lone wolf edward snowden now officially fired by booz hamilton and on the lam. he's reportedly ready to release more secrets as the u.s. presents to ready charges against him. >> he's a traitor. the president outlined last week these were important security programs to help keep americans safe and help give us tools to fight the terrorist threat that we face. borderlines. president obama turns up the heat on congress to act on immigration. >> there's no reason congress can't get this done by the end of the summer. remember, the process that led to this bill was open and inclusive. and john stewart, we hardly miss you. john oliver's now in the chair for the summer. intelligence agencies are secretly collecting millions of americans' phone records on a daily basis. >> you had [ bleep ] kidding me? jon's been gone one day! one day! we had such a fun, gentle first show planned for you as well. a few harmless unbritish jokes. like, oh, this is a football, not a soccer ball. half-way through the show we were going to break and have a little tea time. not only is the government tracking everyone's phone calls, but that's just the tip of the [ bleep ]berg. >> now we're hearing it goes way onphone record to our internet habits and who we e-mail with. >> i bet the amish are feeling pretty blooup sm[ bleep ] smug . good day. i'm andrea mitchell in washington. greatest problem for the obama administration is at the state department. diplomatic security agents and at least one ambassador are now embroiled in serious allegations of misconduct, though not documented, including soliciting prostitution involving minors and sexual assault. all this while hillary clinton was in office. outlined in a memo for the department's office of the inspector general, joining me now, diplomatic correspondent for "the washington post," chuck todd, nbc's chief white house correspondent, political director and the host of "the daily rundown" here on msnbc, and "washington post" editorial columnist ruth marcus. welcome, all. ann, you've been looking into this. chuck, you as well. we'll talk about the significance. what do we know? there have been a lot of charges thrown around and they aren't substantiated as far as we know but there is trouble here, possibly involving cover-up. >> right. we know there was a draft memo prepared by investigators at the state department which was never released publicly. the state department has confirmed the existence of the memo and that it outlines these eight allegations but they've not confirmed any of the substance of the allegations. these alleged misdeeds by contractors, state department employees and in one case an ambassador over approximately the last couple of years and the allegation are two-fold. one, that these things happened, and two, that the investigators who were pursuing them were not allowed to complete will work. >> and in fact it involves diplomatic security agents which, chuck, are the state department equivalent of the secret service and are highly regarded in all of my experience over many decades. but the fact is, the allegation in this unsubstantiated memo is that they misbehaved in pretty serious ways on the road while protecting hillary clinton. >> serious misbehavior that may make people have flashbacks to the secret service scandal. >> the secret servicemen were fired. >> but the larger issue here -- and what the report that is public that gets at, is that there basically is -- there is a culture of cover-up maybe too strong, but there is certainly a culture at the state department where you do not feel as if investigations are -- can fully be conducted without the looming presence of a political appointee that's a supervisor in some form or another. other agencies around the government have sort of reorganized in a way to prevent these potential conflicts of interest where you have a political appointee or somebody that could tell an investigator -- make an investigator feel as if, i got to listen to them. maybe i will take my foot off the gas here a little bit, that there isn't enough outside independence when it comes to the investigator, whether it is the diplomatic security corps or the inspector general themsel s themselves. state department, there is a large he shall issue here. >> the issue involves, ruth, the question of whether the diplomatic security agents themselves were part of the investigation rather than an outside group being brought in, and things like a drug ring alleged to have taken place outside the baghdad embassy among contractors. >> these allegations all boil down to serious, if true. but we really need to put some emphasis on the "if true" part. one of the things that's concerning to me from the outside is something that chuck made reference to, which is if you do not have a confirmed inspector general in place, you don't have -- yes, the inspector general's office is staffed and it goes on, but you don't have someone necessarily with the fortitude and the power to stand you up to the other forces at the state department to say, no, we need to have this investigation in the proper way. so there has been a problem with that post and i would suggest stay department will be wise to get inspector general in there forthwith. >> one of the problems, anne, you've covered the state department, the pentagon, the white house, we both worked together at the state department, one of the problems is vacancies, with this administration, less so with the prior under hillary clinton, but under john kerry they claim that they have problems with the confirmation process, with clearances at the white house. white house counsel's office would say we're not getting names sent over. and he, john kerry, doesn't have the political sway to force some of these nominations through the way hillary clinton did. >> yeah. he didn't have an agreement as she did at the start that he could bring a lot of people with him and hire a lot of people, sort of on his own authority. and there are two other complicatie ining factors. you referred to the slowness of the white house counsel's office but both the white house and state department point fingers at the hill saying we are being required to answer so many questions about nominees that are so far down in the weeds that we have to do these ginormous investigations before we can even possibly give you a name and they have to -- so they have to do investigations on people who are never end up being named. so there's a lot of extra work involved. but all that to say that there are a lot of vak scancies there. >> what's the political fallout? this was on hillary clinton's watch. apparently her office is saying she was not aware of it but is there a fallout for her potentially on a day when she's now gone on twitter -- she's left the last item on her resume in her first tweet as "tbd." >> oh, my gosh. but this is not a second major ig report if you look at the benghazi report that was done by pickering and mullen. that's a scathing report about how state department handles -- >> but that got lost in the shuffle the hill complains about talking points. it was a scathing report which we all covered. >> which pointed the finger at some mismanagement inside the state department. you already see republicans are putting together this dose yea on hillary clinton. which is her time at the state department, an important time for her an her resume when she runs for president. this is some dings. this is some dings in the armor. is this debilitating? no. she can certainly get past this but these are dings that she's going to have to answer to at some point. they're going to come back. >> chuck todd, thank you you so much. anne, great to have you here. and ruth marcus. california congressman ed royce chairs the house foreign affairs committee which oversees the state department. mr. chairman, welcome. should there be an investigation into the charges as outlined so far in this memo? they are preliminary. >> well, absolutely. you have a situation where senior political appointees at the state department leaned in and in these reports clearly attempted to call off investigations, manipulated investigations, not just on misconduct, but on allegedly criminal activity here. the other aspect of this that is really off-putting is that for 4 1/2 years now, we have asked the administration to appoint someone in that position in order to have in the inspector general's office the authority and responsibility, and instead now we find that the political appointee is going all the way up the chain have been involved in this particular suppression. >> are you sending a letter or demanding some kind of action from the state department? >> we certainly are, especially when we find out the under secretary for management and the chief of staff for president clinton allegedly were involved in trying -- >> secretary of state clinton. >> secretary of state clinton. exactly. were involved in trying to manipulate the outcome here an prevent these investigations from going forward. and the other aspect, again, to return to this, is that time after time in committee, and as recently as senator kerry's -- or secretary kerry's last appearance before my committee, i raised this issue of appointing an inspector general. and again, when you're given 4 1/2 years where you don't have someone in that position of authority, of responsibility, at the top, and instead you have the political appointees come in and on eight separate occasions here, we raised this in march, my office raised it and we were told at the time we had seen this sanitized report and we were told there's nothing here. and now all of this comes out as a result of whistle blowers coming forward and saying we weren't allowed to do our job. our traditional job of inspecting these cases. >> should there be separate investigators? if you've got the diplomatic security being accused of misconduct -- it is unsubstantiated -- but should that be investigated by someone other than their colleagues in diplomatic security? >> well, we definitely have a problem when you don't have an inspector general named to the position. so we do want answers right now from the secretary of state and going forward we want to see a serious investigation that is independent, as you point out. that's what we want to see is independence. and we have to be certain that we won't have a situation where political appointees can come in again and manipulate the outcome, influence the outcome, or in the case of this report, actually call off the investigation and suppress it. i think it is very concerning. >> mr. chairman, if these charges are proved to be true, should the agents be fired as their counterparts in the secret service were after the scandal? >> i think if it turns out to be true, then i think the appropriate matters will be taken and there will probably be relieved of their position. but the point here also is why is it that the undersecretary for management, why is it that the chief of staff for the former secretary of state did not -- did not -- instead ensure that this was surfaced, dealt with promptly and resolved. and as i say, it is not just what happened at the lower level. it's the engagement of the political appointees in the process which undermines the ability to have that deterrent effect, to have those investigations be successful and in real time have decisions made and this is my criticism of the administration. to go from day one for 4 1/2 years without putting in place the inspector general whose responsibility it would be to see to it that someone stands up to the political appointees and sees that the proper role of investigations is carried out, that is the problem. >> just finally, we're not naming the person -- the ambassador that was mentioned in this memo because we don't have substantiation of it independently. but if this does involve an ambassador in such inappropriate potentially criminal behavior, what is the procedure then? >> well, absolutely. we're talking about allegations that are criminal here. this is not just misconduct. but again, that's why it is important when an investigator surfaces that the investigations go forward and not be suppressed, not be influenced and called off in order to send a mess animal throughout the corporate culture, or in this case the institution, that this won't be tolerated. >> thank you very much, chairman ed royce. let us know if you have any further development going forward. in south africa today, nelson mandela's family is gathering with him at the hospital. including his daughter. south africa's ambassador to argentina who has flown home as her father continues in serious condition. nbc's keir simmons joins me now from pretoria. what is the latest on his condition? >> reporter: andrea, we've had a statement today from south africa's president jacob zuma in which he says last night he met with nelson mandela's medical team, and he says he is confident that the doctors are doing their best to try and help nelson mandela get better. overnight security here at the hospital has been increased. that's to protect nelson mandela, we think, but also protect visitors to the hospital here. we've seen winnie mandela, his ex-wife, married to him during the 27 years he was in prison, arrive here for a second day. she's here with her daughter whose story was a story. she was born in 1960. and soon afterward, just a few months later, nelson mandela had to go in hiding. she was taken to see had him in hiding but then of course he went into prison. so her story in itself is extraordinary. then of course we have nelson mandela's wife. we haven't seen her since saturday but we understand that she is in the hospital, she's been in there since saturday and is likely to be by his hospital bed. andrea, you get this picture of the family gathering around nelson mandela. children and grandchildren gathered around this father of the nation. >> thank you so much, keir simmons in pretoria, thank you for the update. at least 17 people are now dead, 38 injured after a suicide car bomber attack supreme court staff today in kabul. the court is located just a few hundred yards are from the u.s. embassy. today's explosion is the latest in a series of attacks staged by the taliban in the run-up to next year's troop withdrawal. how many simple ingredients does your dog food have? 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[ grunting ] [ male announcer ] the citi simplicity card is the only card that never has late fees, a penalty rate, or an annual fee, ever. go to citi.com/simplicity to apply. i'm telling you that i refuse to accept the idea that the most powerful country on earth, the nation that put a man on the moon, is incapable of securing its own border. >> the senate is holding a test vote today, a procedural vote, on immigration reform as republican leader mitch mcconnell said today, he will not support a filibuster. is republican opposition to immigration reform beginning to soften, in the senate if not the house. mayor castro attended the president's immigration event at the white house today. thanks so much. of course are you joining us from the north lawn. you've talk to the president and all the policymakers there. is there more optimism today that the opposition on the hill, at least in the senate, seems to be softening? >> thanks for having me, andrea. there is a lot of optimism. today was a very important day with president obama because standing behind him were a diverse group of supporters, including both the president of the u.s. chamber of commerce and the president of the fa achl of. how often does that happen? >> not often. >> i believe that kind of support across ideological lines is also indicative of the kind of bipartisan support this this legislation is going to find in both the senate, and then eventually in the house. so there is a lot of optimism today. >> yet at the same time there is a big push for more krechcertit about border control. do you think you'll ever be able to satisfy critics you have the border under control enough to be able to trigger the path to citizenship that you envision? >> i'm confident that folks who look at this in a sober, reasonable way will conclude that, first, the border is more secure than it ever has been in our country's history. since 2004 we've more than doubled the number of boots on the ground along the southern border. more than 21,000 folks there today. apprehensions are near a 40-year low an deportations have been fairly high over the last few years. so what we're doing, what president obama is doing, what president bush started is working. this legislation enhances that even further. so to anyone who is reasonable and who is looking at this just in terms of does this make our border more secure, the answer is yes, it does. if someone asked will we ever have a border that is 100% secure, the answer to that very plainly is no. there is no country in the world that has a 100% secure border. there's no prison in the world that is 100% secure. that's fine as a goal. i think everybody would agree that that should be the goal. but if someone is demanding that in practice that actually happen, i think that's more of a poison pill to the legislation than wanting to be reasonable about it. >> mr. mayor, when you arrived at the white house today, did any of the guards confuse you with your identical twin brother, the congressman? >> not today, no. >> i'll bet it happens. >> what's that? >> i said i bet it happens a lot to you guys. >> well, it does. he he always says i'm not good looking enough to impersonate him so it makes it a little bit easier. >> thanks very much, mr. mayor. good to see you again. the president has a new position on plan b, the emergency contraception. this has faces years of legal battles. the obama administration announced yes it will no longer fight to keep age restrictions on sales of the so-called morning-after pill. this validates the position oshgoshg originally taken by the fda. new moms realized they didn't have a good place to take their babies in new york city. so with their husbands, they opened apple seed, a clean, unique play space in manhattan. facility was a big success and has since expanded globally. ♪ i' 'm a hard, hard ♪ worker every day. ♪ i' ♪ i'm a hard, hard worker and i'm working every day. ♪ ♪ i'm a hard, hard worker and i'm saving all my pay. ♪ ♪ if i ever get some money put away, ♪ ♪ i'm going to take it all out and celebrate. ♪ ♪ i'm a hard, hard worker... ♪ membership rallied millions of us on small business saturday to make shopping small, huge. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. 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[ static warbles ] welcome back. today florida prosecutors and lawyers for george zimmerman questioned individuals from the jury pool to find out what they knew about the defendant and the 2012 shooting death of trayvon martin before legal proceedings can begin. mr. zimmerman has pleaded not guilty saying that he shot martin in self-defense. nbc's kerry sanders is live in sanford, florida. i cannot imagine that anyone down there hadn't heard of the case. what is the threshold, kerry, for being permitted on the jury having heard of the case but not having a prior opinion? how do they do that voir dire? >> reporter: exactly. they have questionnaires that they've given to the prospective jurors. the first 100 were called in. there is a total group of 500. if they need more, they can summon more people to the courthouse. but that is one of the questions on the form -- have you formed an opinion on this. the second follow-up question is, can you you accept in the courtroom what is presented to form your opinion or are you already held to the opinion? the judge has made it very clear that she does not want to see a member of this six-member jury to be somebody who has formed an opinion based on what they've heard on television, read on the internet, seen in the newspaper or just heard in conversation, because of course this was locally a very big story and a very big topic of conversation. there have already been some jurors who have been excluded for cause so they are working slowly. they've only spoken to four potential jurors yesterday and another four today. averaging about 30 minutes of questions with each individual potential juror. andrea? >> a critical moment in the trial. thank you so much. kerry sanders. of course, george zimmerman has sued nbc news. nbc universal for defamation and the company has strongly denied his allegations. nearly two years ago an earthquake shook the d.c. area causing damage to several buildings around the capitol, including our tallest treasure, washington monument. we were on the air at the moment, in fact. new pictures today give an inside look at the repairs under way to fix the cracks an chips caused by the 5.8 magnitude quake. it is being repaired, thanks to a $20 million donation from washington, d.c. philanthropist david rubenstein. the park hopes to open in a year next year. it starts with little things. tiny changes in the brain. little things anyone can do. it steals your memories. your independence. ensures support, a breakthrough. and sooner than you'd like. sooner than you'd think. you die from alzheimer's disease. we cure alzheimer's disease. every little click, call or donation adds up to something big. 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(announcer) scottrade... ranked "highest in customer loyalty for brokerage and investment companies." violent protests are still raging in turkey today after nearly two weeks of clashes between riot police and anti-government protesters in istanbul. nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel is in istanbul where there's been a lot of teargas so richard is protected today. richard, tell me whether this anti-government protest is taking hold the way obviously the parallel would be egypt. >> reporter: you'll have to excues the audio on this. i am wearing a gas mask because things have changed here just in the last few minutes. about ten minutes ago there were 10,000, maybe 10,000 people in the square behind me. it was relatively peaceful. i didn't see anybody throwing stones. they were just chanting anti-government demonstrations. and then the police came in with their biggest show of force of the day. hundreds, if not maybe 1,000 riot police stormed into the square firing enormous amounts of teargas. they were backed up by water cannons and they have quickly cleared the square and filled the skies with so much teargas that even from our vantage point we had to put on these masks. this hadn't until now been a tahrir square moment. this was more like an occupy wall street protests. there were a lot of people sitting, there were a lot of people doing yoga in the square -- until this morning when the police moved in. they started around 7:00 this morning with the riot police. then they were running battles, street battles, molotov cocktails, stones, up until this evening. things then quieted down, and after work lots of people started coming to the square. it look like it was over. it looked like now we're just going to have a big demonstration, it might even be a concert. and then unexpectedly you saw the riot plis saying enou ipoli enough is enough. they moved in, cleared the square. what happens next? i don't know. it never felt like a tahrir square moment. it still doesn't. because prime minister erdowan is popular, democratically elected, but it's going to be hard for him to explain this away, how he sent in overwhelming force to push out 10,000, maybe 20,000 people in the square who were just chanting. >> richard, it just does not look like turkey. you know this better than anyone. this feels different. it just seems to have taken such an ugly turn and one wonders why erdowan would use what seems to be more force than necessary to handle that kind of protest. >> reporter: yeah. i have been wondering the exact same question. if you look at the last two years, which something prime minister erdowan certainly has been watching, generally it has been an unsuccessful policy for the governments to use teargas and riot police against demonstrators in open squares in the capital city or in the chief economic city which this certainly is. maybe it's become a pride thing. demonstrators if you ask them say the prime minister has become drunk on had his success. this country has seen enormous prosperity under erdowan. erdowan is a key u.s. ally and they say he's no longer concerned about public opinion. we'll see if that changes now that he's clearly authorized the use of force here in this city. the protesters themselves are using social media to tweet it out, something which erdowan described as a nuisance. >> of course, local press has been repressed but the inmedia, as you point out, are all there. i cannot tell you how many american college students, friends of mine, colleagues are all planning trips because it's tourist season of course in istanbul, it is a great destination and this is so different from what people expect and a lot of people are asking the state department whether it is still safe to travel. we'll have to see. we'll follow all of your reporting. richard angle, thanks so much. be safe. here at home, defense secretary hagelle said today on capitol hill the cyber threat is the most insidious, dangerous threat to this country and the world. it was a big and uncomfortable issue last weekend for pr and china's president xi at their first summit especially after edward snowden's admitted leaking that very day of a presidential directive ordering a target list for u.s. cyber attacks against foreign targets. i raised that issue with james clapper, director of national intelligence, when we sat down. >> i think there is an understanding among nation states that we are going to monitor each other's behavior. dwee it we do it. other member nation states do it as well. but i also think there are limits and just how aggressive that is, an that's the reason for i think some discussion among certainly industrialized countries about some rules of the road for how we behave in cyber land. >> we were told -- nbc news reported senator john mccain during the campaign had had written a letter, a draft letter, to the taiwanese leader congratulating the new taiwanese leader, and it was in the computer of his campaign but hadn't been sent yet. and he got a call from the chinese government complaining about a letter that he had sent, that had he not yet sent, to taiwan. of course china's acknowledged rifle or ene rival or enemy? how does that happen? >> it happens because of the technology and global nature of the internet and the connectivity that we all benefit from but there are also down sides. and this is a case in point. to me what this illustrates is the importance of improved cyber security. whole nother subject. so also the vulnerability that we all have when we use media of any form that's publicly accessible. >> joining me now, "new york times" chief washington correspondent david sanger. david, now we are talking about china and edward snowden, the source of those leaks, he acknowledges, was last seen in hong kong. what do you think about his decision to go to hong kong, of all places, with which we have an extradition treaty, given that it is not iceland, not sweden, it is not a place where he could escape u.s. arrest. >> it is an interesting choice, andrea, because as you say, we have the extradition treaty but we don't have one with china. it would be interesting to see what happened if he went over the border. he's obviously got to be of some interest to chinese intelligence as well. he made it pretty clear in one of the interviews that i read the transcript of that he did -- he was interesting in finding a place where he could seek asylum. in that regard he would be a little bit like julian assange who ran wikileaks. i was thinking about that clip of you interviewing the director of national intelligence. i thought what was interesting in what mr. clapper said about the chinese is we each monitor each other. but it is not the monitoring that has actually angered either side. on the side of the americans, it's the theft of intellectual property going into corporate databases, in addition to senator mccain's, as you mentioned. and of course, president, then-candidate obama's xcompute systems as well. >> weapons system. designs for weapons systems according to u.s. government officials. >> that's right. we've written a fair bit about the entry into the system about the f-35, the joint strike force fighter an other similar systems. but then the chinese come back and say, well wait a minute, who was the first country to use a major sophisticated cyber weapon against another state? it was the u.s. against iran. as we've discussed many times on this show. so the chinese that have come back and say, if we're going to be more open about how we are using the web, what about you? what's interesting is one of the documents that mr. snowden seemed to have turned over was the presidential directive signed last fall that lays out the strategy under which the united states would use offensive cyber weapons. >> how concerned do you think the administration is about the way this is playing out, the nsa leaks. i know that they are going this afternoon to brief the hill, the house and senate, and there are calls to more circumscribe the surveillance, the vacuuming up of information. but do you think that they'll change anything willingness unless they are ordered to unless it is legislated? >> i don't think that they will and i don't think the legislation is all that likely. the administration has made the case and many senior members of congress have agreed that congress was informed of most of these programs. the people who weren't informed of these programs were the people in the united states who may have had some assumption that the united states could pursue both their internet searches and telephone calls more readily, but didn't know, for example, that the u.s. was taking verizon's records and presumably those of other telephone companies an dumping them each night into a u.s. database where the government could go monitor these. i think american citizens recognize that they are given up some of their privacy by doing so many electronic transactions with their banks, their phone companies. but i'm not sure the government has such easy access to those. 50 years ago -- a pivotal moment in civil rights when alabama governor george wallace stood in the doorway of the university of alabama attempting to stop a federal court order to integrate the school. >>. >> the constitution of the state of alabama and seeking to preserve and maintain the peace and dignity of this state and the individual freedoms of the citizen thereof do hereby denounce and forbid this illegal and unwarranted action by the government. >> wallace eventually stepped aside and two african-american students, vivian malone and james hood were allowed to register for classes. malone is the subject of the 963 documentary "crisis behind a presidential commitment" that capture the legal and political battles to desegregate alabama. there is a new film about her coming up. >> negro has come a long way but he still has a long way to go. that's quite evident i think because of all the movements and protests, demonstrations that's going on throughout the country now. you know that they are trying -- they're not willing to sit and wait, say well it's coming eventually. s. peacocks? 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[ crows ] now where's the snooze button? the justice department is preparing charges against edward snowden. the information that he's reveal about nsa surveillance has re-opened the debate over the balance between security and privacy. joining me now, npr counterterrorism correspondent dina temple did the rastin and daniel klideman. author of "kill or capture." we've talked about the vacuum cleaner approach, which has become very controversial, whether it can be narrowed. tell me how it works in terms of prism, which as i understand it is a computer tool, and that technically the providers were not lying when they issued their statements of denial. some may not have known the term prism. they were looking at it as a 702 under -- 702 of the act. >> there are two very distinct programs. there's the vacuuming up of phone calls coming in and out of the united states and there's this prism analytical tool which basically what it does, it allows you to take disparate pieces of information that are collected on foreigners and bring it together so you can do analysis. it actually has icons so that you can click on it. it is for sort of younger analysts are supposed to feel very comfortable like this, because almost like a mac or apple computer. >> what is the value of that in terms of intelligence gathering? >> well, it's huge really. because if you think about, even when you are putting together an article or something for television, you have all these disparate things and you want to see them in one place so that you can connect them. what these kinds of programs are called gooey programs. they allow you to use illustrations an icons to see connections. you'd see, say, one phone number and you click on it, then it gives you sort of branches with other phone numbers that are connected to it. it just makes it a little bit easier for you to see what different connections are. there is a program called -- that does something like this. we actually reported on it four or five years ago. it was new at that time. it was providing this sort of gooey interface. >> daniel, does that justify when the administration is saying about prism, that it was very specialized and very valuable to them and that that was the most damaging of the leaks that have been acknowledged by the leaker from nsa, from the contractor? >> well, i guess at the end of the day the answer to that question is the extent of the intrusion and what kind of safeguards have been built in and whether there have been any abus abuses. we don't so far know that either of these programs have been abused in the sense that it was used to learn about people's political views, learn about american citizens,citizens, the believes, their religious believes, what have you. but clearly people are very concerned about the scope of these programs, particularly the verizon program as it's been called because it involves essentially the metadata, the call information of every american. even though it is under court authorization, i think people have been spooked by the scope of it. >> dina, what is your take on the allegations that privacy really has been invaded and that snowden was actually doing a service to people, to americans by letting them know how much has been collected and is being collected ongoing? >> well, there's a distinction the administration is making between collection and actual analysis. the idea being, if they collect it, don't check it, don't do anything with it until they get a second warrant from the court that allows them to do the analysis. they say they haven't invaded your privacy. one of the alternatives to this could be to ask, for example, a phone company to hang on to their records for five years instead of having the government do it. in some ways, you might find that, you know, more comforting to know the phone companyv rather than the government. in some ways you might think it's more comfortable to have the government have it. the american civil liberties union and advocates are saying the collection itself is an invasion of privacy. that's where they're butting heads. >> actually, when i asked that question, i was told that the phone companies refuse to keep their records for more than 90 days. they don't want to spend the money on the storage. perhaps they don't want to make themselves it liable to lawsuits or perhaps it's a consumer issue, that it's bad branding for them to do. they'd rather have the government force their hand and have them do it, daniel. >> yeah, i think that's exactly what happened. i think originally -- and remember, this is a program, the verizon program, that essentially began under the bush administration. it was that warrantless wiretapping program that was so controversial that "the new york times" revealed back in 2005. originally, the government wanted the phone companies to store this information as opposed to the government. in the end, that's not what happened. the difference between the old bush program, which was so controversial, and this one, which is also becoming quite controversial, is that under the bush program, they did it without any court supervision. they did it under what they consider to be the inherent authorities of the president and did not go to this court after the process began before president obama was where the program was then we formed. the one that is currently operating is one where they do go to the court. the president, when he first came in, was briefed on it. he asked about how the program had changed. he asked about what kinds of checks and balances had been put into the program as it was then operating. he seemed quite satisfied. and that is kind of classic obama. i think he was looking for a -- to make sure these kinds of checks and balances were in place and that this kind of balance between security and liberty was there. problem is, it was all shrouded in secrecy. the american people have not been able to see that balance. >> we have to leave it there. daniel and dina, thank you very much. well, this sad note today. one of his proteges, chuck todd, called doug bailey one of the great visionaries of the political world. chuck is describing a man we all learned from, the founder of the hotline and a top consultant to gerald ford's 1976 campaign. doug bailey and his late partner created the world political consulting. not the way we know it now, perhaps, but the way they practiced it, it was in every respect a truly honorable profession. doug mentored our friend chuck and generations of reporters who admired him for his gentlemaner of practicing this art of politics. doug bailey died in his sleep monday night. he was 79 years old. 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"news nation" is following the questioning of more potential jurors in the george zimmerman