Afghani Hospital Catches Attention of Pentagon; Mothers Against Drunk Driving Protesting New Product
BALDWIN: Rotting flesh, protruding ribs? Now, the treatment of wounded afghan soldiers in a Kabul hospital has caught the attention of the Pentagon because the military hospital is partly funded by the U.S. Live pictures coming in here. This is a hearing happening right now into the claims of abuse here and I just want to give you a warning. Time to pause, get the kids out of the room, if you have little ones there. Look away if you need to because the images we're about to show you, they're tough to look at. But they're also very, very important here. CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr has our exclusive report.</s>BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Afghan soldiers starving, lying in dirty beds with festering wounds, denied painkillers. All of this at the Kabul National Military Hospital, a hospital the U.S. paid more than $100 million to help the Afghans run. COLONEL SCHUYLER GELLER, M.D., U.S. AIR FORCE</s>STARR: These days, a world away, Schuyler Geller, a retired Air Force doctor, tends to his Tennessee farm.</s>GELLER: This will be kind of a little haven.</s>STARR: From February 2010 to February 201 he oversaw training of Afghans at the hospital. These photos were taken by his American military staff.</s>GELLER: There are patients that are starving to death because they can't buy the food. They have to bribe for food. They have to bribe for medicine. Patients were beaten when they complained about no pain medicine or no medicine.</s>STARR: And you're not supposed to worry about that?</s>GELLER: That's what we were told.</s>STARR: Pentagon officials do not dispute that the photos from 2010 show hidden, but deliberate abuse by Afghan staff, but they insist that after a U.S. inspection, conditions have improved significantly. In this memo to Congress, Geller alleges, two senior U.S. generals who oversaw afghan training, Lieutenant General William Caldwell and his deputy, Brigadier General Gary Patton, in 2010 delayed bringing in Pentagon investigators because of their political concerns over the looming mid-term U.S. elections. Geller says Caldwell was angry his staff wanted the inspector general to investigate and that Patton ordered a delay out of concern it would embarrass the Obama White House.</s>GELLER: And then he said, but we don't want to do -- we don't want to put that request in right now because there's an upcoming general election. And we wouldn't want this to leak out.</s>REPRESENTATIVE JASON CHAFFETZ (R), UTAH: That's just not acceptable.</s>STARR: Congressman Jason Chaffetz's House oversight subcommittee is investigating the general's alleged behavior.</s>CHAFFETZ: Now, that's a very serious allegation, but it didn't come from just one high-ranking military on the ground. It didn't come from just two. We have several of them who have stepped forward and said, yes, this was indeed the case.</s>STARR: Geller says he wants the truth to come out.</s>GELLER: The biggest frustration is our own leadership's response and how slow that was and how inadequate that was.</s>BALDWIN: Want to bring in our Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr. And just the first image in your piece, I mean, that man looked skeletal. We mentioned this hearing. We saw the pictures. This hearing is happening right now, looking into these allegations that you were just discussing in that interview. What do we expect to come out of this?</s>STARR: Well, you know, the committee has put out a statement, the chairman has put out a statement saying that he is -- and I want to quote -- "disheartened and disgusted by these photos." I want to be clear. This has been around since about 2010, but it's only recently that Schuyler Geller has come forward publicly and agreed to give us this interview on camera. And we now have the Pentagon's inspector general again, Brooke, again looking into all of this, launching a review about whether General Caldwell and Patton did delay an investigation into all of this. General Caldwell, General Patton, we reached out. They declined to comment because of this new pending inspector general review. The Pentagon says the problems have been fixed at the hospital, but Congress is holding hearings to try to determine what really happened here.</s>BALDWIN: I know you'll be watching to see what comes of the review and we'll look for that. Barbara Starr for us at the Pentagon. Barbara, appreciate it. Coming up next, a billboard showing how you can beat a breathalyzer. Yep. You're about to hear how this works and why one group is livid.</s>BALDWIN: I want tell about you this new product that has MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, really living up to its name. MADD in Georgia is worried about the "Breathalyzer Equalizer." That's what this thing's called, which came on the market just last month. A company video demonstrates how a person takes this "Breathalyzer Equalizer." Here he goes. Swallowing this powder to get rid of what's called residual mouth alcohol, so that you can get a lower reading if you have to take a breathalyzer test.</s>BARRY MARTIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GEORGIA MOTHERS AGAINST DRUNK DRIVING: You're putting drunks on the road. If you get caught, you know, you can beat the test and that false sense of hope is going to lead to an accident. That accident could kill somebody, could injure somebody.</s>BALDWIN: Defense attorney Joey Jackson is on the case. So, Joey, I actually was not familiar with residual mouth alcohol until today. So, explain to me how this really works. You take this powder, let's say you haven't had enough drinks to be drunk, but it still leaves something so you could fail a test, is that correct?</s>JOEY JACKSON, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: It could. This is how it works, according to what I've learned as a former prosecutor and now doing this from a defense perspective. What happens is you want a reliable and accurate reading and there are machines which detect the presence of alcohol in your blood. It's a blood-to-alcohol content and they measure it by when you blow into a tube. So, the issue is, you want an accurate reading and, oftentimes, that reading is contaminated or could be by what's called residual mouth alcohol. And what that is, Brooke, it's alcohol which gets confined or secreted in the oral cavity and it could come from a number of things. That's why officers are trained to observe you for a period of time, often 15, 20 minutes, so that if you belch, it comes up from the stomach, it can leave contaminant in your mouth. If you, for example, vomit, regurgitation causes it. You can get it from Binaca Blast or some of those other things. And, so, what this product is designed to do is to eliminate that residual alcohol and just get an accurate reading from what you're blowing from your stomach, deep air, into the tube.</s>BALDWIN: OK, so, the issue, as we just heard in that sound bite from the gentleman from MADD is they're worried that, OK, drunk drivers will try this and that's going to lead to more drunk driving on the roads. Let me get to this. This is the response we have from the company's executive vice president, the company making this product. He's the man we saw in the demonstration video. Here's what he says. Let me quote. "We do not condone drunk driving. This product only reduces the false readings on the roadside breathalyzer that can be caused by residual mouth alcohol and has no effect on a person's true alcohol concentration. Our only goal is to improve the accuracy in roadside breath-testing." So, Joey, if it turns out that a drunk driver thinks that they can use this product and it's going to work, could police then use that against the driver?</s>JACKSON: You know, it would seem to be that they're going to use everything they can, but I would hasten to add this, Brooke. It's not the only thing. The measure of alcohol in your blood is one indicator. There are other things police do, as we know. They have you walk the straight line, right, nine times forward, nine times back. They have you touch your nose to make sure you're OK. They have you stand on one leg to see what your balance is. So, this is one tool, of course, that this company is saying would give you a more reliable reading because it would eliminate any contaminant in your mouth and ensure, and only ensure, that the result comes from deep lung air. So you can spin it any way you like. Prosecutors, I'm sure, won't like this. Defense attorneys will love it. But ultimately, if the product is going to lead to a more desirable result and accurate result, then so be it.</s>BALDWIN: All right. Joey Jackson, thanks for the explanation. Appreciate it. "On the Case" here.</s>JACKSON: A pleasure, Brooke.</s>BALDWIN: It is even hard to bring a hardcore rocker to tears, but watch this.</s>FLEA, MUSICIAN: It was so beautiful, you know.</s>BALDWIN: Chili Pepper bassist, Flea, rocker-dad in tears. You're going to see why this story really affects him.