Page 38 - Jim Clapper News Today

And then president-elect trump did not heed that advice. so there are some former obama administration officials who are seething a little bit this afternoon, jake, as the white house is trying to use them to shield the president from this michael flynn case. >> its astounding. in terms of whether or not flynn was authorized to talk to kislyak, were going to have jim clapper, the former director of national intelligence, on in just a second. we can ask him about it. but i hear that the obama adm...

Were back with this major breaking news. the presidents former national security adviser, lieutenant general michael flynn pleading guilty today to lying to the fbi and now the announcement that he is cooperating with special counsel mueller and the russia investigation. joining me now is the former director of national intelligence in the obama administration, james clapper. he was the top intelligence official when flynn was talking to the russians. i want to start with what the white house is...

Trump presumably didnt know about them. thats very -- the idea that donald trump didnt know about whatever general flynn was doing with the russians strikes me as ridiculous. so theyre better off -- >> the buck stops here isnt a thing in this administration. >> whats weird about it is his behavior since is what makes him look the most guilty. i mean, he basically by trying to stop -- >> he, trump? >> donald trumps effort, relentless effort to impede the investigation -- >> thats whats so odd, ri...

>> hes kind of acting guilty, just to be clear. >> well, the other thing is obviously one of the things that mueller is looking into clearly is obstruction of justice. based on just what we know publicly and what we know from the fbi and the justice department, the special counsel, there is a case there. i dont know that it would be a successful case, but there is a case there. >> right. and the obstruction or part of it was trying to get comey, like we said before, to let general flynn get off ...

Certificate thing, and we are good on our sourcing, but he has pretty widely said the "access hollywood" thing based on my reporting, and again, its fine to stand at the podium and i understand that sarah sanders and sean spicer before her have a difficult job, and you cant say that up and down and black is white and something was reported that wasnt. again, theres a reason that we have not heard a complaint about that. >> thank you very much for all your reporting. >> thanks. >> you will hear c...

Viewers wake up to the news. jim, this is, you know, obviously has been a seismic shock in our business. we understand "the new york times" has been working on a story for a while about matt lauer. what can you share about their reporting? >> we will be only reporting those details after they are firmed up from our standpoint, but obviously nbc found in its own investigation there were troubling incidents involving mr. lauer and relationships. this was interesting to me, what the chairman of nex...

Nbcs very biggest stars but one of the biggest stars in television, as you know. >> its hard to argue that hes not nbcs biggest star. jim, how do you reconcile the fact you have been reporting on this and one other outlet has been reporting on this and other things that happened with the corporate statement from nbc that nothing in 20 years, maybe we have some reason to believe this happened on monday, we acted right away. how do you reconcile those two senses of perspective on how long this has...

Dealing with here is trying to break through a silence in culture, who makes agreements. jim, who makes these kinds of agreements? who knows about this kind of behavior? what avenues are they for women not to take on everybody else in order to come forward? those are real changes. we dont hear about that after the firings. your take? >> first of all, we hold ourselves up to higher standards those of us that take news seriously, and its incumbent upon us to take action and keep reporting. the pol...

Joining us now to discuss this is cnn national security analyst and former director of national intelligence, james clapper. director clapper, thank you very much. this missile has gone higher and further than any we have seen before. how do you think this changes the equation? >> i think the important thing here is context, and you know the north koreans have been on a path developing a intercontinental ballistic missile for sometime, and each one of the missile tests moves them along on that p...

Too alarmist, but with your experience do you find that things like this end up having a ripple affect around the world? does this get the attention of people who want to perhaps perpetrate violence? >> theres that, and as well, i think it causes our friends and allies to question where is he coming from with this, so it has all kinds of ripple affects, both in inciting or encouraging anti-muslim violence, and it causes our friends and allies around the world to wonder about the judgment of the ...