i want a 2012 where both candidates have the promise to be solid presidents, even if i don't agree with one or either. whatever barack obama's degree of success ultimately, he clearly has the substance to fill the office. sarah palin has yet to show she does. most people watching right now, whatever your beliefs about what this country needs to do now, know it. that's hardball for now. thanks for being with us. downtown with keith olberman starts right now. which of these stories will you be talking about tomorrow? tsa meltdown. they patted down this young boy, they patted down this blasser cancer patient with a urine bad. they do not patdown nor feel-up politicians. >> not if i could avoid it. who would? >> the tsa begging passengers to

up out of the big opt-out on wednesday. >> if people choose to opt-out of the advanced image technology because they are trying to slow down the process, then i feel bad for the people who are simply wanting to get home for the holidays. >> stopping starts. republicans demanding other republicans stop holding up the bio nuclear treaty with the russians. the plot to discredit "sicko." he apologizes for his role in the 2007 campaign. tonight here they will talk about it for the first time. it turns out they met while wendell was still trying to slime michael. >> msnbc is marked for death. >> brett favre and the sextinging photos. i have a solution. it involves the tsa scandals. governor jan brewer's death panel. they are still reneging on the

transplants to save people like randy shepherd and towards francisco feliz. all the news and commentary now on "countdown." good evening from new york. this is monday, november 22nd. 715 days until the 2012 presidential elections. if we needed one final straw in the disaster that's been the tsa's choice, do you wish your privates felt up or photographed, we have two. agents actually patted down a dog, because it was wearing a sweater. an al qaeda affiliate endorsed the new security system for causing the kind of economic strain on america that it seeks when it calls the strategy of 1,000 cuts. the message from al qaeda and the arabian peninsula referred to an incident when two bomb-laden critters were were

caused. it is such a good bargain for us to spread fear, fear that would cause the west to invest billions of dollars in new security procedures. calling it operation hemorrhage. this strategy with smaller but more frequent operations is what some may refer tos athe strategy of 1,000 cuts. the aim is to bleed the enemy to death. we will ask roger krescy if that is anything more than a desperate claim of an energy that has been shut down. law enforcement officials told abc that the pat-downs are happening because of al qaeda's engeneral uity. in response to the public's outcry, the obama administration announced tweaks to the procedures. the number of passengers picked at random for pat-downs has been reduced and screeners have been told to be more sensitive. this after the embattled chief of the transportation security administration, john pistol, says his agency was indeed

willing to consider adjustments. >> clearly, there has been a significant concern raised with the traveling public and members of congress have expressed concern. we are going to look at how can we do the most effective screening in the least invasive way knowing that there is always a tradeoff that we talked about, a tradeoff between security and privacy and where, again, regional people can disagree. >> on saturday, mr. pistol had agreed to exempt the pilots from the body scanners. as for national opt-out day, the call for protests on the busiest travel day of the year, mr. pistol expressed concern. >> if people choose to opt out of the advanced imaging technology because they are trying to slow down the process, then i feel bad for the people who are simply wanting to get home for the holidays, that they would be delayed because of that. >> in the meantime, the president has said that the aggressive security measures are the only ones right now they consider to be effective against the kind of threat we saw in the christmas day bombing, a reference obviously to the twasted attempt by a nigh

yearian man to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear on board a flight from amsterdam to detroit where the tsa doesn't have any authority. while secretary of state, hillary clinton, said she didn't want to second-gaes security officials, there was also this. >> would you submit to one of these pat-downs? >> not if i could avoid it. i mean, who would? >> there is house speaker elect, john boehner, because of his security detail, gets to bypass the measures. he was escorted past the scanners. the rest of us must choose. tom sawyer, his bag was spilled by a pat-down in detroit. they are abusing cancer survivor, tom sawyer. or the young boy, who went through the secretary dear screening after setting off a metal detector. his father choosing to remove

the boy's shirt to expedite the process. there is our frequent guest, bob cavner whose poodle did not set off the metal detector but was selected for the enhanced screening because he was told his poodle was wearing a sweater. let's turn to terrorism analyst roger cressy. good evening. >> never follow an animal act. >> i hate poodles. so it's okay. >> that's the first reasonable explanation i have heard yet. >> happy thanksgiving! >> the al qaeda claim first off in the al qaeda magazine for god's sakes, billion dollars responses to the gimics is what they want. is that a retrofitted claim to the fact so many of their attempts have been thwarted. >> there is some truth in it. whenever we overreact by just throwing an enormous amount of money at the problem, they believe they have won a small vic sorry. what it comes down to, it is

incumbent upon us to view the threats out there, respond appropriately, don't trip over ourselves trying to overarchitect a solution. we are dealing with security versus privacy issue that is the toughest we have had since 9/11, i believe. we are trying to find the comfortable middle ground. so far, tsa and the american public has stumbled in finding that middle ground. >> to the point of that, everybody gets, everybody gets a full body scan or a feel-up or both. is that necessary and would it even detect the kind of things it is said to be detecting? >> well, it is actually not true. i flew out of reagan national yesterday and i didn't get that, because i followed the same procedures that i have been doing since i started flying after 9/11. it only happens, you get the pat-down if you choose not to have body scan or if something triggers the magnotometer. you have to be consistent across the board for one important

reason, litigation. we talk about well maybe we only highlight those individuals that are of the greatest risk. unless you can come up with an approach that makes sense, people are going to litigate left and right and i don't think tsa or dhs wants to deal with that. >> the alternative method used by the israelis, they ask everybody atd t the airport a couple of questions and pull out the ones that seem agitated. they say it is human intelligence or racial profiling. which is it? >> i don't bi-racial profiling. tsa does profiling. it is called behavior profiling. they have behavior detection officers around a lot of major airports. the israelis do a good be jo. it is so small, their problem, in scale relative to us. they have a half a dozen airports. they have a fleet of 40 aircraft. i could interview every single passenger if that was the universe i have to deal with. our scale and volume is so much bigger. what we have done since 9/11 is

employed a lot of the best practices the israelis have, canines, detection offerses, secure flights where we are using terror watch lists that the government is doing. we need to be more creative in figuring out a solution that maintains privacy versus security line. this is where we have to do a better job. to tsa's credit, they have said it right. the pilots don't have to go through the same procedure. they are not a threat. i think you are going to see other changes to the proceed why your in the coming weeks. they should have done a better job thinking through some of these things. they are going to try to correct it now. >> is there anything topical that is not generally known that makes this a good time to continue to do this or is that a talk over the weekend in germany about looking for potential bombers there? is that just a coincidence of timing? >> i think that's a coincidence, because the point you made earlier about the engeneral knewity about al qaeda and others applying it, it makes a

lot of the others nervous. the lesson we learned from flight 253 is that we didn't anticipate what omar farouk was going to do. now, we have to be more proactive. the problem there is you are trying to prooch tve the negati. we have new measures in place. this is adapting to the new threat. one thing that has to happen, the government is going to be more forthcoming in explaining the narrative of why this is such an intelligence-driven choice right now and why the threat has evolved. i think the american people will understand it. >> roger cressey, thank you. let's turn to jeffrey goldberg, who has been writing extensively on this. thank you for your time. >> thank you. let's start with something to lighten up the mood. national opt-out day and the kilt. would you explain that, please? >> i recommended that people wear kilts to the airport on

opt-out day. both because it is a festive holiday and also because one of the goals of people who object to these porn machines is to convince tsa employees to go to their supervisors and say, look, we don't want to do this. we don't want to do these aggressive pat-downs. i was joking but only really half joking. i thought kilts would ex ppedit that process. >> what does opt-out day accomplish other than slowing the process down and potentially skewing up travel for all the people that just want to get there before thanksgiving? >> for me, every day is opt-out day. i don't want to participate in the machinery. i don't want to go through the porn machine. i object to the humiliating pose that you have to take, the pose of someone being mugged while you stand in that machine. i find it an invasion of privacy. i would rather have the person-to-person humiliation rather than the cold, mechanical

humiliation but the point of opt-out day is to convince the tsa that this machine is objectionable to a lot of people and to look for something better. look for some more sophisticated way of doing this. i am not soft on terrorism. i want to catch terrorists. i happen to not believe that the airport is the best place to catch terrorists. if the terrorists have already matured their plot to the point it is at the airport, an hour away from execution, that means they have already defeated the cia, the fba, the entire military. all that is standing between them and the successful execution of the plot are these guys in blue shirts with the shoe bins. i'm not overly confidence about that. >> if you find them in the screening process in that crowd of people that usually exceeds the number of people on a plane at a given moment, guess what they may do at that point? that's the other part. >> that's a very, very important part. the tsa and federal government by trying to solve one problem, hijacking, has created another

problem. they have built these huge masses of people in coiled lines, tightly packed coiled lines, sometimes hundreds of people who are completely unprotected. if you are a terrorist and you have a bomb on you, you don't have to have it hidden. you could walk out of the taxi, go up to the line, get to the middle of the line and at the time ton nate yourself. you would accomplish the same thing you would by blowing up an airplane, terrorizing america and the world and bringing aviation to a complete halt and try and destroy the american economy. nobody is going to go to the airport the next day to go through security to fly if that happens. >> can you verify, refute or amplify this seeming urban legend that the former homeland security chief, mr. chertoff, had advocated for these scanners at the same time his consulting firm was representing companies that made the scanners? >> i don't believe that is an urban legend. i think that is true. after he left government, he founded a group called the chertoff group which does homeland security consulting. one of their clients was this

company, rapascan, which is one of the manufacturers of this type of technology. he has been on television advocating for that technology. he may very well believe honestly that this is the best way for the american security system to go but it is sort of a profound conflict of interest, i think. >> and why not make a little profit on the way out. jeffrey goldberg, national correspondent for "the atlantic." republican senator ordering other republican senators to start stopping the s.t.a.r.t. treaty. wendell potter apologizes for the insurance industry scheme to slime michael moore three years ago. let's support the small business owners getting our economy booming with the first ever small business saturday.

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of up to 55% off top hotels. harpist not included. on one side, iran and al qaeda, on the other side, israel and president obama. guess whose side the republicans are on? republican party standing firm for iran and al qaeda on the issue of nothing less than nuclear terrorism against the staunchest supporters of israel. it is time the political football is the new s.t.a.r.t.

treaty historically a bipartisan effort, the reagan aid there at the start joining us presently. a historic effort to reduce the american and soviet missiles aimed at each other. this would reduce both americans and russian arsenals down to 1500 warheads and 700 launchers. the problem is of keeping nuclear material secure and out of the hands of rogue states and terrorists who have openly voiced their desire for a nuclear weapon or radioactive dirt weapon. president obama and dmitry medvedev have signed the treaty. it requires senate ratification. the republicans have delayed this for months. america has been unable to inspect russia's nuclear stock piles. this is not the only threat they are posing as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

the treaty has led russia to help america in other ways. >> the russians have supported us in afghanistan, allowed us to transport some of our most significant equipment where they could have pushed back on that. they have also helped in other ways that wouldn't be widely known. so the relationship is maturing very specifically and it is one that's helped us in iran. >> specifically, russia has let the u.s. access northern afghanistan supply routes to get vital material to u.s. troops. five months after signing the treaty, mr. medvedev outlawed the sale of ships to iran which canceled the deal five years in the making to sell iran $800 million of s-300 missiles. if russia allows the sale would help iran defend their nuclear facilities. the anti-defamation league and ju incouncil are calling for americans to let the treaty go forward. we are deeply concerned that the failure to ratify the new start treaty will have national security far beyond the treaty

itself. joined by former secretary of defense under president reagan, lawrence corub. >> nice to be with you again. >> thanks for your time. senator kyle suggested the treaty doesn't do enough to modernize the u.s. arsenal. mr. gates says it does too as do seven out of eight former commanders of the u.s. nuclear forces, as does the senator from indiana, the republican, dick lugar. can you explain to senator kyle why his concern might be misguided here? >> well, not only is it challenged by the real experts but president obama has increased spending on nuclear modernization by 20% over what president bush did and remember that when president bush had an arms agreement with the soviets back in 2002, the so-called sword treaty, it was approved 95-0. if anything, obama has gone overboard. in fact, i would say he is probably putting more money in that you need to really

modernize the nuclear arsenal. >> this issue of how the republicans are jeopardizing israeli national security, can you amplify that, please? >> basically, what has happened is in addition to what you mentioned in the run-up to the segment here in terms of what the russians have stopped selling iran, they voted with us to put pretty tough sanctions on iran. remember, they are a member of the u.n. security council. they could have vetoed it by supporting that. basically, what has happened, you have probably had the toughest sanctions we have ever had against iran. unless those sanctions can work, you are not going to prevent iran from going nuclear. you have to tell them, you know, if you continue on this path, it is going to cost you economically. hopefully, that will get the people there to say, you know, with he don't need to do this. that's why people in the israeli community and the jewish community are very concerned. the russians pull back on iran,

no telling what will happen. >> obviously, anything that pertains to iran pertains to us. what about this other implication on our national security, the republicans preventing, in essence, indirectly, anyway, inspectors from having a close-up look at the russian nuclear arsenal? do people want to think about that. well, again, it is not so much us getting into a nuclear exchange now that the cold war is over but some of the material falling into the wrong hands. if we can't verify and go in and inspect, with he don't know where it is. we do know that groups like al qaeda have tried to get the material, the so-called loose nukes from russia, because it is not hard to make a bomb. it is hard to get the material.

the other thing, as you mentioned in the run-up to this segment, the russians have been very helpful allowing us to send all kinds of material across russia into afghanistan. the pakistanis stopped it for a couple of days when they were upset we had gone into their territory. >> this is not only an issue of cooperation between russia and the united states but a direct issue of cooperation between democrats and republicans, even the approval of this ratification from committee was bipartisan. what do the democrats do now, bring it to the floor for vote or what do they do to move this along? >> i think they have got to call the bluff of the republicans who say this is a matter of national security. if you don't vote, you will be undermining our security for all the reasons we talked about. the other is to say, wait a second, you didn't want to vote before the election because you said, let's not do it and pol lit size it and have it in the

lame duck now. you are claiming you don't want to have it. if this thing is not ratified before this congress adjourns, you have to start all over. you have to go through the committee, have hearings. we have already had 20 hearings. then, they will say, it is getting too close to a presidential election. what this allows them to do is prevent the treaty from going into force without raising any substantive objectives. all the objections that they raised have been shot down by members of their own party. former secretaries of state and defense and military commanders. >> lawrence korb, assistant secretary of defense under president ronald reagan. a great thanks as always, sir. >> thanks for having me. michael moore and the man that apologized to him today on behalf of an entire insurance agency, wendell potter. mr. moore's thoughts on jan brewer's arizona death penalty and your generosity towards two of the victims. we will continue. exxonmobil and synthetic genomics have built a new facility to identify the most productive strains of algae. algae are amazing little critters.

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we'll save time for wendell potter and mible moore by cutting the preamble and just saying, let's play oddball. get ready for cute. there isn't anything more precious than one kitten is a pile of them. oh, they are so sweet. sweet kittens cuddle together for warm. hidden beneath the piles of claws and cuteness is a surprise, another kitten. the little guy is the luckiest or the unluckiest kitten in the world. just like the famous poster says, "hang in there, baby." this is video of the tsa

screening. to smith town, poland, a horse is a horse, of course. there is no such thing as an artistic horse, unless it is the famous matsiba, the painting horse. with the help of her owner, she is able to hold the paint brush and create art. this is the picasso method, i believe. this one is called ode to barboro. finally to harper's studios in chicago, it is time for oprah's favorite things. with prizes such as a sweater and scented candles, who wouldn't be excited. wow, one car. that's pretty awesome. i think one audience member got a little too dramatic. you get a salmon and you get a salmon and you get. time marchs on. wendell potter's apology to michael moore and both of them live next on countdown. games with my grandchildren.

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in his book "deadly spin" former health insurance editor describes his efforts to deal

with the documentary "sicko." he said the industry had a plan to push more off the cliff. my guests, wendell potter and michael moore will discuss cliffs and pushes. the premise was to highlight the fundamental flaws in this country's health care system and universal care. according to potter, insurers peered they could crater the movie. they funded a campaign to smear "sicko." apco took the debate. june, 2007, usa today, the author, sarah berk was identified as executive direct for of health care america, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization. no acknowledging that berk was on the payroll of the health insurance industry. it showed up on the sanjay gupta

report on "sicko." he told them that michael moore played fast and loose with the facts. joining me now as promised academy award winning film maker, michael moore and the former head of corporate communications at cigna, now senior fellow at the center for media and democracy, and author of the book "deadly spin," mr. potter. >> wendell, on your block today, you apologized to michael moore. is there anything you would like to say to him more or less in person here? >> well, i'm sorry for the part that i played in attacking the movie. i did see the movie actually twice before it was screened across the country. once in sacramento when you had the initial screening an then the official premier in your hometown in bel-air. i knew when i saw the movie the first time that you had really gotten a lot of it right. i was really not very happy at all to be a part of the effort to discredit the movie. i was still working for the industry then. my apologies.

>> well, first of all, wendell, thank you for saying that. certainly, the apology is accepted. in fact, i think of you as a real hero. you have done is he very brave and courageous, giving up a very good job and knowing that you would not earn that income again and probably be vilified by this industry. to come forward, i mean i have been making these movies for over 20 years. i have never had a top executive come forward and admit what you've admitted. yet, i have been dealing with this with every movie since "roger and me." i remember actually i was on ""the tonight show,"" my first time ever on national tv. 20 minutes before the show, they are telling me that some executive from general motors is there with a packet of information about michael moore and trying to smear me to the people, the producers of the tonight show. it was that same line that the

health care america, the fake organization that cnn used and usa today used and so many media outlets used when "sicko" came out, saying he plays fast with the truth. that is a lie. all the facts in my film are always true. i am very, very careful with this. i take it so seriously. because i want to win the political argument that i'm trying to make. so the very first and foremost thing is that things have to be correct. so when you were working at cigna and what your insurance, all the insurance executives apparently -- i read your book this weekend, all got together and met a number of times and you came to the small village in michigan where i was living and i didn't realize it until i read your blog this morning that actually you had -- we had met before. >> that's right. >> and that you were there, as

you said, in the blog this morning, to spy on me and to do reconnaissance on the film. it was -- i have had to go through a lot of this stuff for so long. i'm just so -- if you don't mind, keith, i don't mean to -- could i ask wendell a question? >> go ahead, please, michael, please. >> this is the first time we've talked. so maybe we can talk later. >> i hope so. >> i just -- you mentioned that your son, you took your son to the screening when you came to the little town that i'm in in michigan. i'm just wondering, you said that he was -- you sat next to him during these two hours. he is patching on the screen what you do for a living, which, as you say in your book, contributing to the deaths of 45,000 americans every single year because of this for-profit health insurance system we have. it causes that many deaths every

year. you say in the book that you were a part of that. i'm just wondering, as you were sitting there next to your son, being a dad myself, and after the movie, he wants to come up and have his picture taken with me. you say this morning in your blog that he is telling you i'm his hero, yet he is watching what you do for a living. at that time, i'm just curious what that must have done to you or how you felt going through that experience? >> he knew that i was having problems with the job that i was having to do, that i was having misgivings about what i was supposed to be doing as a spokesman for the industry. as you depicted in the movie, a lot of the people in this country have insurance but it is very, very inadequate. people are finding every day that the insurance that they think they have is going to be there for them really isn't. he saw me be very affected by that movie. it is hard to watch that movie and not almost tear up. many times here in the movie. he and i talked.

i told him that i was thinking of leaving my job. i didn't know how i could do it. i felt like i should do something other than what i was doing. i just didn't feel very good about having to do what i had done to spy on your movies, to go to the back of theater and take notes as i was watching it and come back and know i was going to have to be on the front line of the call to the media when it did start showing nationwide. people would be calling me about the people who were cigna members. that was going to be tough and i knew it was going to be tough. >> go ahead, michael. >> i was just wondering, at the time when you saw cnn falling, taking the bait and usa today and "time" magazine and much of the media using the actual language that you and your guys developed on referring to me as against american principles, socialist, all this stuff and fox news then taking it and

running with it. i mean, that must be a real victory when you are in those meetings, having a sense when you can actually get our major media organizations, supposedly responsible journalists to repeat verbatim your talking points. >> it was just amazing. we had a chipping service. every day, with he would get articles that would appear that had our talking points in them. it, by the way, is a 23-page pr plan that was developed and carried out against the movie. i was at the meeting whether it was explained. i'm not supposed to have this. this was something that was actually obtained by bill moyers when he did an interview with me last year. >> could i just read a line -- i pulled up bill moyer's thing. there is a line in that plan that you guys put together where you said, i'm quoting, the worse case scenario would be that

"sicko" would evolve into a sustained populist movement. that was your worst fear. >> right, right. >> that this movie could make that happen. >> that's exactly right. the industry monitored public opinion from that moment prior to the premier of the movie or the national release of the movie until many weeks after the premier just to see how public opinion had changed and also monitored the box office receipts of the movie and all of its clips that we got. many of them were placed by health care america, which, as we've talked for, was a front group, a very successful one at that. >> michael hold on a second. >> they know if there was a p populist movement against them. >> i have to take a commercial break. obviously, we have to sell something. >> i'm so sorry, keith. >> that's all right. i was staying back deliberately. michael moore and wendell

potter, stand by. we are going to take a quick break and resume where we were in just a moment. [ coughing ]

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potter and michael moore continue their conversation next on countdown. ♪ [ male announcer ] here's hoping you find something special in your driveway this holiday. ♪ [ santa ] ho ho ho! [ male announcer ] get an exceptional offer on the mercedes-benz you've always wanted at the winter event going on now. but hurry -- the offer ends soon. at the winter event going on now. [trumpet playing "reveille" throughout] let's support the small business owners

getting our economy booming with the first ever small business saturday. on november 27th, shop small. it's going to be huge. [trumpet playing "reveille" fades to silence] we'll resume where we were in the first conversation between the former cigna executive, wendell potter, now an insurance industry whistle blower and michael moore, the film director of "sicko."

you were saying you wanted to follow up with a question to wendell. >> i'm sorry. i know i'm a little -- this is the first time we have had a chance to talk. i just, wendell, just want to say, first of all, you are the daniel ellsburg of corporate america. what that man did during vietnam helped to end that war. it would be my wildest dream that what your courageous action has done here, not just about my movie and me. people should read this book. it is the whole book lays it right out there about how the health insurance companies had bam boozeled this country and lied, outright lied about things. to have you say in the book that what i said in the film that everything in there is true and that this is -- that's what it is like in canada. people do have it better.

they do live three years longer. it really -- i was just amazed as i turned every page of this book. i was just, you know, thinking that this big fear of theirs, that there might be a populist uprising against the insurance companies. i believe that if people listen to what you have said and what you are righting, that eventually that will happen. people will see them for the organized crime syndicate that they are. they are set up not to help you with your health. they are set up to make a profit. the only way they make a big profit is to deny as much health care as possible to the people trying to get help. that's the bottom line. it's a sick, rotten system. for you to come forward like this is just really -- i'm just -- i just can't say enough for what you have done. >> well, thank you, michael. i've been doing this for not even 18 months. you and many other people have been advocating for good health

care reform for much longer than i have. so i'm glad to finally be on what i think is the right side at this time and to do what i can to try to pull the curtains back so people can see exactly what these companies do to win and to manipulate public opinion and influence public policy which is at the core front i have been writing about. >> let me jump in, wendell. apco, that pr film seems to contradict some of the remarks you made. apco did not conduct research on michael moore's family. we did not suppress turnout for his movie. explain what you know about the personal research that was done on michael moore and his family. >> i think whoever wrote that, i think, she was just protesting too much. the industry did an enormous amount of research on what we thought was going to be in the movie and on michael moore as a movie maker. i, myself did. i have seen every one of his movies, read all three of his books, seen all 24 episodes of

"the awful truth." i know where you went to school. i know when you dropped out of college. i know who you are married to. i know a lot about you. everybody in the industry knows a lot about you. we needed to know as much as we could, not that we necessarily were going to be using that if we didn't have to. one of the things that i was afraid about doing what i'm doing was that i would be attacked not by the industry directly by but its allies to try to attack my character and reputation. so that's what's goes on in a lot of the campaigns like this. >> when you were doing this research and this spying on myself and my family, what, i mean, to what ends, really? obviously, they don't really want to have the debate on the issue, whether or not a for-profit health insurance system is what's really best for americans? >> right. >> it seemed like their main goal was if people get in to see that film, we are doomed. we have got to make sure as few

people see that film as possible. the way to do that is to smear michael moore, call him anti--american, s anti-american and say he is not telling the truth. you said the other day that you guys were ready for plan "b" if that failed, if the movie was getting too much tracks, that it might be necessary to push me off a cliff, right? >> what exactly did that mean? >> i was in that meeting and those words, indeed, were said. it was not literal, obviously. it meant we would do what we had to do to create ads and op eds that we would get conservative pundits to place in newspapers with the whole objective of, as they call it, reframing the debate, to try to move the attention from them to you as a filmmaker. >> i know we are running out of time but i notice a lot of the

comments that bush made about me in his recent book, it is like the exact language that is in the health industry insurance plan about me, about what names to call me, how to refer to me. i notice on your group, you had bush administration officials as part of, were on the board of the fake organization, health care america. what is the connection there? >> we had a lot of republicans and a lot of conservatives on the board. people who were pollsters for republicans were becoming pollsters for the industry and for health care america. it was all connected. >> gentlemen, i'm out of time but it's been time extraordinarily well-spent. wendell potter, former cigna executive at michael moore, of course. thank you gentlemen, appreciate it. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you, wendell. we will postpone our full follow-up on the arizona death

panel. we will give you a brief update after we told you about the arizona insurance to renegligent on insurance promised for transplants. we introduce you to two victims. the national assistance fund that helps raise money was overwhelmed with donations. it raised $36,000 on friday night alone and they are still counting what they raised over the weekend. you can still donate at ntafund.org. back with worst persons next.

time for today's world persons in the world. vice president of security is trying to see if brett favre texted pictures of his privates to sideline reporter, jenn sterger to see if the little brett can approve to be the real thing. they missed the obvious solution. just have favre go to the airport and undergo a body scan.

our runner up, tell evan jal lift, glenn beck. >> you are going to hear the liberals start to throw msnbc under the bus and throw them under the bus hard. here is why. msnbc is marked for death. if it is sold to comcast, comcast will run it like a business. if it remains liberal, it will just be a good leb beryl station. it will just run things that will actually get ratings. if it is -- if it's not, it will most likely be a news channel. i don't know what they are going to do with it. it won't feature keith olbermann. they know that. so just like everyone, as soon as they start to outlive their usefulness for radicals and revolutionaries, they shoot them in the head. that's what's going to happen to msnbc. they will offer up a false

choice. let's say, we are willing to get rid of msnbc. you just get rid of fox and then we can have real news. mark my words, that's what they will say. we'll get rid of msnbc and you get rid of fox. yeah, really, you will do that. oh, you will shoot the shows that nobody watches on one that's marked for death anyway. >> so now we know he doesn't know anything about television either. this is from an article that was in the hollywood reporter on september 27th. it quotes an analyst named matthew hair began. i can't confirm any of this. this is what a guy that analyzes the finances of tv for the benefit of investors has concluded. the abctv network is worth 1.2 billion. cnbc is worth $3.9 billion. msnbc is worth $2.6 million. there is only one guaranteed conspiracy, glenn, the conspiracy to take money. former house speaker, newt

gingrich talking about boycotting any presidential debate if he didn't like the moderators specifically msnbc. when democrats objected to democrats appearing in a presidential debate, this is yun jury-grade stall inism on their part. mere hip pockcy would never be enough. newt sees things. >> there is no possibility i would ever go to a debate and have olbermann or chris matthews asking questions. i watched the debate a couple years ago. it was an embarrassment. they were so relentlessly hostile and so left wing that every question they asked of the republicans was designed to embarrass and divide the republicans. >> who is they, newt? chris matthews and i have never moderated a debate together and i have never moderated any republican debates at all and, also, newt, i was never in the beetles. i didn't host the oscars