Transcripts For WBAL Today 20100309 : vimarsana.com

good morning. terrifying ride. a california highway patrol officer uses his own car to help stop a toyota prius hurdling down a busy interstate at more than 90 miles an hour. the drer claims it accelerated on its own and now he s speaking out. ultimate insider. president bush s top adviser, karl rove, opens up about the most controversial moments in the bush white house, the war in iraq, the response to hurricane katrina and the leaking of a cia operative s name. karl rove writes about it all in a new memoir, and he s talking about it to us in an exclusive, live interview. and look, mom, no paddle. it s part kayaking, part sky diving, and totally crazy. the thrill-seeking daredevil behind the newest extreme sport, skyaking, today, tuesday, march 9th, 2010. captions paid for by nbc-universal television and good morning. welcome to today on a tuesday morning. i m matt lauer. and i m ann curry, in for meredith, who s still sleeping off her oscar all-nighter. meantime, boy, before we get to the skyaking, let s talk about this prius news. more bad news for toyota. certainly nothing they needed. we need to say, luckily, nobody was injured. it happened on monday, a driver says he was passing another car in his toyota prius, when he claims his accelerator became stuck, his brakes would not engage. the car climbed to speeds over 90 miles an hour, whizzing in and out of traffic for 30 miles. the driver managed to call 911 and was eventually stopped with the help of a fast-thinking state trooper. we re going to hear from that driver and find out what toyota has to say about all this, just ahead. and speaking of dangerous, check this out. a powerful tornado caught on tape on monday by storm chasers in oklahoma. you don t see this every day. it looks like a scene out of the wizard of oz. no one, luckily, was injured, but several homes were destroyed. we re going to get more on this scary moment, coming up. also ahead, little is known to the outside world about the church of scientology, but this woman, kristi colbren, defected from a controversial leadership group within that church, and now she s speaking out about how it operates. she says members of the elite corps are pushed not to have children and must pledge to earthquake a scientologist for a billion years. we ll talk to her about that in an exclusive, live interview. but we begin with the wild ride involving a runaway toyota prius on a highway in california. miguel almaguer has more details. reporter: the 61-year-old driver who has a heart condition says he did everything he could to slow down that prius, but he says the car kept going faster and faster. wedged behind a california highway patrol cruiser, the 2008 prius sat idle after a terrifying 30-mile ride that nearly cost james sikes his life. still shook up. reporter: it began when he tried to pass another driver and his car accelerated out of control. as he dodged other vehicles, sikes says the brakes didn t work. soon, he was doing 90. he called 911. i was on the brakes pretty healthy. it wasn t stopping, wasn t doing anything to it, and just kept speeding up. reporter: the patrol car pulled alongside using the p.a. system to relay instructions keep pressure on the brake, try to shut the car off. when i saw him, i could smell the brakes. i saw his brake lights coming on. i was standing on the brake pedal, looking out the window at him, and he said, push the emergency brake, too, and i laid on both of them. reporter: suddenly, the car began to slow down, dropping to 55 miles per hour. the chp cruiser moved in front of the hybrid, guidi the prius to a stop on the interstate. sikes just had his car serviced at a local dealer. mechanics told him his car wasn t a part of any recall, but eventually, some prius models were recalled for floor mats or brake problems. toyota s recalled 8.5 million vehicles worldwide and 6 million here in the u.s. now the company says it s investigating this latest incident. do you solemnly swear reporter: just last month, congress held hearings on the toyota recalls after the government received complaints of over 30 deaths linked to sudden acceleration since 2000. it s really starting to feed in and fuel a sense that possibly toyota really doesn t know what the situation is and it s a mystery that we re all going to have to discover together. reporter: the investigation into what happened in this case could take weeks, but damage to toyota s reputation may already be done. i won t drive that car again, period. reporter: this morning, both the california highway patrol and toyota say they are investigating the incident. in fact, toyota officials say they re sending a representative here to southern california to take a look at that car. matt? hey, miguel, the highway patrolman said he told the driver to turn the ignition off. the driver did not do that, though, correct? why? reporter: the driver said he did everything he could to turn off that car, matt, and of course, remember, these priuses don t have those key switch ignitions, they have those buttons, and the driver may have had some concern that he would have lost his power steering at speeds up to 90 miles per hour, but he does say he did everything he could to turn off that car. all right, miguel almaguer for us this morning. miguel, thanks very much. it s now five after the hour. here s ann. matt, thanks. washington is buzzing this morning over why new york democrat eric massa stepped down from congress. his resignation took effect on monday afternoon, shortly after he gave his third explanation, and this time, massa placed blame squarely on fellow democrats. nbc s kelly o donnell is now joining us from capitol hill with more on this story. kelly, good morning. reporter: good morning, ann. any sudden resignation from congress is controversy enough, but the story here is full of twists. congressman massa first said cancer would force him to leave and now says a high-level conspiracy pushed him out. i m a direct, salty kind of guy. reporter: and boy, did he pass the salt around. on a local radio station, congressman eric massa denied harassing a male staffer. he blamed lots of drinking at a wedding reception where massa said there was guy talk about chasing the bride s maids, and he responded and i grabbed the staff member sitting next to me and said, well, what i really ought to be doing is . reporter: massa then made a remark. and then tousled the guy s hair and then left. reporter: massa quickly turned to fellow democrats in the interview, aiming at the president s chief of staff. rahm emanuel is son of the devil s spawn. reporter: massa then recounted what could only be called a shower scene in the gym. and i m sitting there showering, making as a jaybird, and here comes rahm emanuel, not even with a towel wrapped around his turn, poking his finger in my chest, yelling at me because i wasn t going to vote for the president s budget. do you know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man? reporter: last week he said he would not run for a second term because cancer had returned. almost instantly, the harassment allegation and an ethics investigation leaked. speaker pelosi said she didn t know any details. this is rumor city. every single day there are rumors. reporter: prompting massa to go after pelosi and house democratic leaders, accusing them of conspiring to force him out because he was a no-vote on health care reform. mine is now the deciding vote on the health care bill, and this administration and this house leadership have said, quote/unquote , they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill. and now they ve gotten rid of me and it will pass. reporter: and massa s opposition was from the more liberal side of the democratic party. he didn t think there was a sufficient public option, so that s why he was against it. now, i ve talked to senior democratic aides who say there was no basis, in fact, in his allegation, and they say it s as absurd as it gets. ann? kelly o donnell, kelly, thanks. you get the feeling that s not the end of what we re going to hear from that. probably not. let s get a check of the other headlines of the morning. ann s here, so natalie s at the news desk. good morning to you. good morning to you. forecasters say there s a possibility of severe weather today from missouri to alabama. on monday, tornadoes hit parts of oklahoma. this one caught on tape by storm chasers at severestudios.com. the storms damaged several buildings, but fortunately, caused no injuries, no serious injuries. today, president obama goes to st. louis to push for health care reform. on monday, he took his health care pitch to pennsylvania. nbc s chief white house correspondent chuck todd joins us, and chuck, the president appearing to be fired up. reporter: it was, natalie. it was the return of candidate obama. believe it or not, it had been six months since the president had done an event outside of washington totally focused on health care. well, that s what yesterday was about and that s what wednesday s going to be about. yesterday he rolled up the sleeves, he got rid of the jacket and he did two things. number one, he railed against the insurance industry in the health care situation. in fact, he used the word insurance some 54 times. only used the phrase health care 27 times to show the focus that they re trying to make that this is about insurance companies, insurance companies, insurance companies. second, he rallied democrats, trying to make it sort of a democrats versus republicans. if they stop us here, he was trying to imply, then that s it, he s not going to be able to get other things done. democrats on capitol hill were very happy with the tone, natalie. chuck todd live for us at the white house. thanks so much, chuck. police in southern california say a registered sex offender charged with killing chelsea king is the focus of the investigation into the death of 14-year-old amber dubois. last night, 1,000 people turned out at a vigil for amber, who disappeared a year ago. her remains were found on saturday. the u.s. government wants nigeria to investigate and prosecute those responsible for massacring more than 200 people sunday in renewed violence between muslims and christians. many of the victims in sunday s attacks were christian women and children. one of the two remaining american missionaries held in haiti for more than a month was released on monday. charisa coulter is now back in the u.s. the other american remains jailed, accused of trying to take children out of haiti after the earthquake. overseas markets are mostly lower this morning. as for wall street, cnbc s melissa francis is at the new york stock exchange for us again this morning. melissa, what are you watching there? reporter: good morning, natalie. it is the one-year anniversary of those multiyear lows we saw last march 9th, and since then, stocks have really been on a tear. the s&p is up 68%, the nasdaq up 83%, the dow up 61%. crude oil up 75% in the past year. that s not good for consumers. and some of the most troubled stocks are the ones that have had the biggest gains. bank of america up almost 350% since this time last year. and texas instruments showing signs that the economy is recovering, said after the bell yesterday they can t keep up with demand. natalie, back to you. all right, melissa francis at the new york stock exchange, thank you. and a record-breaking milestone last night for the uconn women s basketball team. the huskies won their 71st consecutive game, an ncaa record. they beat notre dame 59-44. huge congratulations to them. there is a way to celebrate. 7:11 right now. let s turn it back over to matt, ann and al. here at home, things are pretty quiet. clear skies right now. plenty of sunshine all day to day. temperatures in the 30 s. we will make it into the upper 50s 47 to about 50 for highs there from portland to seattle. the warm spot on the map, go down there into texas, deep south, 83 degrees. that s a look at your tuesday forecast. matt? all right, bill, thank you very much. now to a man who is no stranger to controversy in washington. republican strategist karl rove served as president george w. bush s closest adviser for two terms. during some of the most trying times ever faced by an american president. rove opens up about that experience in his new book, courage and consequence: my life as a conservative in the fight. he is with us exclusively and we should mention he is now a fox news contributor. karl, good morning. good to see you. thanks for having me. the book only comes out today. already the critics have gotten a hold of it. and some are saying this is 500 pages of you rewriting history, that this is putting the best possible spin on some very controversial episodes. dana millbank, who wrote about the bush white house for the washington post writes that business about president george w. bush misleading the nation about iraq? didn t happen. let s stop right there. go ahead. let s stop right there. he said one sentence. i devote an entire chapter to showing that bush did not lie about iraq. in fact, i quote democrats. there were 110 democrats who voted for the iraq war resolution. 67 of those democrats, including john kerry, john edwards, hillary clinton, on the floor of the congress said iraq had weapons of mass destruction. so, he may be able to dismiss it in one snarky line, but i have the facts in here. what you write in the book is that the president, president bush, would not have invaded iraq if he had known there were no weapons of mass destruction. and what you write is, would the iraq war have occurred without wmd? i doubt it. congress was very unlikely to have supported the use-of-force resolution without evidence of wmd. but people have come forward saying there was intelligence pointing that saddam did have weapons of mass destruction, but there was also intelligence pointing in the other direction and there were voices of dissent, and those were ignored so the president could make his case. the intelligence was worldwide agreed that he had wmd. he had ignored 14 resolutions following his surrender after kuwait to account for his wmd. he had spent 12 years stiffing the international community. we now know because of two international reports by two international weapons inspectors, kay and doefler, that he was diverted tens of millions of dollars a year from the oil for food program to keep together the necessary but the agreement was not worldwide. this is from bob woodward s book state of denial. in october of 2002, the top intelligence officer, major general james spider marks, in charge of looking for wmd in iraq looked at 146 wmd sites and said he couldn t find with confidence there were necessary weapons of mass destruction or stockpiles at a single site. well, that s one, but there were many intelligence but you said it was worldwide. there was disagreement. there was a consensus. it doesn t imply that everybody agreed, but it implies that the preponderance of evidence and the majority of agreement was that there were wmd. and look, this is a bipartisan agreement. it was al gore and bill clinton, as well as republicans who said he had wmd. even former british prime minister tony blair in a memo in 2002 wrote president bush had made up his mind to take military action even if the timing was not yet decided, but the case was thin. well, he agreed with the decision. and again, the british intelligence also believed that he had wmd. in fact again, it s a worldwide consensus. you can go back and try to rewrite history, but at that moment, we as a nation were faced with the belief that he had wmd, that he was a threat to the stability of the region, and in the aftermath of 9/11, the calculus changed, and it was, i repeat, a bipartisan agreement. you say if the president so, if president bush lied, then president clinton lied, senator clinton lied, senator kerry lied, senator edwards lied, senator kennedy lied. did the president share all of the information with the american public, all the intelligence, all of the dissenting voices? because if you go back to your assertion that congress wouldn t have voted for the use-of-force resolution without the threat of wmd, you don t have to be too big a cynic to say, of course they beat the drums about wmd. well, this will be surprising to you. the president was restrained. the president said i don t you know, if there are things that we don t have confidence in, we re not going to say them. in fact, you know, secretary powell, for example, went out to the cia to review the evidence for several days, literally 24 hours a day, talking to the experts, reviewing the evidence to come to his own conclusion. the president encouraged that kind of review. we made the information available to congress. congress had access to that intelligence as well. you write in the book that one of the biggest mistakes you think you made was not staying on the offensive against the critics of president bush after this thing started to fall apart. so, the mistake wasn t saying, hey, we made a mistake, we got bad intelligence or we acted on the wrong intelligence you were worried more about the political damage to the president? you know what i was worried about was this and let s be clear about what it was in the book that i talked about, and that is that in july of 2003, on one day, senator ted kennedy goes out and says bush lied about wmd. this is a man who two days after the vote which he voted against the iraq war resolution nonetheless, went out and made a speech saying iraq has wmd, there are other ways besides war that we can use to restrain that. the same day, senator tom daschle, leader of the senate democrats, went out and said the president is misleading the american people. the next day, senator john kerry and senator john edwards in separate appearances say the president misled the american people, was lying about wmd. they re joined by jane harman. when you have five major democrats in two days pick up the same line, which they know is incorrect, that bush lied about wmd, it was a political attack aimed at the heart of the administration and we should have responded more than we did. let me move on because we ve got a lot to cover. hurricane katrina, by all accounts, the federal response, the federal government s response in the first couple of days, few days after hurricane katrina was a disaster, and there was that picture, karl, of the president looking out the window of air force one, looking down at the flooded region, and it made him look terribly out of touch. disconnected, disconnected. with the tragedy on the ground. from the book, you write i am one of the people responsible for that mistake. when did you realize that pr-wise and imagewise for the president, it was a disaster? well, i knew it was look, let s put it in context. the president of the united states, if he had dropped into new orleans that morning, would have discombobulated recovery efforts. they would have had to close the air space. rather than a cargo plane coming in with rescue people, it would have been president bush. but that picture almost was worse than no picture. we should have gone to baton rou rouge, which is where the governor was and where the emergency disaster center was, and that s where we should have gone. you also wrote we did not have the ability to get realtime information so did not realize the initial reports we were getting were wrong. this is the president of the united states. did anyone at the white house turn on the tv? we had realtime information. the media did not have realtime information. for example, the media led people to believe there were snipers. so, as a result, rescue personnel refused to go into some of the but we showed the suffering at some of these places. and that s the point, is that you, for example, you didn t know about the suffering at the convention center until the government did, but the government should have known about it earlier, and that s one of the big reforms to come out of katrina is that the federal government s now aimed at getting realtime information and not depending, as it has in past emergencies, for the state and local people to provide the information about what s going on on the ground. jan bartlett said katrina was politically the final nail in the coffin. do you agree with that? i m not sure i agree it was the final nail in the coffin, because i don t believe the bush administration was by any means dead. the cia leak scandal was so big, i can t dig into it now. you testified before a grand jury on that, but there are a couple questions i have about it, karl. when did you first and i mean a date when did you first tell the president of the united states that, in fact, you were involved in that leak and you were a second source? well, first of all, i did not believe i was a second source. my contribution to this was when bob novak called me and said, in the course of a long conversation, one or two sentences valerie plame, whom i didn t at first figure out was joe wilson s wife, sent him to africa, and when i said, i ve heard that, too. if he had said to me, can you confirm, i would have said, i can t confirm. what you thought was an offhanded comment was used as a second source attribution? i thought from the way he talked about it was that he had this from someone else in the government and he had it confirmed from the cia. but when did you first go to the president, what date? shortly after this all began to bubble up? in september or august or september of 2003? in august or september of 2003. so, in august or september of 2003, you then realized, uh-oh, i m the guy who gave him his second confirmation. yet, on september 29th, 2003, on october 7th, 2003, and on october 10th, 2003, scott mcclellan, the press secretary for the white house, went before the media and said in no uncertain terms, karl rove had nothing to do with this. giving her name. i didn t know her name. i didn t know her name. bob novak got it from someplace else. i m not but are we splitting hairs? did you know that scott mcclellan was giving out information that was not correct? i did not know her name. her name was given to novak by undersecretary of state richard armitage. nobody knows for three years and when ty figure it out in august 2006, it s a ho-hum. the washington post writes an editorial saying, why didn t we know about this before and it s no big deal? so, do you think you owe scott mcclellan any apology for what he said to the media on those occasions? no. none whatsoever. you write in the book, you say when the prosecutor in this case, patrick fitzgerald, i guess contacted your lawyer, and said he was inclined to indict, you put the phone down in the cradle and you wept. you wept because you were frightened about what might happen, that you had made a mistake? why did you weep? no, it s when it is when i believe it s when look, this is an enormously pressure-filled i think i actually weep when i get the news that he s not going to indict. i m sorry. that s the way i meant to say it. but look, it was a lot of pressure, and i had no vulnerability on that so-called underlying offense. from the beginning, i told the fbi when i first met with them about my conversation with no k novak, and for two years, they say you re just a witness to this. and in fact, i tell in the book what they were really focused on, which is not valerie plame, which is not joe wilson. it is a conversation that i cannot to this day remember having with a reporter, and they were focused on if i can t remember this conversation with the reporter, why is it that i asked my staff to go find out if i had had a conversation with them? and when they find the answer to that, which they finally ask after two years, the prosecutor says to my lawyer, o you rocked my world. i spent two years under investigation for something that had absolutely nothing to do with valerie plame and joe wilson. you write about it all in an amazing book. and it s going to generate a lot of controversy. karl, thank you for being here. i really appreciate it. thanks, matt. it s 23 minutes after the hour. just ahead, a live, local, latebreaking. this is wbal-tv 11 news today in baltimore. good morning. i am stan stovall. here is kim dacey at traffic pulse 11. just a couple of things we want to mention. accident on 97 northbound on the ramp to northbound 895, possible lane blockages. report of an accident on 29th southbound at sandy spring road. the big story is delays around the area. 795 at southbound is slow approaching the beltway. the inner loop on the east side, kind of an odd delayed their but not when we usually see. jammed from hawkins point road to curtis creek drawbridge. another delay on the topside of the beltway. traffic is quite backed up. that is all my back to providence road. we are going to continue to see fantastic weather. the last couple of days we have had sunshine and temperatures above normal. a wide range of temperatures. 47 downtown. 30 degrees in frederick, 32 in parkton. take a light jacket this afternoon. sunshine in the forecast for today. high temperatures in the upper 50s to around 60 degrees. average high around 51. things will change tomorrow, with a slight chance for a couple of rain showers on wednesday. chance for showers all four days. high temperatures into the upper 40 s and low 50s over that stretch. this weekend, daylight savings time. before you go to bed saturday night, set your clocks ahead one hour. check the bottom of your screen for updated news and traffic information. our next update, 7:55. 7:30 now on a tuesday morning, march 9th, 2010. there are extreme sports and then there is this. why would anyone jump out of a plane strapped into a kayak? we re going to talk to the daredevil i guess that s the reason right there. we re going to talk to the daredevil behind the wild sport of skyaking in just a little bit. meanwhile, inside studio 1a, i m matt lauer along with ann curry. meredith has the day off. you re a daredevil, aren t you? would you try that? you know, i think if our senior producers have any say in it, the answer would be yes, but as a matter of fact, you must be leaving right now. bye, ann, nice knowing you! no, but you know, i think guiding your we ve both jumped out of planes, and guiding is really tough, so you ve got to be able to really drive your parachute to get in the right spot or else you re skyaking on land. that would not be good. no. we ll find out more about that. also, meantime, let s talk about what else is coming up, and that is about a man who s been a navy s.e.a.l., a professional wrestler and the governor of minnesota. now jesse ventura s writing about what he considers to be the cover-ups by the u.s. government, everything from the assassination of president lincoln and john f. kennedy to the recent financial collapse. we ll hear from jesse ventura, coming up in just a minute. also ahead, look who else is joining us in the studio this morning. that oh, that is the videotape of jane pauley. for 13 years she served as the co-host of today, and now, cut to the live shot, she is back in our studio. man, meredith takes one day off, and she doesn t waste any time getting to the couch. we re going to talk to jane, who s kicking off a new series of reports that she s worked on for us with the help of aarp. we re going to catch up with jane in just a little while. so nice you re here. but let s begin this half hour with the secretive and controversial church of scientology. in a moment, a defector from the church s leadership corps will speak out in an exclusive live interview. but first, nbc s kerry sanders is outside the church of scientology s headquarters. that s in clearwater, florida. kerry, good morning to you. reporter: well, good morning, matt. yes, behind me is the ornate world headquarters of the church of scientology. the elite group that helps run the church is known as the sea organization, and this morning a member is breaking ranks and silence and telling stories of finances, abortions and mime control. business as usual, it seems, for scientologists at the organization s expanding world headquarters in florida, but for 33-year-old christine collbran, once a member of scientology s elite corps, sea org, life is anything but. she was born into a family of scientologists, but since christine and her husband, chris, also a member of the church, broke away and started speaking out against scientology, as they did in a recent the new york times article, christine says the church has cut her off from her family. they have to make a choice between their daughter or, you know, their eternity or what they think is their eternity as far as their salvation goes spiritually. reporter: spokesman tommy davis says the church denies interfering in her family but does say members are taught to cut contact with so-called suppressives, people who viciously attack the church. i ve been labeled a suppressive person because i, you know, basically no longer support the church. reporter: her decision to leave, she says, was emotionally and financially costly. christine says every member signs a so-called eternity contract to remain a scientologist for a billion years. when she broke that contract, she says the church, which had paid her $50 a week, handed her a $40,000 bill for counseling services the church had given her over her lifetime. i signed a contract that said i was going to be there for the rest of my life and beyond, so i didn t fulfill that contract and they bill you. reporter: that bill was later reduced to $10,000, but still, christine claims the church made leaving so difficult, she made an extreme choice. the sea org does not allow members to have children, so she got pregnant and hid it until it was too late for an abortion. the church denies putting any pressure on members to have abortions. scientology boasts millions in their congregation, including high-profile movie stars john travolta and tom cruise. being a scientologist, people turning to you reporter: whose scientology video on youtube has been viewed more than 5 million times, a testament to the public s fascination with this secretive religion. but the new york times reports members are walking away in increasing numbers. now there is the sense that people who do leave have company, they re not alone, and that that s what s contributing, i think, in some ways to this flood of people who are kind of, you know, stepping out of the church. reporter: church spokesman tommy davis says christine is a liar who has been heavily influenced by a former ranking leader of the church who was expelled. matt? kerry sanders in clearwater for us this morning. kerry, thank you very much. christie king collbran is with us exclusively. christie, good morning. good morning. nice to see you. first of all, your response to the statement kerry just gave from tommy davis. i m not a liar, so is that what you re referring to? yeah. no, i mean, the information that i ve spoken out about is true. i still consider myself a scientologist. you would like to be a practicing scientologist. you re speaking out less about the church and the fundamentals of the church than you are about this sea organization. well, yeah. i was in the sea organization, which is basically the elite corps of scientologists. they re staff members. you don t have to be a sea org member to be a scientologist and that s where you sign that billion-year contract is in the sea org. you were a scientologist since you were born. you became a member of that organization. it s kind of like a leadership order within the church. you obviously liked your role there for a while. you worked long hours for very little pay. what changed all that? what made you decide this was not what you signed up for? well, there was a different atmosphere at the very end of my career in the sea org. things had changed. the leader of the church, david miskavich, had implemented things that trickled down even to the organization that i was at that, you know, it was an atmosphere of sort of fear. people were scared. there wasn t you know, scientology is supposed to make you more able to think for yourself, live a happier life, and the people there weren t happy. so, it wasn t really something you know, you re there to make a difference and to help people, and the people there themselves aren t happy. when you and your husband both decided it was time to leave that organization, how difficult did they make it on you? it was difficult. i mean, it took my husband over a year to get out of the organization, you know, from the original time he decided he wanted to leave. and you know, there s a lot of things. there s a program you have to go through. you can t just walk through the door. you have to go through certain steps. somebody watching this might say why can t you just walk out the door? why can t you get in your car and drive away? well, you can if you really want to, but what happens is that you can then be considered a suppressive person for just walking out the door and not going through the steps that they require you to go through. as a result, you lose contact with the other people in your family and your friends. that s right. tommy davis went on in a statement he sent to us, ms.  collbran left the organization, the religious order of the church of scientology, four years ago, having never held a senior management position. she has no knowledge of the management of the church today. she was later expelled for violating the church s ethical codes. she s not a scientologist, is not welcome inside any church of scientology and must be bitter as a result. okay. well, i do consider myself a scientologist, and there is, you know, it s my human right to be and to do whatever i want to do. i believe in the philosophy. i did not leave the faith. and you know, there s actually a creed of the church that says, you know, you re free to believe and practice and do whatever you want to do with regards to that kind of thing. so, for him to say that, it s just not it s really inhumane. when people hear scientology, they think of some high-profile scientologists like john travolta and tom cruise. in your opinion, are they shielded from some of what s going on inside groups like the sea organization? well, yeah. there s a lot of pr that goes on to make it look like it s a very, you know, successful, expanding organization, and you know, i wish that was true, i do, because i believe in the philosophy. i want it to do well. but there s things they don t know about. there s things you know, there s abuse at the top of the organization by david miskavich that they don t know about and they re not being allowed to see that, because you know, that wouldn t be what s wanted. christie king collbran. christie, thanks for joining us this morning. i appreciate it. you re welcome. and let s get a check of the weather now from bill karins, who s in for al. announcer: today s weather is brought to you by advil cold & sinus. with the power of advil plus a strong decongestant. ask for it at the pharmacy counter. well, good tuesday morning. we want to welcome all the girls here from the cosmetology class, greenwood, south carolina. we were chatting a second ago, right? yeah! and you said not just a haircut, you would like to add some color. oh, yeah! what color would you add? let s get some pink going through there! might pass on pink. might do some other shades possible, too. some blues, some greens. got this here, too. you re looking good and doing good. welcome, girls. beautiful weather, no jackets on the plaza for many people. temperatures in the 50s and 60s. we continue with the warm weather. we had 70s in the northeast for the first time in months. enjoyable weather continues for one more day on the east coast, then the storm in the it looks like another fantastic day today. sunshine, temperatures above normal. average high of 51 bit of a 50 s to are athern rockies from colorado up into areas of idaho. and if you ever want to get your hour-by-hour forecast, you can always get that at weather.com. matt? all right, bill, thank you very much. up next, former governor jesse ventura on what he says are a series of high-profile conspiracies the government does not want you to know about. but nothing comes out! advil cold & sinus knows that the real problem isn t always mucus. it s often swelling caused by inflammation in your nasal passages. the right medicine for the real problem is advil cold & sinus with a strong decongestant that reduces swelling to relieve sinus pressure plus the power of advil for the pain. advil cold & sinus. the right medicine for the real problem. ask for the red box at the pharmacy counter. sweet n sour filled twizzlers. the twist you can t resist these are actual farmers who raise vegetables in campbell s condensed soup. so if you ve ever wondered who grew my soup, well, here they are. so many, many reasons it s so m m! m m! good! the sparkly flakes. the honey-baked bunches! the magic s in the mix. my favorite part? eating it. honey bunches of oats. taste the joy we put in every spoonful. honey bunches of oats. we call the bunches in honey bunches of oats the prize in the box. well, now there s a prize inside the prize. pecans! pecans! baked into crunchy oat bunches. taste the delicious surprise in every spoonful. honey bunches of oats with pecan bunches. beautiful. engaged? puppies? broken? alternator? study where? fender bender? leaking where? it s kaput. kaput? [ male announcer ] life is full of unexpected expenses. twins? how much water?! ignition coil? france? both fenders? how deep?! ahhhh! [ male announcer ] be ready, build a cushion, with automatic transfers to savings. twins. [ male announcer ] get started at bank of america. back now at 7:44. jesse ventura rose to fame and was early nicknamed the body as a professional wrestler and he became the governor when he successfully ran for governor of minnesota in 1998. well, now, jesse ventura s a best-selling author. his new book is called american conspiracies: lies, lies and more dirty lies that the government tells us, an explosive look at what he believes are cover-ups by the u.s. government. governor ventura, good morning. good morning. that is some title! well, you know, i can t take credit for that, you know. the publishers do get a little leeway when you write a book, so i m not responsible for the title. in fact, the title scared my wife. oh, well. she said, you re going to put your name on this? and i said, i m afraid so. they came up with the title, but everything inside the book is mine, and dick russell, my co-writer. i wanted to give dick credit because dick did theom yeoman s work on digging in to get all the knowledge. and of course, when you do a book like this, it s really like throwing a jigsaw puzzle on the floor and you have to do it piece by piece, put it together until you develop, and will you ever get the whole picture? no, but you ll get enough of the picture to understand what it s about. you re talking about what you say are alternative theories yep. to what everyone is studying in school, learning from the history books. in fact, you write about some things that people really basically don t believe are debatable. for example, you talk about john wilkes booth, which is debatable, lee harvey oswald, james earl ray, sirhan sirhan, men who were responsible for the deaths of four presidents. and you basically say these men are part of what you call the lone nut theory, which you don t buy into. why not? no. i mean, to me, you re telling me i grew up in the 60s, and all of these guys were killed by lone nuts who never spoke to anyone, never planned anything why don t you believe that? and yet, they were failures, supposedly, at everything else in life, but hugely successful when it came to assassinating someone. and let me make this this is not stuff i make up. everything in this book is documented. if you look, there will be a little number after every paragraph. you can go right to the book. so, this is not my imagination running wild. this is based upon facts, many of them government documents. the biggest government cover-up in your lifetime you say, is the assassination of jfk, and you go so far as to outright say that there was a second gunman. so, you re making a conclusion that the warrant commission did not. absolutely. how do you do that? well, the 1978 house select committee came out and said it was a probable conspiracy, so now you have two government agencies that contradict each other, and yet, no one investigates it. and the key to this are the three bullets. it s not the magic bullet, it s not the head shot. it s the one that missed, because that had to be a near miss. and if you go to where it hit on the ground and injured mr. teague, it s 22 feet high and 33 feet wide from the target area. and you say what the constant in all of these assassinations, virtually all of them, is, starting with kennedy, is the cia. they come up. why are you implying that? i m not implying anything. that s the documents. that s where it leads you. the common denominator is always the central intelligence agency to a great many of these. and it s not me making it up, you know. i didn t make this book up. i offer opinions at the beginning of chapters and at the end of chapters, but everything in it is all documented off of government documents, other articles, interviews that people have given and everything of that. the biggest bombshell of the book is your writing that i am convinced that some people inside our government about 9/11 knew that the attack was going to happen and allowed it to come to pass because it furthered their political agenda. who are you talking about, whose political agenda? whoever was in charge at that time. they knew about osama bin laden are you saying the bush administration? yep. the bush administration had a political agenda in allowing the 9/11 attacks to occur? well, it s not so you know, look back in history. this isn t the first time. the gulf of taiwan well, let me say this, the government has no credibility with me anymore. they lied about the gulf of tonkan incident. that didn t happen. killed 150,000 of us in vietnam, probably 1,500 vietnamese and was the catalyst of the vietnam war. i was teaching at harvard when they admitted the gulf of tonkan incident never happened. is it fair to say that your book does not conclusively offer conclusive evidence that these histories are incorrect? i think it does. i think it offers a great deal of evidence. now, as i said, it s like conclusive evidence? it s like a jigsaw puzzle. years have gone by. you re not going to fill in every hole in the jigsaw puzzle, but you re going to get enough pieces to where you get a picture. and so, what is your goal in questioning these things? my goal is this i believe 100 years from now, i want people to be able to believe that not all of us bought the stories, that there was other people who felt the government did not tell the truth, and i want that to be out there 100 years from now so that people understand that this was not a slam dunk on any of these conspiracies. on that note, we have to leave it because we re out of time. sure. jesse ventura, thank you so much. plymy pleasure. great to meet you. the book is american conspiracies. coming up, the american daredevil sport of skyaking. we destroy ourselves. it s a selfish thing to want to protect nature. i never intended to be a businessman. we made the world s best climbing equipment out of here. we realized that putting in and taking out of all these pitons was causing damage to the rock. so, i made these little soft aluminum chalks that you just put in with your fingers. and i m a dam buster. we ve been working for years to take this dam out. the reservoir behind it is only 4 feet deep the water gets real warm, kills a lot of the life in the river. when you take out a dam, that s a real victory. i mean, a concrete victory so to speak! when i get an idea to do something, i like to take the first step. if that feels good, i take another step. to do good, you actually have to do something. no matter what you want to do, members project from american express can help you take the first step. vote, volunteer or donate at takepart.com. it can take so much out of you. i feel like i have to wind myself up just to get out of bed. then. well. i have to keep winding myself up to deal with the sadness, the loss of interest, the trouble concentrating, the lack of energy. if depression is taking so much out of you, ask your doctor about pristiq. (announcer) pristiq is a prescription medicine proven to treat depression. pristiq is thought to work by affecting the levels of two chemicals in the brain, serotonin and norepinephrine. tell your doctor right away if your depression worsens or you have unusual changes in mood, behavior, or thoughts of suicide. antidepressants can increase suicidal thoughts and behaviors in children, teens and young adults. pristiq is not approved for children under 18. do not take pristiq with maois. taking pristiq with nsaid pain relievers, aspirin or blood thinners may increase bleeding risk. tell your doctor about all your medications, including those for migraine, to avoid a potentially life-threatening condition. pristiq may cause or worsen high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or glaucoma. telling your doctor if you have heart disease. or before you reduce or stop taking pristiq. side effects may include nausea, dizziness and sweating. (woman) for me, pristiq is a key in helping to treat my depression. (announcer) ask your doctor about pristiq. just ahead, a familiar face returns to the today show fold. we ll catch up with jane pauley. that s cool. also coming up, the wild extreme sport of skyaking. take a look at this. unbelievable. higher education was held to a higher standard. because it s time traditn no longer stood in the way of getting an education. people like me demand a different kind of university. one that puts my talent first. on-line. on campus. on my terms. it time a university recognized people like me. people like me. people like me. i m a free runner. .national champion gymnast. .martial artist. and a stuntwoman. if you want to be incredible, eat incredible. announcer: eggs. incredible energy for body and mind. (guitar music) i hear hot babysitter a lot. hi. my sienna is great. it matches my style, it has great stuff for my kids, it has an available dual-view entertainment center. driving my sienna says, sure, i m a mom. but i m not running around rocking mom jeans. miss, there s a diaper bag on your roof. please. [ male announcer ] meet the family and the new sienna on youtube. toyota. and the new sienna on youtube. (announcer) right now, all over the country, discover card customers are getting five percent cashback bonus at grocery stores. it pays to get more, it pays to discover. transform drinks you want, into cold medicine you need. introducing fast crystal packs. a new way from alka-seltzer plus to. get cold and flu relief in a taste-free, fizz-free powder. alka-seltzer plus. live, local, latebreaking. this is wbal-tv 11 news today in baltimore. good morning. i am stan stovall. here is kim dacey and traffic pulse 11. we have an accident on 97 northbound, the rap to northbound 895. also an accident on west oakwood road, left lane blocked and causing jammed traffic there. a big story is delays around the area almost everywhere. harrisburg expressway southbound, slow from middletown road to mount carmel. gen from hawkins point road to curtis creek drawbridge. and we will give you a live look at some of that delays at harford road. outer loop is slow back to charles st.. 95 and white marsh area, that is slow from white marsh to 805 tunnel. 895 tunnel. at least the weather is nice and quiet. clear skies, a beautiful day today, with temperatures climbing above normal. average high temperature is 51. a little chilly right now, especially in the western suburbs. in parkton, 32 degrees. almost 50 downtown at the maryland science center. hijab prefers will range between 56 and 61 to high temperatures will range between 56 and 61 degrees. high temperatures will fall into the 40 s by the weekend. check the bottom of your screen for updated news and traffic information. our next live update at 8:25. coldwell? yes, banker? i took the liberty of beefing up security now that we have the j.d. power & associates award in the office. is that really necessary? well, our agents work really hard. of course. but the locked door is probably sufficient. too much? coldwell banker, ranked highest in customer satisfaction. we never stop moving. how about over here? n let s go back to the left. waffling is back at dunkin donuts. for a short time only, enjoy the return of the delicious oven-toasted waffle breakfast sandwich. america runs on dunkin . 8:00 now on a tuesday morning. it s the 9th day of march 2010. spring is in the air here in new york city. getting up into the 50s again today. probably about 43 right now, not bad, and a big spring break crowd out on our plaza this morning. we appreciate that. there you go. so, out on the plaza, i m matt lauer along with ann curry. meredith and al are taking a much-deserved day off after some hard work out at the academy awards. they re back tomorrow. exactly right. you have jumped out of an airplane. yeah, so have you. i have jumped out of an airplane, but what do you think happens in somebody s mind, where they re like, okay, i ve jumped out of planes, but tomorrow i m going to do it strapped into a kayak? can you believe that? one guy actually did just that, and thus, the extreme sport of skyaking was born. he s going to be here to tell us all about it, coming up oo. i just can t believe it every time i look at this, i can t believe it. it looks like he s flying it. and the landing is the key part. you have to go right into that strip of water. look how thin that strip is! he must do it pretty well. also, we re delighted there is the skyaker. we are delighted to have a former member of the today show family. and i think once you re a member, you re always a member. that s true. yes, you are. that s jane pauley returning to the show this morning, her old stomping grounds where she was the co-host for 13 years. and she s going to start a monthly series. talk about reinventing yourself and following your dreams. i think it s going dob great information for a lot of people watching. she s the perfect person to help us learn that. also coming up, late-night host chelsea handler is considered rude and crude and that s why we understand a lot of fans love her. right now she s out mingling with our crowd. she s written her third book. one of them went to number one on the new york times list. so, she s clearly got some success going for her. thank you, thank you! before we go any further, let s go inside. natalie s got the headlines. good morning, everyone. toyota has sent its own investigator to southern california, where a toyota driver survived a terrifying ride monday. james sikes said the accelerator on his 2008 prius got stuck. his brakes didn t work and the car raced out of control for 30 miles at speeds of up to 90 miles an hour. he called 911 and a california highway patrol officer pulled alongside and coached him to a safe stop. a u.s. missionary released from a haitian jail monday is back on american soil. chrissa sou charisa coulter and nine other members of her idaho baptist group were detained in january on kidnapping charges for trying to take children out of the earthquake-stricken country. the group s leader is the only one still being held in haiti. more than 1,000 people joined a candlelight vigil monday night for amber dubois, the san diego teen whose remains were found saturday. she had been missing for more than a year. police confirm the sex offender charged with raping and killing teenager chelsea king last month is also under investigation in the dubois case. song and tears monday at the funeral for marie osmond s 18-year-old son, michael brian. the 18-year-old died last month in what police said was an apparent suicide. democratic leaders are denying claims by a party member who now says he was forced out of congress for voting against health care reform last year. on friday, new york democrat eric massa said he was quitting the house because of a harassment complaint by a staff member. days earlier, he cited health problems. his resignation took effect monday. tomorrow, president obama takes his appeal for a health care overhaul to st. louis. on monday in pennsylvania, he urged democrats to pass legislation within the next two weeks. the speech drew fresh fire from republicans, who insist the american people want congress to start over. and take a look at this. go, granny, go! argentina s newest skydiver is an 81-year-old grandmother of seven, virginia stefanutto jumped out of an airplane monday to celebrate international women s day. great landing for her there, sort of. 8:04 right now. let s go back outside to matt and ann. she s not in a kayak, though. that s the safer way to do it. that looks like fun. you ve got to root for her. meanwhile, you have a check of the weather. bill karins is in for al. international women s day. when is international men s day? every day. every day. that s the problem. all right, let s start here with our lovely ladies. 21. all right, now, you re from a small town in pennsylvania. what s the name of the town? the town we re from is center valley, pennsylvania, but in general, where s that located? new wilkes-barre. okay, now, we re tying this in because our pick city of the day is going to take us right near your little old town there, where it s going to be sunny and mild, wilkes-barre, pennsylvania. around 53 degrees, so should be very enjoyable still in many areas of the east. we re going to watch it, very nice down in the southeast, too. that storm system, though, watch out for severe storms isolated in arkansas, tennessee, mississippi, alabama, louisiana. some messy weather still in the rockies. and in the northwest, a cold front coming on shore with a little it looks like another wonderful day today. plenty of sunshine. temperatures pushes into the upper 50s to around 60. northwest breeze around 10. florida. it should be relatively dry for most of the spring training baseball games in florida. areas to the north should have more of a chance of wet weather over the next two days. all right, this is your 9th birthday, and on his hat here, it says don t kiss me. i m 9. are you going to let your mom give you a nice little kiss on the cheek? come on! aww, that s what we want to see! i knew you d do it you re a good kid. matt, back to you. bill, thank you so much. when we come back, jane pauley returns to the scene of the crime here at the today show. we re looking forward to catching up with her. then the guy behind the extreme sport of skyaking. find out what that s about. [ male announcer ] a bath becomes even more pleasurable when you know that your water is being heated in an environmentally conscious way, while saving you hundreds of dollars on your water heating energy bill. introducing the geospring water heater from ge with advanced hybrid technology. heating the water in your home any other way is just going to seem primitive. is just going to seem primitive. it s tough to reach that five servings a day if you don t always like the taste of vegetables. good thing v8 v-fusion juice gives you a serving of vegetables hidden by a serving of fruit. v8. what s your number? only revlon® age defying makeup has botafirm™ to help relax fine lines and completely cover flaws. in fact, 95% of women said it visibly helped relax expression lines, instantly. don t deny it. defy it. with hazelnuts. isn t this how calcium should taste? eating well has never been so craveable. with quaker dark chocolate mocha hazelnut cafe squares. isn t this how whole grains should taste? eating well has never been so craveable with quaker caramel baked rice snacks. try the first great-tasting, zero-calorie. natural sweetener borne from the leaves of the stevia plant. truvía. honestly sweet. find it at your grocery store. [ children shouting ] honestly sweet. come on, kiddo, let s go. [ laughs ] hold on a second. come on up here where your brothers sit. [ birds chirping ] wow! did i ever tell you what it was like growing up with four sisters? that sounds fun. yeah.fun for them! [ male announcer ] chevy traverse. a consumers digest best buy. with a 100,000 mile powertrain warranty. it seats eight comfortably not that it always has to. trying to be big like you, dad. you re so good at keeping everyone full and focused with your fiber. but you already are great at doing that. really? sure! you re made with fiber just like me. but best of all, you re the perfect size for smaller kids. give your little ones kellogg s® frosted mini-wheats little bites™ cereal. in chocolate and now original flavor. they re an excellent source of fiber packed in a smaller size. oh, it s original little bite. we re off to practice keeping em full and focused. yeah, we ve got big shoes to fill. we re off to practice keeping em full and focused. why do 4 out of 5 almay women suddenly look younger? new smart shade anti-aging makeup. micro-beads adjust to your ideal shade. a hydrating complex targets areas to reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. new smart shade anti-aging. all right, we know you ve heard of kayaking and you ve heard of sky diving, but have you ever heard of someone do both at once? well, check this out, because that is miles daisher from twin falls, idaho, who gets a thrill just out of diving out of airplanes while sitting in a kayak. he calls it skyaking and he s done it at least 50 times. he s here to tell us all about it miles, good morning. good morning, miles. good morning! i m super pumped up. it s like sky diving. you guys must feel like this all the time. meantime, watching this, we re thinking, are you crazy? what made you do this for the first time? i resemble that remark. i kind of lost a bet to a friend. no, a friend of mine, scott lindgren was making sky diving movies and said could i jump a kayak out of a boat you mean out of a plane. out of an airplane. thank you very much. the boat might have been the first good step. what was it like the first time i mean, you ve been sky diving since, what, 1995. 1995. okay, so for a long time. what was it like the first time you got out of a plane strapped into this thing. kind of like your first skydive, your palms are sweating, you re really nervous, what can happen? am i ready for what can happen? you re going through the malfunction procedures in your head so if anything happens, it s instinctual, you do what you have to do. then once you get out and settle into the air, it s fun. how long did it take you to learn to stabilize the thing so you could sit there and enjoy the ride? because there s video of you flipping around. took a few seconds. you get out and the air catches you and you want to present the bottom of the boat to the air and once you re sitting on it, it s like balancing on an exercise ball in a seated position. meantime, looking at the landing in this narrow strip of water, could you think maybe i ll land, try this over the ocean, maybe? a lake? a lake maybe? what is this about? yeah, that s the truckee river right there. it s a little chilly, but you know, we re having some good times. and yeah, basically, you re looking for sky diving, you want to have very accurate landings, and it s cool to be able to pinpoint an area. with the rebel air force, we do demonstration jumps around the planet and do high-precision landings. but you say with sky diving, you want to have precision landings. we watched ann one time land in a different state than she was supposed to land in. so it doesn t always happen that way. have you ever landed this on ground as opposed to water? what s that like? well, i ve touched water and gone up on the grass uh-oh. and it s just smooth. really? you don t do a face plant right off the bat? no, i stuck it every time. stuck it. you don t want to do that regularly. that s a mistake, but you don t want to purposely land on land. no, this boat would be find on land. you think so? you could probably land it on a street, on a gravel road. you wouldn t want to land it in a boulder field, but we re looking at the other crazy things. you re a husband and a father. yep. does your family ever say, okay, you know, this is the last crazy thing and there shouldn t be anything after this? no. they re proud of me because they know i m a professional at what i do and i take the precautionary measures to be safe in my sport. and yeah, we re always trying to push boundaries and see what s possible out there, and that s kind of a fun thing, kind of exploring, kind of pioneering new sports, but yeah, my family s super supportive of me. yeah, nikki. yeah, eli, woo! [ laughter ] yeah, eli s taking a nap. i think your child is hiding his face. i m not sure about this, dad. miles, how long would it take you to teach ann to do this? you re trying to get rid of me. about half an hour. we ll sit down. sky diving took me eight hours of ground school. it s all about flying the parachute and you re landing. that s the point. with this particular parachute what kind of a parachute are you using? ram air canopy, you steer it with toggles. how dependable is that? because you ve got to be able to land it, be able to stick it, as you say. no, it s really dependable. what we do is we open up higher because sometimes you have malfunctions and that s why we carry two parachute systems. your back parachute is on your bum, right? so in the kayak, how does that work? it s actually all on your back. you ve got the lower part of your backpack is your main canopy, and then if things go wrong, you can simply cut it away and pull your reserve. so you have two chances, which is always nice when you re falling towards the ground at 120 miles an hour. well i say bicycle. i say bicycle is next. been there, done it. have you done that? yeah, buddy! you ve done that on a bicycle? come on! you have not! yes. good landing? no deer up there, thank goodness. miles, that s cool stuff. thank you very much, matt. thank you very much. you re obviously a man who enjoys life. congratulations. do you ever not smile? yeah, sometimes when i m asleep. miles daisher, thanks. he s going to teach me in a couple days. we ll hook up. sure. coming up next, we re going to talk to our good friend, jane pauley. that s right, jane pauley is in the house, coming up. ya know, i m really glad we finally decided to see where raisin bran crunch is made. yeah, this trip is way overdue. i just can t wait to see all those crunchy flakes in action. i hope i get a chance to put two scoops!™ of raisins in some boxes. you know what will really get us in the spirit? 99 boxes of raisin bran crunch if you re nice to me i ll share some with you you take one down ( and pass it around ) 98 boxes of raisin bran crunch three tasty ingredients, one great combination. raisin bran crunch! from kellogg! to cover up flaws and make skin look pretty but there s one that s so clever, it makes your skin look better even after you take it off. neutrogena healthy skin liquid makeup. 98% of women saw improvement in their skin s natural texture, tone, or clarity. does your makeup do that? neutrogena® cosmetics recommended most by dermatologists. honda accord and toyota camry stand behind their powertrain for up to 60,000 miles. chevy malibu stands behind theirs for up to 100,000 miles. which makes it pretty clear whose standing out front. a consumers digest best buy two years running. chevy malibu. compare it to anyone and may the best car win. now, qualified lessees get a low mileage lease on this 2010 malibu ls for around $199 a month. call for details. see your local chevy dealer. love to see kids spirits shine. superstar and mom, martina mcbride and sunnyd shine on sunny taste. sunny spirit. sunny d. you d savor exquisite specials and a fine chianti. but rome is like 4,200 miles away. that s why there s bertolli chicken florentine for two in a luscious white-wine sauce. bertolli. italy is served. we re back now at 8:19. and this morning we re kicking off a new series, your life calling today, and we are welcoming back a very, underline very good friend and a familiar face around here, jane pauley. she s been working with aarp, which has produced and sponsored a new series of reports for us. it s so nice to see you. it is so great to see you back. is it weird to be here? well, you can go home again. they just don t let you have your old room back. yeah. and it s a lot bigger than it used to be, faster. sorry about that. food hasn t changed. no complaints. oh, good. no complaints, no. wonderful to be back, and i m going to be back once a month profiling people who are reinventing themselves. so, what word is the opposite of hobby or pasttime? well, that word would be work, but what if you could trade your job for your pasttime and make it work? that s just what betsy mccarthy did. stress was a constant presence for betsy mccarthy, a top administrator at kaiser permanente in portland, oregon. dealing with time pressure, dealing with long days. reporter: but away from the office, she indulged in her secret passion, knitting. don t let us interrupt you. can you do this and talk at the same time? oh, yeah, and walk. reporter: she knits while she walks the dogs with her husband, terry, in coffee shops and in waiting rooms. it s sort of like zen or yoga, meditation. reporter: i wish i had that. you can get it. reporter: but 11 years ago, she was living between two worlds, her profession and her passion. but there was just something missing in my life. reporter: so, at the age of 57, at the top of her game, she walked away from her career. i went from this six-figure income to under, you know, $5,000 or $10,000 a year. reporter: and her husband was about to retire, too. you made a financial plan. right. we had a certain goal so we could pay off oyur mortgage and then we d be able to live on less. reporter: ten years ago when you did this, reinvention wasn t the buzz word it is today. you re our role model, but yet, it didn t just all happen, leave the paycheck world and then start a whole new great knitting life. no, because it took quite a while, i think, to learn how to restructure your life. reporter: your husband would come home and ask he d say, well, what did you accomplish today? i would say, that s not really the right question. i mean, i really couldn t tell him why, but it s not like i m accomplishing things. it takes the ability to live with a lot of ambiguity and not panic. reporter: she began traveling the country, teaching on cruise ships, even landed a book deal. knit socks! sold 65,000 copies. you do beautiful work. well, thank you. reporter: and here at the money drona fiber arts festival in tacoma, she s a knitting rock star. she taught me to knit my first pair of socks. reporter: really? yes. reporter: but she gets the most fulfillment out of teaching. this is not going to be a problem. she just had a glow as well when she was doing this, and we love her. someone from a previous life, a cfo from a health care company i worked for, he looked very apologetic at me one time and said, i understand you re doing a lot of knitting these days. and i thought, you know, if he only knew, because this was such a happy time of my life, to be able to do that. reporter: oh, if he only knew. right. reporter: does your husband ask what you ve kpluaccomplishe today anymore? no. no. he s quite impressed. okay, for a reality check, betsy s income last year was $5,000. she and her husband obviously had to make some trade-offs, like moving from a big house to a small condo. net result, less money, less stuff, but also less stress and more happiness. yeah, but also happiness on your face. i m watching you do that interview and i ve known you for a long time. you like this idea. you like this subject, and there s a piece of you, i m sure, that identifies with betsy. do you know, over the years here, 30 years at nbc, each job i had was a little closer to what i did best and liked best doing, and the common denominator was always telling stories about real people that had some purpose for an audience, whether it was overt or not. right. and now i am overtly doing stories about real people in the hopes that the viewers at home will get something out of it. but i like what betsy said. she says, you know, you have to be the kind of person that doesn t get freaked out by ambiguity. right, right. but that s not everybody. not everybody. this type of a decision is not for everyone. which is why every month when i come back, we ll have a different kind of story. and over the diversity of 12 stories in a given year, i think everyone will find something that resonates. and aarp, by the way, has this enormous website. i m going to do my first ever live chat web chat? online today at noon eastern time. and if i may say, you can find a link on the today show link, but also, aarp.org/jane. and you know, because everybody reinvention means something very different to everybody. you ve made choices in your own life and career where you ve stepped back at times where people said, why is she stepping back? things are going really well. have they always been easy or are there times when you got home and ambiguity did freak you out a little bit? i m kind of like the roadrunner, and i jump off the cliff and didn t know where i was going, but i was enthusiastic about going there. i m very future-oriented. i m comfortable with the future. aarp calls the baby boomers the opportunity generation. i ve always felt there was more opportunity, even though i also recognized that less could be more. so, but you re right, not everybody feels that way. not everybody is cut out for this. most importantly, we re happy you re here once a month. i ll be back in a month. you got it. we look forward to it. head to todayshow.com for details on the web chat. live, local, latebreaking. this is wbal-tv 11 news today in baltimore. good morning. i am kate amara. let s get a final check on the morning commute with traffic pulse 11 am kim dacey. not looking too, too bad. not too many incidents to talk about. accident 97 northbound, the merge lane is blocked there. westbound 100 and oakwood road, the left lane blocked. jammed traffic because the accident. scaggsville road, report of a vehicle fire there. sandy spring road delays happening all across the area. harrisburg expressway, slow for middletown road to mount carmel. in the east side of the beltway is down from hawkins point road to the curtis creek drawbridge. west side of the beltway is jammed from park heights to edmondson on the outer loop. no. look at the beltway shows a delay there. outer loop. that will go back to 95. inner loop is also seeing a delay. around park heights ave. 95 white marsh, slowed to 895. that is the latest on traffic pulse 11. deceit in the traffic department. there is nothing going on in the weather department. busy in the traffic department, but nothing going on in the weather department. 49 at the maryland science center. 37 parkton. 42 at edgewood. forecast for today, another string of beautiful weather will continue. the average high temperature is 81 today. we will make it almost 10 degrees above that mark. we will keep the sunshine, sunset 7 minutes after 6:00. things changed a little bit tomorrow. 30% chance for rain shower, a pretty good chance for rain. the temperatures begin to fall over that stretch. is and therefore is the time we hit the weekend. we will have another update for you at 8:55. 8:30 now on this tuesday morning. it s the 9th day of march 2010. let s just stop and say, ooh, what a pretty shot. lady liberty soaking up the sun in new york harbor. always a pretty view, as they pull back to show manhattan island. if you look, somewhere there on manhattan island you ll find rockefeller plaza, and that s where we ve got a great crowd of people gathered on this tuesday morning. temperature s in the mid-40s, going up into the mid-50s. we like it. we are not complaining one bit. out on the plaza, i m matt lauer along with ann curry and natalie morales. meredith and ann and al, excuse me, are taking the day off today. will be back tomorrow. much deserved. just ahead, the three of us are actually going to school. we are. that s right. we re going to learn how to cook. he s got four different ways of making a classic italian dish, which is called the seltan boca. apparently involves getting the aggression out first. yes. with that piece of meat there. pork. yes, pork. apparently, it s very tasty and we re going to learn how to make it. also ahead, the very outspoken host of chelsea lately, chelsea handler is there reading her favorite book, karl rove s new book. she s known for her quick wit and that she ll say anything on her mind, probably will say things on your mind, too, but you re afraid to say. she s so funny. i m sure karl rove is thanking her as well for that extra plug. plus, what do women from other countries know about beauty? beauty secrets around the world. you can get them here now. before we go any further, though, let s meet the competitors, the latest competitors who were sent packing from the biggest loser. on on the last show, darryl huff lost the elimination challenge and his place on the ranch and miggy was then voted off after coming up short at the weigh-in. darryl and miggy, welcome. thanks for being here. you both look great. you both look great. darryl, you started out over 400 pounds, right? 418, right. what do you weigh now? 287. and you re feeling how about that level of success? super. this is wonderful. great. it s a new chance on life for me. i was reading, and i don t know if i have this right, but you found a jacket in your closet that you haven t worn since you were young and you were able to fit in? graduation present was a motorcycle jacket and i wore it for a couple years and soon grew out of it, and it s back on again. and the feeling you had when you were able to put that back on again? at first, i said there s no possible way, and as i started putting it on, i said hey, this is going to be great. and miggy, you started over 240 pounds. yes. so, how far are you down now? i m down to 170. that s great. and how is it doing this at home now? because you guys have had to keep up with all the weight loss at home. yes. well, as a chef at home, i ve just been converting my recipes into a healthier lifestyle, interchanging from the fat and the sodium, taking all that out. i mean, it has been working. yeah, but you also cheated, because you found a novel way to lose weight, you lost your appendix, you know? so, that s just going way too far, miggy, right? i think it was when i started walking those miles and i was told you have to walk, and i walked the 13 miles after surgery. wow. the passion was there and it s still there. is exercise the single biggest factor, do you think, in the weight loss? no, no. what is the biggest factor? i think it s the diet with exercise. you wouldn t want to do one without the other. you get a big bang that way. all right. it s a combination. without that combination, it s not going to work. and you are continuing to compete for that $100,000 at-home prize, right? that s correct. good luck with that. so, weight training every day. it s nice to meet you both. thank you very much. thank you so much. let me remind our viewers, the biggest loser couples airs tonight at 8:00/7:00 central time right here on nbc. and right now we want to get a check of the weather from bill karins, who s in while al takes the day off. bill? thanks, matt. if you noticed, everyone out here in orange today. this is ms awareness week. this is melissa goodman. three years ago diagnosed with ms. yes. you look wonderful. well, thank you. are you feeling good? feeling great. thank you. and you re feeling good this week because? because it is ms awareness week and we re out here to raise awareness for ms. now, there s stuff going on not just in new york, but around the country. all over the country. and if they want to find out what is going on in their area they can go to www.nationalmssociety.org. well done. good luck, and the slogan? it s move it! let s move it. we ll move it. let s talk a little bit about the weather on this tuesday out here. and the spring flood outlook does look interesting in the northern plains. that really looks like the best chance of severe flooding, the red river valley, also above average chance of flooding down through the mid-atlantic. remember, we had all the snowstorms. that all melted, but the rivers are still running high. we have rain in the middle of the country. that is going to be sliding east. we re also going to be watching the beautiful weather in new england going away after today, so bottle it up and enjoy it while it lasts. it looks like another fantastic day today. sunshine, temperatures above normal. average high of 51 bit of a 50 s to are aroun than it should be. temperature only 63 in l.a. today? that doesn t make people happy. 64 in vegas. that s not warm weather, either. that s cold for vegas! that s a look at your tuesday forecast. ann? all right, bill, thank you so much. meantime, buckle up, because we re going to have a wild ride because chelsea handler is in the house and she s been reading karl rove s book. the house and she s been reading karl rove s book. but first oh, and jesse coldwell? yes, banker? i took the liberty of beefing up security now that we have the j.d. power & associates award in the office. is that really necessary? well, our agents work really hard. of course. but the locked door is probably sufficient. too much? coldwell banker, ranked highest in customer satisfaction. we never stop moving. and we re back now at 8:38. late-night comedian chelsea handler is known for saying what may be on your mind but would never come out of your mouth. i want to know what you drink to keep your body like that, because what i m drinking is not working. i know you did a song on this album with t.i. yeah. who i used to have a very intimate relationship with. really? are you serious? you think that s funny? cloris leachman, i went to drinks with cloris. oh, really? yes, she called you a [ bleep ] recently. doesn t everybody? chelsea is also a best-selling author. her first two books at the top of the the new york times best-seller s list. now she s out with her third collection of personal essays, chelsea chelsea bang bang. chelsea handler, good morning. nice to have you here. good morning. nice to meet you. nice to meet you as well. i would be remiss if i didn t just begin with what i think is a touching dedication in this book. i mean, it s just it brought a tear to my eye. to my brothers and sisters, what a bunch of and i ll say jerks. you use a tougher word. i ll use the word a-hole, since it s morning television. what s wrong with your brothers and sisters? why do they deserve that on page one of the book? well, if you met my brothers and sisters, you d know. i d know instantly? i come from a varied family. it s very colorful and it starts with my father, so we all kind of talk to each other like that. melvin, is that right? his name in the book is melvin. his real name is seymour, so ooid i had to find something equally as jewish for the book. is it true in the first couple books they actually asked you to change their names and now they ve been bitten a bit by the attention bug and now they want their real names in it? yeah, my sister has more friends on facebook. she says all the people from high school want to be my friends. use my real name. that s not fair. they have to stick with that decision. that s what i told them. melvin apparently is suing you, or might sue you as a result of this book. explain how that happened. well, my father, who loves the attention, by the way he thinks that he s a celebrity through me, which he s obviously not. and he i asked him to put he started dating his jamaican cleaning lady, who s 19, by the way. i guess she s probably aged now. i don t know how jamaicans age, but he s been dating her for about three years. so, she started at 19. i said, i m going to write about this because this is a true story. he said you can t. that s my personal life. i don t want women to think i m unavailable. he s 78, by the way, and nobody wants him to be available. so, i told him that i was going to use it because it s a true story and i can use it and my brothers and sisters will also corroborate it for me that he is dating this woman, or lady. and he said that he would sue me if or first he said he wanted to be paid $25,000 to be in the book, and i said that s not going to happen. you told him forget it, right. and he said what if i sue you? and i said that won t happen either because you would have to borrow money from me to sue me. where s it stand now? he s probably watching at home in new jersey, hi, dad, melvin seymour, and hello lady friend. so, he s trying to scam you on this, but everything i read about you and i have read in articles, you are the ultimate practical joker. where did this come from in your life? how did that get started? well, it starts because i like to lie and i don t like to wrap up the lies or admit they re lies, so as an adult, that can turn into practical jokes. like i have a chapter in here that are open-ended practical jokes for a lot of my friends that don t know the true end of the story, like one of my friends thinks sully, the guy who landed the plane on the hudson, is actually my personal pilot. you convinced that person of this? yes. and he drives me around i mean, he flies me around and drives in the car also because he wants to make extra cash. because he had nothing better to do after becoming a hero in the miracle on the hudson? nothing going on socially or professionally. and the best part is beyonce and paul mccartney are the two people before me. so, if they have to go somewhere, sully s not available for me, but he s available, if beyonce s sleeping that day. you say you surround yourself with ridiculous people. you even send out fake e-mails to your staff members just so you can figure out who the dumbest person on your staff is. those are your words, matt, and mine, actually, so thank you for reading my book. how s that gone for you so far? well, it s good. one day we set up fake pap smears downstairs on stage 2 to see how many girls would sign up for a gynecologist who was coming, because we had a fake doctor s table. i ve announced pregnancies. i ve come out of the closet for people who are not gay to heir parents on e-mail. does anyone still work for you? they do. they love it. they love the abuse. it s amazing. you pulled a prank on your former boyfriend. yeah. what happened? well, he just probably got sick of me, don t you think? wouldn t you be sick of me? i mean, what happened with the prank? oh, i faked a dog s funeral and made him go to a dog s funeral that i by accident you told him you killed the dog. i killed the dog, i said, with a napkin because the dog ate a napkin and the next day i said the dog died. so we videotaped the funeral at the santa monica pier, but that s pretty much his thought for believing that that s a really stupid story. you re better off without him, you think? i might be. so, your book comes out on the same day karl rove s memoir comes out. do you see these catering to the same audience? pretty much. he and i are almost identical twins. i mean, he stole the title from my book, which was courage and consequence, and, yeah, i mean, it s highly competitive. you know, jesse ventura also has a book out. obviously, you know. he was on the show earlier today. and you know, i ll do what i can. i m happy to be in the same company as somebody as hot as karl rove a hot karl, as i would describe him. a hot karl. hot chelsea, thank you very much. the book is called chelsea chelsea bang bang, and you ve had quite a track record with these books, so congratulations. good luck with the show, also. thank you, matt. it s nice to meet you. it s 44 after the hour. up next, it s time to head to class, chef mario vitali gives us a announcer: today s cooking school is brought to you by i can t believe it s not butter! back now at 8:46. this morning on today s cooking school, a traditional italian dish made with veal, chicken and pork and our teacher is known other than chef mario batali. mario, good morning. mario, nice to see you. saltara boca, does that literally mean to jump around? from the dish to the mouth, because it s so delicious. the italians feel anything that s exciting has to be excited itself. it s a reflexive verb. so, here we are. if you can mix saltimbocca with anything, what ingredients make it traditionally? prosciutto, sage you re making something without those ingredients, but the ladies here have their pieces of pork a boneless pork chop or pork loin. they ve got it slightly pounded. there s a slice of prosciutto inside and two leaves of sage. that s the ingredients that you absolutely have to have. okay. it s variations of the same sort of idea. right. so, what we ve got here is you have taken yours and you would press these into the pan. press down. right. then what you ve got is into the pan with a little extra virgin olive oil and you re cooking it. you pounded this pretty good. when do you know to stop? when it s just a little bit thinner. what is a very misunderstood thing about american butchering and great shops around the country, they ll do all of this for you without charging you like an up price. they want you to be more involved in your cooking. so, when you say listen, i saw this on tv with ann and matt and everyone here, natalie, i want to know exactly how to make this dish, can you pound this for me? they ll set you up with almost the entire thing. good to know. now, to make the sauces, basically, you have to turn the meat over. okay. everyone s got theirs over. now in matt s case, we have tomato sauce and a little chicken stock. i don t want to get your suit dirty. i have to grforgot to grab a apron, sorry about that. my rule of thumb is with tomato sauces, if you can buy one with your picture on the label, you should go ahead and do that, but if you can t how many of us can say? but if you can t, buy one with mine on the label. now, down here, what we have are mushrooms. because i m making the you re making the veal marseilles. so you don t have to cook the mushrooms, that s all cooked down, right? you can if you want to. do you use an inexpensive wine? we want it to be a little sweet. add a tablespoon of the tomato sauce and a little stock. now, i have lemon. here you have the lemon scallopinie variation. add the juice and the stock and a little butter. lemon juice. all of it. in my case, the simplest one, which is just plain white wine is yours chicken? what s yours? mine is just white wine. mine has actually got the pork on the outside. okay, i got it. so that gives it a crispy overcoat, which i like. a little butter. a little butter to kind of bring it together. you ll take the mozzarella and put it right on top. right on top, okay, great. then you ll swirl this around, demand realtime, it shouldn t take go ahead and turn your heat up, ladies. give yourself a nice bit of heat. a bit of butter in there. are we making a reduction, is that the idea? well, the wine s going to reduce. when you cook with wine, you want to get rid of the alcohol. that takes it to a boil and cooks it for two or three minutes. then add your lemon juice, add your zest. did you add your zest? in the wine, yes. and then what you did was swirl it around. uh huh, swirl it. and then you add a touch of pepper. everyone s got a little pepper mill. and then a little bit of herb. and matt, you have the margrum. you have italian parsley. and mario, i have chicken stock to mine here, right? just a touch. make sure it s just loose enough to get all of that to reduce. you wouldn t put a cover on this to help melt the cheese? let it melt itself? or toss it under the broiler for a second, because you do want it to soften. you don t want it to melt all over the place. the classic is with the cheese still having a texture. so it doesn t look like chicken parm at that point. exactly. you don t want that. this is reducing very fast and the aroma is unbelievable. good. what you want to do to make sure the sauce comes together is give it a twiswirl like that and it mulsifies, which is where the air gets in with the broth and surrounds the little bit of butter in there. i turned yours off because it was going crazy. generally speaking, this dish will take you? ten minutes max. ten minutes max. ten minutes if you re taking your time. you could rush it out in four or five minutes, providing you had everything prepared. and the basic ingredients. one of which is love. fine, that adds five. are you traveling again this year? going off to some far-flung place? i am, as usual, but what we re really working on that i m excited about is a store called italy, which is a 50,000-square-foot grocery store built in torino that we re building at the toy building on 23rd street. wow. and inside are going to be five new restaurants, and it s this whole slow food ideology, and on top of it, we re having an alpine tread arena and a brewery. oh, my. do you like the slow brewed thing? i do. it s important for people to understand where we ve come from and not what we ve developed. now, you re ready. i m ready. go ahead and toss those on to that extra plate there. okay. what do you like to serve these with, mario? what i really like, which isn t really popular, but overcooked greens. i like broccoli that s been boiled a long time. i like roasted tomatoes. go ahead and try mine, matt. the professionals. yours are good. you re ready. i didn t pay enough attention to mine. matt s expressing the ultimate trust in the chef by eating mine first. ladies, if you want to he s not eating his own, is the point. his is just about ready. very good. ann, how s yours? testing mine, okay. i m going to say here s a knife. i m going to test this and tell you that mario batali oh, you can cook this any time. look how good this. this cooking school thing is working out for you guys. as long as you re here. if you want to learn more cooking secrets, check out the italian 101 lessons at our cooking school at today shtod. we re back we ve got an exciting contest that could be a fantastic trip for your child s entire classroom. the wizarding world of harry potter at universal orlando resort is opening this spring and your class could be at universal s island of adventure in orlando for the grand opening. all you have to do is head to our website at todayshow.com, and let us know why your classroom is extraordinary. very cool. it looks like the video we ve seen of that so far, it looks like it s going to be really cool. amazing. have you read the books? we re reading the books to the children right now, the first. it s fun. starting in the process. and then the movies and then then the wizarding world. still ahead, switching gears, the beauty secrets of women in other parts of the world. plus, your diet questions answered, including which is the healthier wine, red or white? red, of course. we ll find out about all that. live, local, latebreaking. this is wbal-tv 11 news today in baltimore. good morning. i am kate amara. less than a year after he was released from jail, michael vick is back in the nfl, and now he is being honored as an inspirational player. he was nominated by his philadelphia eagles teammates to proceed in courage award, but that is not sitting well with several animal rights groups and advocates, who will be at the ceremony to protest the award. he spent time in prison for now let s take a look at the forecast with tony pann. things are pretty quiet on this tuesday. plenty of sunshine. temperatures way above average. average high of 51. shooting for a high temperature in the upper 50s to around 60 degrees. sunset s this evening at 6:07. the big storm we re talking about in the midwest will hit us by the end of the week. good chance for rain showers thursday, friday, saturday, sunday. the 50 s on thursday and friday. we got all the way back into the upper 40 s over the weekend. we will have another update at 9:25.