We noted that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton touched down in Haiti today to see the devastation for herself. Our Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell has been traveling with the secretary. Andrea, good evening.
Good evening, Lester. Hillary Clinton said that she came here to listen. She came on a cargo plane, a Coast Guard cargo plane carrying 650 pounds of water and military rations for the Haitian people. And as she said, she wanted to listen. Today she heard a lot.
Her mission to help unclog bottlenecks in the relief pipeline, to find out what Haiti's government needs most and how to get it to them. Meeting first with Haiti's president, Rene Preval.
I want to assure the people of Haiti that the United States is a friend, a partner, and a supporter and we will work with your government under the direction of President Preval to assist in every way we can.
In the maze of different governments and aid agencies here, Clinton says there are some things the United States does best. She says they are literally taking a Google map to identify 14 distribution points for water and food and flying in water filtration equipment from all over the world. In an interview with NBC News, she challenged reports that vital aid is sitting at the airport, not getting out.
There is a perception and there’ve been complaints or reports of bottlenecks that there’s a lot of aid coming in, but it's very hard to get it out to the people who need it.
That’s just not true. The aid is coming in, we are getting it out, there’s just not enough of it yet because we don't yet have the kind of distribution networks, nor do we have the port open. So everything you see is either coming in by air, and the airport has one runway.
Clinton said her first question this week was why not parachute food to the starving people of Port-au-Prince? The US military said that wouldn't work in an urban environment, it could start riots. Clinton's aides also brought toiletries for the beleaguered US Embassy staff, thousands of dollars of soap, toilet paper, even underwear. With an empty cargo plane going back, the Secretary of State is taking American evacuees out with her. They have been lined up at the airport desperate to get home.
Our structure held up nicely, but most didn't.
So we drove three hours here this morning.
Clinton said for her this is really personal. She reacted emotionally to seeing all of this today. She came here on her honeymoon and has been coming back ever since and working very hard on Haiti, as has, of course her husband in the last year. So, there’s a lot of work to be done, obviously.
