bodies of those killed in a devastating tornado almost one week ago. just ahead, one of the coroners involved in the daunting and grisly task. and clash of conservative men for the race for the white house. will it be sarah palin or michele bachmann? i'm candy crowley and you're in "the situation room." first to the u.s. investigation into osama bin laden and dramatic new clues revealing that he may have been trying to reach out to pakistan for protection in the years before he was killed. this comes as hillary clinton paid a visit to the country in a new effort to ease tension in the wake of bin laden's death. chris lawrence is at the pentagon with all of the details. chris? >> candy, all of this is coming out of the massive treasurer trove of intelligence that the navy s.e.a.l.s pulled out of bin laden's compound. this revelation is fascinating in that it really reveals one of the ways in which osama bin laden thought about trying to evade u.s. detection. documents seized show that he was ready to make a deal, pakistan, no attacks if pakistan protected its leaders and allowed them to live there. pakistan's ambassador told cnn there were no contacts with his country. >> you can think of many things of wanting to do them and so did osama bin laden. question is, did erase any of them and the government shows that it did not. >> bin laden did communicate with the operations chief about brokering protection and while there's no evidence that he ever approached pakistani leaders to make a deal, there's still an open question about bin laden's links to people in pakistan. >> our counterparts in the government were very forthcoming in saying that, you know, somebody somewhere was providing some kind of support. >> reporter: secretary of state hillary clinton and admiral mike mullen have left islamabad. the israeli pakistan relationship has been walked back from the brink. >> but this was an especially important visit because we have reached a turning point. >> reporter: the question is, turning where? pakistan is again demanding a decrease in drone strikes and telling u.s. military to send its 200 trainers home. >> they are talking about reducing the joint intelligence fusion centers. >> reporter: pakistan agreed to let the cia send a forensic team into the compound. they can swab surfaces for dna samples and look for anything embedded in the walls. >> there is potentially explosive material in this intelligence find. >> u.s. officials reiterated again today right now there is no evidence that senior or any pakistani officials new bin laden was there. in fact, secretary clinton hinted that there could be announcements of new u.s. and pakistan joint missions, just in the coming days, possibly focused on counterterrorism. candy? >> chris lawrence at the pentagon, thanks. we want to get more on these revelations. joining me now is peter bergen. clearly, osama bin laden by having plans to reach out to the pakistani government at some level felt that there was a soft spot somewhere willing to protect him. >> it was kind of a strange thought for bin laden. in 2007 he made it a policy to attack the pakistani government. we've seen a rash of suicide attacks in pakistan that they were encouraging attacks on the pakistani government. that said, bin laden has had a fairly high favorable rating and it's been dropping precipitously over the years. somewhere in the pakistani army there are people sympathetic to this in the sense that think of general musharraf who was for many years after in charge of the country. he was in charge of assassination attacks. and that involved members of the military. so it was -- but it was a -- it was not like he had actually done it. >> it seems -- what do you make -- let's think of the total that we know so far that came out of that house. that he thought that maybe he could make a deal somewhere, the pakistani government, in exchange for not attacking pakistani targets. it seemed in his final years that may have been more of a dreamer than a doer? >> if you look at sheikh mohammed, he told american investigators, gave a 30 different scenarios of things that they would like to do. very few of them did they actually recruit people to do. so bin laden had a lot of time on his hands, he's thinking about attacking on july 4th in washington, with sort of unsurprising things. but i think you're right, he was doing a lot of dreaming. he wasn't doing a lot of stuff that actually ended up with anything that happened. >> and let me ask you just listening to this piece from chris about, well, now we've turned the corner. was there any doubt in your mind, given how much these two countries need each other, that they wouldn't find a way out of this where we insulted it pakistan and going into their military and kill osama bin laden and embarrass them? we think maybe they protected him. but in the end, was there any doubt that they wouldn't come back and say, okay? >> the relationship is way too important for both sides. pakistan is about to be the fifth largest country in the world, has nuclear weapons, the taliban is vital to what the united states does in afghanistan and pakistan understands that the relationship with the united states is also important. there was no doubt -- the relationship took a huge hit. it wasn't just the bin laden discovery. it's also being the raymond, the drone attacks which chris mentioned in his piece. >> thank you so much. peter for coming by. 156 people in joplin, missouri, still remain unaccounted for. 90 that were originally listed as missing have been found alive. new signs of life amidst the rubble. the first business is just beginning. we're going to bring in casey wian. >> reporter: candy, that's right. you can see the wreckage behind me that is percent vase sif but we came across one sign of hope that there's a good chance that joplin will recover. >> this is america and we're going to rebuild it. >> reporter: four days after an historic tornado demolished much of joplin, missouri, contractor darren collins started construction on the first new building to remerge from the rubble. >> at some point we're going to have to stop scratching our head and staring at the rubble and roll-up our sleeves and get things back to normalcy. >> he's rebuilding his wife's beauty salon which he built once before 17 years ago. on tuesday, he discussed the idea with city officials and on wednesday they gave him the idea to start and thursday construction began. >> we've had just an enormous out pouring of generosity and help to get prepared to get back to this point. the city has been great, the city of joplin has allowed us a permit in record time. >> there's still no electricity in this part of joplin. the substation across the street remains in ruins so a generator powers the tools. >> time to roll-up our sleeves and do what we can do to move on with our lives. >> reporter: passers by continually stop by. >> i just had two police officers stop by and said, man, we want to shake your hand. the first glimmer of hope that we've really seen towards the town rebuilding. >> reporter: four nearby homes that collins built in the past year are in ruins. already he has at least six projects waiting to be rebuilt. >> my heart and prayer goes out to everyone. >> i hate for it to bring business to the area like this but i believe everyone will surprise everyone in the country with the rate that we can come back. >> reporter: after so much tragedy and so much devastation, collins takes solace in the cross that remains standing in the rubble of st. mary's church across the street and the support that he's received from his community. >> i thank god to live in such a place. >> reporter: collins says he expects to have the roof on that structure as early as this sunday and hopes to be open for business in 45 days and that will allow five stylists to be back to work in their home location. candy? >> it's so wonderful how such a little piece of news can sort of up everybody's spirits. casey, you profiled a national guardsman for us yesterday and you have an update on it. >> reporter: absolutely. army reservice in the name of dennis osborne killed in the home depot collapse during the tornado. his body was found across someone else and they believe that he was actually trying to protect someone from that tornado. we profiled his grieving widow, stephanie, and part of the problem that she and so many others have been having here in joplin is trying to get the remains of their loved ones out of the morgue. the identification process has taken a very, very long time. she was frustrated as many here are. we got word from the county coroner that his body has been positively identified and she should be able to get her husband's remains either later today or perhaps tomorrow and be able to schedule a funeral and that's something that a lot of families here are really hoping that they can get done as quickly as possible. candy? >> not good news but comforting news i'm sure for his widow. casey wian in a very wounded joplin, missouri, thank you, casey. there is growing frustration of families trying to get information about loved ones. i'll find out what is holding up the process. former president george b. wush's effort to help fight aids saving lives in africa. and as the gop race to the white house gains steam, you may be surprised who is topping our latest poll. here's a hint. they are not even running. ♪ [ male announcer ] in 2011, at&t is at work, building up our wireless network all across america. we're adding new cell sites... increasing network capacity, and investing billions of dollars to improve your wireless network experience. from a single phone call to the most advanced data download, we're covering more people in more places than ever before in an effort to give you the best network possible. at&t. rethink possible. 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[ male announcer ] joining aarp is only sixteen dollars a year. so call in and get a free travel bag when you join now. as authorities continue the grueling pros is he of identifying those killed in joplin, fine better prints are being used in the effort. the newton county coroner is joining us from joplin. mr. bridges, thank you so much. i cannot imagine what your job is like and i know you can't imagine what these families are going through as they await for confirmation of the death of a loved one. could you just first -- why does it seem to be taking so long to identify these bodies? >> well, it's frustrating to the families and it's frustrating to me. when you depend upon people coming in from all over the country to help start your identification program, it takes a while for them to ramp up. so we have adjusted from that point at the request of these families, at the family meeting last night at 6:00 and we have started pulling people out of the line that are readily identifiable and that process has been taken place since about 8:00 last night. >> so if i read you correctly, what you're saying is that there are people who are recognizable that you can say, all right, i have someone that roughly matches the description of your loved one. will you take a look? but that there are others that are either either too gruesome to look at or unidentifiable to look at that are taking more time. is that correct? >> that's right. basically, we've put the people identifiable to the front of the line now at the request, of course, of the family members and that is something that we've wanted. that's not protocol for the federal identification team but the state of missouri reacting to the family's wants and needs has assigned a number of personnel to make this happen and it is happening today. >> and so do you expect to be completed with the identification of the bodies that you have today? >> no. it will be a long process with people. i'm sure that there will be some that -- i'm fairly sure that there will be some that will even have to be made with dna and that will take a matter of weeks. but the people that are ready blee identifiable, i would say in the next few days they ought to be able to be identified. >> i guess i don't understand why it would take a couple of days to be identified a love one. >> i hope i'm giving you a worst case scenario. i hope that doesn't take that long but i would rather be far out than be close. once they find an individual, they pull him out, they have information on the body bag, then they take that information, they -- just involved with one a while ago, they look at the picture, we looked at the picture in this case, it looked like the individual, he -- the only thing is, it just wasn't -- you know, somebody laying there that is dead versus a picture, we were a little bit hesitant so they are running through dental. there are five dentists on the scene. we have dental records on him but that will take a little bit of time. so that is the process right now. and we don't want false identifiers at first. early on they were releasing an individual, for instance, that the family had i.d.ed and it was in fact not their loved one. they came into the funeral home after he was cleaned up and said, oh, that's not our loved one. we don't want that happening anymore. so i apologize to the families. it takes longer but the steps we're taking is i think we're going to have positive i.d.s and it takes time to go through those identifiers and get them to the families and get them cleaned up so they can look at them and actually say, hey, that does look like my loved one and we've got to have them say, that is my loved one. >> real quickly, can you tell me approximately how many bodies you have in this morgue and how many people you have working helping to identify them? >> weshlgs i'm going to say right now they have been releasing bodies. so i don't have an exact count but it's probably in the neighborhood of 115 and there's probably 75 people working in that morgue right now. >> okay. mr. bridges, no one envies you, your job. thank you so much for taking the time out to talk with us. >> thank you, appreciate it. >> sarah palin has played coy about whether she's ready to run for president. could a new poll give her pause before taking on president obama? and mitt romney could throw his hat in the ring next week but he had an alarming experience in iowa today. that's ahead. you're in "the situation room." 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[ male announcer ] hurry, join for free today. weight watchers online for men. finally, losing weight clicks. some dramatic twists and turns in the gop race to the white house just as the unofficial start to summer gets under way. joe johns is monitoring all of the developments. there's a research opinion poll out with a surprising name at the top. >> it sure is a surprising name, candy. somebody that we're not talking about much in politics right now, actually in the lead. former new york mayor rudy giuliani and that's interesting because you haven't heard much from him. a couple of points behind him. we see mitt romney and a tick or two behind mitt romney, we see sarah palin. if you look at that poll very carefully, there are two people that haven't shown any intention of getting into the race doing pretty good right now. >> i always thought politicians were doing the best when they were not running for something. but nonetheless, sarah palin, who has not said whether she's decided to get in that, should make republicans happy? >> we have numbers that show that there is a lot of polarization. people, as we've always said, either like sarah palin or they really don't like her a lot. if you look at this poll, it sort of reflects that. 40% of the people