Missouri Flooding, Levees Failing; IRS Audited, Cannot Find Its Receipts
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Erin, thanks. Good evening, everyone. Breaking news tonight. We're going to take you where the flood waters are rising and the levees are failing. Also tonight new word that Friday's tornado set a terrifying record. And later in the hour the mystery hero of the Boston marathon bombing. Who is that woman? A victim who says she saved her life wants to know -- wants to thank her personally. Well, tonight thanks to our viewers we can tell you who she is and how she was found and also take a look at this.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.</s>COOPER: And one giant mystery since 1969. What exactly did Neil Armstrong say as the first man to step on the moon? For years we thought he botched the line, that he meant to say one small step for a man or that static swallowed the A. Tonight new research may have an answer that no one expected about what he actually said. We begin where Missouri meets the Mississippi, with the water's rising, breaching levees, drowning crops and threatening homes. People have been pitching in all day, filling sandbags, trying to fight back, but it may not be enough. And the weather could make things even worse over the next few days. Martin Savidge joins us now from the flood zones north of St. Louis. Martin, I understand the authorities are bracing themselves for another breach.</s>MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Anderson, this is just outside of West Alton. This area has literally been all day long kind of the focus of a battle with the flood waters here. They've had two breaches in the last 24 hours. Now the fear is for a third breach. And this one could be the most serious of all. The Mississippi River is just beyond here. You might see that smokestack in the background there. If it gives way, and there is real fear there's a slide occurring on one of the levees there. If that happens, all that water is going to come right this way. 94 here, the state highway, it is the main way out. They have to keep this roadway open because for a lot of people it's going to be the way they get out of the water's way. They're erecting right now a stone kind of levee very quickly to try to prevent that from happening. In essence it's going to be a watery Alamo. They have to hold it here. If they don't they'll be in serious trouble. That power plant would be in trouble as well -- Anderson.</s>COOPER: Why West Alton in particular is so affected?</s>SAVIDGE: Two very big reasons. Two and a half miles just off in this direction is the Missouri River. A mile and a half in that direction is the Mississippi River. And both of those rivers right now are struggling to try to contain an awful lot of storm surge that has been coming from the heavy weather that's essentially been up north. Right now the Mississippi River is seeing levels it hasn't seen in close to two decades. For the most part the flood protection system has been working. But right here even though the water is starting to recede that system is showing the wear and tear. And quite frankly, right here on this stretch of roadway the next 24 hours are going to be crucial.</s>COOPER: I've been actually in Alton on the Illinois side, I have friends there. I know they've had flooding over the years. Are conditions -- they're supposed to get worse before they get better in West Alton?</s>SAVIDGE: Yes. Because the next thing that's going to happen is even though the water is going down the weather is going to move in. Tomorrow more rain is anticipated. What's going to be crucial is how much rain, where will that rain fall, especially to the north, and is there going to be wind as well, because you see the water is at the top of a lot of these levees. If you get the wind, if you get the wave action, it's going to have more of a kind of a corrosive effect. It will erode even more and weaken the structures that right now are already showing signs of weakness. So it is really going to be a time when people are going to watch the water and watch the sky -- Anderson.</s>COOPER: All right, Martin, we'll continue checking with you throughout this hour. The death toll climbed again today in the tornado that struck El Reno, Oklahoma, on Friday night. It now stands at 19. As for that tornado itself, it now has the terrible distinction of being the widest on record and one of the most powerful as well. Chad Myers is in El Reno tonight, joins us. So the tornado was upgraded today from an EF-3 to an EF-5. That really caught me by surprise. Does that mean in terms of power? I mean, why was it upgraded?</s>CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Because Doppler on wheels, scientists, storm chasers that we talk so much about, two teams of scientists with Doppler on the back of pickup trucks spinning around found wind speeds of almost 300 miles per hour. Now those winds never hit anything. So we don't have houses that are missing because there's so much empty space here. But what we know, Anderson, think about this. Think about a two- mile-wide carousel with horses going around and around. Going around at 185 miles per hour. And then take those horses and spin them at 110 miles per hour. That's what this storm was doing. Had multiple vortices, or multiple horses going around a two-mile, 2 1/2-mile circulation moving right toward El Reno. And they know that some of those vortices had winds of 295. Remember, Moore was only 210. This was stronger than Moore. The good news is there wasn't a lot to hit. It hit this building right back here. This is EF-3 damage, not EF-5. The EF-5 out in the field with nothing to hit.</s>COOPER: Yes, I saw one figure that said it was 2.6 miles wide at one point. In perspective, Manhattan, the island of Manhattan is 2.3 miles wide. What could this have done in a more populated area?</s>MYERS: It would have taken out -- everything would have looked just like Moore except it would have been twice as wide. And even stronger damage because at 295 there was much more in there. At 210, 220, 230, 240, where Moore stopped at 210, the damage would have been worse than Moore and it would have been wider than Moore and pretty much longer than Moore. Sixteen or so miles long. That is longer than Manhattan is wide. 2.6 is wider than Manhattan is wide. It would have covered the entire island. It would have taken it all out.</s>COOPER: That's just incredible. Chad, appreciate it. Thanks for the update. "Keeping Them Honest," tax collectors spending your money, taxpayer money, on themselves. Namely, feel-good conferences and morale-boosting retreats held in feel-good locations with morale- boosting weather and free drinks. The IRS spending nearly, get ready, $50 million of your money on travel, hotels, seminars, cheesy videos, even arts and crafts. And that's not all. This was happening while the IRS was claiming it didn't have enough money to properly do its job. An inspector general's report that came out today that we've been previewing now for several day, Dana Bash took a look at it. She's "Keeping Them Honest" tonight.</s>DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Paintings of Albert Einstein, Michael Jordan, Abraham Lincoln, and even Bono from U2, all made on site at an IRS conference by an artist hired to perform "Leadership Through Art" and paid $17,000. Taxpayer dollars. It's just one example of IRS excess detailed in this new inspector general report, which zeros in on a 2010 IRS conference in Anaheim, California, which cost taxpayers a whopping $4 million. Nearly 2700 IRS employees stayed at three hotels with no attempt to negotiate lower rates. Why? The IRS hired outside organizers with no incentive to bargain because they got a 5 percent commission from the hotels. In fact, two event organizers got paid $66,500 by Uncle Sam from this one conference.</s>REP. DARRELL ISSA (R), CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM COMMITTEE: They didn't negotiate. They didn't bid it. And this was 2700 folks. So they could have gotten a considerable reduction. Instead what they said is we'll pay full boat but we want some perks.</s>BASH: Those perks included 24 tickets to Los Angeles Angels games, free drinks, and upgrades like this lavish presidential suite. An IRS division head stayed here. (</s>On camera): The IRS even made swag for its employees to take home like this tote bag with a special logo made just for the conference. This bag was made in China, by the way. So was this leather folio. They also got notebooks like this, even bottle openers. All of these gifts and trinkets added up to 64,000 taxpayer dollars. But what may be just as outrageous as wasting this money is the fact that the IRS did not appear to follow the very rules it requires each and every taxpayer to follow.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Attempting to modulate the frequency now.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sorry about the uniforms, Captain. The dry cleaner gave me the wrong order.</s>BASH (voice-over): For example, this "Star Trek" spoof. The inspector general said this and other videos made for the conference cost $50,187. But the I.G. says no one knows if that cost is accurate because the IRS, the agency that requires taxpayers to keep receipts, did not save its own documents to show what it spent. The new acting IRS commissioner, Danny Werfel, calls this wasteful spending inappropriate and stresses they have already reduced the cost and size of IRS conferences. One conference workshop should have helped. It was entitled "Political Savvy: How Not to Shoot Yourself in the Foot."</s>COOPER: Well, they certainly didn't do that. Dana joins me now live from Washington. So, I mean, I've got to go back to something you said. The IRS facing this audit actually said they couldn't find some of their own receipts? Is that for real?</s>BASH: That is for real, Anderson. It really is hard to believe. But the I.G. report explicitly says, quote, "IRS management could not provide any documentation dealing how this money was -- detailing how this money was spent." At the time three years ago, this is all so hard to believe, keeping track of and reporting costs of conferences wasn't required at the IRS. So shoddy recordkeeping wasn't limited to just these videos. The I.G. couldn't even verify the overall cost of the conference. They say that the IRS says the cost was $4.1 million but the I.G. also says explicitly that they were unable to provide documentation to support all costs associated with the conference.</s>COOPER: And we're talking about the spring of 2010. So they're spending all this money at the same time they're saying they didn't have enough people to process those Tea Party tax-exempt applications, right?</s>BASH: That's right. It is the same time period. These conference costs were paid with unused funds intended for hiring enforcement employees. Now it's unclear if that money really could have gone to help sift through the applications for tax-exempt status that has really caused this controversy. It caused these long delays that many of these tax -- these Tea Party groups have endured. Regardless, the fact that tens of millions of dollars were being spent on spoof videos and swag at a time taxpayers were not being served well at all makes the black eye on the IRS even darker for sure.</s>COOPER: It's -- it's just unbelievable. Dana, appreciate it, thank you very much. Let us know what you think about this. Let's talk about it on Twitter right now, @andersoncooper during the break. A lot more happening, though tonight. The blade runner, Oscar Pistorius, facing murder charges in the shooting death of his girlfriend. He is back in court. We'll tell you why his trial is being delayed and why some who knew him say he turned into a monster. Later, we asked you to help reunite this Boston marathon bombing victim with the anonymous woman who helped her, helped her so much on that terrible day. In fact, the victim says she saved her life. Only on 360 we'll have a progress report we think you'll like a lot.