conspiracy theory. >> lost time and lost money, yes, america it is another day in the hearing room with congressman daryl issa and his hunt for a white whale at the irs. in today's episode of this long-running multimillion dollar serial drama, he directed the an tag nix towards jennifer o'connor. the outrage, a loss of e-mails sustained during the crash of a hard drive belonging to issa enemy number one, lois lerner, o'connor worked as counsel to the irs for six months and supervised much of the collection of documents in response to congressional investigations. after issuing a subpoena for o'connor to appear, issa released his pent up hostilities basically immediately. >> they hired you as soon as we said we want a bunch of documents, correct? >> mr. warfel, the acting commissioner. >> yes or no, you're a hostile witness. were you hired? >> i'm not at all a hostile witness. >> yes, you are. >> one of those people seems hostile and it is not jennifer o'connor. this a wonder actually because the irs is the agency that says it has spent 120,000 hours and $10 million to find and turn over 1.3 million pages of documents in response to congressional probes. that includes 67,000 e-mails to and from lois lerner, for daryl issa, the 67,000 e-mails are sheer mockery. >> what do you say to those who say you were so wrong about so much at the expense of so many? one thing daryl issa does not like to hear is there may be any other congressional big dogs fighting for what little meat is left on irs bones. as such he saw fit to close the hearing by taking the irs to school dropping i.t. knowledge about his own systems backup. >> the tools exist at my former company, which is not a large company, it's a few00 million dollars and exist to search the entire record of years worth of millions of e-mails because in fact the federal rules of discovery do not toll rate you saying here's paper, sort through it. or our dog ate it or we destroy everything by simply not backing it up after six months. >> only daryl issa can take a congressional hearing over a crashed computer and spin it into a humble brag conspiracy theory featuring his own ego. bryan boyler and ezra, that was our own system malfunction we were treated to -- >> i'm sure congressional hearings will be intense. >> i'm waiting for daryl issa to subpoena my hard drive of the republicans are calling this on the level, suggesting this may be conspiracy on the level of the watergate tapes and this is some sort of partisan, stone walling, nobody has yet tackled the theory that it might just be government bureaucracy and underfunded department and agents who don't really know how to interpret the law or perhaps a law regarding 501 c4s that is too broad. >> i think we need to separate two things out here. i really think this has become a fascinatingly confused and partisan -- confused for a reason debate. there's a question on the e-mails and her e-mails did disappear in ways that i think should upset people. it looks like at the very least incompetence, there could be malfeasan malfeasance, the e-mail her computer crashed a couple weeks after ten days after congressman dave camp wanted the irs to begin looking into questions whether or not it was plitizing a tea party application. there are reasons for people who think there's a conspiracy theory to be upset. i think the broader question, which we shouldn't get lose sight of, there really has been a really full investigation into whether there was a broader conspiracy. what we were looking for was to see whether or not there had been efforts coming down from somewhere higher that led to a broad and/or targeted look at tea party groups in in order to plit size the election and that is pretty conclusively proven to be no -- >> then what is there for people who are concerned about a conspiracy to get upset over? i think it's upsetting that the irs does not have any any way sort of systems that are in the 21st century. it's unfortunate that the sort of decembsignations seem to be incredibly troubled process. but you think there's a reason for people to get upset. i wonder what you think that might be given your second point? >> the people concerned about conspiracy are upset because this leaves a blank spot unfinished for them. the second point is exactly what you're saying here, there isn't a broader reason to get upset and that is the connection getting missed here. there is an emotional desire to still see something come out of this. a lot of people feel angry about what they feel the irs did, even though no real evidence has come out there was a conspiracy they are worried about. so now that emotion is i think being channelled into this question of lois lerner's e-mail, whatever they say about lois lerner now gone from the irs, they don't prove something larger and there's not webbing between here and there. we have this question coming down to something not actually the question of the conspiracy but people who want to be upset very badly to be upset and go after the irs and obama administration in some vague way. >> in so far as it has been a season of maligning the government, whether it is the aca or epa regulations or whether it is the handling of benghazi, this goes into the kitty, this kind of mountain of stuff that conservatives like to point at when they talk about government overreach. i wonder if you think it has a measurable effect on the progressive agenda for the rest of the country. in so far as how the rest of the country is embracing it or not? >> i think like right now we're experiencing this moment, right, wherefore a week at a time or two weeks at a time, whatever issue has -- there's been a new revelation about, becomes sort of a scandal due jour and end up spend ag lot of time and effort on it. you get the impression if the e-mails were to turn up, republicans wouldn't say great, thanks for the e-mails. they would say this is a distraction from whatever scandal they claim to be interested in. on the other side of the aisle, desperately want the country to see this is happening without dealing with substantive issues like immigration reform or increasing the minimum wage and i think that's a track we're on from here until at least the election, probably until we have awe unified government again at some point in the future. the parties don't see eye to eye, these are what the two parties can do and majority people can point out they are obstructing progress in other issues. >> ezra, there were two things to come from this, i would like to see move over to cloud computing, perhaps and maybe someone have a sub tan tif conversation about campaign finance reform. i will quote daryl issa. we asked for lois lerner because she became a person of interest for being at the center for the unfair treatment and this is the important part, and the deliberate effort to overturn citizens united using the power of the irs. which is not -- not something i think we talked about before. irs overturning citizens united. >> this is such a huge point you're making here. it is what comes to the core of it. congress does have an important oversight function and daryl issa is in some way or another trying to fill that out though he often does so in a way that seems unusually partisan and also has another function. it is meant to solve the underlying problems the country faces, daryl issa and others very upset when you saw a massive failure around the healthcare.gov operation very early into october and november and december. very upset over how the unclear process led to tea party groups taking a long time to get their tax status ratified. these are problems they could solve. they could very aggressively modernize the i.t. infrastructure of the federal government and really should. they could really clarify what it is that gets you 501 c 4 status and haven't done either. that goes to the real point. they want the conspiracy, they want the attacks but don't actually want to solve the problems. >> they would like to have a very fancy graphics package and preferably twitter feeds and hash tags to go along with the conspiracy. brian, this is as to ezra's point, it's about motivating the base, rights? >> john boehner says they not fully cooperated, but haven't done a damned thing to get to the truth of what happened. that could go to anything whether ben gazdy or climate change. she refuses to tell us the truth and we lose two years worth of e-mails. i grew up in a bar, this doesn't pass the straight face test. i will say, conversely, republicans efforts around this don't pass the straight face test for me. i don't have much of a straight face. do you think lois lerner's e-mails get conservatives to the voting booth in november? >> the whole atmosphere they've created around the obama administration, it's not just irs, bowe bergdahl and obamacare and overreach with epa regulars and stuff like that. that kind of just -- ginning up of the idea this is an out of control president who is no moral bearings could help. i don't know if this hearing or that hearing really does much, but the thing that daryl issa said at the end of that last clip you played sort of goes to ezra's point. he was making a point about the irs' i.t. failures, if you parlay that into something substantive, than the issue goes away. nobody in the house republican conference is going to do that. gives the lie to the idea that this is about anything other than ginning them up if they can do that. >> between the glitches and the i.t. fails, it's clear the u.s. government needs better computers. i will leave this there. thank you guys. >> thank you. >> after the break, terrorists launch another round of violence as secretary of state john kerry scrambles to manage a new iraq. the latest on the new reality in the middle east coming up next. relish...the sweet pleasure of delivered straight to your face in accomodation paradise. ♪ booking.com booking.yeah! cut! 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[bell ring] "roll sound!" iraq is falling and falling fast. sunni militants now control almost all of iraq's border with syria and with jordan. this comes amid reports from the wall street journal that syrian war planes have struck targets in anbar province for the second day with bombs killing at least 50. the dramatic shift in power prompted the kurdish regional president to declare today we are facing a new reality and a new iraq. those comments came as he met with secretary of state john kerry who is in the region for high level crisis talks. kurdish leaders suggested they may break away from iraq and form their own independent state. kerry is calling on them to stand with baghdad. >> a united iraq is a stronger iraq and our policy is to respect the territorial integrity of iraq as a whole. the president understands that, particularly right now. >> while the united states urges diplomacy, the bloody conflict is exacting a terrible price. according to a u.n. report released today, more than 1,000 people have been killed in iraq in 17 days this month. most of them civilians. in about an hour, the entire u.s. senate will be briefed on the situation. >> coming up, what makes it legal to kill an american overseas? the new york times mark mazetti discusses a controversial new secret memo coming up next. 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who cares. almost three years after the united states deliberatery killed an american citizen using drone strikes in yemen, after years of being shrouded in secrecy, the legal justification for the killing of aulaqi has been made public for the very first time. yesterday a federal appeals court released large portions of a justice department memo outlining whi it was legal to kid a citizen abroad without due process. in its 41 page memo written 14 months before aulaqi was killed, the justice department argues this does not apply to the department of defense and essentially killing enemies who pose a threat is part of the department's job. something known as the public authority justification. that is the same argument that for example, allows police officers or fire trucks to lawfully break the speedlimit if they are responding to a threat. the memo also argues that the law forbidding the killing of americans overseas does not apply to the cia either. so if it's not illegal, then what makes it legal? that would be the authorization for the use of military force. this law enacted in 2001 granted the president broad military powers to pursue terrorists both at home and abroad. and it is a law that has been relied upon in some of the darkest hours of u.s. history. the kidnapping and detention and torture of hundreds of people after 9/11, the opening of gitmo, the eavesdropping on americans without a warrant. and the use of targeted drone strikes and now according to the justice department, this law is providing the legal basis for the administration's extra judicial killing of an war al alawky. the 11 pages of the memo that were redacted were precisely the ones that provided evidence of this continued and imminent threat and detailed exactly why aulaqi could not be captured. joining me now is national security correspondent with "the new york times." mark, thanks for joining me. your paper, the editorial board calls this memo a slap dash of legal furies, do you think that's an accurate description? >> i'm not allowed to speak for the editorial board. >> in your expert analysis? >> there's plenty controversy about the legal reasoning behind the memo, and you laid it out quite well, what exactly they relied on to justify targeting aulaqi. it is amazing that we are -- so many years after 9/11 keep going back to this aumf, which was passed just a week after 9/11 in the days after this attack. it was this very sort of curt resolution, very short. it has been used so broadly. and so expansively to justify overseas operations that it's really extraordinary that this is -- this is the -- this is the justification although not at all surprising. >> let me ask you about the redakss, the house progressive caucus released their response to the memo and redakss. you'll see the statement which is heavily redacted, given the breadth of the reda krctions an the argument as to why he couldn't be captured, can we asession the legal justification for this given how much we don't know still? >> you're right. when you boil it down, not all that much was learned yesterday from the memo. we had broadly known what the arguments were from aulaqi, the government's arguments, we had not seen the intelligence that backed up the assessments that he had become a operational leader and posed an imminent threat to the united states. these are crucial factors that are still a secret and still redacted and goes to the issue of transparency that president obama talked about a year ago at the national defense university when he talked about bringing more trans parency to this process. but we're here more than a year later. and most people agree that is still lacking. >> what do you think about the parts of the memo that collapse the differences between the dod who's job includes the killing of enemy combatants and cia who's job thus far has not included that specifically? >> yeah, i mean, and so much of the cia analysis and memo is redacted so we don't know what they are say ig. we know they are blurring these authorities in many ways. what dod does and cia does as written about a lot. have pretty much merged over the last 13 years. what the cia once was prohibited from doing, it now does expansively and what dod was prohibited from doing, it does expansively. it is interchangeable, not just legal theory here. if you look at what's going on in yemen today, there are cia drone strikes and dod drone strikes and it is very hard as an outsider to figure out what the difference and obviously when one is conducted, no one publicly says who carried them out. >> mark, it is great to talk to you. thanks so much for your time. >> thank you. >> just ahead, what does it mean to be an american? damian explains his journey through the back bone of the united states in part two of the new series, the invisible us. that's coming up next. start with the best writing experience.? 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"start your engines" . tomorrow homeland security secretary jeh johnson will travel to arizona to tour a shelter housing children who have crossed the u.s. border alone. johnson said the government is adding more than 100 customs agents to the south texas border to help deal with the ongoing humanitarian crisis. for many migrants south texas is the launching pad for next journey. migrating through america. over the last month, "new york times" mexico correspondent damian cave traveled the spine of the country, interstate 35 which stretches from south texas up to minnesota. i-35 is a route well traveled by immigrants and he set out to answer the fundamental questions, what demines citizenship. and to what degree is our identity evolving? in laredo tex