he leaves tom daschle, like where they? tom daschle doesn't get the big job but he is still an adviser. he says i can't get a call and for two months. it is a black hole in there. he is losing in march and april and in today the most important two months and 15 years on health care after he steps up saying this is my priority with all of this promethean power obama nothing happens. and he forgets that and gives it to baucus in the senate and the tea party is taking up in the summer. obama says i need to give a speech. the biggest speech of his first year. and rahm says you have to wait till the end because you only get one shot. he makes a decision and again he doesn't make a lot of these but this is one he makes. he calls it the brilliant speechwriter. the guy is 14 to 15 years old. it's unbelievable. how did that happen? the guy says he is brilliant and they have this bond. it is kind of the fusion of the youth movement that follows obama and they are ripping off of each other. is a great speech and the ted kennedy letter

. >> the letter is addressed to tom daschle. it's open. the white powder spills out. >> we don't know how many people came in contact with the letter. there were 40 people in my office at the time. >> a preliminary testing says it's anthrax. it was game on. >> i was covering the hill back then, and i can tell you, it felt surreal. congress and the supreme court shut down, and mail delivery to the white house was cut off. all three branches of government. >> you can't overstate the drama, the shock and awe power of that event. >> a massive multi-agency investigation called amerithrax goes to full force. another anthrax letter addressed to senator patrick leahy of vermont found unopened. >> no one thought, whoa, any letter in congress has to come through the brentwood mail handling facility just a few blocks away in northeast washington. so none of the postal worker were given the benefit of immediate nasal swabs or preemptive doses of an antibiotic. >> two poes sal workers, joseph curseen and thomas morris jr. will die. >> letters but we co

october 15th, then senate majority leader tom daschle reports anthrax found in his office. 23rd, two postal workers in washington, d.c. die after anthrax poisoning. october 31st, a hospital worker in new york city becomes the fourth victim. november 21st, a 94-year-old woman in connecticut becomes the fifth victim in the anthrax attacks. years later, in july 2008, bruce ivans, a government scientists suspected in the attacks commits suicide. so how much have we learned about biodefense over the last decade and are we any safer? jonathan moreno, a senior fellow at the center for american progress. also author, of the body politic, the battle over science in america. jonathan, you know we take that whole episode pretty seriously. there were anthrax spores mailed to this building where fox news channel sits. >> yeah. jon: obviously or thankfully nobody here was infected but it hit very close to home. so answer the question, are we better prepared? >> it is a mixed answer, jon. we're better prepared than we were in october of 2001. at that time some public health departments di

then i heard that time-so wanted to offer that amendment -- tom daschle and he wanted a promise that he could offer it. i checked and found out he was right and i was wrong. we did what we call it vitiating all of the proceedings -- voiding all of the proceedings. we watched it out and he offered it and everything was fine. it seems to me that some of that is missing today, some of the trust and some of the friendship. i do not want to criticize the place that i was all parts of for 30-something years. i think we can do better and i believe we will. people are going to rise up on the democratic and republican side. there are going to be leaders on both sides who will say, i can i get it all, but i will take x. the other side will say, i do not want to give all of that, but i will take xy. have a meeting with all of the people working on the bill. i would say, work it out. when you get it worked out, come to see me. it worked pretty well. we got a lot of things worked out. [laughter] i cannot read this. i know it is a great honor to be in the senate. i remember that. [laughter] oh, ye

and then i heard that tom daschle had wanted to offer that amendment and thought he was going to have that promise that he could offer, and i checked and found out that he was right and i was wrong. so we did what we call the sheeting of the proceedings and this sort of white it out and tom daschle got up and passed his amendment and everything was fine. tom was a good friend of mine coming and i think -- i don't know, it just seems to me some of that is missing today. some of the trust and some of the friendship, and i don't say -- i don't want to criticize the place i was a part of for 30 some years, but i think we can do better and i think we will. people are going to rise up on the democratic and republican side and there are going to be leaders on both sides who are going to say i can't get it all but i will take x and the other side says i don't want to give all that but i will take xy or something like that, how it works. my family -- i would have a meeting with all the people working on the bill, and i would just say work it out. you get it worked out, come and see me. and wor

take a guy like tom daschle, mike, tom daschle, pushed aside during the stupidity of a process that weedss to be secretary of the treasury. about the you mentioned obama was quick to fire. who did he fire? >> actually -- they're not senior people, but the people like assistant secretary of labor, there were some questions about contracting. gone in a day. remember shirley sherrod? now, that wasn't obama himself, i'm saying, it's a double-edged sword. they did not want to let anything fester. so, there are many examples of stories that surfaced for less than a full news cycle, the person was gone. none of us got a chance to really talk about it. there's also -- but there are a lot of other explanations, too, there's been really pretty impressive oversight of the -- of the stimulus money. you know, $787 billion and you would think -- i certainly expected that there would be a lot more scandals with the way that money was spent. you can say, well, they didn't spend it well. some people might argue that. but that's not the same thing as saying that it was stolen or somehow abused. >> right. >

then i heard that time-so wanted to offer that amendment -- tom daschle and he wanted a promise thatund out he was right and i was wrong. we did what we call it vitiating all of the proceedings -- ev voiding all of the proceedings. we watched it out and he offered it and everything was fine. it seems to me that some of that is missing today, some of the trust and some of the friendship. i do not want to criticize the place that i was all parts of for 30-something years. i think we can do better and i believe we will. people are going to rise up on the democratic and republican side. there are going to be leaders on both sides who will say, i can i get it all, but i will take x. the other side will say, i do not want to give all of that, but i will take xy. have a meeting with all of the people working on the bill. i would say, work it out. when you get it worked out, come to see me. it worked pretty well. we got a lot of things worked out. [laughter] i cannot read this. i know it is a great honor to be in the senate. i remember that. [laughter] oh, yeah. this old institute is a great