[Chetry:] Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning. A big story that we've been covering this morning, the ruthless drug wars in Mexico. More than 6,000 people were killed last year alone as the cartels along with a network of corrupt police and officials battle the Mexican authorities. This morning, Washington is committing more money, more technology, and more manpower to try to stop the violence from spreading north and terrorizing our border cities and towns. CNN's Anderson Cooper is in El Paso, Texas, just steps away from the Mexican border and the war next door.
[Anderson Cooper, Cnn Correspondent:] John and Kiran, we're here right along the U.S.Mexico border from between El Paso and Juarez, Mexico. Now Juarez is right over there. That's been a major epicenter for the violence. They've had as many as ten people getting killed every day. The last couple of days the murder rate has dropped dramatically because there are some 9,500 Mexican troops which have swarmed into Juarez and basically taken over the area from the local police who weren't able to handle the violence. Corruption obviously is a big problem especially at the local level in Mexico. But Juarez is right over here. Right here you see the dried up Rio Grande riverbed. This is a major crossover point for people trying to sneak into the United States, bringing with them drugs, in some cases, or just themselves, trying to work here illegal immigrants. Now, we've been covering the story for a couple of years now and in the middle of 2006, we went to San Diego to Otay Mesa, where immigration and customs enforcement agents had just discovered a major tunnel, one of the most sophisticated tunnels they've ever seen between Tijuana and San Diego. Take a look.
[Cooper:] So this is the tunnel. It's 2,400 feet, all the way through to Mexico. It's the size of about eight football fields in length, seven of the football fields underneath U.S. territory, one football field is in Tijuana. It goes from this warehouse here all the way to a warehouse in Mexico. The tunnel immediately starts to slope down from ground level. It goes down about 60 feet. If you look down at the ground here, this is all concrete. The walls down here is a soft rock. They don't know exactly how this tunnel was dug, but you can tell some sort of a drill was used. You can actually see the markings here on the side of the wall. Now in this El Paso area, tunnels are not a problem because you have the river. You can't, you know, build a tunnel underneath a riverbed. But when people do run across, if they make it across, you see right over there, there's actually a drainage system. Drainage tunnels which have been already built, which were built out of concrete. There's an overpass over them and if they make it into that, that drainage system, then they can also go all the way into the city of El Paso. Actually, one of these nearby drainage systems actually goes out right to city hall. So people that's how they try to run. Border Patrol agents are all over here. You can see their SUV just over here, but they are all over. We saw a Border Patrol helicopter crossing over a short time ago. This is a very active area and it goes on all night long as people kind of just wait until it gets as dark as possible before they try to cross over.
[Chetry:] And we're going to have much more from Mexico tonight on "ANDERSON COOPER 360" including how the drug violence in Mexico is threatening the U.S. It's a special "AC 360" report, "THE WAR NEXT DOOR, LIVE FROM THE U.S.MEXICAN BORDER" tonight, 10:00 Eastern.
[Roberts:] Twenty-eight and a half minutes now after the hour, and here are the top stories that we're following for you right now. Growing tensions with North Korea, the U.S. military says new satellite images show North Korea has moved a new long range missile to a launch pad. North Korea says it is, in fact, not a ballistic missile, but a satellite payload and that it's planning a launch between April 4th and 8th. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the firing of a missile would "be a provocative act and carry consequences." Right now, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials are reportedly drafting a new list of terror targets for U.S. drones to hit. According to "The Wall Street Journal," the new plan is part of the Obama administration's decision to revamp its strategy for the region and target extremists who have carried out attacks against Pakistanis. And developing right now in North Dakota, teams of volunteers are racing to fill sandbags as the state braces for record flooding. The Red River is expected to crest at 41 feet this weekend. That's two feet higher than the record flood of 1997 that caused more than $4 billion in damages. Officials are now warning that people's lives there are at stake. In Bismarck, demolition crews are blasting chunks of ice that have clogged the Missouri River forcing evacuations. President Obama open for questions today. He'll be fielding them not from the press but from you in an online town hall meeting beginning at 11:30 a.m. Eastern time. And the president making a direct video pitch to the public for those questions.
[Barack Obama, President Of The United States:] Right now, at WhiteHouse.gov, anyone can submit a question about the economy or vote on other questions. We're going to compile those questions and votes and then on Thursday, I'll be giving you some answers myself.
[Roberts:] Seventy-five thousand questions have already been submitted and it's not too late to submit yours, just go to the White House Web site. It's whitehouse.govopen for questions. You've got until 9:30 Eastern this morning. And joining us now to talk more about this online outreach is "Wired" magazine senior editor Nicholas Thompson. Good morning to you.
[Nicholas Thompson, Senior Editor, Wired Magazine:] Good morning.
[Roberts:] Good to see you.
[Thompson:] Good to see you.
[Roberts:] So is this an effective way to reach out to your constituency?
[Thompson:] Absolutely. Look at the number of people who have responded. Look at the number of people who have submitted questions. And people who voted on the quality of other people's questions. I think it's working quite well.
[Roberts:] But there is one problem, though. We were discussing this before we went on. There were a number of different categories that the questions are put into. And in five of those categories, the marijuana lobby has hijacked the Web site and it got a lot of questions out there that have been voted on and floated right to the top. And if he was to take it, you know, from this idea of we're going to answer the most popular questions, five of those categories he'd be talking about marijuana.
[Thompson:] Right. Well, this is one of the problems with Internet outreach of all sorts. You know, it's very easy. The Internet makes it easy to communicate with lots of people in different ways, and it also makes it very easy for people to hijack polls. And this is something we've seen throughout time. And the marijuana lobbyist has put up sites on marijuana.com, saying, hey, the White House is open for questions. Go, search for the word "Marijuana," and vote everything up. And 5,000 people do that. Suddenly, it looks like marijuana is the most pressing issue in the country. Now, Obama is going to have to decide. Well, how do we deal with this? Do we say these people are trolls, let's ignore them. And "Wired" did the same. Don't feed the trolls. Or does Obama say, well, you know, I said I'll answer the most popular questions...
[Roberts:] Right.
[Thompson:] Clearly, there are a lot of people concern about the decriminalization of marijuana, do I deal with it?
[Roberts:] Obviously, there are a lot of very high-tech ballot box stuffing going on.
[Thompson:] It is very high-tech. But so here's one of the advantages of the site. You submit questions, and then people will vote yes or no. So, if a lot of people were to go on this morning and say look, marijuana legalization is not the most pressing problem facing the economy and vote all of those down, you know, 2,000 people removed those questions.
[Roberts:] Here we are on CNN telling people to manipulate the Web site. This isn't going to work out really well, I'm afraid. Some questions did manage to get through that a lot people will obviously, a lot of people want to know about marijuana, but there are a lot of other people who want to know about jobs and education.
[Thompson:] Right.
[Roberts:] Here's one that comes from James in Bloomington, Indiana. He says, quote, "As a student, who like so many others works full time and attends school full time only to break even at the end of the month, what is the government doing to make higher education more affordable for lower and middle-class families?" You know, it's a great question. A lot of people very much affected by all of this. You know, the bad economy, and they want to, you know, get a good education and all that, and they can't afford it. But how will the White House sift through 75,000 questions, if you don't just take the most popular ones, how do you sift through all of this?
[Thompson:] Well, there's an algorithm built into this site and it weighs the number of votes for the question and the votes against the question. And also, there are questions flagged as an appropriate, which are also dealt with in a different way. So, the people have actually already sifted through them fairly well. So, there is sort of ten questions in each category. Maybe the White House will look at the top 20, so, you know, 11 categories, 220 questions. You can have people who go through 220 questions, and find the eight most interesting.
[Roberts:] So it's interesting to watch how this has all evolved, too, in the last few years. The previous administration had an "Ask the White House"...
[Thompson:] Right.
[Roberts:] ... function on its Web site. I think two or three times a month, or maybe even as much as once a week at one point. They would have an official who would sit down in front of the computer and answer questions in real time for about an hour or so. This is the first time they've taken it to this level. They just recently hired a new chief technology officer. Where do you think it will go from here?
[Thompson:] Well, I hope that the next step right now, Obama is saying ask questions and I'll answer them. I hope the next step is Obama asks questions and we answer them. And people vote on different people's answers. And people submit
[Roberts:] And this certainly takes the process of democracy to a whole new level, doesn't it?
[Thompson:] A very interesting new level.
[Roberts:] Nick Thompson, it's great to see you. Thanks for coming in this morning.
[Thompson:] Thank you.
[Roberts:] Appreciate it Kiran.
[Chetry:] All right. Well, from promises to cut the deficit to limit lobbyist influence in the White House. President Obama has made a lot of pledges. Still ahead, we're putting them to the test. Bill Adair from Politifact.com is here with his truth-o-meter. Also, keeping your investment secure in this tough economic times, we'll tell you if there's anything you can do to keep the value of your 401 [k] from evaporating every time the market takes a dive. It's 34 minutes after the hour.