Congressman Says Twitter Account was Hacked; Libyan Generals Defect
CANDY CROWLEY, CNN ANCHOR: You're in THE SITUATION ROOM. Happening now, eight Libyan generals and dozens of troops defect. South Africa's leader shows up in Libya on a peace mission. And NATO's chief says Moammar Gadhafi's reign of terror is coming to an end. Has the war reached a turning point? She started off on a motorcycle. Now Sarah Palin continues a bus tour of American historic sites. She says it's not a campaign bus, but she does plan a trip to Iowa. And a lewd photo goes out to a college student on Congressman Anthony Weiner's Twitter account. He calls it a prank and says he was hacked. Is there more than meets the eye? Wolf Blitzer is off. I'm Candy Crowley and you're in THE SITUATION ROOM. Anyone unfortunate enough to wind up in the hospital this Memorial Day may be in for a potentially dangerous surprise, a shortage of critical drugs. And it's getting worse. Our CNN's Mary Snow is going in-depth for us. Mary, what is this all about?</s>MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Candy, this has been a problem that's been around as the drug industry consolidates, but as one doctor told us today, in her 30 years of practicing medicine, she's never seen the kind of drug shortages she's seeing now.</s>SNOW (voice-over): At Westchester Medical Center, chief medical officer Renee Garrick says the staff now gets daily alerts about which drugs are in short supply and she says most people aren't aware of the shortages hospitals are facing.</s>RENEE GARRICK, WESTCHESTER MEDICAL CENTER: If you have a gasoline shortage, the world knows in about 30 seconds. So, we have drug shortages that can affect the ability to get the drug to the bedside in someone who has had a heart attack, someone who needs blood pressure support, someone who needs antibiotics. And I think public awareness of that is not what it should be.</s>SNOW: Each hospital is different. In Phoenix, for example, Shaneen Tahani (ph), a pharmacist at Maricopa Medical Center, said earlier this month the hospital had to reserve a supply of a hard-to-get drug to treat leukemia and lymphoma.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have had to reserve our supply. We have had to turn patients away. Sometimes we -- in order to treat more patients, we have had to reduce the doses of that drug.</s>SNOW: While shortages may not be a new problem, those who monitor them for the American Society of Health System Pharmacists counted 211 drugs in short supply last year and say it's not getting any better.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is getting worse, because, so far, in 2011, if you look at just the first three months of the year, so the first 90 days of the year, we tracked 89 brand-new shortages. So, that's almost, if you think about it, a new shortage a day.</s>SNOW: So, what is behind the shortages? The FDA says manufacturing problems and delays are the main reasons, as well as drugs being discontinued. In a statement, the agency told us most shortages involve older drugs made by fewer firms and says: "These drugs often get discontinued by companies and replaced by more profitable, newer drugs. FDA continues to do all we can within our authority to resolve these shortages." But in the meantime, Dr. Garrick says hospitals are scrambling for alternatives, with shortages of some chemotherapy drugs a particular concern.</s>GARRICK: You either delay treatment until the drug is available or seek an alternative drug. But the alternative drug may not have been tested as part of that regimen, so you won't really know what the outcome will be. So that's why the chemotherapy shortage has become such a national concern.</s>SNOW: Now, lawmakers have also gotten involved. Legislation was introduced that would require manufacturers to give the Food and Drug Administration six months' notice if they plan to discontinue a drug or take any other action where there would be an interruption. As far as the pharmaceutical industry, a trade group for drug research companies says there's a number of reasons contributing to why they might have shortages and they cite anything from natural disasters to shortages in raw materials. And that group says it's committed to maintaining good manufacturing practices and working closely with the FDA -- Candy.</s>CROWLEY: So, Mary, other than -- you said they have to turn patients away. Is there anything else these hospitals do to kind of make up for these shortages? Can they call another hospital or find it elsewhere?</s>SNOW: Well, at the Westchester Medical Center we went to today, this is one hospital that said so far it hasn't had to turn people away. But what it's been doing is getting alternative medications. And it says it's been very aggressive about monitoring these drug shortages, but it says, as a result, it's really been a drain on resources, because you're taking people who are -- constantly, their job is to monitor the drugs. But if they also buy drugs from a vendor, the cost is much higher than it would be. So, this is costing these hospitals, or this one in particular, a lot more money.</s>CROWLEY: Wow. Thanks very much, our Mary Snow. Appreciate it. And a stunning twist in Libya's civil war. As brutal fighting rages on, eight generals from Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's army have defected to Italy. A senior Italian official says the generals were joined by more than 100 soldiers. Some of them are now speaking out. This comes as South Africa's president meets with Gadhafi trying to broker a peace deal. CNN's Nima Elbagir is live from the Libyan capital with us. Several Libyan generals have defected. They're taking with them soldiers. What does this mean? What is left? What portion of this is -- is this of the forces that Gadhafi has?</s>NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the Libyan generals, as you said, have been speaking up, and they say they bring with them news that Gadhafi's military capacity is weakening. One of them, General Oun Ali Oun, told a news conference that the moment of glory is near. Why this is such a big blow is because this news is coming within the same week that we're hearing reports of a deployment of U.K. and French attack helicopters. Now, these helicopters, because NATO says that they can limit collateral damage, they can be used to get really up close in terms of aerial bombardment. And the concern, at least on the Libyan government's side, is that they could be used at this time of reduced military capacity within the Libyan armed forces, to clear the way for a rapid advancement of operation -- of opposition forces. We have to stress, though, that, on the ground, there is still a territorial stalemate. We haven't yet really seen the impacts of this defection. But the rebels are very close. They are two hours away at Misrata. So, possibly, if the aerial bombardment were to happen, they could move quite quickly towards Tripoli, Candy.</s>CROWLEY: Nima, can you tell me, has there been any reaction from the Libyan government or anyone in an official capacity?</s>ELBAGIR: The Libyan government is trying to brush this off. They haven't yet released an official statement, but definitely officials that we have been speaking to have said that, well, this is just another defection. You know, Mustafa -- Jibril, the head of the -- one of the main Libyan rebel leaders on the National Transitional Council, was, himself, a justice minister in the Libyan government. So, they're just trying to put it within this context of try to portray the civil war as a power grab, as just -- as more disgruntled former top-level members of the regime trying to put them place -- put themselves in a strong position to take power post a Gadhafi step-down. This, of course, all comes on the day that president Jacob Zuma was here. We had been led to believe by leaks coming ahead of his visit that he might be talking about a soft landing for Gadhafi. That has now been completely thrown aside by the Libyan government, who tell us that, actually, all he's come to get is the colonel's OK for the African Union road map, would allow -- which would allow Gadhafi to oversee political reforms and political dialogue, Candy.</s>CROWLEY: Well, so did Gadhafi agree to that? Did anything else come of this meeting? I know you spent the day following President Zuma around during this meeting with Gadhafi.</s>ELBAGIR: It's been a little bit of an anticlimax. You know, we had all hoped -- you know, the hope had been here that Zuma, having had such a long relationship with Colonel Gadhafi, was perhaps coming to tell him what nobody else could say, that the colonel would need to step down for this conflict to come to an end. But, instead, all that we have really heard is that the African union road map, which Gadhafi had agreed to on the 10th of April, so more than a month ago, was now going ahead. But -- so, really, we're not really hearing anything that new. Gadhafi has said that he's agreed to a cease-fire, he's agreed to political reform, but that's not really what the rebels are asking for. They're saying that, without Gadhafi agreeing to step down, that nothing will go ahead, no cease-fire, no reform, and no dialogue -- Candy.</s>CROWLEY: CNN's Nima Elbagir, thank you so much out of Tripoli tonight. We appreciate it. A CIA team recently returned to Osama bin Laden's compound to scour the site for intelligence information that Navy SEALs didn't have the time to collect when they killed the al Qaeda chief earlier this month. We're also getting a chance to learn a little bit more about what went on in that compound. CNN's Stan Grant takes us back to the Pakistan town of Abbottabad, where he spoke with some of bin Laden's neighbors.</s>STAN GRANT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): One month on, killing Osama Bin Laden has not won America too many friends here. This shopkeeper lives less than 200 meters from where bin Laden lived and died. He has more sympathy for the slain al Qaeda leader than foreigners, swearing at us, calling us pigs. "Are Muslims terrorists everywhere?" he says. "Actually, America is the biggest terrorist." Others, though, are friendlier. This boy, Zarar (ph), approaches us with a story to tell. He and his sister, Aza (ph), befriended bin Laden's youngest children and grandchildren. They say there were two boys, one girl, seven, four and three years old. Zarar relives the cricket games he played with them. That's the white bin Laden house you can see behind us. Contradicting reports that no outsiders breached the bin Laden security, Zarar says he actually played inside the compound itself, getting a close look at his secret world. Despite being neighbors, the brother and sister didn't know the bin Laden children's names. The children told them their father was the family courier they called Nedin (ph). Only now do they know who their playmates really were. "My grandmother asked in Pashtun, 'Who is your father?' Aza says. "They said Nedin. They always said Nedin." Through this brother and sister, we get to piece together daily life in the bin Laden compound. Rather than speaking the local language, the bin Ladens preferred Pashtun, the language of the Afghanistan- Pakistan border. They were a normal family, friendly, the children said. They never saw Osama bin Laden. He remained well hidden. They did meet the bin Laden wives. "There were two aunties standing in the house," Zarar says."They asked me how was I? Where did I live? What did my mother do? I told them my mother was a housewife. They wore ordinary Pakistani clothes." Zarar says he said he noticed the women were different from other mothers in the neighborhood."They spoke in a strange language," he says, "very poor Urdu. Then I thought probably they were Arabic." And the children were different too. Even in this Muslim community, they were especially devout. "They were very religious," Zarar says. "Whenever I went there to play, they asked me to wait until afternoon prayer, and then they would stop playing later for evening prayer." Aza shows us pet rabbits, a gift from the bin Laden family. After everything, she says, she misses her friends. "They were young. They were beautiful. I really miss them. They were the only children we played with." Zarar and Aza's father is a government official in the Justice Department, yet Osama bin Laden lived right next door and no one knew. The bin Ladens lived this way for years, in the heart of Abbottabad, a military city in the mountains, two hours' drive north from Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. Now, the area is in lockdown. In recent days, it's been open for the CIA to collect material and information, but no such access for us. As we tried to get close, this is what happens. (on camera): Roll. Roll on. (voice-over): The police say they're under instructions to smash our camera. We get it back, but we'll not be going any further. (on camera): Well, this is clearly as far as we're going to go. We're not going to get any closer to the bin Laden Compound. Here, life continues as normal. Beyond here, though, 200 meters or so away, is the bin Laden house, still holding in so many of the secrets of his life here in Abbottabad. OK. We're -- we're finished. Thank you very much. Thank you. (voice-over): Stan Grant, CNN, Abbottabad, Pakistan.</s>CROWLEY: Here at home, shockwaves are rattling the world of college football with a resignation of a coach who led his team to multiple championships and titles -- details of why Ohio State's Jim Tressel was forced out and why the story may not be over yet. Also, a lewd picture sent from a congressman's Twitter account. He says it was a setup. Others are alleging cover-up. Plus, we're following Sarah Palin's bus tour happening right now. Is it a prelude to a presidential campaign?</s>SARAH PALIN (R), FORMER ALASKA GOVERNOR: It's just -- it's heartwarming, and it's -- it means so much to so many of us to be able to physically be here and see the foundation of America.