in addition, those same sources outlined the help assad is getting from iran. weapons and computer expertise to root out opposition. their own people. barbara starr is there tonight. and robert bair, and even though we have word of more defections from the syrian army, you're hearing that bashar al assad has a firm grip on power in syria? >> absolutely, anderson. i spoke with three separate senior u.s. intelligence officials. the assessment is all in agreement. assad remains in control, in charge. commanding his forces. there is no break. they believe, in the inner circle around him. you see these defections. you see some generals fleeing, but this is not his critical inner circle. they have closed ranks, they have determined to fight. they have tucked themselves into it. one of the officials says they're fighting an insurgency, and they believe right now that they will win. and sadly, anderson, the opposition remains fractured and unable to really mount an effective counteroffensive, according to the officials. >> so does it surprise you to hear? >> not really, but i'm not sure of the quality of american intelligence around syria. the inner circle around him is still tight, and the inner circle is reliable. who is the inner circle? his brother. yes, that inner circle is been with him throughout. they will flee with him, fight with him. and most likely they will die with him. he's had a good month, assad. he looked at the democracy, the conference in tunisia, nothing came out of it. he heard what the american officials are saying, he hears general dempsey saying the air defense system in syria is robust. he hears secretary of state clinton rebuking the syrian people and questioning. this has been a good run. >> and in homs now, basically, they won. they were able to decimate baba amr, and move in with their forces. do you feel that the assad regime feels the worst has passed? >> i think so. if you want to read their mind. we have taken the worst our enemies can give us, and they have looked at what the international community has sent their way, the arab league and the united nations have sent their way. none other than former secretary general of the u.n., kofi annan. kofi annan has been a friend of dictators throughout. something remarkable he said as he prepared for the mission. we have to be careful that we don't produce a medicine that worsens the disease. we don't have to go very far in the region to find an example of what i'm talking about, so this is the envoy of the arab league and the united nations saying no rescue is coming for the syrian people. >> you say the syrian military is basically built to put down uprisings -- >> put down depression, coup d'etats. when i was in syria, i was there in the coup d'etat in the '80s. the only tanks that came out were by the aloites. they made sure that every single officer in control of every key unit was an aloite. he can be a captain overrule a colonel in the same unit, making sure the tanks stayed with the regime. the same goes for the air force, for the helicopters. i don't think we'll see any unit, cohesive unit defecting to the rebels. that's why it's going to go on for so long. and another thing, anderson, the arabs are not helping much. these people really do need weapons, they do need supplies, and they're holding back so far. >> barbara, what are u.s. intelligence officials telling you about the support that iran is giving syria throughout the uprising. obviously, they have a very good track record of suppressing their own people. are they giving them the tools to do that in syria? >> well, you know, anderson, the word you used, tools, is exactly the right one. don't even think about the weapons just yet. think about the computer tools that iran is giving to syria. the very same things they used to suppress their own people in tehran and on the streets of iran. the web searching, the social media tracking tools. all of these high-tech computer tools coming from iran into the syrian regime so they can track down the people making these youtube videos, putting out these social media messages and broadcasts that the world has been looking at for so many weeks now. that's part of what iran is giving them. they're also giving them small arms. syria is also now flying, we're told, umds, unmanned drones. some coming from iran in the past to fly over syrian cities and towns and look for the opposition so they can better target. they're now targeting, we know this from the imagery we saw today, mosques, hospitals, even playgrounds, where they believe the so-called opponents of the regime are hiding out. of course, they wind up killing men, women, and children civilians on the streets of syria. what it will take to change it remains to be seen. u.s. military, hard to go in and do air strikes in that environment. >> iran is committed to the end? >> of course, the iranians understand there's a fight. and they understand the center of the fight is none other than syria. they know that their access to the mediterranean and their access to beirut, is really central to the iranian regime is dependent on a friendly regime in damascus. they will fight for this regime. the russians will fight for the regime. will the arabs finance the civili civilians? will the americans come to the rescue of the civilians. i think the syrian people are discovering that they are alone. no break has come their way. >> bob, do you think that he's right, that the syrians are probably believing that the worst for the regime is passed? that they've kind of dodged any bullet that would be coming and they can cling to power? >> i think it's the chances are good. in a rebellion like this, you never want to make a firm prediction, but they're doing a lot better than they are, and the alawites that i talked to in the regime are very confident that they're going to survive this, and they support bash bashar al assad. they think he's going to win in end, and they're going to stick with him. >> they don't care about the economy being destroyed. they're going to stick with him? >> they don't care. they care about clinging to power, and they're never going to give up. >> bob, appreciate your expertise, fuad as well, barbara. follow me on anderson cooper. >> claims republican challengers are making about president obama handling the economy, and promises about bringing back cheaper gasoline. we're keeping then honest. >> and it's been a year after japan's nuclear disaster. we have an undercover video from inside the power station. amazing stuff including who is doing the clean-up stuff, and why the man who made the video says the company is lying. those are his words, about the real dangers posed by the plant. ok, guys-- what's next ? chocolate lemonade ? susie's lemonade... the movie. or... we make it pink ! with these 4g lte tablets, you can do business at lightning-fast speeds. we'll take all the strawberries, dave. you got it, kid. we have a winner. we're definitely gonna need another one. small businesses that want to grow use 4g lte technology from verizon. i wonder how she does it. that's why she's the boss. because the small business with the best technology rules. contact the verizon center for customers with disabilities at 1-800-974-6006. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 there are atm fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 account service fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 and the most dreaded fees of all, hidden fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 at charles schwab, you won't pay fees on top of fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 no monthly account service fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 no hidden fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 and we rebate every atm fee. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 so talk to chuck tdd# 1-800-345-2550 because when it comes to talking, there is no fee. when it comes to home insurance, surprises can be a little scary. and a little costly. that's why the best agents present their clients with a lot of options. because when it comes to what's covered and what's not, nobody likes surprises. 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[ male announcer ] we are insurance. ♪ we are farmers ♪ bum, ba-da-bum, bum, bum, bum ♪ will be giving away passafree copies of the alcoholism & addiction cure. to get yours, go to ssagesmalibubook.com. keeping them honest on campaign statements. republican challengers are making about the state of the economy that don't stand up to the facts, which is not to say that the economy is in great shape. it's a mixed picture to say the least. new numbers show employers adding 227,000 jobs last month and 1.7 million since the recession officially ended back in mid-2009. take a look at the change in late 2008 and 2009. you can see the progress since then, though to many it doesn't feel like it. at the same time, the jobless rate after declining from the peak at 10% now remains stuck at 8.3% because more people interred the workforce. there's plenty for the republican candidates to challenge president obama on without having to make up facts. mitt romney who's made his business experience and the economy two pillars in his exam today had no direct comment on the jobs report, but he's often slamming obama for something it turns out the president never actually said. >> don't forget back in january when the president had just been re-elected or elected for the first time. he said that if we let him borrow $787 billion he would hold unemployment below 8%. the 8% was a frightening number. and it has not been below 8% ever since. >> president obama has never made that promise, but it's been repeated so many times that a lot of people think it's true. >> three years ago, a newly elected president obama said that if congress would allow him to borrow nearly a trillion dollars, he would hold unemployment below 8%. >> 8%. >> 8%. >> keeping them honest, ""the washington post"" fact checked this and found that the number came from a report three weeks before the obama took the oath of office. it was by some of his economic visitors. it did predict that a $775 billion stimulus might hold unemployment to 8%, but it wasn't a steadfast prediction, not a promise. bottom line, mr. obama never said it. and then there's newt gingrich who put out a statement on the jobless numbers and pivoted to a promise of $2.50 a gallon for gasoline, a pledge he almost makes daily on the campaign trail. >> i have a suggestion to you that somewhere around $2 to $2.50, the oil company is making up money to develop enough oil supplies that we're independent in the least and we keep the price down to a level you can afford. >> as appealing as that sounds, it's simply a promise in candidate or either party include og bama has ever been able to keep. the top has plenty to hold the president accountable to without resorting to stretching the truth. the jobless numbers are improving, but they're hardly good. let's get to economics with robert rice, the author of "aftershock" also gop strategist rich galen. mr. secretary, adding new jobs is obviously a good thing. there's still millions of people out of work. the president is not out of the woods, right? >> no, there's still a long way to go, anderson. there have been about 10 million jobs either lost since the beginning of the recession or should have been made up given the growth in the population. there's a very, very long way to go. even in the job market continued to do this well for the next four or five year, ewith would still just about get back to where we were before the recession started. >> and rich, rather than addressing today's job numbers, romney makes the argument that obama vowed to keep the unemployment rate below 8%, which isn't true, but he's got to come up with something more than that, doesn't he, if he's going to run on turning the economy around. >> i think what he said last week or a week and a half ago was a better argument. that was that the unemployment numbers are good numbers. you can't root for higher unemployment, but that if romney would say, look, i mean, the unemployment might go down faster and jobs would be created faster if businesses had more confidence in what was over the horizon. every time they hear the class warfare card being played by the administration, it stops them cold in their tracks. i'll wait another month or wait another month and wait another month. romney has a good case to make that american business needs stability and needs optimism, but talking about what somebody said, you know, nobody is going to want to go back to what romney said, you know, back when he was massachusetts governor either. >> mr. secretary, newt gingrich, he responded to today's numbers by again touting his ability to get gas back down to $2.50, which by all accounts no president has the ability to do. >> no. no president has figured out how to do that, because the price of gas is largely set by international markets, oil markets, some speculators, no. there's nothing that the president can do in the short term about gas prices. but it looks as though consumers really have not been terribly bothered by gas prices, anderson. consumer spending has been increasing at a moderate level. inventories are being rebuilt by manufacturers and by wholesalers. a lot of that economic activity is translated into relatively healthy -- slow, but relatively healthy job numbers. >> rich, you were former speaker gingrich's spokesperson. when you hear him say he can get gas prices down to $2.50, do you buy that? >> no, and it's something he's been running on even when he wasn't running. drill here, drill now. there are things we can do to put downward pressure on prices, but to say you can reduce it by $1.50 anytime in the near term doesn't make any sense. going back to what the secretary was talking about, there are a lot of things that are out of a president's control, this president or anybody else. international oil numbers are one. the european economy is not in the purview of the president of the united states. he's wholly dependent on angela merkel to keep that going. there's a lot of things that can go wrong, and because the president happens to be the president, it will fall to him. i think that given what he's got going for him, from a republican standpoint, if he would just -- if the president would just turn his attention to helping businesses understand that they can now begin to make longer range plans, i think that would go a long way to helping the economy speed up, pick up more. >> mr. secretary,'m curious. you were active in massachusetts politics when romney was govern governor. you ran the democratic primary. you know his ability to harness a specific message. is romney still a candidate that president obama should fear most? >> well, i would have said yes four or five months ago, anderson. i'm less certain of that right now. i mean, romney certainly has more appeal to independents and centrists than rick santorum and newt gingrich, but the economy, when the economy was so clearly bad, when jobs were not being created, when people were so worried about jobs, having somebody like mitt romney who could come in say, i was a business person, i know how to create jobs, i have created them bmpb before, was more of a challenge, it seems to me, than mitt romney might be right now. most people do believe and they see the evidence that jobs are coming back. >> secretary reich, appreciate your time. rich, thank you. coming up, a really interesting report. a year after japan's nuclear disaster, a writer went undercover in the plant in fukushima and found out why workers are risking their lives. he says if the workers speak out for themselves, they'll be fired. also a chapter in american history that is hard to believe. sterilizing americans against their will. california was the worst offender. is the state now doing anything at all to even acknowledge that? 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(phone rings) that's a step forward. with chase quickpay, you can send money directly to anyone's checking account. i guess he's a kicker... again, again! oh, no you don't! take a step forward and chase what matters. it's hard to believe, this sunday marks one year since a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami and nuclear disaster changed everything in japan. the pictures from the tsunami are still hard to comprehend. still horrifying. the numbers staggering. more than 16,000 dead, more than 3,300 still listed as missing. damage in the hundreds of billions of dollars. here's just a small portion of the devastation we saw when we were in japan this time last year. last week there were some 20 homes in this area, now there are none. the house you're seeing here, he says, wasn't here before, it was swept here by the wave. the houses that were here, were completely washed away. this man said only one of his neighbor's bodies has been found. he's not sure how many more may have died. there is no contact, he says, there are no phones, no internet, the people in the neighborhood, they haven't been back, those that died might be right over here under the water, under the wreckage. other than the sound of choppers, there's mostly silence, sometimes you hear a bird or something rustling in the wind, but the silence always returns. in the wreckage, you find all man ore of things -- children's do dolls, empty shoes, wedding photo s covered in mud. as we left a squad of japanese soldiers arrived to do a cursory search. they go by smell, moving fast. there's just too much ground to cover, too many more neighborhoods to search. on top of the earthquake and tsunami, japan is still grappling with the nuclear disaster, on par with chernobyl. the disaster could take up to 40 years to be completely under control. the meltdown at the fukushima power plant left a meltdown extending for miles. there was concern about the workers at the plant, the radiation levels they were being exposed to and whether tokyo electric power company was being forthright about the dangers the workers were actually facing. a year later, radiation is still leaking, there's still cleanup work going on at the plant, but not by nuclear engineers. to find out what's really going on, who the workers are and why they're risking their health, a writer went undercover with a hidden camera. >> reporter: inside a nuclear disaster, these are the nameless men tasked with cleaning up the crippled fukushima nuclear plant. nearly one year ago, this was the site of a triple meltdown, a force so powerful, radiation still leaks today. a 12-mile radius around the plant is a nuclear waste land, and yet these workers operate around the clock, trying to contain the radiation and nuclear fuel amid the melted steel of the blown reactor building