MTP Transcript for April 22, 2007

COL. GERALD MASSENGILL: Tim, I have been given that awesome responsibility, and we’re going to do what, what I would call a comprehensive case study of this entire event. We’re going to learn as much as we can about the shooter. We’re going to learn as much as we can about both incidents. And when we get all the, the information is out there, the accurate information, we’re going to ask the tough questions. I know that, in, in public safety, you only have one chance to get it right. And in this case, we’ll, we’ll learn what the circumstances were that the, the officials used to make that decision. And I, I would say to you that, at least from, from my perspective, the first decision—it’s been asked a lot, they locked down in August, why didn’t they now? Certainly, just from a commonsense perspective, you had a gunman in August that was running toward this campus, had already shot two police officers. In this particular instance, they thought, based on information we have now, that the shooter had left the campus. So I’m not going to make any—I’m not going to have any preconceived notions going into this, but we’re certainly going to take a tough look.

MR. RUSSERT: Governor Ridge, also about the reaction of the university to the presence of someone on its campus, in its dormitories with a very serious record of mental illness, will that be examined?

FMR. GOV. TOM RIDGE (R-PA): I don’t think, as the—under the leadership of the colonel at the direction of the governor, we’ve given a broad mandate, and I think what is very, very clear, this very unique situation surrounds a severely disturbed young man who’s very, very ill, who seemed to have access at the time, seemed to have lawful access to firearms in an environment that is one of the most open and cherished in America, a college and university campus. So there’s, there’s a range of issues that we’re going to have to look at, facts we’re going to have to look at, assumptions that were made, conclusions that were, were drawn. And it’s a, it’s a national tragedy, and, at the end of the day, I think, out of this tragedy, there may be lessons learned that have a national application. Tim, we’ve got over 4200 great colleges and universities in this country. We got 17 million men and women going to school. And maybe, out of this tragedy, we can reduce the risk that this could ever happen again.

MR. RUSSERT: But everything’s on the table?

FMR. GOV. RIDGE: Everything’s on the table. The governor’s been very clear, as the colonel pointed out. The, the primary problem, the individual that’s really to blame is deceased. And everybody—there’ll be a lot of other people looking for villains. We’ll let the other folks do that. We’re looking for potential solutions.

MR. RUSSERT: Two secretaries here, the secretary of health and human services, Michael Leavitt, Margaret Spellings, secretary of education. What mandate has the president given you?

SEC’Y. MARGARET SPELLINGS: Well, he’s asked us to look at things that, that we might do here in Washington to engage in, in a national dialogue, to listen from—listen to folks all around the country—educators, law enforcement officials—and really see what we can take away from this, what we in education call “a teachable moment” about the situation that has presented itself. This is a very complicated area of the law, with respect to student privacy and health privacy. And, you know, we want our educators and our students to feel safe always, and, and what we, we might learn from and how to improve this so it doesn’t happen again.

MR. RUSSERT: Is there any thought being given to national standards for a warning system on a campus or at a school so that students and faculty can learn immediately of crisis or trouble and take the necessary steps?

SEC’Y. SPELLINGS: Well, I think, like Governor Ridge, we don’t have preconceived notions about, about what we would or wouldn’t recommend. But I think we know that there really is no one-size-fits-all sort of solution, that institutions, higher institutions and K-12 institutions, are, are widely variant—big, small, rural, urban—and I think we would be guarded against, you know, prescribing from Washington one single solution.

MR. RUSSERT: But do you think there’s a need for schools to have such warning systems?

SEC’Y. SPELLINGS: Well, certainly, I—there is, and, and they do, often, many of them do. And I think this is an opportunity where every single university president, every single superintendant, campus principal, all of us as families, are thinking about what we would we do if this happened in our town. But I do want parents to know that—and students to know, that largely their schools are safe places to be. And, you know, I—we commend all the students who’re going back to school tomorrow, and we have to get about the business of learning.

MR. RUSSERT: Secretary Leavitt, in terms of mental health, here’s a, a young man who clearly had trouble and, as recently as two years ago, undergone—underwent serious analysis and treatment. And yet he was back in the dormitories. How do we deal with that?

SEC’Y. MICHAEL LEAVITT: Tim, it’s important to me to, to say that I join with you in being able to express the sympathy we feel for these families and the pain we’re all feeling. These are complex, mind-numbingly complex situations, and they, they cause festering conflicts that have already been part of our society to be inflamed again, and many of the kinds of questions you’re raising today are among them. How do we balance privacy with the need for security? How, how do we make certain that people have mental health treatment when they need it and not create a, a stigma for it? How do we protect privacy? These are the kinds of larger issues that are not just applicable to what happened at Blacksburg, but also what’s happening in this, this unexplainable pattern of nightmarish episodes of, of violence in our, in our society. And that’s what the president has asked Secretary Spellings and I, and Secretary, Secretary—or Attorney General Gonzales to look at. We’ll be going across the country asking that question, asking mental health professionals, asking governors, law enforcement, higher education officials, “Talk to us, tell us what you’re feeling, what suggestions, what can we learn from this?”

MR. RUSSERT: If a student or a teacher observes bizarre behavior, at this moment, what should they do?

SEC’Y. LEAVITT: Well, I think those are among the questions, and I think we’ll learn, from what—the very specific inquiry that’s done at Virginia Tech, what should the answer to that be. These are the balances. We—it may—we’ve been wrestling with these for years. In circumstances like this, we have to reweigh values that we’ve already set. In some cases, we conclude that we need to recalibrate. In other cases, we, we find that there are just risks in mortality and that we have to do better at what we’ve already decided to do. It may be we’ll find that we’ve already made the right decisions, but we just need to execute better.

MR. RUSSERT: Colonel, are you concerned—worried about copy cats?

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