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From inside toyota. you really get a sense of what was going on, the conversations that were being had, but in january tota was scrambling to figure out the best way to deal with this major accelerator problem and in an e-mail obtained by the associated press, one of the top executives warned that the company needs to, quote, come clean about the sticking pedals and the executive saying toyota was not protecting customers by keeping quiet about this. in the e-mail by recently retired vice president irv miller, he said we have the tendency for sticking pedals and the time to hide on this one is over. what s more, toyota had failed to alert u.s. regulators even though the automaker was busy addressing sticky pedal problems in 31 european countries and canada. toyota s new chief quality officer for north america spoke about that disconnect, the ability to translate the information between continents last week at the inauguration of toyota s committee for global ....
A fresh p.r. nightmare for toyota as new questions surface about its handling of those mechanical problems. now an email has come to light showing toyota knew there were issues days before the company made the information public. they are covering this. i guess you have seen them. what do you say? i have a copy of them. we ll show them to you now. the guy month wrote this is a guy named irv miller. a 30-year veteran of the company who was just days away, 15 days away from retirement when on january 16 he wrote to a japanese counterpart, i hate to break this to you but we have a tendency for certain manufacturer on certain models. we are not protect our customers by keeping this quiet. the time to hide on this one is ....
Jane: new questions today about what toyota knew about its mechanical problems and when. our sister publication the wall street journal is breaking the story of internal e-mails of one that shows in no uncertain terms the company knew about some issues with its vehicles days before the massive recall was announced. brian wilson is in d.c. for us on this today. brian, these documents seem on their face anyway to be rather damming. you have them in hand? reporter: that s right, i have them in hand and when i have them, of course, we share them with you. we can show thaw memo written by irv, irv miller, take a look at this document that seems destined to show up in court cases across the country, miller wrote and i quote, i hate to break to with you but we have a tendency in mechanical failure. we are not protecting our customers by keeping this quiet. the time to hide on this one is over. now, this is one of some ....
More clear, at one point using all capitals for emphasis. at one point he also wrote the time to hide on this one is over. it may have had the desired impact, because five days later toyota launched a worldwide recall for some 2.3 million vehicles, a recall that s been expanded since. the law requires, however, that safety problems be brought to the government s attention within five days of when they are recognized and toyota warned dealers in 31 european countries months before but did not warn our government about it. martha: well, that s interesting, it could be that mr. miller wanted to be very much on the record about how he felt about that and sent this e-mail out perhaps in part for that reason. what does toyota say about this e-mail? well, they did issue a statement yesterday, and it says, and i quote, we have publicly acknowledged on several occasions that the company did a poor job of communicating during the period prior, preceding our recent recalls. toyota has also been ....
The vice president of the company at the time and he has since retired. among other things he wrote we need to come clean, we are nor protecting our customers by keeping this quiet. the time to hide on this is over. five days later toyota announced it would recall more than two million vehicles to fix problems with accelerator systems that could cause the cars to speed out-of-control. and live to washington, dc we have eastbound what irv miller wrote, did anyone at toyota respond to the e-mail? the response suggests several japanese executives discussed the matter and decided toyota should not openly discuss the problems because it might raise another uneaseness of customers. that is the exact quote but you get the idea. what is toyota saying about this now? they do not comment directly on the document but are willing to admit mistakes. ....