an ad, public service announcement with no hate, a gay, lesbian and transgender group, and this a portion of it. let me play it. >> our political and religious leaders say they have no future. >> they can't get married. >> they can't donate blood. >> they can't serve our country openly. >> referring to don't ask don't tell openly. she did clarify this on her twter page. you're both so active on twitter. i fully support the no hate campaign and all it stands for and proud to be part of it, but i stand by my sband's stance on don't ask, don't tell. >> which is a complete and thorough study and review on battle effectiveness and morale. by the way, i respect the first amendment rights of every member of my family. >> what is interesting about this, a debate in families, the is kind of -- you talk about waiting -- there is an appeal to honor. it's not right for people to be lying who they are to protect fellow citizens. >> and you have a commandant in the marine corps who says, whose people he is directly responsible for, says this could fect our ability to win. >> do you believe that? >> i pay attention to the commandant of the marine corps.

i'm paying attention to the chief of staff of the air force, the army. >> you know these people. you know the issue. do you have a sense int in your gut about what should happen? >> i have a sense that i respect and admire these four service chiefs who have expressed either outright opposition or deep reservation about the repeal. they're the ones who are in charge. now, the chairman ofhe joint chiefs of staff, i agree. the president and secretary of defense have all come out for repeal. but i really would -- i was in outpost near kandahar. army master sergeant, appointed to iraq and afghanistan. he said senator mccain, we live, eat, sleep and fight together in close proximity. i'm concerned about the repeal. i would like to know more about it. that the view that i got from chief petty officers and sergeants all over afghanistan. >> the ban will not be lifted in the lame ducsession, is th fair to say? >> i think we should at least -- i don't think it should be, because i think once the study comes out the beginning of december, we should at least

have a chance to review it and mae have hearingon it. >> i want to spend a couple of minutes on taxes and spending. this is your 59th appearance on "meet the press." you know what that means. we have so much tape. if you go back to 2004. i know your position on the bush tax cuts did change and you talked about that before. i wanted to play something from an interview in 2004 and ask you about it. >> i voted against the tax cuts because of the disproportional amount that went to the wealthiest americans. i would clearly support not extending those tax cuts in der to help address the deficit. but the middle income tax credits, the families, the child tax credits, the marriage tax credits, all those i would keep. >> that's extly what president obama says. >> is there a statute of limitations? the economicituation is vastly different today. we are in the midst of the greatest recession in the history of this country since the great depression. it is not the time to raise anyone's taxes. and, by the way, also along with

that statement, i said we have to restrain spending, and spending was way out of ntrol at that time. i said, otherwise, we're facing massive deficits and that's what happened. >> shod tax cuts on the wealthiest americans only be extended for a temporary period and only if ere are corresponding spending cuts? >> i think they should be extended until we're out of this recession. at such time, we could look at other tax hikes. but in this serious recession, i cannot believe that raising taxes is a good thing on anybody. >> is the tax commission a nonstarter, a od starter or something else? >> i think it's a starter. they don't get the 14 members, as you mentioned earlier when you were talking with david axelrod, i hope this is a wake-up call to america. it gives us an idea of the eadth of this problem. but we are going to have to make significant changes. we'll have to touch the serious issues of entitlements if we're going to dig out of the hole. >> everything should be on the table? >> everything -- >> raising the retirement age? >> everything should be on the table.

if it's not, obviously, i don't think we're going to make progress. i would like to applaud alan simpson and erskine bowles. i thk americans, if you listen to this last election, the message was stop the spending, do things differently. we're worried about our children and our grandchildren and we can't keep on going like we are. and so maybe the environment has changed enough that americans will respect us making some tough decisis. >> just about a minute left. president bush's memoir is out, "decision points." he talks about you in a couple of places and he talks about your decision not have him campaign with you. and he writes this -- "i thought it looked defensive for john to distance himself from me. i was confident i could have helped him me the case." any regrets that you kept him on the sidelines? >> no, it was a decision made at the time of the campaign. i respect and admire president bush. at the time, it was just the realities of the political

situation, as you know. president obama at the time was doing everything he could to tie me to president bush. i admire and respect, and i believe i called president bush a friend, and it was just a decision we made and i hope he respects it. >> there was a meeting he talks about, december of '08. you suspend your campaign, called for a meeting in the white house. here is a picture of it. senator obama is there as well. you called this meeting. you didn't really add that much substantively, didn't have a question, suggesting you were unprepared for the meeting. is that fair? >> i was prepared for the meeting. i wasn't prepared for the onslaught that took place from all the democrats in the room. my reason for being there was to make sure that republicans were heard, people like boehner, mitch mcconnell was the reason i was there. i didn't think i was going to make any headway wh some of the democrats who were in the room. but i didn't ask for that meeting.

the fact is that i thought it was best, at that time, to say i want republicans to be heard. until that time, they had been shut out of the process. >> we'll leave it there until your 6h appearance. senator, thanks ou, as always. >> thanks for having me on. >> up next, special focus on the economy, jobs and the debt. former chairman of the federal reserve, alan greenspan. former speaker of the house, republican newt gingrich, author of the new book "all the devils are here" about the financial crisis," bethany mclean and former representative democrat in 1968, as whaling continued worldwide, the first recordings of humpback songs were released. public reaction led to international bans, and whe populations began to recover. at pacific life, the whale symbolizes what is possible when people stop and thinkbout the future.

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we are back. co-author of the new book "a the dils are here," bethany mclean. alan greenspan, former federal reserve chair, and former spear of the house, newt gingrich and former democratic representative harold ford jr. free trade and his approach to economic recovery. alan greenspan, dr. greenspan, l me begin with you. where are we on our search for jobs and on our overall economic outlook? >> well, our search for jobs is still -- not doing too well.

10% unemployment rate is the consequence of the fact that this economy is not picking up the way it ordinarily would out of a recession. and the basic reason is that unlike previous recoveries when, for example, we would be getting very significant pick ups in building, residential, nonresidenti nonresidential, we're not getting that today. it's a big hole in the econom and the reason, esentially, as far as the business sector is concerned is that business is highly uncertain about the future in a way whch i've never seen it before and way in which the data suggests has never, in fact, been so depressed. and unless and until we can begin to lift that uncertainty, it is very difficult to see people reaching out into the

longer term. let us remember, buildings are 20, 30-year investments. >> right. >> what the data show is that extremely high risk aversion in what experts call. >> newt gingrich, the president talked about a new normal in our economy. let me play a portion of the interview and have you react to it. >> what is a danger is that we stay stuck in a new normal where unemployment rates stay high. people who have jbs see their incomes go up. businesses make big profits. but they've learned to do re with less and so they don't hire. and as a consequence, we keep on seeing growth that is just too slow to bring back the 8 million jobs that were lost. >> do you accept that? >> no. i think we have two enormous

policy challens. fir is that we're now in a world market, general be win world market where you've got to think about economics in terms of competing with china, india, germany. you ought to study germany, high-cost country with a huge export base. this administration is just wrong. the obama model of economy is fundamentally, profoundly wrong. i don't care -- i think chairman bernanke is very foolish to be $600 billion of additional money, because the fact is that the problems in this economy are problems of fiscal policy, problems of taxation and problems of an anti-business, anti-j anti-jobs bureaucry that this president encourages. >> harold, we're propping up the housing market. we're in this state. do you agree with that? >> in large part. let me differ a little bit with the speaker. i think there are two kinds of debt here. the first is the debt we're accumulating as a result of this crisis and we can't ignore the factthat to get america back on

a growth trajectory and growth platform, i agree with the chairman wholeheartedly. i hope the administration will call for a moratorium on regulations and cut even the corrate rate. an active role, especially in the face of inaction on the fiscal side, i think, is wrong. two, the entitlement debt. recommendations made by this deficit reduction commission have been responsible. there may be some areas we disagree with. i hope the left in my party and the right in the republican party don't scream so loud that they scare the crowd at middle. >> i want to get back to the debt commission. bethany mclean, a big part of your book deals with the financial collapse and the housing market. we don't talk about this enough. the fact that the government is propping up the housing market. prices have not come down far enough even though there's so much pain out there and such a crisis out there. can the economy really rebound unless the housing market coects fully?

>> that's a great question. it's a really interesting thing. one of the great ironies of the financial crisis, one of the big complais is that government's role was a factor. it was the factor. we have come out of the financial crisis with the housing market een more reliant on the government. it's now some 90% of the housing market. and i don't know if anybody has the guts to see what happens if you yank government support away from the housing market right now. but i think if you don't do that, it's hard to argue that we found a real bottom in housing prices. but doing so will ris putting the economy into more of a -- >> alan greenspan,is there a second crash out there that you fear? >> no, i don't. in fact, we are i a position where we are mving forward largely because the rest of the world is moving forward. so, we're moving forward, but at too slow a paceto bring the

unemployment rate down. there's very little evidence of any deterioration that suggests we're about to have a dble dip, as they call it. in fa, if there's any evidence at all, we are actually picking up some. through the month of november, industrial production is clearly improving and all evidence is out there that this is a very mild degree of acceleration in the american economy, but not enough to get the system -- >> let's talk about the debt commission. speaker gingrich you've been on ai this week, disagreeing with some of these recommendations. they've got to get to 14. what i asked senator mccain, is this a nonstarter, starter or something in between? >> the statement by the chairman is a nonstarter because you not only have to get to 14 but you have to get through the house and senate. to frighten most americans, that's what it did. people are calling or e-mailing me about cutting social security

is absurd. it's not going to happen. >> don't we have to have an adult coersation with people about what the real problem is? >> look, i think something equivalent to what alan simpson put out is going to be passed by the congress. the only question is, is it before or after a bond market crisis? because there's no ternative. >> you've got to explain a little bit more about what that means. >> here is the issue. right now, we have very low bond prices and markets are functioning in a reasonably good way. the big, serious problem is whether or not the outlook for the longer-termeficit spooks the bond market to a point where long-term interest and mortgage rates move up very sharply. if that happens, that will cause

the double dip. just basically hoping we have enough sense to realize that we've got to rolve this issue before it gets forced upon us. >> on friday he writes about the politics here. me of the best ways to raise revenue and cut spending but it comes with no enactment strategy. in this climate, asking politici politicians to end mortgage deduction and tax employer health care plans and raise capital gains taxes and cuts benefits for affluent seniors is asking them to jump on a buzzing sack full of liverenades and they won't do it. >> people see it coming and we have to take action. if we don't take action, we'll look back when there is a bond market crisis and say why didn't we do something when we had choices? people at this table may disagree with me but it seems our budget problems are simple arithmetic.

we're spending $3 for every dollar we take in. something has to give. >> i don't see why some of these suggestions on social security are going to be demagogged to death. why can't people have that be a serious discussion point? >> you can't pay off the debt without either cutting things or raising taxes. this is a pretty good mixture of things. the chairman is right in another regard. this is going to happen. we're going to have to deal with our deficit either by congressional, senate and political leaders acting or the global markets will impose a harsher set of realities, force rates to go up and change our standing in the world. speaker gingrich is a friend. he has been not only a leader in the republican party,e has been a leader in a lot of ways in calling for a new american way, new american majority. i would hope that all the smart minds in the republican and democratic party could come together and say this is painful, but we have to do this. if we're serious about all this talk with our kids and grandkids, we're facing the --

>> the tea party movement its within the repubcan party, why don't you think there's more of a mandate for really tough choices on government spending? >> let me come back for a second, david. people can disagree without it being demagoguery. i helped to work with bill clinton and we balanced the budget for four straight years and paid off $4 billion in debt. it was not a trivial achiement. it can be done. it can't be done by sweeping, slashing generalizations by people who won't be affected. the deficit commission at the rate they're going will be a step backwards. the tea party movement wants real change. they would start and say to you what john boehner has said, the new speaker. roll back the discretionary accounts to the 2008 level. that's a trillion dollars over ten years. ibm and other technical companies will come in with a set of proposals to change the management of government. they believe that's another trillion dollars. at the center of heath transformation, fraud in medicare d medicaid because

the government is such a bad manager, that's 70 to $120 billion a year. you can do a lot things to get back to a balanced budget without having to hurt the american people. >> let me get a break in here. we'll come back and talk more about this. ♪ ♪ i was young and i was stupid ♪ i had just turned 17 ♪ a harmonica and a box guitar ♪ ♪ in a canvas-covered wagon stuffed... ♪ [ male announcer ] while the world's been waiting on the electric car, maybe the whole time, the electric car has been waiting for this... the wattstation from ge. it's ing to change the way we get to where we all want to go. ♪ i didn't think much of it till i took it apart ♪

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my kids say i speak a different language. but i love math and math and science develop new ideas. we've used hydrogen in our plants for decades. the old hydrogen units were very large. recently, we've been able to duce that. th our scientists said "what we could make it small enough to produce and use hydrogen right on board a car, as part of a hydrogen system." is could significantly reduce emissions and increasfuel economy by as much as 80%. we're back with the roundtable. harold ford, here are some of the scenes fromround the world. london, you saw rioting in the street because of a hike of college tuition costs. in the past year, we remember scenes from greece. draconian cuts were introduced and there was social unrest. is that what it could come to in this country if the politicians

really do try to tackle the debt? >> i hope not. i think there's a sense of who we are, whate represent and why we're important to the word. the notion of exceptionalism is thrown around and the term is thrown around often. we have innovated, we've led. for us to maintain that position, changes will have to come back. the rise of e tea party movement, in some ways, is positive for this discussion. if th recognize that overspending, overtaxing are challenges to the country, the same is true when we look back at the clinton years. he realized that as well. smart, sensible people in both parties as long as you don't allow the far left and the far right to crowd out the predominant middle, we can ge a lot of this done f that means making tough choices on social security, i'm 40. i'm willing to give that up. a lot of people who are my ag are willing to do the same but political leaders have to show courage and will to make that happen. >> i had no idea you were that old. speaker gingrich, do you think this president has theolitical stroke that bill clinton did to

actually forge a consensus on tough choices? >> i have no idea. i was a little disappointed in mr. axeod's comments this morning. but it took president clinton eight months from the time we won inovember to his decision in june of '95 to work with us. i mean, change on this scale is very wrenching. it's wrenching for his staff. it's wrenching for his allies. speaker pelosi becoming the minority leader will make it harder. i don't know what the president will do. the only place i worry about in terms of kind of riots yu were showing is not americans in general. i believe the scale of change coming to government workers is going to be so great thatou may well see, in places like sacramento or alny, new york, very serious nrest by union members who are offended at the idea that they should actually earn in prortion to the taxpayer and not be the new special class in america, which is what they've bome over the past 20 years. >> let me get to -- we talked

about this issue before, dr. greenspan. should the tax cuts on wealthier americans extended without corresponding spending cuts? what's going to happen? what should happen? >> well, wat's going to happen is they're going to get extended and that's very obvious with respect to what the rhetoric is. that's the easiest thing to d politically at this stage. we have to recognize that longer term the problem is spending. you can't think about the concept of taxes untilyou ask what is it that you're hunting? at the moment, we are essentially borrowing more than a third of what we spend and this is causing a huge increase in the debt. it's not going to be easily reverse as far as i'm concerned, what we're going to have to do is to essentially lookat not individual piece meal cuts or taxes.

we have to look at whole projects. for example, i think paul ryan di a very important -- made a very important contribution. >> chairman of the budget committee in the house? >> yeah. you can agree or disagree with his structure. i happen to agree with most of it. >> draconian cuts in medicare? >> yeah. we'll have to vote anp or down budget each time. all of thse budgets are going to come up, are going to be compromised. you can't do it piecemeal. very fascinating question is, how, i ask my colleagues across the table here, how does the congress de with that sort of thing? committee chairmen and committee s that have jurisdiction for all various aspects of the budget are going tonsist upon -- >> let me getethany on the tax cut issue, whether this will move forward or only on a temporary basis. >> i have to say, i hope it does. if you lo at economic history, the bush tax cuts didn't put our

economy on a sound footing. since neither one has worked, let's try some of both. my b fear is that we don't have as much time as washington seems to think we have. i say that because the smart money on wall street has been talking about a sovereign debt crisis for a couple of years now, even before we had the -- >> what does that mean? >> that mean that is we're going to have this bond market crisis that dr. greenspan was talking about earlier, sooner than we may expect and i worry that we have less time to fix this problem and less time to get our house in order than people seem to think. >> what happens in an indull generaindullge indlgence in an area -- if fanny mae and freddie mac, there is no re room for mortgages an the government says we have to wind these things down, what will happen with the mortgage market? >> the private market does step up, and the case that some people argue, that freddie and

fannie are crowding out the market. >> you worry about proposition up the housing market, dr. greenspan? >> unless the housing market begins to move back, we'll not have any significant cuts in the unemployment ra generally. but at the moment, housing starts are as low as they can get and replace the number of units we need. so there's a question not of the housing market going down anore. the key question here is the price of homes. becau what we saw, for example, in 2005, 2006, there was something like 8 million new home purchases financed by conventional conforming mortgages, which means 20% down and the like. those 8 million homes are now right on the edge of being so-called under water. and while the price levels o homes have been remkably stable since the beginning of

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iowa. where are you? are you going to run? >> i'm leaning bk. it' like you in the center rase ace. if we do run, we'll announce, i suspect, in late march. we're still months away from that. >> what's going into your thinking? >> can you create a movement that wants to get to fundamental change and can you make that bigger than the presidency? i n't think you can solve problems in a country of 13,000 elected officials with only focusing on the oval office. >> do you think the president is vulnerable in 2012? >> yes. but he has an enormous opportunity to recovery. he and the house republicans will fight over who did it, but i suspect it will be closer8% than 10% unemployment. >> sarah palin and the tea part have created a whole new dynamic on the republican side. it is impossible to say who has

an early edge. what is the impact? >> i think that's exactly right it's like all the races we saw this year. you will not know who the nominee is until very late in the spring of 2012, because governor palin has a role, governor huckabee has a role, governor daniels. go down the list. governor pawlenty, governor barbour. you could have 12 or 15 candidates next year and you won't know how the conversation leads to a decision until it actually happens. >> we'll leave it the. thank you all very much for joining us today. you can read an excerpt of "all the devils are here" from bethany mclean, and latest novel about valley forge, george washington and the crucible of victory all on our website. we'll be back next week with an exclusive interview with governor bobby jindal, taking ñ;

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while brushing your teeth keeping the water on wastes almost eight gallons of water? keeping your teeth white doesn't have to put you in the red. turn off the faucet and watch yourself go green.

she was fun. she was happy. >> popular, pretty. she was the girl in the yellow camero, right out of school she married r sweetheart. he was the one who found her. >> my wife's been killed! please hurry.

>> young wife, dead on the bedroom floor. >> i want to know why. why? >> who could have killed her? there were plenty of whispers about a marriage on the rocks and a husband under a cloud. >> hearsay and gossip and li. for decades it went unsolved, mystery. then they opened it, a lime green suitcase, and no one was prepared for what happened afterward. >> my mi was just screaming. >> a detective, asister, both. after almost 30 years, could they get it? "the secrets in the suitcase". >> thanks for joining us. i'm ann curry. for police it was that most frustrating of cases, a crime, a suspect, but not enough evidence to prove or solve it. almost three decades passed and heart broken loved ones wondered if justice would ever be done. then they learned the answer was

in plain sight all along. it just wasn't what anyone expected. here's keith morrison. >> they kept it in the dark. down the stairs in the basement. among the bolt cutters and the bags of white pder and the guns. the investigative leftovers of a small police department. why they chose a lime green suitcase for it is beyond knowing now. but h'd see it down there every time he filed a piece of evidence, tucked in all but forgotten behind a door frame like a silent ausation. >> there it kind of sat in that room staring at you. >> yes, yes, for years. >> in fact, since about the time brad benson got his start in the woods cross police department. >> i was always intrigued by this case because, you know, it was a cold case, homicide, that had never beensolved. >> the lime green mystery. inside that suitcase the

original just like this one was quite possibly all the evidence required to p a murderer away for life. if he opened it, god knows what would come sithering out. though he never guessed just how bizarre it would turn out to be. back inhe summer of 1980, it seemed frankly like one of those murders that happened all too commonly in other cities though surely not here. brad benson was a rookie, a reserve officer in the town that only rarely seemed to need much of a police department. >> i was kind ofhocked quite frankly that we hadomething like that in woods cross. i had only been there a couple years but i could never imagine we would be investigating a homicide. >> murder in woodscrossing. unheard of. >> yes, unheard of. that was our very first homicide as a matter of fact. >> woods cross was busily growing out from the fringe of

salt lake city in those days, quiet, middle class, studded everywhere with mostly mormon churches, and it prided itself on being a safe place to live. that's why people moved here. so it was a shock that very first time woods cross encountered murder. it was the 6th of june, 1980, a friday morning. >> oh my god! this is 1653 south -- 1200 -- 1200 west 1653 south. >> what's the problem? >> in woods cross. my wife's been killed! i just got home from work! >> the event stands out in the collective memoryhere. >> i'll send -- what is your name? >> steve strom. please come. please hurry. >> steve strom was an overnight shift worker at a local aerospace parts company, so it was just before 8:00 a.m. he told first responders when he came home to find his wife's body. she had been severely beaten, the furniture in their bedroom pushed around as if in a violent

struggle. >> i was at work and my step mother had called me and she says, karen's dead. i just said, what? she goes, karen's dead. i said she can't be. i just talked to her. >> karen strom's sister coco rushed to the crime scene. a friendly cop threw that jacket around her shoulders. >> i knew it was a crime scene but oh, god i just wanted to old her so bad. then they brought her body out and you're in such shock. you're like, she can't be in there. no. that's not my sister. she's not in there. then they took her away. >> did y ever get a chance to hold her? >> . no. >> then the whole town got to know about coco's big sister, karen, how pretty she was, how full of life and potential, how young. just 25 when someone got into her bedroom, tore the place apart, and strangled the life out of her.

what earthly reason would anyone have for killing karen strom? >> she was fun. she was happy. she had a lot of friends. she was a good soul. >> but even before that awful day came to an end, some friends of steve and karen strom felt like they knew what must have happened. >> i received a telephone call from my husband and what he said to me was, well, it finally happened. steve finally killed her. >> steve killed her? >> my wife's been killed! i just g home from work! >> was his frantic voice on that 911 call the equivalent of crying crocodile tears? brad benson, remember, was a rookie back then. didn't take part in the investigation. but before long his calling

seemed to feel that eve was indeed the murderer. and they h their reasons. >> well, there were some reports of domestic violence in his past. >> in fact, it turned out, karen had left steve. why was she even in the house that night? a couple mohs after ren's death steve was arrested and chaed with his wife's murder. what did steve strom do? >> well, of course, he denied it. he denied beinginvolved. he fought the case tooth and nail. >> those investigators remained convinced that their man was steve? >> yes. >> but as the trial approached back at the beginning of the 1980s none of the evidence from that chaotic bedroom murder scene could be tested for dna. the technology just didn't exist then. what they had instead was a circumstantial case, the testimony of friends an family, who would say that steve was sometimes verbally and possibly physically abusive. karen wanted out. >> there was black eyes and

bruises that were witnessed by some of their co-workers and friends. >> but it wasn't enough. not much more than hearsay acrding to the assigned trial judge who dismissed the charges and released steve strom to go on about his life. strom lost his friends, his cribility. perhaps oly this friend still believed in him. >> i mean, everybody was just saying, you did it. you did it. you did it. you know? and they chased him. they followed him everywhere he went. >> cops? >> yep. i was with him. and that was that. nobody satisfied. certainly not karen's sister coco who believed in her heart like so many others that steve had gotten away with murder. and that decided coco could not stand. her big sister had been there for her growing up and now coco would do what she could to fight for justice. >> 27 years. >> 27 years and it ner left

your mind? >> how could it? it's shocking. and it's your sister. somebody you loved dearly. it's like you go and think about it and then you give up and then it's there again. you know, it never goes away. >> just like the lime green suitcase. all that evidence felt no emotion at all as it sat there gathering dust all those years. but now as he contemplated retirement, brad benson now a detective sergeant had come to believe or hope at least that new tecologies would finally give mute evidence a voice. and make the case that couldn't be made back in 198 >> we're very confidt if there is dna that it'll come back to somebody we are familiar with. but you know what they say about assumptions, because as bson was about to discover, just benea that apparently obvious surface was a very strange story

indeed. coming up -- >> i thought, wow. maybe something is really going to happen this time. >> old evidence yields new clues. where would they lead? to a place nobody in woods cross would have thought. when "the secrets in the suitcase" continues. [ spanish music strumming ] ♪ ♪ it ain't pretty... but brenda likes it. that's the power of gain. gain apple mao tango. in detergent, fabric softener and now in dish soap, too. sniff sniff...hooray! maybe it's because their department store makeup is expensive. simply ageless witolay regenerist serum costs less and it won't glob up in lines and wrinkles. you'll look amazing and happy too. simply ageless, from olay and easy breezy beautiful covergl.

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