somehow the president didn't care about a particular issue. in any case, reagan's congressional liaison said it was a gift to them to work with a president who wants to get along with congress. reagan was always sort of short on details but he was strong on geniality, he had a nice pact with tip o'neill, the speaker of the house that politics would stop at 6:00 so they could have a drink together and he would

often call tip o'neill and say, "tip, is it 6:00 yet?" he had also his coattails brought in -- the first republican majority in the senate in 26 years and they were so grateful, they gave him a process known as reconciliation, which hadn't been used for much up until that point but which swept reagan's tax program through early in his administration. and established his reputation. one other thing about ronald reagan, we think of him as an actor but he's the only labor union president to become president of the united states. he learned how to negotiate as a labor union president -- the screen actors guild. when jimmy carter would ask for something, get most of what he asked for and then publicly lament what he lost, reagan would take an absolutely strong position, negotiate, cut the deal, split the difference and declare total victory, which is what labor union presidents tend to operate and that's one reason why i think his standing in terms of his relations with

congress was probably a little higher in some respects than he deserves but -- but recognizing that -- that initial burst of activity in his administration. his successor, george h.w. bush came in on an empty tank, reagan had pretty much drained the tank, the iran-contra scandal, democrats had held the majority during bush's presidency so he went back to fordya practice of vetoing republicans -- tried to keep his vetoes from being overridden and they were successful in doing that but essentially you had legislative gridlock during the four years of bush's administration. the very astute political scientist james sundquist, however, pointed out that the problem was not congress blocking bush's programs because there really wasn't much of one -- bush ran a very passive presidency in terms of legislation and he lacked what

he said was the vision thing. the defining moment in bush's administration took place in the summer of 1990 when leaders of the administration and leaders of the congress met at andrews air force base to come up with a budget plan and they did and the democrat supported it and the republicans in the house led by newt gingrich opposed it -- defeat -- defeated the first plan. they had to renegotiate and they got something through but it had made bush look weak and in fact, that contributed to his defeat in the election 1992. bill clinton came to office promising that he was going to create bipartisanship with congress -- a new era bipartisanship and yet we remember his administration as one of the most divided politically in recent history. the lines actually grew much tighter during his administration. some of this had to do with his first tactical decisions with congress. senator daniel patrick moynihan was the chairman of the finance committee and he advised the

clinton administration to tackle welfare reform before they tackled health care. he said everybody agreed that welfare reform -- welfare was broken and needed to be fixed. not everybody knew that there was a problem with health care but nobody knew exactly what the problem was or what the solution was so he thought that the path of least resistance was to go through the welfare reform. the clinton administration was afraid that that would offend their base and they would get more support on health issues, they chose health and they lost big, and as a result they lost the majorities in the congress and that changed the nature of clinton's relationship. the peculiar thing about clinton's relationship is that the worse they got with congress the stronger he appeared in the polls. he was able to pope many of the best ideas that the republicans had and stand up against their least popular programs. he eventually did get welfare

reform through which drove the republican party a little wild at that stage because it was their plan but he got the credit for it, and, of course, then came the famous federal government shutdown in 1995 which the public blamed congress for rather than the president, and so clinton's public standing increased enough to re-elect him in 1996. the historian steve gillen has written a book recently about gingrich and clinton indicating that in clinton's second term they were reaching an accord to try to get over the partisan divide and that -- that perhaps it would have been a more productive second term except for the monica lewinsky scandal that ended in clinton's impeachment and gingrich's resignation. a poll ranked clinton among the below-average presidents but in

2009 c-span poll he ranked 15th overall and 19th in his congressional relations and that is probably because by 2009 he was being compared against his successor. in the c-span poll, george w. bush ranked 36th among 44 presidents. he left office with a majority of the americans telling the gallup polls that history would judge him as a poor president, but bush has advised us not to misunderestimate him. despite -- despite his -- his coming in second in the public polls in 2000 and facing a senate that was 50-50, bush actually got most of his initial legislative program through including a tax cut that was even larger than the one he had promised while campaigning, he got two war resolutions passed in congress, prescription drug benefits for seniors, no child

left behind and energy legislation that he asked for. ""the new republic"" recently said whatever the substantive merits of this agenda, its passage represented an impressive feat of political leverage accomplished by near total party discipline. senator tom daschle who was the democratic leader of the senate at that time pointed out that bush's strongest asset was his affable personality and his ability to work one-on-one with members of congress. he was good at making them feel comfortable and that he personally lobbied with moderate democrats for his tax cuts. daschle said, "you got a call from the president of the united states and that had a very powerful impact on members of congress because it constituted a patriotic invitation to do something for the good of the country coupled with the implicit fact that there are more things that a president can do for you and your home state if he chooses." so bush was remarkably successful in his first six years. there was a certain quid pro

quo, apparently, between bush and his party in congress. the number of oversight investigations that had taken place during the clinton years dropped off precipitously during the bush years and in return, president bush did not veto a single bill in his first six years as president. now, this had the consequence of allowing earmarks to flourish eventually capped by the infamous bridge to nowhere which contributed to president bush's party losing the majority in 2006 and really ending his sledge slative agenda. now we're at the start of -- legislative agenda. now we're at the start of president barack obama's administration. he enjoys strong standings in the polls, solid majorities in congress and a national sense of peril that has helped him pull together the executive and legislative branch although not the two parties within the legislative branch. president obama is the first president in a half century to

come directly from the congress into the white house and he has put together a staff that's getting very good record in washington for being able to -- to call in members of congress and convince them to -- to come on board. president obama is by nature a synthesizer, and he initially sought bipartisan support but the house republicans voted unanimously against his initial stimulus plan. the white house immediately switched then to a strategy within the majority party and there are some statistics here i have to throw out to give you an idea of what's going on. it takes 218 votes to pass anything in the house of representatives. the democrats have 255 members right now, but 51 of them come from marginal seats and are identified with the sort of blue-dog conservative faction, and that means to get anything through, the democratic party has to negotiate between their

liberal and their blue-dog wings. and the reality is that the house republicans have lost most of the marginal seats. their members are mostly in safe districts right now, and they feel little need to compromise. steve schmidt, who helped run senator mccain's presidential campaign doubted that there would be very much bipartisanship because "the truth is there are very few house republicans that worry about the middle of the electorate anymore." veteran washington observers have been comparing obama's congressional relations to ronald reagan's and noted that he's pointed very favorably to the way reagan changed the trajectory of america and he did that, he said, fundamentally because the country was ready for it, and i think that explains why the president has balanced his lobbying with congress with his going out to -- to gain public support for his programs. to summarize these remarks about

all of these presidents, six of harry truman's successors in the white house had some congressional experience on their -- four had none. looking at presidents from truman to obama, i don't think there is any guarantee that having served in congress actually gets you a better relationship with congress. eisenhower and reagan, for instance, score higher than kennedy and ford did. there are a lot of other factors other than personal relationships that are at work. one is the constitutional system. congress is a separate branch. it is never going to be a rubber stamp for any president of the united states and they're just going to have to face it. there is perpetual struggle built into the system. except in dire emergencies, a president can't expect congress to walk in lockstep. presidents have got to have clear objectives, diligence, persistence, willingness to listen, willingness to make personal overtures, willingness to expend political capital and

a savvy liaison staff, they have to balance some deference to congress and the congressional leadership with some toughness and willingness to veto, and they have to rally public opinion to convince congress that theirs is the right position to be supportingment the shifting political fortunes have also had an impact and i'm sure the panelists will be talking about some of this but the political parties today are entirely different than they were when harry truman was president. when harry truman was president, there were never more than four republicans in the house from the south. today, there are 72 republicans from the south. it's a different republican party. it's a different democratic party that they're dealing with. the moderate center which used to be the place to work out compromises has shrunk and that's -- that's creating difficulties. presidents have had to revise their strategies to meet this. and, of course, a president can't count on his own party being in the majority. truman, kennedy and carter found that having a majority of your

own party didn't really help you in some respects, it wasn't tantamount to legislative success, it was the internal nature of the parties that make a difference. i thought when i was looking through all the materials on this that one of the most astute comments came from a british newspaper correspondent, henry brandon who covered presidents from franklin roosevelt to ronald reagan and he summed it up with the observation, "some presidents come to power at the right time." harry truman came to power at a really tough time. a really critical juncture in american history. he faced considerable obstacles in winning support and i think in retrospect, looking at his record against these other presidents his relations with congress sort of matches up fairly evenly with many of these others. he deserves credit for building bipartisanship in foreign policy and for proposing a substantial domestic legislation even if they went against the prevailing sentiments of the time. barack obama has come to office

a more fortuitous political circumstances and therefore has higher expectations for what he's going to accomplish. he is going to need to register some substantial legislative accomplishments if he want to measure up to harry truman in the next c-span poll. thank you very much and -- [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009]

>> our history coverage continues with a 1996 interview with rhonda cornem who serve as a doctor in the army. she was held as a prisoner of war for eight days during the persian gulf war. this is about 40 minutes.

>> i'm rhonda cornam, and i was captured on the 27th of february 1991 while i was doing a search-and-rescue mission in iraq. >> tell me about the circumstances surrounding that. >> it was -- as it turns out, it was the last day of the war -- of course, you don't know that at the time but i was with an apache unit of the 101st and we were being very successful, hadn't lost an airplane, hadn't lost anybody and we had blown up a lot of stuff, so we were feeling fairly jubilant, so it was about mid afternoon and we got a call -- got a call on the radio saying "do you have the doc on board?" that's me. he said "yes." and he said "do you have all our stuff?" i'm thinking somebody got hurt. "we have all our stuff and we have gas" and he said there is this f-16 pilot that was shot down, he has a broken leg, we got his coordinates and can you get him?" we thought that was a great mission.

we've practiced a lot but we've never had to go get anybody, we've hauled back prisoners and hauled back guns, we've never hauled back any americans so we took my blackhawk and two apaches and went whopping up to get this guy. unfortunately, the same guy that is shot down his had f-16 shot down my blackhawk, and so we crashed. very quickly. it was a bad wreck. we were going about 140 and it blew the tail off the helicopter. there were eight people on board. five people were killed in the wreck, and the three of us that were left were captured. >> what was going through your mind in the crash? you pretty much know that capture is imminent? >> when you crash in a helicopter you pretty much think you're going to be dead, and so the first thing i thought as i was recovering, i suppose, from this crash, i guess i was knocked out, was i think i'm dead.

this must be one of those after -- out-of-body things. when i had the guys come over and try to stand me up, i thought i guess i'm not dead after all so i was a p. o. w., which -- you know, is better than being dead. >> what was the initial treatment like? >> initially, they took my helmet and weapons and took off all the stuff, and unfortunately for me i had two broken arms and i was shot during the crash and i had a dislocated leg, so it was -- i certainly was no threat, i couldn't move anything, hardly. it was painful. i don't think they were particularly malicious, but they weren't particularly careful either, and so getting thrown around and kicked around in the back of a pickup truck is

painful when you've got a bunch of dislocated bones, so it was not like we are when we capture people. >> your situation from some respects was difficult is that you were an iraqi female prisoner of war, something americans had to deal with at least on the level -- i say that at andersonville for p.o.w.'s. >> there have always been women who were p.o.a.'s and i was say it was a much more big deal to the american media than it was to either me or the iraqis. >> was there a point in saying what particular point that you didn't like -- you know, i'm a female p.o.w.? did that make any difference to the iraqis? >> not really. i've always been female, that never entered into it, and i didn't think they would treat me particularly differently, and they didn't.

>> tell me the different areas that you worked in that -- where they have specific names or -- >> right. that first day, they captured me and they captured sergeant dunlap and they dragged us to a bunch of different bunker and interrogated us, finally found somebody to make a decision and they sent us to prison which was about 30 minutes away by truck, and that was in basra, and it was -- didn't seem very military, but it was sort of a half-underground real -- probably a county jail or something -- normal prison-type thing and we were in solitary confinement when we were there. the next day, they took us to what they said was some kind of reserve military facility in basra. we were there all that day and

one night and the next day, and that next night they loaded us up on a bus and that was the point that we found -- we had stemeris, the third guy from our wreck who was hurt, and as it turned out they also captured captain andrews, who was the guy we were going to pick up and so they took us all -- the four of us to baghdad. we got to baghdad the next morning, we first went to some military facility -- we were always blindfolded everywhere you go so you don't know exactly where it is but some military facility where there was a bunch of military people, they interrogated us all again there and split us up and the injured people got taken to the rashid military hospital, and i spent the rest of my time at the prison ward, i guess, at the rashid hospital, and they took stemeris there and some other person there who i don't know, and then after -- i guess three or four days there, they took

all of us to whatever prison that the rest of the prisoners had been kept in and that's where they gave us the yellow p.o.w. costumes and eventually the next day after that i guess took us to a hotel in downtown baghdad where we got turned over to the red cross. >> do you feel like you were prepared for what you experienced as a p.o.w. as far as the training and instructions? >> i felt like i was prepared, whether it had much to do with training or not is an interesting question. i think it has to do with just having been in the military for a long time, 13 years by then, and just realizing that that's kind of how things go -- you read a little military history and you know that there is a certain small percentage of people that that happens to. i just happened to be one of them. >> how much intelligence or briefings had you gotten as far as earlier p.o.w. -- american -- earlier p.o.w.'s and how they were treated -- >> honestly, i didn't get any -- i had had a briefing about the

geneva conventions. and that i was supposed to be treated differently because i was a physician. i didn't take my geneva convention card with me so that was an irrelevant factor and my life and theirs, i wanted to be treated just like one of the guys and that's how it happened. >> tell me about the interrogations that you went through. >> actually, they were fairly benign as i are read about and talked to other people about getting interrogated. it was the last day of the war. i think by then they realized it was over, the cease-fire was called the next morning, now, so i don't know what they were hoping to gain. they didn't beat on us -- i think they realized by then that they were going to have to give us back and giving back broken or dead p.o.w.'s was not going to help their cause at all. when tru and i got together was actually -- they had captured

him and then -- and they had me next, i think they thought i was dead at first and then i started moving around and they came and got me, they threw me down next to them, and there was this big -- you know, 13 or 15 guys with guns pointed at you and you are looking at each other trying to think of something positive, and i was so happy to see another american, and i didn't know this guy from adam -- i mean, he had been in our unit but he was an infantry guy and i was a doc and just like you said, i was a doctor, he was enlisted, he said "good morning, ma'am," i said "good morning," and i could only know that because i could read it on his shirt, the things go away, the important thing is the rest of the world disappears and there is just you and whoever you are with and it was a very comforting thing. i would have to say to both of us. yeah, it was awkward. having to have some 20-year-old

guy help you go to the bathroom and get your clothes on and off is not a comfortable thing for anybody, but i would rather him than one of them, so he took good care of me and i have to say he thinks the same thing. >> of course, you're here with us today. i have no idea what happened to sergeant dunlap. >> sergeant dunlap after several years got out of the service and interestingly enough he is a prison guard in illinois. i guess turnaround is fair play, kind of thing. >> did he or anybody else try to stay and touch? >> we did the first several years and we still send christmas cards and he calls once in a while, but when you get back and after -- and you're all better and you are back in your normal jobs, the differences reappear. he's still 20, i was still 36, he's still in the infantry, i'm still a doctor and so the things

we had in common that really bind you together during the war -- you know, they frequently aren't there anymore. so you have the shared experience but -- and i would do anything for him, actually, but we don't have a lot in common. there were two things that were most important in my mind. the first one was, surely this guy could do better than this bloody, broken-armed woman. and the second thing was that i hoped sergeant dunlap doesn't do anything stupid. and luckily for him, he thought the same thing. he said, "i would like to defend this lady but it would be stupid, they would shoot me and she would still get molested," so good judgment there too. getting physically or sexually molested is -- is a bad thing. but in the ultimate scheme of things, it's -- it's not nearly

as bad as getting wired to the talk man like teco or getting your bones broken or your eardrums pounded out or all the things that are pretty much unrecoverable. so in the hierarchy of bad things, it's less important. now, that's not to diminish its importance in our society, but as a p.o.w. experience it's -- it's unpleasant, and it's unprofessional for them to do it and i'm sure that we don't when we capture people, but -- but it's -- you know, it's not the worst thing that's ever happened to anybody either. >> what are your feelings that you referred to earlier involving the attention damp -- what were your feelings once you gained your freedom and realized -- >> they were excited about me being female and being captured.

so i thought if they were going to make a big deal out of it, then it was a good -- as these things go, it was a good thing. i thought i would be a good -- a good model for what happens when women get captured -- nothing different than what happens to guys. they come home, they get better, they go back to work. so i mean, you've got to find something good about all these bad experiences and that's the one -- that i think we've pretty well demonstrated that -- that it's not different. >> what about medical treatment during your time as a prisoner of war? >> the medical treatment i got while i was in baghdad was as good as they could provide to anyone, i feel very confident about that. the orthopedic surgeon who took care of me there, in fact, had already been to -- he was trained in the west, he -- he had already given talks, for example, at the mayo clinic -- the guy is well respected, and

very professional, and certainly took care of us as well as he would have taken care of any of his people. now, we're in a hospital that doesn't have much medicine, only hads electricity about three hours a day, didn't have normal suture materials like you would normally use, didn't have a lot of things so we got as good as there was. i didn't get any until i got there so i can't speak much about that but about the third day i was there i got taken to a field hospital and i got my arms -- at least -- they weren't set like where they were supposed to be, but at least they put them in slings so they stopped moving which was a vast improvement. >> you had -- >> i had displaced fractures on both sides, and it was pretty painful. the arm came out to here and went down on both sides. it hurts a lot. but -- you know, pain is one of those things that -- if you can't do anything about it, you might as well just dissociate

yourself from it and forget about it and -- >> how about rations? food while you were a prisoner of war. can you describe that? >> well, it was not very frequently forthcoming, and part of that may have been my fault -- you know, if you can eat -- i couldn't eat very fast because somebody had to feed me. the food -- while we were in basra was quite good, actually, rice and lentils and tea and stuff. in fact the food in baghdad was pretty good, there wasn't very much of it, and it was only if you happened to be there at a time that they happened to have food available that you got any, so there were a couple of days we were either traveling and we just didn't get any, but it was pretty good, actually -- that's pretty good after six months of m.r.e.'s, so pretty good is a very relative term. >> m.r.e.'s -- >> most things are good --

m.r.e.'s are pretty good for a -- are ok for a week or two but -- >> did you ever have any contact with the civilian population? >> the only contact i had with civilians was while we were in basra, for some afternoon we were in this room that had bars on the windows but -- but glass on the other side, and there were people who's-who were unhappy and we were glad when the guards closed the curt curtains. damp basically a lynch party had come to take us out of there, i guess they were tired of getting bombed and were blaming us and that they had defended us and whether that was true i don't know, so the only -- the only experience i had with civilians was that other than that, we were just in jail the whole time. >> while you were a prisoner of

war, did you receive any -- any information about what was happening in the war? >> the only thing that happened -- on the -- on the bus ride to baghdad, captain andrews stood up and said, "the war is over." i thought "how does he know that? he's been captured the same time i have." whether he was told that because he somehow knew it or whether he was saying it to somehow psychologically do something to them, i don't know. the only other thing -- i got no information -- there was radio on all the time but it was all in arabic so that was not really helpful. but when i was in -- when i was in baghdad, the surgeon did say to me -- he said, "i can do your definitive repairs here but i think you will get back to the states in time to have it done

there" and that was his only hint that "negotiations are ongoing and you are going to leave" so i thought that was -- i thought that was pretty subtle but pretty helpful. >> did you get a chance to see other prisoners of war from other nationalities and make any kind of comparison maybe the differences? >> the only person -- i saw some brits. we got captured with some brits and one italian and one kuwaiti. they were all in the same boat we were. i don't think there were any differences that i -- surely none that were obvious to me. >> on any given day, what you do, how you get through each day? >> i sang. if you tried to talk to somebody else they would yell at you but they didn't seem to mind me singing, and when i was in baghdad, i decided -- i mean, i had read the same books from

ex-p.o.w.'s that anybody else has so i thought it's time to get in shape and get some kind of program. -- by this time i could get in and out of bed by myself so i started walking triangles in my room from -- sort of two corners and across. not much. you sing every song you know, you go through every musical you remember. we didn't stew -- we didn't try to communicate with each other particularly when we were there. i guess because by the time we were there we were almost to get out. >> was there any communication at all? >> i knew about how -- like sergeant stemeris was the only person that was there where i was and they would tell me about him, there was professional courtesy, go and talk to him and tell him what they were planning and it was a good idea so it wasn't really a big issue for us, i think it was much different for the people who

were at the other prison but for the people -- as it turned out, there was some other guy and -- and i think he must have been a brit -- who was in this prison ward and he never said a word -- never sang, never made a noise, never anything, the only reason i know he was there is that they loaded three of us on to leave, so -- so i had no way of knowing he was there. i knew stemaris was there and i didn't know this other character was there at all until we left. i would probably have tried to communicate with him had i known who he was. he told me about hearing my singing. >> heard a little bit from different people and i would say several referred to the british and when it comes to humor. were you -- how much of a part did you -- >> oh, sense of humor is absolutely vital to -- to getting through these kind of experiences. successfully, i guess.

and -- the humor really came out, i guess, afterwards when people were talking about what happened to them, and for example, we were in prison and they asked me, "why are you doing here?" and i said "i'm a doctor and i do search and rescue." he said "are you going to rescue anybody?" he said, "no, we were just training." they asked sergeant dunlap what he was doing there," and he said, "i came to kill saddam hussein." judgment did not win out that day, and they pounded on him. but it was a funny story, nonetheless. i think he must have felt guilty that he didn't break any bones in the wreck so he was going to try to make up for that when he got captured. >> how much did the vietnam war -- knowing what p.o.w.'s endured there -- or the fact that -- a

lot of the p.o.w.'s from vietnam are unaccounted for, how much did that bear on your experience? >> well, it had -- i certainly was aware of it and i think the bearing it had was on how the whole war was conducted and i think that -- that the gulf war was conducted in every way to be different from vietnam. in terms of mobilizing support for it at home, in terms of letting the military pick targets in terms of massively instead of incrementally attacking, and so i felt very confident that they would handle the p.o.w. situation just as differently as they had handled everything else and i felt very confident that we would all get back if we were still alive and if we didn't they would turn the whole place into green glachltsz i just felt very confident that cheney, powell and bush were going to get us out. >> which in fact that was one of the conditions -- >> which in fact, it was so.

so i think -- i think the p.o.w. -- the vietnam p.o.w. experience, unfortunately for them but fortunately for us had at least as much of an impact on the leadership as it did on us -- you know, the peons, they said "we may make mistakes but we'll make new mistakes" and they certainly didn't make any that we could see. >> what can you say objectively that being a p.o.w. had on your family? >> well, ultimately, not very much. i would say at the time, certainly they were sad that i was missing, they didn't know i was a prisoner until i got released, they were told -- first of all, most people on our wreck were told that their service persons were dead, so then when it became obvious i wasn't dead, at least they couldn't find the body, they said "we know she's not dead but we don't know where she is" so i

think it just -- i don't know, i guess i think my family was pretty well prepared for it, my husband was in the gulf, my daughter had been in the -- my daughter -- i had been in the military ever since she was two, so she expected me to go and then when this happened she was sad and she hoped i would get back and we weren't -- we did a lot of things -- we did more things together for the first year or two when i got back but after that -- i thought it made no difference to her at all, and then i realized the only piece of memorabilia that she had hanging in her room -- other people put up t-shirts, she put up the p.o.w. flag. maybe it did have some. >> tell me about actually being -- whether you were held a day or more -- >> that's a wonderful thing and i have to say i have been really happily surprised that like the vietnam guys have just welcomed us into their fold, and they spent a lot more time than we did, certainly -- they spent years and we spent at the most

30 days. but the lessons you learn are the same because the fears are the same, the fears are that you don't know howing long it's going to last and you don't know if you're going to get out and those are the same fears whether you have to have them every day or whether you have them only for a short time. it's pretty exciting. you just don't hardly want to believe it. i remember flying back from -- from baghdad, and where -- we're in a swissair jet, we're feeling pretty good but we're still in iraqi air space and i know i was thinking, "there is some poor gupper down there who doesn't know there is a truce and he's going to shoot down this airliner," you just know, and so you just have -- it takes a while to -- to believe it. you have to really kiss the ground kind of thing, and it has to be your own ground, and i remember we got back to the states -- spent a couple of days in washington, and then they flew us back to florida because i was going to get my surgery, actually, in florida, and we have a farm in florida, and so

we dropped us off at eglund, dropped me off, and i said "i just need to go home," so we borrowed a car and drove out to our farm. i just needed to go -- actually see it was really still there because it had been a long time, and then i felt like i was home and i went back to the hospital and got fixed. >> i'm sure there is the debriefing. >> yeah, we got debriefed by -- we got debriefed on the boat -- they took us all to the mercy for a while first and then they hauled us back to washington some weeks later and we got another round. >> were are you told how to react once you got back or what you could talk about, what you could not talk about? >> no. not at all. >> how much did you talk about your experience initially compared to now? any different? >> no different. i talked about it more early on

i suppose because more people asked. then when i sort of got reintegrated to what i do, i do surgery and i do -- i do research, and so there is much less time being spent being an ex-p.o.w. but it's a unique experience, and so when people ask to hear about it, it's one of those things it's better to learn vicariously than it is to experience it so i do -- i've gone to the air force academy and talked there, and i've gone to the marine mid-level -- whatever their version of air command staff college is and i've -- gone to the war college, i've gone to a lot of places and talked about this sort of thing. the only criticism i heard was from medical people who don't think that a flight surgeon should have been on the aircraft going to pick somebody up. well, that was in the war plan, that was in the medical annex of the war plan, that was doctrine. whether or not they agree with it is really irrelevant to whether i should be there. that was sort of the duty description.

and so -- you know, i think certainly had -- had i not been there, and had they gotten somebody and had they done badly, then i would have felt very guilty, so since i sort of live a life of guilt avoidance, so i think i did the right thing and i really don't care what anybody else thinks. >> do you think being a prisoner of war has that or will be -- will change anything or help change the mindset? >> i think it already did. i think the fact that we now have women flying combat aircraft is a direct result of everybody used the excuse, "they might get shot down and captured before that" and they said "yeah, they might" and "so what?" they might get run over going to

work too but we let them go to work so i think it had a direct and positive impact, yes, and i had several people who voted on that thing to say that that had a direct and positive impact on their decision. >> in your book, it mentions that one day you felt particularly proud to be in the army when you were getting word to go -- to go overseas, someone had phoned washington and asking about -- i was trying to remember now. >> i remember the story. >> the main thing in combat was we have a war going on. >> surely we have something more to worry about than the sex offure doctors. >> can you tell us about it? >> there were some people who didn't think i should go at all with the unit because i was female and it was a combat unit, and i went because the unit commander asked for me to go because it isn't -- it isn't a physician that is fill -- it isn't a position that is filled

unless we go to war, battalion has an empty slot in it that gets filled when you deploy, he had a choice of anybody he wanted, he thought -- because i had known the guy, i took care of him when he was in apache training and i knew all the people basically that were in his unit, he thought his unit would do better if i went and i thought that was pretty cool, and he thought that at the end, so i guess it was pretty cool. >> what was the worst thing about being a prisoner of war? >> the very worst thing is worrying about what your family thinks happened to you. and you recognize that and then you stop thinking about it because that is very destructive, because you can't do anything about it, so you hope that they get word that you are ok, and then you think about stuff you can work on, like you think about your health, you think about eating, you think about escaping or you think about something. dunlap and i even discussed afterwards about our various

opportunities to escape, and -- and there had been one on the truck. we were getting shot at, so all the guards left, and he thought about running but he said "what am i going to do with this lady one leg?" one leg and no arms, you're not going to go anywhere so we didn't do it then and we thought about it again, we were together a little bit in basra, we've got civilians outside who are hating us and we have the same problem -- we have a blond army guy and a -- and a broken female p.o.w. there is just no way you're going to wlend in. -- there is no way you're going to blend in. so we thought about it but we didn't do it. >> do you feel like the experience you went through changed you? >> i think my basic personality is the same. i think it changed me in that it is much -- i get irritated much less easily.

when you have a really significant experience happen, then the minor irritations of life are much less important. you sort of think, "well, what are they going to do? send me back to baghdad? no." so it just doesn't matter. i think you focus on things thar important and you learn to -- just not let yourself get worked up about things that aren't. that's how i felt about it, anyway. >> if you had it to do over again, is there anything you would change? >> there was a marine helicopter -- there was actually a marine f-18 who was clearing a path for us to go in and get this guy. i probably would hope that we would have awacs directing us that route and we would have gone in, gotten the guy and walked back, but given that we didn't do, that no, i think i would do everything again -- i would certainly go -- i would go again.

>> a couple of things. camaraderie. part of that camaraderie as a p.o.w. talk about the grief that you want to -- about five years or so later -- >> five-year anniversary. >> just talk about -- >> camaraderie is -- it was very interesting, you know, when the red cross got us in baghdad and they had very nicely got this whole hotel set aside for them, they had gotten us each a private room -- they had gotten the hot water hooked up and everything and it was very nice of them but the last thing in the world after have been in solitary confinement for the last month is to be by yourself so we used two of these 20-some rooms and it was like a big slumber party and everybody told stories about getting shot down and it was very -- it was very military and it was -- it was like -- it didn't really happen to anybody, it was like telling stories about someone even though it was happening to you. i think people always do that.

but it was very interesting, and we got to the bet and people did the same thing. now you've got the guys from unit -- every unit that had been in the war sent one member from the unit over to the mercy to hear what happened and get reintegrated and bring their stuff, and they may have been a little shocked that we weren't more, i guess, reverent about all the bad things that happened but once you have survived it, it didn't -- it's not bad anymore. so we were -- you are very different. you have had this very intense, shared experience that you can't really describe unless you have it. and we were really close right then. once again, here we are five years later, people have -- you know, changed jobs, changed units, changed spouses on a few of them, had more kids, gone back to school, gotten out of

the service, whatever they have done, so it's i a much less -- it's a much less intense thing now. it's still a big part of your life when you get together but it's not the only thing that's part of your life. >> i was thinking about yesterday after hearing some interviews, and it kind of went through my mind that it seems like you think of vietnam, you think of what the p.o.w.'s went through, the physical and mental abuse but it almost seems like in the gulf war it was such just an overwhelming quick -- so to speak, victory for the united states it seems like they missed all the glory with the big victory it almost seems like the p.o.w. story is is not as well known -- we hear all the stories about how bad the abuse and everything was.

>> i don't think about it at all. i don't see any reason to dwell on the bad things. i really don't. i don't see any reason to dwell on -- it's kind of like -- it's kind of like being in a hospital. we don't dwell on the 2% of cases that don't go well. so there is no -- there is nothing really to be gained by that. i don't think gunfire the p.o.w.'s feel bad that people aren't still weeping about their bad experiences. they're certainly not. >> someone did comment -- we received a comment that it feels like people think, hey, you know, you went through it, now just forget about it," know what i mean? that doesn't pass or are you still -- something about -- is it something that -- that goes -- i'm sure it doesn't go away but -- >> no, but it doesn't -- you don't need to dwell on it. it's kind of like a lot of other

things in your life and you certainly don't need -- you know, i mean, i talk about it because people ask, i don't talk about it when they don't. i mean, i know what happened and that's all that i need to do. >> how much do you think the younger generation coming along needs to know about the p.o.w. experience? >> well, i think they need to know about the risk that it will happen. i remember getting called -- we had a guy who abandoned his guard post at the perimeter, and he was found later, and they asked me to evaluate his competency for administrative justice and i said i can tell you over this radio he's competent to stand administrative justice but i'll come interview him. i did and i said "what were you thinking?" he said they told me at fort rucker i would never go to war at the training base." i asked "how long have you been in the army?" 11 years. either you're really stupid or that's just not true and nobody ever told you that. they may have told you it was a

low likelihood but nobody would ever tell you, "you're in the army, you're not going to war." that's just not a reasonable thing to say. and so i think they need to know that it can happen -- i don't think -- and i think that's because if that is the most horrible thing -- and there are people i know that "i just couldn't stand ti would kill myself, i couldn't survive" if whatever happened to them, then i say "you ought to do something else for a living because it could happen to you" and they feel -- they're a neurologist or something and i say, "well, you know, if an anesthesiologist got killed and in vietnam a flight surgeon got -- was a p.o.w., and in the gulf a flight surgeon was a p.o.w. so it's a low likelihood but it's real, so if you really think it's that horrible then go for for humana or go work for united if you're a pilot or go work for someone else but don't -- don't take the benefits of being in the military and then say, "well, i couldn't stand it." that's just cowardice.

>> if you're talking to someone and you said if you ever become a prisoner of war, three most important things that will get you through that, do you think you could do that? >> i would say, "take care of your fellow prisoners as much as you are able." "maintain a sense of humor." and "have faith that we're going to come get you. and your job is to stay alive, and keep them alive until we do," and i think that's all you really have to do. but you have to have faith that the military is going to come get you. some people have talked about faith in a religious sense, and -- if that's important to you, then -- then that's important to you, but that's a very individual thing, but i think everybody needs to have -- it's my opinion, of course -- i think everybody needs to have confidence that the military

will do everything that's possible to get them. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009]

>> president obama held a town hall meeting earlier today in grand junction, colorado. his visit there is the first by a sitting president since george

h.w. bush in 1991. >> this is -- now, this is obviously a tough time for the families in colorado and all across america. now, i just want to rewind the clock a little bit because sometimes people have forgotten what's transpired over the last seven, eight months. just six months ago, we were in the middle of the worst recession of our life times. we were losing about 700,000 jobs each month. economists from the left and the right, liberals and conservatives, feared the second coming of the great depression. i don't know if everybody knows that. that was six months ago. that's why we acted as fast as we could to in fact the recovery plan to stop the free fall, and there's been a lot of misinformation about that so let me talk briefly about what we did. the recovery plan was divided into three parts.

1/3 of the money -- 1/3 of the money in the recovery act -- the stimulus plan -- went to tax cuts that are already showing up in the pay checks of nearly two million working families in colorado. including right here in grand junction. so i just want everybody to be clear. 1/3 of it, tax cuts, not tax increases, more money in your pockets to spend as you wish. we also cut taxes for small businesses on the investments that they make. and hundreds of colorado small businesses have qualified for new loans backed by the recovery act including 11 businesses in grand junction alone. that was 1/3 ofof it. now, another third of the money in the recovery act is for emergency relief for folks who have borne the brunt of this

recession so we've extended unemployment benefits for more than 150,000 colorado citizens. we've made -- we've made health insurance 65% cheaper for families who are having to use cobra because they lost their jobs and they're out there looking for work. and for states facing historic budget shortfalls, we provided assistance that has saved the jobs of 10's of thousands of workers who provide essential services like teachers and police officers and governor ritter will tell you, if we had not had some of that money in, then colorado would have had to make much more painful job cuts, in vital services, and might have had to put in place some very painful state and local tax increases, so that was the second third of the recovery act. now, the last third of the

recovery act is for investments that are already putting people back to work. there are almost 100 shovel-ready transportation projects already approved in colorado which are beginning to create jobs. not far from here, for example, there is a project to pave and add lanes to state highway 92. most of the work is being done by local businesses. because that's how we're going to create jobs and grow this economy again. by next month, projects will be under way at more than 100 national parks all over america, including colorado. these are -- -- these are projects restoring trails, improving infrastructure, making park facilities more energy efficient. earlier today, some of you may know, i toured yellowstone with michelle and the girls, we saw old faithful, i hadn't seen it since it was 11 years old, it's

still going strong -- tomorrow we're going to be visiting the grand canyon, and i recently signed into law a public-lands bill that designates the dominguez escalante canyon as a national conservation area here in colorado. conservation area here in colorado. these are national treasures. symbols of how much we owe to those who came before us and the fact that we're borrowing this earth from those who will follow us. and i want to thank especially ken salazar because he's been leading the way on these vital issues especially in the west. as we -- as we grapple with enormous challenges like health care, the work of generations past reminds us of our duty to generations yet to come. so there is no doubt that the recovery plan is doing what we

said it would. putting us on the road to recovery. it's not solving all problems. unemployment is still way too high, but we just saw last week that the jobs picture is beginning to turn, we are beginning to see signs the jobs picture is coming back but that doesn't mean we're out of the woods. even before this extraordinary financial crisis, we had an economy that was working pretty well for the wealthiest americans, working pretty well for the wall street bankers, for big corporations but it wasn't working so well for everybody else, it was an economy of bubbles and busts. it was an economy in which the average worker -- their wages and incomes had flatlined for a decade. it was an economy that rewarded recklessness over responsibility, so we can't go back to that kind of economy. if we want this country to succeed in the 21st century, we've got to lay a new foundation for lasting

prosperity and health insurance reform is a key pillar of this new foundation because this economy -- this economy -- this economy won't work for everyone until folks like nathan and his family aren't pushed to the brink of bankruptcy by medical expenses. until companies aren't slashing payrolls and lose profits to pay for health insurance, until every single american has the security and peace of mind of quality, affordable health care, and health care touches us all. in profound ways. which by the way means it's only natural this debate is going to be an emotional one, there is a lot at stake and i know there's been a lot of attention paid to some of the town hall meetings going on around the country, especially those where tempers have flared and tv really likes that, so you can have 20 really great town hall meetings and if

there is one where somebody lose their temper, that's the one tv wants to cover. what you haven't been seeing are the constructive meetings going on all over the country. that doesn't mean people agree with me on every single issue but it means that we have been trying to figure out how do we solve what we know is an unsustainable problem in our health care system, so just yesterday -- >> just yesterday i held a town hall in belgrade, indiana, some were supporters of concern, some had -- in belgrade, montana, some were supporters of reform, some had questions, even though montanans had strong opinions they didn't shout at one another, they were there to listen and hareflects the american people and what our democracy is about, a lot more than what's been covered on tv these last few days and that's

why i thank all of you whether you are for or against health care reform for being here today. now, i'm going to take a bunch of questions, but before i do i want to just talk about what health insurance reform will mean for you, because there is a lot of misunderstandings out there. first of all, what we're proposing is a commonsense set of consumer protections for people with health insurance. people with private health insurance. i expect that after reform passes, the vast majority of americans are still going to be getting their insurance from private insurers, so we've got to have some protections in place for people like me, people like you, so insurance companies will no longer be able to place an arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive or charge outrageous out-of-pocket expenses on top of your premiums. that's what happened to nathan and his wife -- their son

diagnosed with hemophilia when he was born, the insurance company raised the premiums for him and his co-workers, the family was approaching the cap, on top of worrying about taking care of their sewn they had the added worry of trying to find insurance that would cover him plus thousands and thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs. nathan and his wife even considered getting a divorce so that she might possibly go on medicare. thankfully, colorado's law doesn't allow coverage for small businesses to permanently exclude preexisting conditions like his son's so eventually they found insurance but they're paying increasing premiums and still face the prospect of hitting their new cap. those are stories i i hear all over the country. i heard from a teenager in indiana diagnosed with leukemia, the chemotherapy and intensive care therapy he received cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, his family hit their

cap in less than a year, they had insurance so the insurance wouldn't cover a bone marrow transplant and the family couldn't afford all the money that was needed, the family turned to the public for help but the boy died before he could receive that transplant. if you think that can't happen to you or your family, think again. almost 90% of individual health insurance policies have lifetime benefit limits and about a third of family plans in the individual insurance market have lifetime limits under $3 million. if you or your spouse or your child gets sick and you hit that limit, it's suddenly like you have no insurance at all, and this is part of a larger story of folks with insurance paying more and more out of pocket. in the past few years, premiums have nearly doubled for the average american family. total out-of-pocket costs have increased by almost 50%. that's more than $2,000 per person and nobody's holding these insurance companies

accountable for these practices, and by the way, your employer is paying even more and you may not even see the costs of it except for the fact that's why you're not getting a raise because it's going into your health care instead of your salary and income. so we're going to ban arbitrary caps on benefits. we'll place limits on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses. no one in america should go broke because they get sick. go broke because they get sick. [applause] insurance companies will also be stopped from cancelling your coverage because you get sick or denying coverage because of your medical history. again, if you think this has nothing to do with you, think

again. a recent report found that in the past few years more than 12 million americans were discriminated against by insurance companies because of a preexisting condition. when we get health insurance reform, those days will be over, and we will require insurance companies to cover routine check-ups and preventive care like mammograms and colnoscopies. that saves money and saves -- and colonoscopies. that saves money and saves lives. at the same time -- i just want to be completely clear about this -- i keep on saying this but somehow folks aren't listening -- if you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan. nobody's going to force you to leave your health care plan. if you like your doctor, you keep seeing your doctor. i don't want government bureaucrats meddling in your health care, but the point is i don't want insurance company bureaucrats meddling in your health care either.

so -- [applause] so -- so -- so just to recap here, if you're one of nearly 46 million people who don't have health insurance, you will finally have quality, affordable options. if you do have health insurance, we will help make that insurance more affordable and more secure. under the reform proposals that we've put out there, roughly 700,000 middle class coloradans will get a health care credit. more than a million coloradans will have access to a new

marketplace where you can easily compare health insurance options. 87,000 small businesses in colorado will be aided by new tax benefits so when they're doing the right thing for their employees they're not penalized for it. and we will do -- and we will do all of this without adding to our deficit over the next decade, largely by cutting waste and ending sweetheart deals for insurance companies that don't make anybody any healthier. here if you don't -- i know there is some skepticism, "well, how are you going to save money in the health care system?" you're doing it here in grand junction. you know -- you know -- you know that lowering costs is possible if you put in place smarter incentives. if you think about how to treat people, not just illnesses, if you look at problems facing not just one hospital or physician but the many system-wide problems that are shared.

that's what the medical community in this city did and now you're getting better results while wasting less money and i know that your senator michael bennett has been working hard on legislation that's based on putting the innovations that are here in grand junction into practice across the system. there is no reason why we can't do that. so the fact is we are closer to achieving reform than we've ever been, we have the american nurses association, we have the american medical association on board because america's doctors and nurses know how badly we need reform. we have -- we have broad agreement in congress on about 80% of what we're trying to achieve, we have an agreement from drug companies to make prescription drugs more affordable for seniors. $80 billion that can cut the doughnut hole that seniors have to deal with on prescription drug plans in half.

the aarp supports this policy and agrees with us that reform must happen this year. but look, because we're getting close, the fight's getting fierce and history is clear. every time we're in sight of reform, special interests start fighting back with everything they've got. they use their influence, they run their ads, and let's face it, they -- they get people scared. and understandably -- i -- i understand why people are nervous. health care is a big deal. in fact, whenever america has set about solving our toughest problems, there have always been those who sought to preserve the status quo by scaring the american people. that's what happened when f.d.r. tried to pass social security. they said that was socialist. they did. that -- verbatim, that's what they said. they said that everybody was going to have to wear dogtags

and -- and that this was a plot for the government to keep track of everybody. when j.f.k., and then lyndon johnson, tried to pass medicare, they said this was a government takeover of health care. they were going to get between you and your doctor. the same argument that's being made today. these struggles have always boiled down to a contest between hope and fear. it was true when social security was born. it was true when medicare was created. it's true in today's debate. when medicare was created, it is true in today's debate. [applause] but whether you have health insurance or you don't have health insurance, we all know we can't continue down this path. costs are rising far faster than wages. cuts -- the system works a lot better for insurance companies than it does for america's families.

to maintain what's best about our health care system, for you to keep what you have got if you're happy with it is going to require change. we've got to keep what's good about the system, especially the relationship between doctors, nurses and their patients while fixing what's broken, because for all the scare tactics out there what's truly scary is if we don't do anything. we will continue to see 14,000 americans lose their health insurance every day. premiums will continue to skyrocket, going up three times faster than your wages. the deficit will continue to grow because most of it is medicare and medicaid. medicare will go into the red in less than a decade. and insurance companies will continue to profit by discriminating against people just because they're sick. so if you want a different future, a brighter future, i need your help. i need you to stand for hope. i need you to knock on doors. i need you to spread the word. because we are going to get this done