bob mcdonald veterans administration, in the last few months.sing urban development. megan smith, senior technology guru from google. we'll keep adding people, ron claim and john allen on i.s.i.l. >> albert: so any sense, okay, we had an election, heard from the voters and we have to make bigger changes now? >> well, if the bigger changes now are, you know, us, as you say, firing somebody, i don't see anything like that on the horizon. >> albert: who's going to be the main contact, the chief contact in this different environment with leader mcconnell? will it be vice president biden? denis mcdonough? who will it be? >> i think the president will be working closely with the leader and you heard what he said in the press conference about their interactions over the course of time. they had good interaction today before lunch and will continue to build that. the leader has been gracious to me over the course of my time in this job and obviously developed a good working relationship with the vice president but the chief contact being the president,

. >> reporter: new veteran's administration secretary bob mcdonald made the rounds in advance of veterans day with several appearances touting a new day at the va. among the changes, thousands of employees implicated in falsifying wait times and who caused poor patient care are being disciplined. >> the top level people we have disciplinary actions against, there are 40 plus of those. we look over the last year, we have had about 5,600 different actions, some of which are already completed. >> critics ask why is it taking so long, a law passed last summer, cut the va's cumbersome appeals process to just 20 days. if a judge fails to rule within that time-- >> there are no administrative impedestrianments, congress passed a reform law that gave him all the power he needs to immediately fire senior managers for cause. >> the chairman of the house veterans affairs committee says,ish stead of embracing -- mcdonald is highlighting other progress such as integrating websites and pass words, 1.2 million authorizations for care in the private sector with new choice cards. >> the first choice cards

veteran's day today, the administration has announced it may fire 1,000 staffers who were part of the failure to provide adequate healthcare to veterans. newly appointed veterans affairs secretary bob mcdonald cited improvements in care. >> we have developed something we call the blueprint for v.a.'snce to reestablish leader in health care and we have begun what may become the largest restructuring in the department's history. >> in nigeria, a suicide bomber disguised as a student killed nearly 50 boys at a boarding school in the town of potiskum. boko haram isroup suspected of carrying out the attack. in india, at least eight women have died and 30 others are in serious condition after receiving sterilization surgeries with infected instruments as part of a government run program. more than 80 women were reportedly operated on over a six-hour period by a single doctor. india offers free sterilizations as a way to combat population growth, often providing cash incentives that amount to the equivalent of a week's salary for the poor. outrage continues in mexico over the apparent massacre of 43 students in the southern state of guerrero. on monday protesters blocked the international airport

martha: the new secretary of the scandal-plagued veterans administration wasting no time trying to clean house. bill sits down with bob mcdonald and asks about changes he has in mind after the biggest shake-up in va history. >> one of my very first days i asked every employee to sit with their leader, talk about the mission and recommit themselves to it. if we have an individual who violated our values we're going to act upon that. i make a lot of purchases for my business. and i get a lot in return with ink plus from chase. like 50,000 bonus points when i spent $5,000 in the first 3 months after i opened my account. and i earn 5 times the rewards on internet, phone services and at office supply stores. with ink plus i can choose how to redeem my points. travel, gift cards, even cash back. and my rewards points won't expire. so you can make owning a business even more rewarding. ink from chase. so you can. by 1914 the dodge brothers and set out on their own.pany they believed in more, than the assembly line. they believed driving was a holy endeavor. a hundred years later the dodge brothers spirit lives on. bill: the captain o

veterans? >> yes, actually. >> okay. >> what bob mcdonald has done is taken the job with the proviso he can do things erik shinseki couldn't do, for example firing non-productive administratorsgetting rid of the bonus system that prostituted effectively the appointment system, where they manufactured short waiting times and actually put people who were -- who needed appointments, put them in a holding pattern for weeks and then months, with the administrators getting a bonus anyway. he's gotten rid of all of that. i think it's going to be a relatively short time as the system develops that waiting times will come down even further. it remains to be seen. it's a large unwieldy impassive bureaucracy. but bob mcdonald is a really tough guy. he ran proctor and gamble, a graduate of the military academy and i think he knows what to do in a large bureaucracy like that and i think he will do a good job. >> looking overseas, the third rail is this sending troops into iraq. president obama sent force but flatly rejects sending troops into combat. what do you think of these force. >> one level of analysis i think it's disingenuous to say we will only send advisors and they won't be in

administrative leave. we've moved them out because we don't want any harm to our veterans. >> tomorrow on "60 minutes" bob mcdonald explains the reorganization of the biggest system. >>> also tomorrow the germans will celebrate the anniversary of the fall of the biggest wall. the wall snaked for more than 25 miles across berlin dividing the communist ruled east from the isolated democratic west. a potent symbol of the cold war. charlie d'agata has more from london. >> reporter: 8,000 illuminated balloons lit up city sidewalks a new ber len wall to mark 25 years since it was brought down. since 1961 the wall became the sign of the cold war. hundreds died trying. an iron curtain made of stone, it was an icon and the fault line between the soviet empire of the east and the democratic west. president john f. kennedy visited in the summer of 1963 and solidarity to both sides of berlin. >> mr. gorbachev, open this gate. >> reporter: in a 1987 speech in front of brandenberg gate president ronald reagan threw down the challenge to leader mikael gorbachev. >> mr. goshrbachev, tear down this wall. >> reporter: it happened i