CNN "Newsroom" - Transcript: HealthCare.gov

Interview

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BLITZER: As we reported first here on CNN, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa has now subpoenaed the Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, over the botched Obamacare website. Darrell Issa's House Oversight Committee is demanding documents and information relating to healthcare.gov, that website. Sebelius was grilled by another House panel about the website yesterday. Congressman Issa is here in the studio with us.

Thanks very much, Congressman, for coming in.

REP. DARRELL ISSA (R), CALIFORNIA: Well, thank you, Wolf. And as you said, the secretary has answered some questions, but evaded a great many. And in our case, both Senator Lamar Alexander and I have asked for documents, we set a reasonable deadline, it expired. Now we really need to insist on those documents.

BLITZER: All right. So what documents specifically do you need?

ISSA: Well, Wolf, we've had contractors give us proof that in fact briefings were made in a timely fashion that showed - and some of them have been aired -- showed that in fact they weren't ready and they knew they weren't ready. Just today Jay Carney said the president was shown this website ahead of time as though it was ready. So figuring out who inside the organization knew but failed to communicate is important. But more importantly, because there's so many other areas, including the risk of private information coming out in a website that isn't ready, we really need to ask those questions and see the -- what's internally going on.

BLITZER: Because Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, whose also a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, asked some tough questions about whether or not information people provide to that website about their Social Security Numbers, their income, whatever, is really secured. And you want to subpoena information to show that they knew in advance the security, the cyber security, was not adequate?

ISSA: Well, exactly. We need to know who knew and why they should still be on the job. But, you know, Wolf, there's even more complex information. Do you realize that tax I.D. information is in there, voter information is in there? This is a very important link to a lot of private information. And although we've been given assurances that it's safe, we were given assurances that they could handle the volume.

BLITZER: They say they've cleaned it up and secured it. Do you believe it's secure right now?

ISSA: Well, I don't want to overly find humor in this, but while the secretary's speaking yesterday saying they hadn't had a shutdown, another network was showing a current shutdown that was displayed. So very clearly they're saying one thing but they're not yet demonstrating it with the reliability of this website. They're claiming November 30th they'll be ready. We want to help make sure they will. And then we want to make sure this doesn't happen again. You know, the process here of delivering very expensive IT, $600 million, shows that government doesn't really get it right, even when they employ good contractors, they seem to find a way not to use best practices.

BLITZER: Here's a statement that the Department of Health and Human Services issued regarding your subpoena request. They say they're cooperating. "Since October 10th, the committee has made five separate requests for a wide range of documents. Their timeline was not feasible given the vast scope of their requests. We are disappointed that the committee believes a subpoena was necessary. However, it does not change our intent to continue to cooperate with them, to produce documents as expeditiously as we are able to do." So they say they're doing their best.

ISSA: Well, they say they're able to take a failed site that they had three and a half years to produce and they're going to get it fixed by November 30th, basically 30 days. In our case, Senator Lamar Alexander is a very patient man and he's a very moderate senator. He has lost his patience. I've lost my patience. We're saying, start giving us at least the critical - and we prioritize -- the critical discovery to let us understand particularly related to documents we already have that showed they were shown these failures.

BLITZER: And you - you want documents from the Department of Health and Humans Services, also from the main contractors who were providing services to create this website, is that right?

ISSA: Absolutely. Although 10 out of 11 of the major contractors are cooperating fully. So --

BLITZER: Who's - who's not cooperating?

ISSA: QSSI, the -

BLITZER: But that's the big one.

ISSA: They're the big -

BLITZER: What are they saying to you?

ISSA: Well, they basically wouldn't give us timelines. They sort of slow rolled us and we had to send them a subpoena, too. The challenge here, quite frankly, though, is, the tip of the iceberg is the website. But safety, security, reliability of the information at a time when people are being ordered on penalty of tax to do things we need to make sure happens.

BLITZER: You know the argument that's made against you. You really don't want to fix Obamacare. You want to destroy Obamacare and you're just doing this for political purposes.

ISSA: Well, and I know that often is the case. But in 2009, in 2011, and again this year, I authored bipartisan legislation to open up the federal employees health care system to all Americans as an exchange. I've said that in fact the problem of health care being affordable is real. I'd like to attack it. I'd like to work on it. And not everything in Obamacare is bad. But right now, a lot of things aren't working and we have an obligation, under the law, to get it working, at least as the law intended.

BLITZER: While you're here, very quickly, we don't have a lot of time, Benghazi. Lindsey Graham, I interviewed him the other day, he wants to block all federal nominations to key jobs, including Janet Yellen, as the next chair of the Federal Reserve, until certain survivors of the Benghazi attack more than a year ago are allowed to appear before members of Congress. I know you've been an out -

ISSA: Right.

BLITZER: You know, you've been investigating this as well. Who hasn't -- who have they not allowed to appear before you or member of the Intelligence Committee, even in classified, closed-door circumstances?

ISSA: Well, I can speak as to my committee. We were not allowed to have access to any of the down range survivors --

BLITZER: Even in a closed door circumstance?

ISSA: Under any circumstances.

BLITZER: What was the -- why did they say that to you?

ISSA: What they claimed for more than a year was that these people could appear if they wanted to and then they, of course, advised them not to. We ultimately subpoenaed and we have deposed, under deposition rules, several people that were not made available. So in our case, as sort of the ultimate select committee to do this, we are getting discovery, but we're having to subpoena it.

And this is unfair to the individuals who are good, loyal Americans who were just doing their job. And it's very unfair because we would like to have this be a cooperative investigation. The White House has pledged that it would be, but it hasn't been. But we are learning a lot from people who were down range, learning a lot about what they thought versus what actually happened in the way of the backup after the attack began.

BLITZER: All right, so where do we go from here? Right now there are still these individuals that - when I hear -- you say you did take depositions from several of them? Isn't that -- haven't they -- isn't that enough?

ISSA: Well, what normally happens in these investigations, no surprise, one deposition leads to questions to ask a different person. The individuals we've talked to so far have given us very different stories than some of what's publicly available and we are now following up with some additional depositions.

But the real question here is, why aren't we getting cooperation? We already know there wasn't enough security, there wasn't a good plan during those eight and a half hours and we were given false information afterwards. We're no longer investigating that. What we're trying to do, along with the commandant of the Marine Corps and all the other people, is find ways to ensure this can never happen again and that's really the reason we're still investigating is, we've got to get to the truth so it doesn't happen again.

BLITZER: Darrell Issa. Congressman, thanks very much for coming in.

ISSA: Thank you, Wolf.

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