• Delayed by war, Class of 1943 finally holds senior prom

    NBC News

    Grace Duffy dances with her stand-in date Dave Lenahan at the Hillhouse High School class of 1943 reunion and prom.


     

    By Rehema Ellis and Andrew Rafferty, NBC News

    It took seven decades, but the Hillhouse High School Class of 1943 finally had its senior prom.

    Prom for the members of the Greatest Generation was cancelled 70 years ago when the young men in the Connecticut school — and across the country — were called on to go defend the United States during World War II. But as of last Sunday, the high school rite of passage was no longer something these former high schoolers had to live without.

    But when it's a senior prom for senior citizens, the rules are different. First of all, the event started at noon, everyone could drink alcohol, and the dress code was, well, comfortable.

    NBC News

    Honey Pegnataro, right, shares a toast with some of her classmates at the Hillhouse High School class of 1943 reunion and prom.

    Many were dropped off not by their parents, but by their children.

    And with attendees now in their late 80s, dancing was left to only the most adventurous souls.

    Members of the Class of '43 say they did not feel cheated when school administrators told them to stop planning their prom so many years ago. Rather, they felt it was they were fulfilling their responsibility as Americans.

    NBC News

    Marilyn Unger pins on her corsage at the Hillhouse High School class of 1943 reunion and prom.

    "Our country had been attacked, and we felt very strongly that whatever we did to support our country, we would do," said 87-year-old Marilyn White Unger. "So we didn't feel any sense of personal loss, because the boys were fighting."

    Unger helped plan the reunion/prom, along with Anthony Pegnataro, 87, then class president who served in Guam and Okinawa during the war. Some of their classmates never came back from the war, and even more have perished in the years since.

    "I open the paper every morning, I look at the obituary page and I see two or three more classmates that have gone up to their maker," said Pegnataro.

    The "senior" prom means a lot more to 88-year-old Tony Pegnataro than most.  Pegnataro and his classmates explain they did whatever necessary to support the war during the 1940s, which meant forgoing their high school prom. But better late than never – they finally formed a committee and organized a classmate reunion all these years later.

    He estimates that of the 1,250 members of their graduating class, prom organizers have only been able to get ahold of about 10 percent of them. The group has been getting together every five years since 1946.

    And like nearly everything else about this prom, he did it the old fashioned way -- no Facebook, just phone calls.

    Just as if the prom had been held during the 1940s, on Sunday the group danced to the likes of the Glen Miller band. Though the music may have been the same, but the moves were different -- with some prom goers in wheelchairs.

    "Time's running out on all of us. Ya know, how many more years do we have?" said Pegnataro. "And we want to enjoy every year we got."

    NBC News

    Honey and Tony Pegnataro

  • Video: Why the Europeans are better at forecasting our weather than we are

    The predictions from European computer models, which have 10 times the computing ability of the National Weather Service, have increasingly become more accurate than our models with the starkest example being Hurricane Sandy. NBC's Al Roker reports.

  • Copyright case could threaten eBay and garage sales

    By Pete Williams, NBC News Justice Correspondent

    The U.S. Supreme Court, in a case to be argued Monday, wades into a controversy over federal copyright law that could determine the legal rights of American consumers to sell thousands of used products on eBay and at garage sales and flea markets.

    Stelios Varias / Reuters file photo

    The legal battle involves Supap Kirtsaeng, a student from Thailand who was surprised by the high cost of academic textbooks when he arrived in the U.S. to attend college.  He asked his parents to search bookstores back home and send him much cheaper versions -- published overseas and sold at a fraction of the price -- of the same texts. 

    He was soon running what amounted to a small business out of his apartment, helping to pay his way through school by selling textbooks on eBay. The exact amount of his profit is unclear, but court records say it was around $100,000. 

    The textbooks his family shipped him each bore this warning: "Exportation from or importation of this book to another region without the publisher's authorization is illegal," but Kirtsaeng wasn't bothered.  He concluded -- based on a search of articles on the Internet -- that he was in no legal jeopardy.  

    The first Monday in October is the traditional start of the Supreme Court's new term.  Last term was a blockbuster, dominated by health care and immigration. But this one looks like it, too, and will be one of the most important in years.  NBC's Pete Williams reports.

    The publisher of some of the books he sold, John Wiley & Sons, didn't see it that way. It sued him in federal court, and a New York jury ordered him in 2009 to pay $600,000 in damages.  When he said he had nowhere near that kind of money, he had to hand over personal property, including his computer, printer and golf clubs. A federal appeals court last year upheld the verdict. 

    Kirtsaeng was caught between two federal laws, and he's now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to see it his way.

    One longstanding provision says when the holder of a copyright offers a work for sale, its legal interest in that specific copy evaporates as the item is sold. It's called the first-sale doctrine, and it means that if you buy the latest John Grisham novel, you can sell it on a website or give it away to the church library without violating copyright laws. 

    But another law prohibits importing works "acquired outside the United States ... without the authority of the owner of copyright."  Applying that statue, the federal courts ruled against Kirtsaeng, reasoning that "the first-sale doctrine does not apply to copies manufactured outside of the United States."           

    A who's who of companies and groups involved in selling used merchandise is urging the Supreme Court to overturn the publisher's victory. 

    EBay warns that leaving the ruling intact would be a blow to "trade, consumers, secondary markets, e-commerce, small businesses, and jobs."  Goodwill Industries says the ruling would have "a catastrophic effect on the viability of the secondary market and, consequently, on Goodwill's ability to provide needed community-based services." 

    "There are enough copyright owners out there -- and enough crazy copyright lawsuits," says a group of book store operators in a friend of court brief. "No one should be put to the choice of violating the law and hoping they don't get caught, and losing their business." 

    The effect of a victory for the publisher, according to some experts in copyright law, would extend far beyond the market for books and other published materials.  It could also affect sales of thousands of used consumer electronic products made outside the U.S. that contain copyrighted software, perhaps even used cars. 

    Kirtsaeng's lawyer makes the same expansive claim in his Supreme Court brief.  "Even cherished American traditions, such as flea markets, garage sales, and swapping dog-eared books are vulnerable to copyright challenge" under the appeals court ruling, argues Josh Rosenkranz of New York.

    But could that really be the outcome? 

    "It doesn't mean you'd have industry enforcers attending yard sales. You'd just be converting a bunch of people into law breakers," says Prof. Rebecca Tushnet, an expert on copyright law at Georgetown Law Center in Washington. 

    Most likely, she says, music and book publishers would be visiting stores and Internet sites that sell used materials. "Anything more organized, like eBay sales or craigslist could be disrupted," she says.  "And I do think it's a very serious threat. They are very clearly willing to do this." 

    Not so, argues Washington, D.C. lawyer Ted Olson, representing the publisher that sued Kirtsaeng. If such predictions were right, he says, "those consequences should already have occurred in response to 30 years of judicial decisions and commentary." 

    However the court decides the case, it will undoubtedly affect a category known as graymarket sales, in which middlemen legally buy products overseas, then make them available for sale by retailers in the U.S. who can offer the products for lower prices.  

    Swiss watch maker Omega and discount retailer Costco have been battling in court for years over this issue. Omega claimed Costco was improperly selling its watches acquired overseas through just such a graymarket mechanism. 

    Omega says its authorized US dealers charge prices "that are higher than the prices charged in other, less developed and less competitive markets."  It argues that any erosion of copyright protection for overseas sales would limit a manufacturer's ability to tailor prices to global markets. 

    But discount retailer Costco is siding with Supap Kirtsaeng, saying it "often sells copyrighted products that, although genuine, were not purchased directly from the copyright owner."

  • Video: Michigan Powerball winner has a year to come forward

    Residents in the tiny town of Lapeer, Mich., are consumed with speculation as to which of their neighbors holds the winning Powerball lottery ticket with a valued jackpot of $337 million.

    The winning Powerball ticket was purchased at a local Sunoco gas station in Michigan, but the ticket holder remains anonymous -- which is fine, because under state law, the winner has a year to come forward. NBC's Kevin Tibbles reports.

     

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  • Broke Baltimore considers ads on fire trucks

    Baltimore officials are considering plugging budget deficits by selling advertisement space on the side of fire trucks. NBC's Gabe Gutierrez reports. 

  • Supreme Court upholds health care law

    Opponents of the health care law said Congress' power to regulate commerce didn't extend to people who choose not to buy something; the court's conservatives disagreed. Chief Justice John Roberts did decide, however, that the law was a legitimate use of the congressional power to tax. NBC's Pete Williams reports.

    By Tom Curry, msnbc.com National Affairs Writer

    Updated at 11:55 a.m. ET: In a dramatic victory for President Barack Obama, the Supreme Court upheld the 2010 health care law Thursday, preserving Obama’s landmark legislative achievement.

    The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts, who held that the law was a valid exercise of Congress’s power to tax.

    Roberts re-framed the debate over health care as a debate over increasing taxes. Congress, he said, is “increasing taxes” on those who choose to go uninsured.

    Poll: Do you agree with Supreme Court ruling on health care law?

    Tom Goldstein of the SCOTUS blog breaks down the Supreme Court's ruling on health care. Also, when asked why Chief Justice John Roberts upheld the law, Goldstein said, "I think he believed it."

     

    Click here for the text of the ruling

    The 2010 law, the Affordable Care Act, requires non-exempted individuals to maintain a minimum level of health insurance or pay a tax penalty.

    The essence of Roberts’s ruling was:

    •       “The Affordable Care Act is constitutional in part and unconstitutional in part,” Roberts wrote.

    •       “The individual mandate cannot be upheld as an exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause. That Clause authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce, not to order individuals to engage in it.”

    •       But “it is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but (who) choose to go without health insurance. Such legislation is within Congress’s power to tax.”

    Roberts made a point of noting that he and the other justices “possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”

     

    Click here for Twitter reactions to the ruling

    In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court upholds President Obama's national health-care insurance act. NBC's Pete Williams reports. TODAY's Matt Lauer discusses the ruling with NBC's Savannah Guthrie and David Gregory, host of "Meet the Press."

     

    The law, Roberts wrote, “makes going without insurance just another thing the Government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income. And if the mandate is in effect just a tax hike on certain taxpayers who do not have health insurance, it may be within Congress’s constitutional power to tax.”

    Jason Reed / Reuters

    A sharply divided Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the centerpiece of Obama's signature healthcare overhaul law that requires that most Americans get insurance by 2014 or pay a financial penalty.

    He said “The question is not whether that is the most natural interpretation of the mandate, but only whether it is a ‘fairly possible’ one.”

    He said the Supreme Court precedent is that “every reasonable construction” of a law passed by Congress “must be resorted to, in order to save a statute from unconstitutionality.” 

    Dems cheer high court as galvanized GOP vows 'full repeal'

    Veteran Supreme Court lawyer Tom Goldstein told NBC’s Pete Williams that “the Affordable Care Act was saved by Chief Justice John Roberts.”

    Claire McAndrew of Washington, left, and Donny Kirsch of Washington celebrate outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., Thursday, after a the court's ruling on health care.

    Goldstein said the Obama administration “got the one vote they really needed in Chief Justice John Roberts.”

    When he served in the Senate in 2005, Obama voted against confirming Roberts as chief justice, arguing that he lacked empathy for underdogs and “he has far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak.”

    (Twenty-one other Democratic senators, including Joe Biden, also voted against confirming Roberts. Twenty-two Democratic senators voted to confirm him.)

    Obama hailed his victory: “The highest court in the land has now spoken. We will continue to implement this law and we'll work together to improve on it where we can.”

    But he urged Americans to refrain from re-fighting "the political battles of two years ago" or trying to "go back to the way things were.”

    The four justices joining Roberts in upholding the law were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

    The dissenting justices were Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

    For individuals who choose to not comply with the individual insurance mandate, Congress deliberately chose to make the penalty fairly weak: only $95 for 2014; $325 for 2015; and $695 in 2016.

    After 2016, that $695 amount is indexed to the consumer price index.

    Congress specifically did not allow the use of liens and seizures of property as methods of enforcing the penalty.

    Non-compliance with the mandate is also not subject to criminal or civil penalties under the Tax Code and interest does not accrue for failure to pay the penalty in a timely manner, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

     

    Chief Justice Roberts announces the Supreme Court's opinion in health care law

    NBC's Pete Williams reported that Roberts reasoned that “there’s no real compulsion here” since those who do not pay the penalty for not having insurance can’t be sent to jail. “This is one of the scenarios that administration officials had considered that if the court did this they would consider it a big victory,” Williams said.

    In his reaction to the court’s decision, Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney said, “What the court did today was say that Obamacare does not violate the Constitution. What they did not do was say that Obamacare is good law or that it's good policy.”

    He said the ruling had made it clear “If we want to get rid of Obamacare, we're going to have replace President Obama.”

    But in a major victory for the states who challenged the law, the court said that the Obama administration cannot coerce states to go along with the Medicaid insurance program for low-income people.

    The financial pressure which the federal government puts on the states in the expansion of Medicaid “is a gun to the head,” Roberts wrote.

    “A State that opts out of the Affordable Care Act’s expansion in health care coverage thus stands to lose not merely ‘a relatively small percentage’ of its existing Medicaid funding, but all of it,” Roberts said.

    Congress cannot “penalize States that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding,” Roberts said.

    The Medicaid provision is projected to add nearly 30 million more people to the insurance program for low-income Americans -- but the court’s decision left states free to opt out of the expansion if they choose.

     

  • Detroit may let abandoned buildings burn; film documents firefighters' tough times

    The documentary 'Burn,' which premiered this week at the Tribeca Film Festival, follows Detroit firefighters facing a staggering problem: the city has three times as many structure fires as Los Angeles, a city more than five times its size. NBC's Kevin Tibbles reports.

    By NBC News' Yardena Schwartz and msnbc.com's Jim Gold

    Cash-strapped, arson-prone Detroit could let fires in vacant buildings and homes burn themselves out to save the city Fire Department money.


    The fiery notion from Detroit’s Executive Fire Commissioner Donald Austin surfaced as the documentary “Burn,” chronicling a year of Motor City firefighters’ camaraderie in the face of declining budgets and increasing fire calls, made its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.

    “We are in no way looking to 'let the city' burn, this is about saving lives and money,” Austin said, according to a report Tuesday by NBC station WDIV in Detroit. “My department is strapped, the budget is strapped, and it’s time to look at a new way of doing things.”

    Detroit Mayor Dave Bing is looking to trim $250 million and cut more than 2,500 jobs from the city’s 2012-13 budget. The cuts would lower the fire department budget below this fiscal year's $183 million.

    Austin's proposal would allow vacant buildings to burn if they're more than 50 percent ablaze — as long as they're not a risk to inhabited structures and the weather is favorable.

    Max Ortiz / The Detroit News via AP file

    An arson investigator photographs a fire at a Detroit building complex at Sycamore and Grand River on March, 28 2012.

    Bing’s office is not taking any position on Austin’s idea until he makes a formal proposal of his annual budget request, the mayor’s spokeswoman, Naomi Patton, told msnbc.com.

    Detroit Fire Fighters Association President Daniel McNamara said he opposes Austin's idea of letting vacant homes burn, unless they're on a predetermined demolition list, WDIV reported.

    “This is a long overdue idea, really,” Jo Robins Davis, a Detroit-area lawyer specializing in fire insurance claims, told msnbc.com. As long as they can keep the burns controlled, the idea would work for her, she said.

    “They’re going to be torn down anyway,” she said of the vacant structures.

    Austin has other ideas to save money, WDIV reported: Ask the U.S. Navy's construction division, the Seabees, to level 10,000 vacant and dilapidated homes; or create a demolition unit in the Fire Department to use heavy equipment to level the remnants of newly burned buildings.

    Detroit has 80,000 abandoned structures, "Burn" filmmakers Tom Putnam and Brenna Sanchez say.

    Film-makers Tom Putnam and Brenna Sanchez discuss the hardships facing Detroit's fire department, as documented in their upcoming film, "BURN."  

    Austin said 40 to 60 percent of the fires in Detroit are in vacant structures. Last year alone, the Fire Department fielded 30,000 fire calls. The city of 714,000 sees 30 structure fires a day. In contrast, Los Angeles, a city of nearly 4 million, faces just 11 structure fires a day.

    Watch US News crime videos on msnbc.com

    To illuminate the obstacles that Detroit firefighters face, filmmakers Putnam and Sanchez documented a year in the life of the men and women tasked with saving their beloved city. The film features video shot by the firefighters with cameras attached to their helmets.

     “On our first two nights filming, we went to 21 structure fires with one engine company,” recalled Putnam, who said that he and Sanchez were inspired by the 2008 death of Detroit firefighter Walter Harris.

    Burned on purpose
    Arson in Detroit rose in 2010 to 1,082 incidents, up from 636 the year earlier, according to FBI crime statistics. Insurance companies paid $237.8 million for damage caused by arsons or suspicious blazes in 2010, the Detroit News reported.

    Why is arson so frequent?

    “I think Detroit's a place where people feel disenfranchised and there aren't a lot of ways to express themselves,” Putnam told NBC News. The filmmaker broke the reasons down into categories: arson for profit, homeowners who are upside down on their mortgages, and arson for revenge. Other times it’s just arson for kicks. “Like one of the firefighters says, ‘a gallon of gasoline is cheaper than a movie ticket,’” Putnam said.

    Scrappers, who strip vacant buildings of valuable materials, are also a problem. After stripping away all metal piping, they can leave an exposed gas line to catch fire, which is what happened April 10, when fire destroyed two abandoned buildings and damaged the occupied family home of Tiffanie Alston, 31.  

    She grabbed her children — 9, 10 and 11 years old — and then headed to the basement to help her 61-year-old father.

    "People go in there and scrap all the time, and it was just a matter of time till it got set on fire," she told The Detroit News.

    In the 1980s, Detroit was known for Devil’s Night fires, which peaked in 1984 with more than 800 fires over Halloween. In 1985, an Angel’s Night campaign began to counter the arsons. Firefighters responded to only 94 calls Oct. 29-31, 2011, according to the mayor’s office.

    'Katrina without the hurricane'
    Wide swaths of Detroit consist of scattered occupied homes surrounded by boarded-up structures, burned-out buildings and weed-covered vacant lots, WDIV reported.

    The city’s population, which peaked when the post-World War II auto industry boomed in the 1950s at nearly 2 million people, has dwindled. Now Detroit’s population has plummeted to 714,000, the Census reported last year.

    As one firefighter in the film put it, “This has been Katrina without the hurricane.”

    Now Bing’s planned budget cuts could make firefighters' jobs even tougher. With starting salaries at approximately $30,000 a year, most firefighters already have second jobs.

    From their extensive time with the Fire Department, Putnam and Sanchez saw firsthand the real impact the city’s budget problems had on the firefighters. Many of their boots were secured with duct tape, some were missing gloves, and they were still cutting holes in roofs with axes, the filmmakers said.

    “I think we think that's all being taken care of, and it's not being taken care of,” said Sanchez. “We need to be there for them because they're always there for us.”

    Funding for the film came from corporate sponsors like General Motors and an outpouring of donations from supporters who saw preview clips online. To do their part, Putnam and Sanchez  are donating portion of any proceeds from the film to the Leary Firefighters Foundation to help supply firefighters with equipment.

    For Putnam, the story of this one city’s firefighters is symbolic of what the rest of the country’s fire departments may soon be facing, as budget are slashed in almost every state. And Putnam and Sanchez want people to remember that, as heroic as their work may be, firefighters are human after all.

    “People tend to think of firefighters as being indestructible,” Putnam said. “They're not indestructible. If you don't give them the equipment they need and you send them into situations they shouldn't be going into, they can get hurt and they can get killed. And it's easy to forget that.”

    Follow the film on Facebook here, or on its website, here.

    Follow Jim Gold on Facebook here. Follow Yardena Schwartz here.

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  • Afghan shooter: Chain-of-command failure

    More information on the alleged killing of 16 civilians in Afghanistan by a U.S. soldier continues to surface, and the Morning Joe panel wonders how the Army Staff Sergeant was able to leave his base to conduct the shootings. Vanity Fair's Sebastian Junger and MSNBC's Col. Jack Jacobs join the conversation.

    By Col. Jack Jacobs , NBC News contributor

    NEWS ANALYSIS 
    At the moment, we know only that a 38-year-old U.S. Army Staff Sergeant left his post and shot to death 16 civilians in Afghanistan, including nine children and three women, and surrendered soon after the incident. Others were wounded and may not survive. The sergeant's wife and children in the United States have been relocated and are under the protection of the American government. 

    News of the attacks has spread slowly across the country, but thousands of people took to the streets in the eastern Afghanistan Tuesday to demonstrate against the killings, burning an effigy of President Barack Obama and chanting “Death to American.” 

    There have been NATO casualties in the area in the wake of the incident, but most of the American activity is not daily active combat with the enemy, but instead public works projects and the training of Afghans. In this regard, it is telling that the sergeant was able to walk unaccompanied and unmolested to the sites where the civilians were killed.

    Protests break out over Afghan shootings

    He is in American custody and, pursuant to the agreement between the United States and Afghanistan, will be prosecuted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. This means that a General Officer, probably John Allen, who commands U.S. forces in Afghanistan, will appoint an officer, almost certainly a military lawyer, to investigate the incident. The investigator will interview witnesses and
    then make a recommendation to the commander about how to deal with the case.

    This process, called an Article 32 Investigation, is the military equivalent of a grand jury, but unlike in a civilian procedure, the accused can be represented by counsel and cross-examine witnesses. The commander can follow the investigator's recommendation or not, as he sees fit, but in this case if the investigating officer recommends a trial by court-martial, you can bet the sergeant will be tried.

    The U.S. Army staff sergeant accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, comes from a U.S. base with a troubled history. NBC's Miguel Almaguer reports.

    There has been much discussion about the fact that the non-commissioned officer was on his fourth trip to Southwest Asia, implying that the stress of repeated deployments may have been the proximate cause of a breakdown that resulted in this tragic violence. While we should not be sanguine about the huge demands we place on our undermanned and overtaxed forces, specious arguments justifying the outburst are easy but dangerous to construct.

    Most murderers have not served in the armed forces, and there are many thousands of American troops who have murdered nobody, but have more deployments than this suspect. Coincidence is not causation.

    NYT: An Afghan elder comes home to find a massacre

    Breakdown in the chain-of-command
    What seems most striking about the incident is the failure of this sergeant's chain-of-command. The camp is guarded all the time, and particular attention is always given to security at night, when this soldier departed. There is a sergeant of the relief, supervised by a sergeant of the guard, supervised by an officer of the guard, supervised by an officer of the day and a field officer of the day.

    Furthermore, troops live together continuously, often in close quarters, and it is impossible to envision a situation in which nobody had any inkling of his propensity for violence. He worked for another sergeant who worked for a lieutenant or a captain, all of whom lived with him. The investigation will include interviews of his comrades, his leaders and his family. His snail mail, email and social sites will be scoured, and all of it is likely to reveal that his commander either did know, or should have known, that this violence was possible, or even probable, and that this man should have been removed from the unit.

    If this sounds familiar, it is because the situation is similar to that of Maj. Nidal Hasan. His supervisors knew that he was unstable and did nothing about it, and in 2009 Hasan killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas.

    For the moment, the National Command Authority has reiterated its commitment to the mission in Afghanistan, with some withdrawal of conventional troops slated to begin in 2014. But with an increasing number of influential people, including prominent Republicans, convinced that we should withdraw sooner rather than later, it's certain that there is already a plan for an accelerated pull-out beginning in 2013, soon after our national election.

    Nevertheless, whether troops are in Afghanistan or the United States or anywhere else, the stringent and vital requirement of good leadership is the same. Being in the uniform of the U.S. Armed Forces is not just another job and indeed is like no other endeavor in the world.

    Yes, we ask far too much of brave people who are willing to sacrifice for us, but when their leaders forget or ignore their awesome responsibilities, the result is often tragedy.

    Read more from Col. Jack Jacobs

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  • BP's cleanup chief: Spill 'is going to change the industry'

    Following is the full transcript of "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams' interview with BP Managing Director Bob Dudley:

    BRIAN WILLIAMS: BP has turned to a new man to run the cleanup operation in the gulf. Managing director Bob Dudley spent time there growing up in Mississippi. He's with us from Washington, where he met with the interior secretary today, the head of the EPA.

    Mr. Dudley, we're duty bound to point out two things as we get under way here. This nation swallows about, give or take, 19 million barrels of oil and petroleum products every day. We understand that it has to come from somewhere. And second, this is the first time in this 66 days of this disaster that the BP boss has appeared live on this broadcast, which is viewed by the largest single daily news audience in the country. So the question is this: Can we agree that this happened because BP knows how to get oil a mile down, but not how to stop it? And given that, should you be allowed to drill for it that deep?

    BOB DUDLEY: Good evening, Brian. This is a disaster that-a very, very low probability of happening to any oil company. It has happened. We need to pull it apart piece by piece by piece, understand what happened, learn from it, disseminate that knowledge around the world and throughout the industry so it never, ever, ever happens again. This is a terrible tragedy. It's a terrible tragedy on people. I saw the pictures of the wildlife in the gulf. This is terrible, and the company's going to put its full might behind the--providing every resource it can to stop it, clean it up and restore the gulf.

    WILLIAMS: What did the feds want to know from you today, and what did you tell them?

    DUDLEY: We had a review today of the latest update on the containment that is back on stream. He have about $25,000 contained. We talked about the kinds of things that the oil and the gas industry needs to do in the future to ensure this never, ever happens again. We spoke with administrator Jackson about the long-term impacts of dispersants and the concerns, and making sure that we learn from this event for the future, for everybody in the future; and with Carol Browner, we went over pretty much the full spectrum of issues that we're working on in the gulf.

    WILLIAMS: Is...

    DUDLEY: We want to keep everybody informed.

    WILLIAMS: Is there anything else you need to warn us about? Anything else that could go wrong?

    DUDLEY: Well, we're working in this 5,000 feet below the seabed. We've got untold, uncharted territory that we've been through to get to this point in it. We've got relief wells that are getting close to being down. We should be able to shut this off by August, in August. You never know. I have a concern about storms in the gulf. We're going to have to react. We've got a lot of planning in place. Those are things that I think are unknown variables at this point, but it isn't because of lack of planning and people and manpower by the Coast Guard and by BP working together out of the unified command center in New Orleans.

    WILLIAMS: If this is what happens again, knowing how to get the oil a mile down but not to stop it, do you now look at the next Alaska, the Prudhoe Bay project, in a new light? For viewers who haven't followed it, that will go two miles down and then six to eight miles across into a reservoir of oil. And to get off of regulations on offshore drilling, BP has built an island, attached it to land so it's technically onshore. Do you now step back and say, `Well, should we be doing this?'

    DUDLEY: Well, in Alaska, that is how you drill mainly offshore because of the ice. So that's not an unusual development plan. But this kind of drilling goes on all over the world, and so we need to learn what's happened on this well in the gulf. There're unknown things about it. We need to understand what equipment failed, what decisions might've been, what could be done differently, and do a real forensic investigation of it. I think this is going to change the industry for--in--for good around the world, and we want to be part of understanding what happened and making sure everyone knows so that it doesn't happen again.

    WILLIAMS: I have to ask a question on behalf of the shrimpers and the folks who work the water, many of whom we've come to know well on our many visits down there.

    DUDLEY: Mm-hmm.

    WILLIAMS: Do you have any fundamental problem--because they didn't do anything wrong here, of course--in making them whole? You've got families threatening to leave the area, move. They just can't make it. They can't survive, some of them waiting for payments from BP.

    DUDLEY: Mm. Well, this is a terrible tragedy. We've been moving as fast as we can. We have 33 claims offices across the gulf. As of yesterday we had written checks for 123 million. We've had to revise how we do businesses. We're now going to start paying one to two months out in time to make sure that the business can be sustained. We want to move as fast as we can. We want to transition with Ken Feinberg, who's the independent claims person. He's giving us a lot of input and advice. We're not slowing down, and if we're going to err, we're going to err on the side of paying a claim and squaring it up later, if that's an issue.

    WILLIAMS: Whole lot of people down in the gulf anxious to talk to you now that you're on the job. Thank you very much for coming on our broadcast. We hope it's the first of many conversations. Bob Dudley, the new boss at BP, on Capitol Hill tonight.

    DUDLEY: Thank you, Brian.

    WILLIAMS: Mr. Dudley, thank you.

    DUDLEY: Great. Appreciate it.