Congressional Hearings on Conditions at Walter Reed; Vying for Votes; Atlanta Bus Crash
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: You are with CNN. You're informed. Good morning, everybody. I'm Heidi Collins.</s>T.J. HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm T.J. Holmes, sitting in today for Tony Harris. Developments coming in to the NEWSROOM on this Monday, March 5th. Her is what we have on the rundown.</s>COLLINS: Happening now, Army outpatient care under the microscope. Congress questioning generals and soldiers about conditions at Walter Reed.</s>HOLMES: From foe to friend? North Korea and the U.S. sit down for one-on-one talks today. Could American aid be far behind?</s>COLLINS: And it's an illness that's often misdiagnosed. Living with Celiac Disease in the NEWSROOM. Army generals facing major questions this hour. What went wrong at the Army's premier hospital? Right now, live pictures. You see members of Congress are at Army Walter Reed Medical Center, holding a hearing. The focus, reports of substandard conditions for America's wounded warriors. CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr is following today's hearings. Barbara, I've been trying to listen in myself, but it's a little difficult to do. Tell us what has happened so far this morning.</s>BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Heidi, this is an extraordinary hearing this morning at Walter Reed. This is the first panel. We have two very badly injured soldiers, the wife of another soldier testifying on behalf of her husband. What Americans are seeing here, Heidi, is the side of coming home from war that is not about parades, that is not about music videos. The very painful side of trying to get the medical care that these troops need. Let's play for you just two comments that were made by these wounded troops.</s>STAFF. SGT. JOHN DANIEL SHANNON, U.S. ARMY: The system can't be trusted. And soldiers get less than they deserve from a system seemingly design to run -- and run, to cut the costs associated with fighting this war. The truly sad thing is that surviving veterans from every war we've ever fought can tell the same basic story.</s>SPEC. JEREMY DUNCAN, U.S. ARMY: The conditions in the room in my mind were just -- it was unforgivable for anybody to live -- it wasn't fit for anybody to live in a room like that. I know most soldiers have -- they're just coming out of recovery. You have weaker immune systems. The black mold can do damage to people and the holes in the walls. I wouldn't live there even if I had to.</s>STARR: Heidi, firsthand accounts from the soldiers at Walter Reed about the outpatient conditions that they were facing, the deplorable housing conditions for some of them, and their great frustration and pain in trying to get this post-op outpatient care that they needed. Now, to be clear, not every soldier faced this kind of frustration. There are many cases where soldiers moved through the system, went on, went back home, went back on to active duty. But for way too many troops, Heidi, this has been a very painful, very frustrating experience. And now, of course, later today we will hear from the top generals, who will try and explain how all of this happened without anybody seemingly noticing -- Heidi.</s>COLLINS: Barbara, I have so many questions for you, but I know we need to keep it on focus here. What does BRAC have to do with all this, the Base Realignment and Closure list? Is that something that affects or affected the situation here?</s>STARR: Well, some people are saying it does. Walt Reed Army Hospital is slated to close in the months ahead under the base closure system. There is a contention out there that once it was slated for closing, that things fell into disrepair, that many of the permanent staff left, that it was all handed over to contractors.</s>COLLINS: Right.</s>STARR: There haven't internal memos warning about all of this. But Army officials say that they did get enough staff finally on board. But the fact that this hospital was slated for closure, certainly I don't think anyone believes that that's a viable excuse for less than top-quality care for America's wounded troops. It still is a question that begs an answer -- how could these people have been living in an outpatient system, not on the hospital wards, not during that trauma care period, but once they became outpatient, once they were going for their medical appointments, for their rehabilitation, for their evaluations, how could America's most badly wounded troops be living in rooms with mold on the walls?</s>COLLINS: Interesting, though I'm not -- right.</s>STARR: Those are questions that still have to be answered.</s>COLLINS: Absolutely, no question about it. A couple of other things here. Lieutenant General Kevin Kiley -- of course the Army's surgeon general -- his status at this point today is what?</s>STARR: Lieutenant General Kevin Kiley, as we speak, remains the surgeon general of the Army. He is scheduled to testify at this hearing on the next panel. But make no mistake, Heidi. General Kiley is now the man in the crosshairs by all accounts. General Kiley was the commander at Walter Reed up until late last year when -- before he was promoted to surgeon general. He was in command at Walter Reed when many of these problems emerged. His replacement, General George Weightman, who had only been on the job several months, already has been fired. The secretary of the Army, the civilian head, Francis Harvey, already fired. Hard to see, frankly, how General Kiley will be able to keep the support and be able to stay in his current job. We are told that General Kiley will testify he wants to stay on. He wants to be part of the solution, he will say, but he clearly was in command when these problems developed. How he plans to stay in command remains something that will emerge over the next several hours -- Heidi.</s>COLLINS: CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr. Barbara, we'll be watching this with you. Thanks so much.</s>STARR: Sure.</s>HOLMES: Well, they're not the only ones talking about Walter Reed today. The vice president also making some comments. Dick Cheney is actually delivering some comments to the joint opening session of the VFW national conference that they have, a national legislative conference that's happening in D.C., expected to talk about the war on terrorism. But he opened by making some comments and remarks about the issues at Walter Reed. Take a listen.</s>RICHARD CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Closer to home, there's serious concern about conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center here in Washington. Secretary Bob Gates and the Defense Department have moved quickly to ensure that our injured soldiers are taken care of. The secretary has formed an independent review group to investigate the situation and identify the necessary steps to make sure it never happens again. President Bush has made our administration's priority very clear to the Congress and to the country -- there will be no excuses, only action. And the federal bureaucracy will not slow that action down. We're going to fix the problems at Walter Reed, period.</s>HOLMES: You hear the vice president there promising action to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The conference happening in D.C., promising that the bureaucracy, you just heard there, is not going to stop that action. So, a lot happening, a lot of talk, at least today in Washington, D.C., about the issues at Walter Reed. Now let's head back to Wall Street and check out the numbers right now.</s>COLLINS: Courting the African-American vote -- a full-court press by the top two Democratic presidential hopefuls. We get the story now from CNN Senior Political Correspondent Candy Crowley, part of the best political team on television.</s>CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Competing for the attention and votes of African-Americans, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama spoke at churches within shouting distance of each other, each laying claim to the legacy that was Selma.</s>SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D-NY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It is the gift that keeps on giving. Today it is giving senator Obama the chance to run for president of the United States. And by its logic and spirit it is giving the same chance to Governor Bill Richardson, a Hispanic, and yes, it is giving me that chance, too.</s>SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Don't tell me I'm not coming home when I come to Selma, Alabama. I'm here because somebody marched for our freedom. I'm here because y'all sacrificed for me. I stand on the shoulders...</s>CROWLEY: This was two high-profile competitors, united by a cause giving roughly the same message.</s>WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT  OF THE UNITED STATES: All the good speaking has been done by Hillary and Senator Obama today.</s>CROWLEY: Make that three high-profile people. Former President Bill Clinton, often referred to in the African-American community as the first black president, came along, too. Another sign of how fierce the competition is for the black vote. Consider John Lewis, who was beaten in the original march from Selma in '65. Sunday he was in church with Barack Obama and then walked holding hands with Hillary Clinton. Ask him who he'll support. REP. JOHN LEWIS (D), GEORGIA; Well, it's a very difficult position to be in, but it's a good position to be in. We have choices.</s>CROWLEY: Obama, Clinton, Clinton and Lewis walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge Sunday where 42 years ago marchers were stopped with dogs, and horses and police batons. This time only the cameras got in the way.</s>COLLINS: CNN's Candy Crowley, part of the best political team on television. And if you want to hear more of the Selma speeches made by senators Obama and Clinton, just be sure to log on to CNN.com.</s>HOLMES: And new developments this morning in that disturbing case out of Michigan where a woman was killed and also dismembered. And now the sheriff there says Stephen Grant has confessed to killing his wife, Tara Lynn.</s>SHERIFF MARK HACKEL, MACOMB COUNTY, MICHIGAN: I think he understood there was a lot of mounting pressure. He understood that the investigators and the law enforcement were not letting up on this issue. And I think it led him to realizing, you know, I've got to get this off my chest, because, you know, I have to make some admissions or at least let you know exactly what took place. And he did just that.</s>HOLMES: A human torso was found Saturday in the family's garage. Grant was then captured the next day about 250 miles from his home. He has been hospitalized for hypothermia and possible frostbite. The sheriff expects Grant to be released from the hospital later today and possibly face arraignment tomorrow.</s>COLLINS: Looking for clues in a very tragic accident. Today, investigators focusing on a highway interchange here in Atlanta, while in the aftermath of Friday's deadly bus crash, a close-knit community in Ohio tries to make sense of the losses. Our Soledad O'Brien has more.</s>SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Bluffton University baseball players and their parents returning home on Sunday from Atlanta, where four teammates perished in a bus crash on Friday. John Betts lost his son, David, a sophomore. He came home to Ohio wearing David's Bluffton baseball cap.</s>JOHN BETTS, SON DIED IN BUS CRASH: He died doing what he loved and who he enjoyed being with. And I think that's a very important part for us as a family, to know that he was very, very happy in the last moments and seconds of his life.</s>O'BRIEN: Three of David's teammates died, too -- freshmen Cody Holp and Scott Harmon and sophomore Tyler Williams. The bus driver and his wife, Jerome and Jean Niemeyer, were also killed. Crash investigators believe the driver mistook an exit ramp for the regular HOV lane on I-75. The charter bus apparently failed to stop at the top of the ramp, careening across the intersection before plunging on to the interstate below. Twenty-nine passengers were injured in the crash. Several remain in Atlanta hospitals, including the team's coach, James Grandey.</s>JIM GRANDEY, FATHER OF BLUFFTON BASEBALL COACH: About all he remembers, he remembers sitting -- what he called was on the median. It might have been the berm of the road, up against some concrete looking at the bus on its side and thinking, my goodness, we must have fallen off.</s>O'BRIEN: Federal investigators are now looking closely at this highway interchange that has seen more than 80 accidents in the past decade.</s>KITTY HIGGINS, NTSB: I personally believe that we should be talking to the state of Georgia to see whether there is any sort of interim steps, not necessarily a recommendation coming from us, but is there something that the state of Georgia could do to recognize that it shouldn't be business as usual at that intersection?</s>O'BRIEN: Soledad O'Brien, CNN, reporting.</s>HOLMES: Wounded in war, forgotten in treatment? Congress tackling the troubles at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. You're looking at a live shot of hearings that are under way right now in D.C. We are covering it here in the</s>NEWSROOM. COLLINS: And when food hurts. Living with Celiac Disease, why some foods make so many so sick. It's all coming up in the</s>NEWSROOM. HOLMES: And more scenes of carnage in the streets of Baghdad. A suicide bomber takes aim at a book market. Those details coming up.</s>CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: And just when you thought winter had loosened its grip, I have wind-chills in Maine coming up tomorrow 56 degrees below zero. It's going to be cold in New York City, too. The forecast coming up.