skeptical social conservatives. i'll talk about that and more with this former rival who just dropped out of the race newt gingrich. we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room." formally this week, satellites would have been dominated by the race for the white house and the increasingly heating battle between the obama and romney campaigns. but president obama rewrote the script, catching the world by surprise with an unexpected trip to afghanistan where he marked the one-year anniversary of the death of the world's most wanted terrorist. >> one year ago from bases here in afghanistan our troops launched the operation that killed osama bin laden. the goal that i set to defeat al qaeda and denied a chance to rebuild is now within our reach. >> the trip wasn't without controversy, some critics accusing the president of playing politics with the anniversary of bin laden's death, questioning whether romney's campaign would have done the same thing. romney this week picked up an important endorsement, the endorsement of the formal rival michele bachmann. jim acosta, romney still has an enormous amount of work ahead of him. >> that's right. endorsements do help but it's the candidate who has to win over voters one by one. looking at his schedule this week, it's no secret he's trying to rally social conservatives to his campaign but for now it's a work in progress, normally something republicans see a contender doing while running for the nomination, not after it's locked up. >> good morning! >> reporter: mitt romney was doing more than just sizesiing a new running partner in jim mcdonald. he's also out to win over social conservative, picking up the endorsement of his one-time rival michele bachmann. just four months ago bachmann predicted romney couldn't win. >> he is the only governor in the history of the united states that has put into place socialized medicine in his state. >> reporter: this week the presumptive gop nominee has taken some hits from evangelical leaders who were outraged over the hiring of romney former policy adviser richard grannel. one blogger declared victory. >> i will flat out guaranty you he is not going to make this mistake again. there is no way mitt romney is going to put a homosexual activist in any position of importance in his campaign. >> it did send a message. i don't think it was an in your face message. think thi i think it could have been an oversight but a troubling oversight. >> he has basically checked all the conservative boxes on the issues of life and marriage and family, but his past policy positions still, you know, kind of cloud that. >> reporter: romney is trying to mend fences fast, sending his top campaign aides to meet with newt gingrich and having a private session with rick santorum. they're saying he went behind doors with bloggers, all part of an effort to improve relations with the republicans base. no one is enjoying this more than the democrats. >> some women across virginia are outraged as governor bob mcdonald signs that controversial bill requiring women seeking an abortion to first undergo an ultrasound. >> evangelical leaders say romney's next test comes a little more than a week when he speaks at the christian conservative liberty university but the romney campaign says it's not worried, it is confident the gop is motivated and rallying to beat president obama in the fall. wolf? >> thanks very much. he was one of candidate obama's sharpest critics in the 2008 campaign but what a difference four years has made. now former president clinton is one of the biggest guns in president obama's reelection arsenal. >> reporter: in 2007 bill clinton took aim at barack obama. then the junior senator from illinois. >> you know, i'm old fashioned. i think a president ought to have done something for other people and for his country when you pick a president. >> reporter: president clinton questioned obama's inexperience. >> when is the last time we elected a president based on one year of service in the senate before he started running? >> reporter: in early 2008 obama won iowa and entered an all-out feud with the former first couple. >> i'm here, he's not. >> i can't tell who i'm running against sometimes. >> reporter: president clinton and president obama have never been close. but appointing hillary clinton secretary of state helped their relationship heal and the president has looked to president clinton for help. >> you're in good hands. and dibs will call last question. >> help me. thank you. >> reporter: having president clinton on board might help attract voters in areas where obama struggles, the south and some rust belt states. the obama campaign is featuring clinton in ads and hitting up his network of wealthy donors. obama and clinton appeared at a fund-raiser together sunday at the home of long time clinton supporter terry mcauliffe. obama joked the crowd would be getting two presidents for the price of one. president clinton will be a primary defender of president obama on the topic of the economy. he'll be heading out to multiple swing states targeting moderate democratic voters. his message will be that he knows what it takes to build a good economy and he'll say president obama is on the right path. >> let's dig deeper now into all of this. joining us, our chief political analyst gora borger and cnn political analyst ron brownstein. the unemployment numbers were disappoints, even they the numbers went down slightly from 8.2 to 8.1%. >> that's disappointing for the white house, not the fact that the number went down but the fact they're not creating the number of jobs they need to be creating to give people a sense of optimism. it may also be a signal that job creation is going to continue to slow down. if that's the case, the one opportunity mitt romney has is really on the economy because if you go and ask that question in some of the battleground states and we did, somebody asked it in florida and ohio and who's better able to handle the economy, i believe it was quinnipiac, the numbers were in florida that mitt romney is better able to handle the economy and in ohio, again, that romney is better able to handle the economy. that is barack obama's real weakness. >> the core reason obama's position is stronger this spring than it was last fall, why his approval rating is better, is because americans are more optimistic about the forward trajectory of the economy than they were a year ago. one of the principle reasons for that optimism is the job news were getting better over the winner, seeing 200,000 a month. as that rolls back now to a lower level, the big threat to the president is that it will erode that forward looking optimism because i think almost all political strategists and political scientists will agree trajectory matters more than level in presidential politics. the expectations about where we're going. as gloria says, if this is the beginning of a sustained period where job growth will be less robust than it was, the risk to the president is it undermines that sense that we're heading in the right direction. >> and our cnn poll showed over half of the american public is now willing to give mitt romney another look. that's really important. because what he's going to emphasize is his business experience. during the primaries, he got taken off on a track on cultural issues and all the rest. now he's going to talk business experience, that he can fix the economy. >> i don't think there's any doubt at least in my mind that the romney campaign now is trying to move away from the far right and trying to reposition itself towards the center. >> absolutely. and that is where presidential elections are won, of course, historically. but there is not a complete etch a sketch, to use the analogy -- >> the picture is not complete. >> no. some of the things that happened during the primary are going to be difficult to undo, particularly what happened with hispanics on issues relating to immigration and with women and issues of contraception. he'll try to shift the focus from a choice to a referendum. his goal always every day is to encourage voters to simply look at this as an up-and-down referendum of has president obama delivered what he promised four years ago. >> but when you look at the problems mitt romney will have and it is because of the primaries and newt gingrich called him the most anti-immigrant candidate, don't think the obama campaign won't be using that, battleground states, arizona, nevada, new mexico, colorado all very large hispanic populations, things that mitt romney is going to have difficulty explaining in a general election complex. >> you wrote this on cnn.com, after this combative primary season, watching mitt romney's former gop rivals struggle with ways to endoes their one time nemesis is painful. >> it been kind of tough for them. you saw michele bachmann do it. rick santorum has not endorsed but they're sort of trying to find a middle ground. rudy giuliani, who called him a flip flopper. they're never going to love each other but they're united in their want to defeat barack obama. >> but they dislike the president a whole lot more. >> that's why at some level, the long they are draws out, i think the risk becomes greater for rick santorum than for mitt romney. we're in an all hands on deck era of modern politics. motivation is to defeat the other side. if these republicans are doing everything they can to contribute to beating barack obama, it will hurt him. >> it just reminds voters, though, of why they don't trust anything politicians say. because if you can turn on a dime from saying, by the way, as michele bachmann did to abc news that mitt romney could not beat president obama, if you can turn on a dime and suddenly embrace somebody and say, yes, he can -- >> she might still believe that. y -- we don't know. >> people are cynical for a reason. >> al qaeda maplans hidden insi pornography. terror leaders encouraging their followers to attack the united states with wildfires. plus the obama campaign using newt gingrich's own word to attack mitt romney. i'll talk about that and more with the former house speaker. and some difficult ones. but, through it all, we've persevered, supporting some of the biggest ideas in modern history. so why should our anniversary matter to you? because for 200 years, we've been helping ideas move from ambition to achievement. and the next great idea could be yours. ♪ the teacher that comes to mind for me is my high school math teacher, dr. gilmore. i mean he could teach. he was there for us, even if we needed him in college. you could call him, you had his phone number. he was just focused on making sure we were gonna be successful. he would never give up on any of us. we turn to stunning revelations about secret al qaeda attack plans hidden inside a porn video. it gives a plot and chilling revelations of future threats. they're tied to a pair of al qaeda suspects on trial. here's nic robertson. >> reporter: as u.s. navy seals were preparing to storm bin laden's now infamous compound in pakistan a year ago, two of his european trained recruits were sneaking out of the country on a mission to call carnage. they were headed for vienna and berlin. but not long after they returned to europe, one of them was being questioned at this police station. he was arrested and searched and hidden in his underwear, police found memory recording devices like these. buried deep in the devices of a pornographic video and hidden in files inside that were what police believe were more than a hundred secret al qaeda documents. documents that included detail accounts of the planning for some of al qaeda's biggest attacks and ideas for future operations, apparently drawn up by some of the terror group's most senior operatives from years ago. >> according to the german federal prison police, must have been written up by the inner core of al qaeda. >> reporter: investigator journalist works for the "zeit" newspaper and was the first to report on the documents. among al qaeda's plans, attacks like the one in mumbai, indian, where they stormed three hole tells killing more than 160 people. >> deal be with -- okay. >> reporter: and another plan, the most chilling yet -- >> he says that we could hijack a passenger ship on the sea and then use it to pressure pressurize the public. what he most likely means is that they would then start executing passengers on those ships and demand the release of particular prisoners. >> reporter: they would dress passengers in orange jump suits, mimicking al qaeda prisoners in gitmo. executions would be quickly uploaded to an al qaeda web site. also in the plan's document titled "future works" to flood europe with trained terrorists and overwhelm counterterrorism agencies. >> but the author seems to be convinced that al qaeda should be pursuing a two-track strategy of low cost, low damage attacks and large scale attacks. >> reporter: like the 9/11 attack sp. >> yes. the reason being if al qaeda were to pursue only large scale attacks and those are foiled, then they have nothing. >> reporter: that's where these two men sent back to europe fit into al qaeda's planning. yusef, seen here in a militant video threatening germany. and 22-year-old maxoud, the man found with the memory sticks. german prosecutors allege their job was to recruit a network of suicide attackers. >> we do not know what these two month were actually up to but there are certain information if those files that make it plausible to assume it was a mahmoud-style attack. >> reporter: they have denied being part of a terrorist objection. other files show not only al qaeda thinking about the future but also shed light on the planning of past attacks and elaborate efforts to foil intelligence services. u.s. intelligence sources tell cnn this information is pure gold and it includes details of some of al qaeda's most dangerous attacks, including the attack on the london subway seven years ago. 52 were killed. several hundred injured. the mastermind of that attack, a british member of al qaeda. in one of the documents found in berlin, he spells out his role in that attack, as this bomber recorded his martyrdom statement, he writes he was in the roo room off camera, he set up a camera with the scripted statement. he also reveals there was a shortless of three targets, the bank of england, the g-8 summit taking place in scotland and the london subway. they picked the subway because it required less explosives. his big takeaway of the success from this team was the time he spent memorizing codes to teach them countersurveillance techniques to switch their phones, use e-mail accounts on internet chats. he revealed two of the bombers were sure they were being watched by british intelligence because some of their associate himself been arrested in connection with another plot. they acted out that life was normal, going to the movies, joking out loud a lot. a subsequent inquiry in britain found that the intelligence services, mi-5, were aware of the two men and their connections but didn't think they posed a threat. even as london was recovering from that terrible day, he was planning the devastating follow up. >> nic robertson reporting for us. he also reports al qaeda is setting up new training camps in yemen and libya right now. >> into a war zone and back. how president obama pulled off the dangerous trip to afghanistan. and newt gingrich drops out of the race for the white house saying he might be backing mitt montana but does newt gingrich still think romney's a liar? i'll ask him. ct, i'm already seg your best friend, justin. ♪ i would've appreciated a proactive update on the status of our relationship. who do you think i am, tim? quicken loans? at quicken loans, we provide you with proactive updates on 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[ seagulls calling ] away...is a place that's beyond your imagination, yet well within your means. find your away. for a dealer and the rv that's right for you, visit gorving.com. he's officially out of the republican race for the white house but some of gingrich's sharpest attacks of mitt romney are living on thanks to the obama campaign. i sat down this week with the former house speaker. you shouldn't be surprised because you've been in politics for a long time. the obama-biden campaign using your words in a new commercial hammering away at mitt romney. i'll play a clip. >> the romney machine can drive down turnout, run over opponents with negative ads. it doesn't seem capable of inspiring turnout. the result is i think very, very worrisome if you're thinking about the fall campaign. >> is he still the most anti-immigrant candidate? >> i think of the four of us, yes. >> are you calling mitt romney a liar? >> yes. >> the truth team they call it. how do you feel when you see your words used in a campaign commercial like that to hammer away at mitt romney? >> you have a rough and tumble primary season. you're going to get word like that. i think when mccain tried to use hillary clinton's words against obama, it didn't work all that well. the fact is you have a president with the worst unemployment record of any president since the great depression. you have a president with the highest price of gasoline of any president in american history on average. you have a president who is running up huge deficits to crush our children and grandchildren with the level of debt we've never dreamed of before. this president will say and do anything in order to try to make sure we don't pay attention to his record. >> do you still believe mitt romney is a liar? >> i still believe the romney campaign said things that aren't true. >> forget about the romney campaign. is mitt romney a liar? >> he said things at times that are untrue. >> so your answer is yes. >> i also believe in relation to president obama, i would trust mitt romney a hundred times over. >> it wasn't exactly an endorsement for mitt romney. >> i said i wanted to come pain for him, he would be appoint better judges, do far more to balance the budget than the president. i went down a long list as to why mitt romney would be better than president obama. >> would you consider what you said yesterday an endorsement? >> the only distinction people draw is at some point in the next couple of weeks mitt and i will be together and there will be some kind of endorsement. i tried to send every single that if you were a conservative and you do not want to reelect barack obama, you have one choice and that's mitt romney. >> so from your opinion, you endorsed him? have you been speaking with him? >> we don't have a specific date that we're going to do that. i talked with the governor, i met with his campaign manager, we're coordinating with his policy team. they've been generous on pointing out on the issue of energy independence i was way ahead of them, they're eager to work with us on those kind of platforms. >> will we see mitt romney and newt gingrich to the out there on the campaign trail? >> absolutely. >> will you go out independently, go to areas where you're well liked? >> i will do everything i can to help defeat barack obama and help elect a republican house and a republican senate. >> newt gingrich speaking with me earlier in the week. meanwhile president obama, he's now back from a dangerous trip to the afghanistan war zone. why his visit was cloaked in such high secrecy. and love letters from a young barack obama. his ex-girl friends now sharing stories about their relationships. coffee doesn't have vitamins... unless you want