d daddy s a hero. daddy, can we play ponies? right after we do foldies. tide boost is my tide. what s yours? so if ydead battery,t tire, need a tow or lock your keys in the car, geico s emergency roadside assistance is there 24/7. oh dear, i got a flat tire. hmmm. uh. yeah, can you find a take where it s a bit more dramatic on that last line, yeah? yeah i got it right here. someone help me!!! i have a flat tire!!! well it s good. good for me. what do you think? geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. i m s.e. cupp. the president looking to a new nis fiscal fight. the rest of hasandy aid bill up for a vote. xlees with tax breaks for rum distillers? i need a drunk. i m kry is tal ball. are we turning our kids in to narcissists? a dope. lance armstrong comes clean to the queen of talk but who needed the interview more, lance or oprah? i m shooting straight coming to guns. ready, aim? the cycle is on fire. the house is back and getting serious about the constitution. members spent 1:05 reciting the entire u.s. constitution. it s the basis of our government, of course, but this is only the second time ever the entire document was read aloud in the house. we the people of the united states in order to form a more perfect union no person except a natural-born citizen shall be eligible to the office of president. the powers to all cases of law and equity. full faith and credit given in each state to the public acts. congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the united states. the validity of the public debt of the united states authorized by law shall not be questioned. the right of citizens of the united states to vote shall not be denied on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. the right of the citizens of the united states to vote shall not be denied on account of sex. the 18th article of the amendment to the constitution of the amendment is hereby repealed. ah, the constitution from those opening lines we the people to the 21st amendment, wahoo! glorious document. i think i heard a clap or two in there about the debt and the nation paying bills and closer and closer to running out of cash to do it. remember, raising the debt ceiling isn t additional spending but allows the government to pay the bills it s already racked up on money it s already spent. today, fitch ratings which sets credit ratings for countries around the world warned the u.s. could lose the aaa rating, the highest there is, if there s not a quote median-term deficit reduction plan put in place. what will it take to get a deal? we start with dan gross. his latest piece is titled obama brinksmanship puts gop in tough spot on debt ceiling. so dan, you write that while you fall off a cliff, you only bump your head in to a ceiling but economically the ceiling has the capacity to deliver far more damage. you are talking like my friend steve kornacki here. what is failing to raise the debt ceiling? why is that going to be catastrophic? well, you know, first of all the stock and bond markets will really go haywire in a way they didn t when we were about to go over the fiscal cliff because government bonds are held by everybody. chinese central bank, japanese central bank, every single bank financial institution out there. so if there s any question over the value of those and they start to decline, these institutions have a great amount of leverage and interconnected with everything else and sort of see what happened in 2008. it s also this issue of, you know, who gets paid? if you start to have to say maybe soldiers get paid but not paying for the fuel or these doctors will get paid, you know, government is a huge force in our economy. like it or not. and the number of companies that would really be affected from walmart to every defense contractor to giant health care companies, if their ability to collect money that is owed to them is then put in doubt, that triggers a whole, you know, range of activities of other people wanting to collect debts from them. sounds really scary. do me a favor, though, and crawl in to president obama s head for me and tell me why you think in 2006 he voted not to raise the debt ceiling and said the fact we re here today to debate raising the debt limit is a sign of leadership failure, the sign the u.s. government can t pay his own bills. what was he thinking there? voting against an increase of the debt kreeling is what you do in the opposition party. oh, okay. in congress. this is going back for the last many years. yeah. all the republicans in the senate voted for increases when bush was in office. they vote against it when obama is in office. and vice versa. the problem or challenges now is the house where republicans don t want to vote for it and we need them, you know, it is sort of a luxury you have when the opposition controls the house. you can vote against it and have
engaging in this behavior so bad for the country. there s, you know, a long piece in politico where they were talking about, you know, what boehner s doing and manages this, and there s a line there when someone said we may have to let them do a partial government shutdown just to let them get this out of their system before they go on to approve what needs to be done and i think, you know, the challenge of leadership is to tell the people who you are leading that what they want is not realistic or that it doesn t make sense. i think boehner s modus operandi is to do some sort of last-minute deal. i think that s part of the psychology here. that you let these people, you know, they don t want to approve a debt ceiling, didn t come here to approve it and before they ll do it, they have to do something that lets them get that energy out of their system. and unfortunately, that might be the best strategy that he actually has, but you know, overall in terms of the president s and democrats approach, i think the president did a wonderful job and the democrats got a good deal in the fiscal cliff deal and the president s negotiating strategy of not negotiating on the debt ceiling has really put republicans in the corner where they re sort of backing away and saying maybe we can go in another direction but one thing i m concerned about is when i look back at 2010 and the big losses that democrats sustained there, part of the reason was because we ceded the debate to the republicans and allowed them to frame the conversation around the debt and the deficit and if you look at gallup polling, you can see that the debt and the deficit and government dissatisfaction with government which is another strong place for republicans to fight on are rising, are increasing in importance for voters in terms of what they re concerned about so i m concerned and wonder if you think this is right, that democrats may be setting themselves up to be on weak terrain sort to speak in terms of 2014 congressional elections by allowing this debate to be focused on the debt and deficit. people never stop and always in campaign mode and i think with obama the issue is, he has a campaign and wants to get in governing mode and that s why you see the changing of the discussion of the framing and why i think they suffered the losses in 2010 when it wasn t just a matter of issues, they weren t getting their voters out to the polls and i think it s more we saw it last fall when there was a big debate between obama and romney and the sort of democratic and gop view of what we should do with the budget deficit and what we should do with taxes and talked about in great detail and relentlessly. although, if i could we saw how that turned out. that was more about the future of the middle class and traditionally a stronger place for democrats to be. this is still a question about priorities or at least if i m doing the messaging and strategy on this, do you want we have a limited number of resources. we have a fair amount of debt. assume we all want to reduce our deficits and reduce the amount of debt. do we want to do that by cutting social security and medicare and taking these entitlements and the safety net and fundamentally changing it or do we want more cash from individuals and from companies and whether you do that through higher rates or tax reform or getting rid of deductions, you know, that s a debate worth having and i think one that democrats can be in a pretty decent position to win if they talk about it in the right way. dan gross, thanks for coming. thank you. next, developing news this afternoon on the latest sandy aid bill before congress. a house vote is expected tonight but there s plenty of opposition and maybe for good reason. we re spinning as the cycle rolls on for tuesday, january 15th. hey sis, it s so great to see you. you, too! oh, cloudy glasses. you didn t have to come over! actually, honey, i think i did. oh? you did? whoa, ladies, easy. hi. cascade kitchen counselor. we can help avoid this with cascade complete pacs. see, over time, cascade complete pacs fight film buildup two times better than finish quantum. to help leave glasses sparkling shiny! too bad it doesn t work on windows. okay, i m outta here. cascade. the clear choice. some brokerage firms are. but way too many aren t. some of the ones that push mutual funds with their names on them aren t. why? because selling their funds makes them more money. which makes you wonder isn t that a conflict? am i in the best fund for me, or them? search proprietary mutual funds . yikes, it s best for them. then go to e-trade. we ve got over 8,000 mutual funds
it is not our policy position to respond to this through regime change. we will take an appropriate response, and we are evaluating, the president and his team are evaluating the options available to them. and the president will make an assessment and an announcement in due time. defense secretary chuck hagel made clear that u.s. military forces are ready. suffice to say the options are there, the united states department of defense is ready to carry out those options. if that would occur, that would occur also in coordination with our international partners. but you re ready to go like that? we re ready to go like that. meanwhile, closest allies are lining up in agreement. british prime minister david cameron. now, of course, any action we take, or others take, would have to be legal, would have to be
that could be used to deliver chemical weapons such as airplanes, artillery rockets, and no apparent serious regime targets are included in that risks and they believe the strikes could take maybe two to three days to hit all targets they want. congressional reaction has been cautious and muddled, while senator chris murphy said on our show last night the president should come to congress here for a vote. there s hardly, of course, consensus on that point. of course, congress is out of session. today congressman steve cohen suggested president obama wait until congress returns on september 9th. then congressman cohen all but dismissed that idea. i think we could wait until september the 9th or thereabouts to take action. in many ways, i defer to the president s prerogative and trust the president to do what s right. joining me now, congressman elliot engel, democrat from new york, ranking member of the house foreign affairs committee and has been an advocate of the u.s. intervention in syria. congressman, as best as you can articulate, as someone who i understand supports increased u.s. intervention and military strike here, can you explain to me and our viewers what the concrete mission here, what the concrete goal is of any kind of military action? well, i assume the concrete goal, of course, it hasn t been decided to do this. if seems imminent. but i think the goal would be to say to assad and other assads of the world that crimes of this violent nature cannot go unpunished. if we stand by and watch the murder of innocent men, women and children, children gasping for breath and foaming at the mouth and don t take action, i think it encourages other bad players to do the same thing. so i think at the very least, it s saying that you ve gone too far, and we re going to make it hard for you to use your air
it. it s not with the gassing of innocent children. let me just say, i mean, i share your and i think any decent person s horror at the images we ve seen of children being gassed. absolutely, complete total moral revulsion. it is evil, unquestionably. what, to you, is the principle that separates the death of those innocent children from the 100,000 civilian dead who come before the chemical weapon strike? what is it about that strike that puts it on different terrain than the routine horrific slaughter of innocents that we ve seen duration of this civil war? well, assad in my estimation has been slaughtering his people from the start of this war. this is not something new, but the chemical weapons, the use of chemicals is new. and i think that that is just horrific. all deaths are bad. war is bad. but when you turn gas on to your own people, i think that s just going a bit far. and i think the world has a right to express its revulsion. i liken what s happening in syria today to 1999 in kosovo. there you had an end dangered population which was being murdered by its own government, and nato intervened with strikes, air strikes, and turned things around. i think you have an endangered population now, and i think assad needs to know that there is a line that he cannot cross, and i think the west is going to show him that line. now, it s not just the united states. it s our nato allies. the arab league today seemed to agree. and i just think that they seemed to agree the chemical weapons were used by the assad regime but did quite pointedly stop short. in the past, in libya, they explicitly endorsed the u.n. and allied bombing there. congressman eliot engel, tm from new york. thank you for your time tonight. thank you, chris. joining me now, julia ioffe, senior editor at the new republic covering this story. had a great writeup today about the thinking in the white house. what struck me here is there s this bizarre kind of goldilocks evaluation being done about what this response looks like, not too strong to tip the balance of the civil war, but not too weak so that it actually means something to assad. what is the thinking about the calculation of what this strike should look like inside the white house? well, i think, you know, it s as was once joked, obama is between a rock and a hard place. he s very much haunted by the mistakes of the previous administration that rushed into two wars that have really tired out the country and emptied our coffers. he s not rushing to get into a new one. i think the fact that, for example, that secretary of state john kerry spoke first, but we haven t heard from president obama yet, is significant. i think he s taking his time, but he also wants to show that he will do something, but it doesn t really make sense. you can t really take the chemical weapons attack out of context here. i mean, it is part of this whole war. so, you know, however many people died in this attack, but as you said yourself, 100,000 people died before using conventional weapons. here s one of the things that came across in what you wrote and reported today is that even though the specific responses to a chemical weapons attack, even though prime minister david cameron says the goal has to be to deter the possibility of chemical weapons attacks. it s essentially impossible for us to strike any chemical weapons stashes for the risk of making things worse by blowing up a whole bunch of nerve agents that you then send spiraling into the air. well, it s not just that, you destroy the depots and then people can come in and lute them. the containers that aren t exploded. that is really a surefire way to set these things loose on the world. you don t know where they ll go after that. but in terms of, you know, setting up a sense of consequence, okay, we ll hit him in a few places, we won t hit him too hard so it will be a slap on the wrist so he ll know he can use chemical weapons on a smaller scale, because we haven t punished that before. it doesn t i understand the impulse not to get involved in a another war in the middle east. we have egypt next door spiraling out of control. syria has been a mess for three years. but at this point, you either i feel like you have to do everything or it doesn t make sense to just hit him a little bit. julia ioffe from the new republic. thank you so much. joining us now, advocacy and director of middle east of human rights watch. she s a native of syria. the head of human rights, kenneth roth, i ve been following him on twitter, he has been incredibly strong in condemnations of the behavior of the assad regime, particularly as it pertains to the use of chemical weapons, indiscriminate slaughter of civilians. what s your feeling about the imminence of this military strike justified quite explicitly on humanitarian grounds as a way of enforcing an international norm human rights and i believe in, which is the prohibition of kchemical weapon. for us as human rights watch, you do not gas your own people like you just said and everyone s saying. then the effects of this attack will be judged by the sequence of such horrific attacks. we will only be able to judge whether this was successful if we see a real halt to the atrocities conducted over the past tsh. what is your calculation about whether we have either the military capability or the will to do that or whether we can do that in this way being described now there s this single surgical moment of punishment that enforces the norm and then we stop. then we just let them get back to the civil war. it s a very complex situation that s witnessed so many abuses. this is not the first abuse human rights watch has documented. been going on and on including the use of missiles and many kinds of arms that cannot distinguish between civilians and competence, anyway. now, what will come out of this particular attack if it happens is just speculation today. okay, but that is exactly the speculation that anyone engaged in this policy has to deal with. what do you say to the congressman, congressman eliot engel who makes the argument those in support of intervention have made, been making a while now, which is the world cannot sit idly by and watch such atrocities? as someone from human rights watch, how do you respond to that? we have not advocating for or against the intervention. if the intervention really is to happen, which is looks like it will, then for us, all must respect the law forward. they should not target civilians, they should not use weapons that are prohibited. they should not give either par parties to this conflict,
also expect the president to address russia s annexation of crimea? reporter: probably so just because this dominated the discussion so much. the g-7 meeting which was held as a part of the nuclear security summit wasn t really, the move wasn t originally part of the plan. it wasn t because of the esflepevents that happened in ukraine. suspending with the biggest economies in the world. russia was supposed to host in june in sochi. it is a big step. the question, though, is, specially among critics, will this have any effect? the u.s.ed administration, other countries repeatedly said, there is still a door open to discussion, to a diplomatic solution. there is a chance for deescalation. we can change things if russia decides to change course. for everything that has been said and all the talks that have been held, not only among western countries but talks with russia, nothing has changed that course. so it remains to be seen now what could constitute escalation for additional and more damaging sanctions to be issued and what could be deescalation. we ask that question yesterday. michelle, we re going to jump out. the president has now taken the stage with the prime minister of the netherlands. the two men are addressing the congregated press there. let s listen to what they are saying. i am proud to present our summit communique to you today. building of the progress remains early in washington and seoul. this communique sets the bar even higher. we have taken major steps towards meeting all three main objectives of the nss process. i will say a few words about each. the first objective is to reduce the amount of dangerous nuclear material in the world. the less dangerous nuclear material there is and the better the nuclear security, the smaller the chance that terrorists will be able to get hold of it. it s that simple. i m pleased that the 53 countries and four international organizations here have confirmed their commitment to continue reducing stocks of dangerous nuclear material, uranium and plutonium. a number of countries have announced the intention to hand over the highly dangerous to the u.s. as xhar chair of the summit, i naturally welcome these announcements. we are also making progress on the second objective, improving the security of nuclear and radioactive material. we have confirm our ambition to improve the security of materials that can be used to make nuclear weapons and the security of radiological sources that terrorists could use to make dirty bombs. the commitment of the nsa became more complete. the fear that the dirty bomb would cause doesn t bear thinking about, not to mention the possible disruption to society. i m specially pleased that we are including this area. furthermore, the nss countries have encouraged implementation of the iaa nuclear security guidelines. a significant number of us have decided to take this commitment even further. as chair of the summit, i m delighted to announce that two thirds of the countries on the initiative of the united states, korea and the netherlands, have pledged to incorporate these important recommendations into the national legislation. this is a message and represents potential progress. i can t stress enough how important it is. fortunately, in a group of countries supporting this initiative is growing. our ultimate goal is, of course, for all nss countries to follow this league and set an example for other countries. he many pleas i am pleased with the growing awareness of nuclear material. it is important to determine the origin of the material and trace that. we are listening. michelle kosinski, i wanted to bring you in briefly before president obama speaks. the president will also probably at some point have to address a rather large domestic issue which is brewing. the white house plans to change and modify and in some ways do away with the current system of the nsa collecting telephone data. can you explain what this change will be? reporter: yes. feel free to cut me off when this starts again. there is a delay in what i can see and here. we wonder how much this issue came up in discussions with other european nations also. during this series of meetings. it has been this highly controversial, really played out in the media, irritation, of how much spying was gone on. similar, was overplayed. it came out later that we know that the u.k., germany, other european countries do this same kind of data collection as well as spying. here is what the president wants to do. he has been working with congress. soon, in the coming days, his administration says, he wants to propose a law that would change the way this is done. right now, the nsa is the one that collects this bulk data, phone records, that americans make on a day it day basis. they keep it for five years. what s been highly controversial in the past is that the nsa can essentially choose its own investigations and authorize them. the president wants the phone companies to collect the data and keep it possibly. although, that might be done by some third party. the administration didn t make that clear. the president wants it such to be such that the nsa would have to go to a judge for every search it would want to do. that judge would have to say yes or no as to whether that specific phone number could be likely tied to terrorism. there are some other changes too. keep in mind, this is a proposed piece of legislation. what it would do would take the nsa out of the business of collecting and storing the data. of core, turse, the nsa would s be able to gain access to the data when needed. the bigger question is, will congress pass this law? how long could that take? in the meantime, the president has authorized for 90 days an will continue in 90-day increments to authorize the collection and the processing of that data as it stands right now. the president is about to speak now. let s go back to the the hague to listen to president obama. i would like to say a few words about the tragedy that recently took place back in the united states. over the weekend, a massive landslide swept through a tiny town called oso in washington state. while i won t get ahead of the ongoing response and rescue operations, we know that part of this tightly knit community has been lost. first responders acted bravely despite still dangerous conditions. the american red cross has opened multiple shelters and the people of washington state have been quick to help and comfort their fellow citizens. i just spoke to governor insly who swiftly declared a state of emergency and i signed that emergency declaration to make sure he has got all the resources he needs from my administration. they are in contact with them on an on going basis, fema and the army core of engineers has been on site to offer their assistance and expertise. i would ask all americans to send their thoughts and prayers to washington state and the community, oso, and the families and friends of those who continue to be missing. we hope for the best but we recognize this is a tough situation. now, as for our work here in the hague, i want to just repeat the extraordinary work that mark has done in helping to organize this. some of the people of the netherlands, your hospitality has been remarkable. your organization has been flawless. to all the people who were involved in putting this together, including those that are putting up with what i caused, i m told there is a dutch word that captures the spirit that doesn t translate exactly into english but let me say my first visit to the netherlands has been truly kozelik. i convened the first nuclear summit in washington four years ago, because i believed we need a series and sustained global effort to deal with one of the greatest threats to international security, the specter of nuclear terrorism. we made further progress at our second summit in seoul and under your prime minister s stewardship, we have built on that progress here. keeping with the spirits of these summits, this was not about vague commitments but about taking tangible and concrete steps to secure more of the world s nuclear material so it never falls in the hands of terrorists. in particular, i want to come mend bell judge and it will i for completing the removal of their excess supplies of uranium and plutonium. japan announced it will work with the united states to eliminate hundreds of kilograms of weapons from one of their experimental reactors. that s enough for dozens of nuclear weapons. dozens of other nations have agreed to take specific steps towards improving nuclear security in their own countries and to support our global efforts. some have pledged to convert their research reactors to low enriched uranium which cannot be used to make a bomb. we have set new goals for implemented or nuclear security measures, including sharing more information to ensure we are all living up to our commitments. i have made it clear the united states will continue to do our part. our nuclear regulator will develop new guidelines to strengthen cybersecurity at our nuclear power plants. we have pledged to pursue the production of a key medical isotope used to treat illnesses like cancer without relying on weapons useable materials and we are going to work to install more radiation detection equipment at ports and transit sites to combat nuclear smuggling. all of this builds on our previous efforts. 12 countries and two dozen nuclear facilities around the world have now rid themselves entirely of highly enriched uranium and plutonium. dozens of nations have boosted security or created new centers to improve nuclear security and training. the international atomic energy agency is now sfrotronger and m countries have ratified the treaties in international partnerships at the heart of our efforts. we have seepn a fundamental shit in our approach. we still have a lot more to do to ensure the ambitious goals we set years ago. i believe this is he sengs to the security of the entire world and given the catastrophic consequences of even a single attack, we can not be complacent. i ll clothes by reminding everybody that one of the achievements of our first summit in 2010 was ukraine s decision to remove all its highly enriched uranium from its nuclear fuel sites. had that not happen, those dangerous nuclear materials would still be there now and the difficult situation we are dealing with in ukraine today would involve yet another level of concern. so it s a vivid reminder that the more of this material we can secure, the safer all of our countries will be. we made progress. we have got more to do. we are going to continue our work. i look forward to hosting the fourth nuclear security summit in the united states in two years. thank you again, mark and all your team as well as the people of the netherlands for this outstanding summit. thank you, mr. president. we will go straight to the questions now. the first question will be the associate press. thank you, mr. president. you have been criticized during this dispute with russia as not understanding president putin s motivations. you and others said you thought putin was reflecting or pausing his encouragement to crimea. did you misread his intentions and what do you think his motivations are now? when you spoke about the nsa review in january, you said you weren t sold on the option of having phone companies hold meta-da ta and you thought it raised additional privacy concerns. what has changed since that time and do you think congress will pass the legislation you are seeking? mr. prime minister, there are leaders in europe who have concerns about the sector sanctions the president has proposed on russia s economy. do you think any of those leaders have had their concerns alleviated during their talks with the president over the past few days? thank you. let me see if i can remember all of these. with respect to president putin s motivation, there has been a lot of speculation. i am less interested in motivation and more interested in the facts and the principles that not only the united states but the entire international community are looking to uphold. i don t think that any of us have been under any illusion that russia has been very interested in controlling what happens to ukraine. that s not new. that s been the case for years now. that s been the case dating back to the orange revolution. what we have said consistently throughout this process is that it is up to the ukrainian people to make their own decisions about how they organize themselves and who they interact with. it has always been our belief that ukraine is going to have a relationship to russia. there is a strong historic bond between the two countries. that does not justify russia enroaching on ukraine s territorial integrity or sovereignty. that s exactly what s happened. i said, very early on, that should russia do so, there would be consequences. working with our european partners and our international partners, we have put in place sanctions that have already had some impact on the russian economy. now, moving forward, we have said and i want to be very clear about this, we north recognizing what has happened in crimea. the notion that a referendum sloppily organized over the course of two weeks would somehow justify the breaking off of the crimea and annexation by russia, somehow that would have a valid process. the overwhelming majority of the world rejects. we are also concerned about further encroachment by russia into ukraine. so what i announced and what the european council announced was that we were consulting and putting in place the framework, the architecture for additional sanctions, additional costs should russia take this next step. we also said and will continue to say is that there is another path available to russia. the ukrainian government has said it is prepared to negotiate with russia, that it is prepared to recognize its international obligations and the international community has been supportive of a diplomatic process. that would allow a deescalation of tensions, a moving back of russian troops from ukraine s borders. and rapidly organized elections that allow the ukrainian people to choose their leadership. my expectation is that if the ukrainian people are allowed to make their own decisions, their decision will be that they want to have a relationship with europe and they want to have a relationship with russia. this is not a zero sung game. i think that prime minister and the current government have shown remarkable strength and are prepared to go down the diplomatic path. it is now up to russia to act reresponsibly and show itself to be, once again, willing to abide by international rules and international norms. if it chooses to do so, i think there can be a better outcome. if it fails to do so, there will be additional costs. those will have some disruptive effect to the global economy but they will have the greatest impact on russia. so i think that would be a bad choice for president putin to make. ultimately, he is the president of russia and he is the one that s going to be making that decision. he just has to understand there is a choice to be made here. with respect to even though this was directed at mark, i just want to address this issue of sectoral sections. so far, we have put in place sa sanctions that impact individuals, restrict visas being issued to them, freezes their assets. we have identified one bank in particular in russia that was well-known to be the bank of choice for many of the persons who support and facilitate russian officials from carrying out some of these activities. what we have held off on are more broad-based sanctions that would impact entire sectors of the russian economy. it has not just been my suggestion but the european council s suggestion that should russia go further, such sectoral sanctions would be appropriate. that would include areas potentially like energy or finance or arms sales. or trade. that exists between europe and the united states and russia. what we are doing now at a very technical level, examining the impacts of each of these sanctions. some particular sanctions would hurt some countries more than others. all of us recognize that we have to stand up for a core principle. that lies at the heart of the international order and that facilitated the european union and the incredible prosperity and peace that europe has enjoyed now for decades. so although it could cause some disruptions to each of our economies or certain industries, what i ve been encouraged by is the firmness and the willingness on the part of all countries to look at ways in which they can participate in this process. our preference throughout will be to resolve this diplomatically. i think we are prepared, as we ve already shown, to take the next step, if the situation gets worse. finally, on ukraine, i think it is very important that we spend as much effort on bolstering the economy inside of ukraine and making sure that the elections proceed in an orderly fashion. so my hope is that the imf is able to complete a package for ukraine rapidly to stabilize their finances, their economy. . osce and other international organizations are sending in observers and monitors and we are providing technical assistants to make sure the elections are free and fair. the sooner the elections take place, the sooner the economy is stabilized, the better positioned the ukrainian people will be in terms of managing what is a very challenging situation. with respect to the nsa and i will be just brief on this, i said several months ago that i was assigning our various agencies in the i.c., the intelligence community, to bring me new options with respect to the telephone database program. they have presented me now with an option that i think is workable. it addresses the two core concerns the people have. number one, the idea of government storing bulk data generally. this ensures that the government is not in possession of that bulk data. i want to emphasize once again that some of the dangers that people high pott size when it came to bulk data, there were clear safeguards against but he recognize that people were concerned about what might happen in the future with that bulk data. this proposal that s been presented to me would eliminate that concern. the second thing the people were concerned about is making sure that not only is a judge in the program overall but looking at each individual inquiry that is made into a database. in new plan that s been presented to me does that. so overall i m confident that it allows us to do what is necessary in order to deal with the dangers of a nefarious attack and addresses the dangers that people have raised. i m looking forward to working with congress to make sure we go ahead and pass the enabling legislation quickly so that we can get on with the business of effective law enforcement. let me make it absolutely clear that the european union and the u.s. and yesterday we saw alignment within the summit. we are working very closely together. i can fully support all the answers which you just gave on the question you asked. maybe i can add one thing, which is the effect of the russian economy is very much gas and oil dependant. that means that economic sanctions, if they will be necessary, and we are not there yet, if economic sanctions would be necessary, because this conflict would escalate to the next stage, if this were to happen, these sanctions would hit russia very badly and obviously, you can never guarantee that the people in europe and canada, in the u.s., would not be hurt. obviously, with he will mae wil sure we will design these sanctions in such a way they will have maximum impact on the russian economy and not the european, the japanese, the american economy. we work very closely together and seek total alignment. next question. reportedly, there are about 30,000 russian troops on the border with ukraine. what guarantees can you give to the people of eastern ukraine and to the people in the baltic states, mole da va, other countries, that they will not be next when it comes to the russian politics of annex sayings. with regard to that also, is this a done deal? is there any doubt in your mind that putin will return crimea to where it belongs according to the west or is this diplomatic show of force basically to prevent another land grant somewhere else? on the second question first, on the issue of crimea, it is not a done deal in the sense that the international community by and large is not recognizing the annexation of crimea. the facts on the ground are that the russian military controls crimea. there are a number of individuals inside of crimea that are supportive of that process. there is no expectation that they will be dislodged by force. so what we can bring to bear are the legal arguments, the diplomatic arguments, the political pressure, the economic sanctions that are already in place to try and make sure that there is a cost to that process. i think it would be dishonest to suggest that there is a simple solution to resolving what has already taken place in crimea. although, history has a funny way of moving in twists and turns and not just in a straight line. so how the situation in crimea evolves in part depends on making sure the international community stays unified, indicating this was an illegal action on part of russia. with respect to the russian troops that are along the border of ukraine at the moment, right now, they are on russian soil. if they stay on russian soil, we oppose what appears to be an effort of intimidation by russia has a right legally to have its troops on its own soil. i don t think it is a done deal. i think that russia is still making a series of calculations. again, those calculations will be impacted in part by how unified the united states and europe are and the international community is in saying to russia, this is not how in the 21st century we resolve disputes. i think it is particularly important for all of us to dismiss this notion that somehow russian speakers or national inside of ukraine are threatened and that somehow that would justify russian action. there has been no evidence that russian speakers have been in any way threatened. if anything, what we have seen are provok coutours that have created scuffles inside ukraine. when i here analogy to kosovo where you had thousands of people who were being slaughtered by their government, it s a comparison that makes absolutely no sense. i think it is important for everybody to be clear and strip away some of the possible excuses for potential russian action. with respect to the broader issue of states that are bordering russia and what assurances do they have about future land grabs, as you put it, obviously, some of those countries are nato countries and as nato allies, we believe that the cornerstone of our security is making sure that all of us, including the united states, are abiding by article 5. the notion of collective defense. what we are not doing is organizing even more intensively to make sure that we have contingency plans and that every one of our nato allies has assurances that we will act in their defense against any threats. that s what nato is all about. that s been the cornerstone of peace in the transatlantic region now for several generations. so we will uphold that and there will be a series of nato consultations. it is going to be coming up in which we further develop and deepen those plans. i have not seen any nato members who have not expressed a firm determination with respect to nato members. now, those countries, border countries, that are outside of nato, what we can do, is what we are doing with ukraine, which is trying to make sure there is sufficient international pressure and a spotlight shined on the situation in some of these countries and that we are also doing everything we can to bolster their economies, make sure that through various diplomatic and economic initiatives that they feel supported and they know we stand by them. when it comes to a potential military response, that is defined by nato membership. that is what nato is about. jon karl from abc news. mr. president, thank you. in china, syria, and egypt and now in russia, we have seen you make strong statements, issue warnings that have been ignored. are you concerned that america s influence in the world, your influence in the world, is on the decline and in the light of recent developments, do you think mitt romney had a point when he said that russia is america s biggest geopolitical faux. if not russia, who? mr. prime minister, do you think these sanctions will change vladmir putin s calculation, cause him to back down? do you see where do you see a russian red line where if they go any further, into eastern ukraine and moldova where options beyond sanctions have to be considered? thank you. well, jonathan, i think if the premise of the question is that whenever the united states objects to an action and other countries don t immediately do exactly what we want, that that has been the norm. that would pretty much erase most of 20th century history. i think there is a distinction between us being very clear about what we think is an appropriate action, what we stand for, what principles we believe in versus what is, i guess, implied in the question, that we should engage in some sort of military action to prevent something. the truth of the matter is that the world has always been messy. what the united states has been consistently able to do and continue to be able to do is mobilize the international community around a set of principles and norms and where our own self-defense may not be involved. we may not act militarily. that does not mean that we don t steadily push against those forces that would violate those principles and eye deals we care about. so, yes, you are right. syria, the syrian civil war is not solved and yesterday syria has never been more isolated. with respect to the situation in ukraine, we have not gone to war with russia. i think there is a significant precedent to that in the past. that does not mean that russia is not isolated. in fact, russia is far more isolated in this instance than it was five years ago with respect to georgia and more isolated than it was certainly during most of the 20th century when it was part of the soviet union. the point is that they are always going to be bad things that happen around the world. the united states is the most powerful nation in the world. understandably, is looked to for solutions to those problems. we have put all evidence of our power behind solutions and working with our international powers. standing up for the principles and ideals in a clear way. there are going to be moments where military action is appropriate. there are going to be sometimes where that s not in the interest of national security interest of the united states or some of our partners. that doesn t mean we are not going to continue to make the effort or speak clearly about what we think is right and wrong. that s what we have done. with respect to mr. romney s assertion that russia is our number one geopolitical faux. the truth of the matter is that america has got a whole lot of challenges. russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors. not out of strength but out of weakness. ukraine has been a country in which russia had enormous influence for decades, since the break up of the soviet union. we have considerable influence on our neighbors. we generally don t need to invade them in order to have a strong cooperative relationship with them. the fact that russia felt to go in militarily and lay bare these violations of international law indicates less influence, not more my response then continues to be what i believe today, which is, russia s actions are a problem. they don t pose the number one national security threat to the united states. i continue to be much more concerned when it comes to our security when with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in manhattan, which is part of the reason why the united states showing its continued international leadership has organized a form over the last several years that has been able to help eliminate that threat in a consistent way. there is no geopolitical conflict that can be solved without the united states. therefore, i applaud the fact that president obama s administration is active in every aarenrena. the initiatives that secretary kerry was taking in the middle east. i was in the region and spoke with leaders in israel and the palestinian territories. they are extremely grateful for the fact that america is providing leadership. this is a difficult issue. it can t be solved overnight. there is no magic wand that can handle this. i spoke with the president in the economic forum in january. we have now the fact that i was label to over 30, 40 years we spoke with an iranian leader. it was possible. it seems it is holding. america provided leadership there. i applaud president obama s role in all these major issues. it is necessary, because the united states is the leader of the free world and needs to provide leadership and he is doing that. your question on president putin, it would be difficult to exactly judge what is happening in the leadership in moscow, in russia at this moment. as i said earlier, i highly undiversified economy like the russian economy, which is so much oil and gas dependant, which has not invested in infrastructure and other areas of the economy, will be worried in the financial sector or in weapons or in trade or indeed, in energy. there could be potential sanctions that will hurt them. we have to design in such a way that it will particularly hit russia and not europe, the u.s., canada or japan. that is what we are working on. we hope we won t need it. i cannot envision this conflict ending up in a military conflict. i don t think it is likely i don t think anybody wants it. i tote little agree with president obama s answers on article 5 where the conflict will be taken to the board in the nato countries. luckily, that is, at this moment, not the case. questions. you met a lot of leaders here. many were angry about the nsa story. have you fixed the relationships with these leaders and the second question is, many are shocked by the extent of which the nsa collects private data. today, we read in the new york times that you plan to end the systematic collection of data of americans but can you address the concerns of the dutch and the rest of the world about their privacy? first of all, we have had a consistent, unbreakable bond between the leaders of europe over the last several decades. it s across many dimensions, economic, military, counter terrorism, cultural. any one issue can be an irritant in the relationship between the countries but it doesn t define those relationships. that continues to be the case and that has been the case throughout the last couple of years. as i setd in a spooech i gave earlier thisser yoo, the united states is very proud of its record of working with countries around the world to prevent terrorism or nuclear proliferation or human trafficking or a whole host of issues that all of us would be concerned about. intelligence plays a critical role in that process. what we ve seen is as technology has evolved, the guidelines and structures that con train how our intelligence agencies operated have not kept pace with these advances in technology. although having examined over the last year, year and a half what s been done, i m confident that everybody in our intelligence agencies operates in the best of intentions and is not snooping into the privacy of ordinary dutch, german, french, or american citizens. what is true is that there is a danger because of these new technologies that at some point, it cob abused. that s why i initiated a broad-based review of what we could do. there are a couple of things we did that are unprecedent. in my speech, i announced that for the first time, under my direction, that we are going to treat the privacy concerns of non u.s. persons as seriously as we are the constraints that already exist by law on u.s. persons. we are doing that not because we are bound by international law but because ultimately it is the right thing to do. with respect to some of the aspects of data collection, what i ve been very clear about is that there has to be a narrow purpose to it, not a broad-based purpose but rather based on a specific concern around terrorism or counter proliferation or human trafficking or something that i think all of us would say has to be pursued. and so what i ve tried to do then is to make sure that my intelligence teams are consulting very closely at each stage with their counterparts in other nations. so that there is greater transparency in terms of what exactly we are doing, what we are not doing. so some of the reporting here in european as well as the united states, frankly, has been pretty sensationalized. i think the fears about our privacy in this age of the internet and big data are justified. i think the actual facts people would have an assurance if that if you are just ordinary citizen, in any of these countries, that your privacy, in fact, is not being invaded. i recognize that because of these revelations, that there is a process that s taking place where we have to win back the trust, not just of governments but more importantly of ordinary citizens. that s not going to happen overnight, because i think that there is a tendency to be skeptical of government and to be skeptical in particular of u.s. intelligence services. so it is going to be necessary for us, the step we took that was announced today, i think is an example of us slowly, systematically, putting in more checks, balances, legal processes. the good news is, that i m very confident it can be achieved. i m also confident that the core values that america has always believed in in terms of privacy, rule of law, individual rights, that that has guided the united states for many years and will continue to guide us in the future. thank you very much, everybody. thank you again. you have been listening to president obama in a news conference with the dutch prime minister. there is the president finishing up with the dutch prime minister. i think really some of his most expansive comments to date over the crisis in ukraine, the president is saying there is no simple solution. he is saying it would be dishonest to suggest there was a simple solution to undo what s already done. in other words, get russian troops out of crimea. he did lay down something of a marker about what the united states would do if russia acts further. he took something of a rhetorical slap at vladmir putin calling russia a regional power. the sanctions are meant to isolate russia economically and politically. also, taking a stab at a bit of a slap at his ego if you will and those kind of comments will make it back to vladmir putin. let s bring in wolf blitzer. he is nour in our d.c. bureau. we noticed the comments and the two leaders and president obama talking about the linking of arms between the remaining g-7 countries about what they are doing to isolate russia. they are pretty much united right now. i think there were some substantive disagreements on specific steps if, in fact, the russians up the ante if you will. if they do anything beyond holding on to crimea. the president basically said that s a done deal. the facts on the ground. he realizes that russia is now in control of crimea even though the u.s. and european allies, almost all of the world, still reguards russia as part of ukraine. they are in charge and the president himself even acknowledged a whole lot of people in crimea who are happy about that. he did warn if the russians do take steps going against other parts of ukraine or if they were to take steps against other countries in that part of the world, eastern europe, certainly, if any steps were taken against nato allies like poland, estonia, lithuania, latvia, charter 5 of the charter would go into effect. you attack one and you attack all. the united states would have to come to the aid of that ally. he did acknowledge for all practical purposes russia is now in control of crimea. he didn t lay out the limits. he said there would be military support if russia encroaches on nato countries. wolf blitzer, in washington, we know you will be covering much more on wolf at 1:00 p.m. we are going to take a quick bre break. when we do come back, we will take a look at the search for flight 370. would get in between my dentures and my gum and it was 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(announcer) love. it s what makes a subaru, a subaru. so when my moderate to severe chronic plaque psoriasis them. was also on display, i d had it. i finally had a serious talk with my dermatologist. this time, he prescribed humira-adalimumab. humira helps to clear the surface of my skin by actually working inside my body. in clinical trials, most adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis saw 75% skin clearance. and the majority of people were clear or almost clear in just 4 months. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal events, such as infections, lymphoma, or other types of cancer have happened. blood, liver and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure have occurred. before starting humira, your doctor should test you for tb. ask your doctor if you live in or have been to a region where certain fungal infections are common. tell your doctor if you have had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have symptoms such as fever, fatigue, cough, or sores. you should not start humira if you have any kind of infection. make the most of every moment. ask your dermatologist about humira, today. clearer skin is possible. he thought it was the endn for his dof the conversation.d. she didn t tell him that her college expenses were going up. or that she maxed out her card during spring break. when the satellite provider checked his credit, he found out his daughter didn t pay her bills. but he s not worried. now he checks his credit report and score at experian.com, allowing him to keep track of his credit and take a break of his own. experian. live credit confident. now, to what is happening at this hour with the malaysia plane airlines mystery. families of the passengers are still trying to come to grips with the devastating announcement from the malaysian government that according to the data they have, they believe the plane went down in the southern indian ocean and no one aboard survived. hundred of family and friends marched furious over what they say are lies coming from the government. obviously, you can see the crowds flashing the police. once they got to the embassy, the families gave a petition there. on the search front, australian maritime officials suspended search efforts today because of storms, high seas, gusty winds in the southern indian ocean. we are told that crews are likely to be back on task tomorrow. australian officials are cautioning the search operation is xl i kate complicated. we are not searching for a needle in a haystack but trying to determine where the haystack is. this is 3,500 meters deep, 2,500 kilometers from perth. they say they have called off search operations in the so-called northern corridor. they base that decision on the new analysis of satellite data. we are going to bring in a couple of guests to help us sort it all out. we have steven, a former ntsb airliner, a commercial and air force pilot. we have dr. bob arnot. he is with us once again as well. a pilot and veteran aviation correspondent. thank you so much for joining us. steve, i want to start with you. the problem today is a lack of search. there is no search going on. they had spotted debris of some kind, wanted to get a closer look. how much of a setback is this? it s certainly a setback. i think the safety investigation needs to be ongoing, and, of course, you ve got to identify a crash site before you can begin the investigation in earnest. so a bit of a setback, but an act of nature so we ve got to comply with that and we ll be done with in a day or so. and hopefully they ll find the wreckage and the crash site soon. we appreciate that optimism. bob, let s talk to you about this information that we saw. the malaysian government deliver to the world and to the families of the passengers. and i think the families specifically were struggling with the fact that they said this information has led to us believe that the plane went down in the south indian ocean with the absence of any wreckage. how do we accept this information as a definitive cause or result of what happened? i really think, given the malaysian government s track record, it s a little hard to take it at face value here. this is a very, very sophisticated analysis. as you know, it s based on what they call the doppler effect. when you hear a siren coming towards you, that frequency changes, that s the doppler effect. well, they re looking at the satellite versus airplanes flying away from it. first time it s of been done. none of us have seen the data. i think the chinese are right. we want to look at this data to make sure they really got it right this time, because they certainly had it wrong most of the last couple weeks. and steve, as we know, we are in a race against time. quite literally here. those black boxes, they stop pinging after 30 days or so after the plane, you know, disappeared. there will not be some of the equipment they need, the tow pinger locater won t arrive. they won t get it on the ship until april 5th and could stop pinging by april 8th. that s very difficult. they re up against it here. i agree. the pinger is important in finding the black box. but keep in mind, air france 447, it was almost two years before we found the recorders on the bottom of the ocean. so, yeah, it would be nice if we could do it via pinger, and a navy ship can find it with their equipment. but if it s not found by the end of the battery life of the recorder the pinger battery life, that is, they ll at least continue to search with all their other sophisticated equipment until they find it. want to say a big thank you to bob arnot. a real delight. thanks so much. we talk about the families and it s really important to always bring the focus back to them. they say they re not going to believe the government s version of what happened until they see proof with their own eyes. joining us to talk about the grief and frustration they are displaying right now, you know, it s very hard for all of us to see is heidi snow. heidi understands this. heidi lost her fiance in the twa 800 crash. since then, she has become a leading advocate for survivors, founding the group a.c.c.e.s.s., and she has trained care teams and aid disaster responders for major airlines. she this also the author of the book surviving sudden loss. heidi, we re all looking at these pictures and hearing just the emotion coming from the people in beijing and kuala lumpur. when you see it, you have such a unique perspective. what do you see? well, for me, it always brings me and all of us back. we had over 1,000 calls to help to a.c.c.e.s.s. over the years for different air disasters and a lot of calls from people from past air disasters, as well as a few of these families now. and for those of us who have been through it before, it brings us back to that crash site, the family assistance center. we all remember being there, just looking for answers. just holding out hope. and i feel like they re very much in that situation right now. and basically, we just kind of went back and forth, hold south hope and then going back to facing the reality that they may never come back to us and our lives are going to be forever changed. and we re going to have to live without them. and until there s some kind of confirmation through wreckage or some type of remains, i really believe that there really is no closure or any way to really get out of going back and forth with this hope that we cling on to and going back it to the reality. i think there needs to be a lot more evidence for the families to really be able to accept that their loved ones actually are gone. and i remember so well at the site, the varying personalities, we really learned at a.c.c.e.s.s. everybody goes through their grief in their own way. and a lot of the emotions that we have seen do remind me of what it was like. we had people who were very quiet, who were in shock. then we had those people who were very angry. and then we had people who were just sobbing. and so it really does resonate with all of us who have been there before. and after interviewing hundreds of people for our book, so much of what we re watching now just really is what the common reactions are for all of us. and what distinguishes air disasters from other types of losses is this waiting period. is this not having answers. and we certainly have a lot of people at a.c.c.e.s.s. who still do not have any remains or any confirmation from other air disasters that their loved ones actually were on board. so it is something that we all live with and one of the things we find most important is really being able to talk to somebody else who has been down that road. and who has had to go through this process. by pairing them according to the relationship of their loss and specific circumstances that they re facing. so we match mothers to mothers, siblings to siblings, spouses to spouses. and if remains are not found, we pair them up with somebody else who also had to wait a long time. so we really find that what has helped the most for our families is really being able to validate some of these feelings that are extremely difficult. and this is such a difficult time, and the rest of the world, i think it s hard for them to understand the hope piece. but all of us know that. because we would do anything we could to keep them alive. heidi, we want to say thank you, because we know this work that you do is ongoing. you have spoken with us before about the ongoing need after the press conferences are over. after the cameras go away. thank you so much, heidi snow. it works with providing emotional support services to survivors and family members of air aviation disasters. it thank you so much for joining us. you can read more about heidi s support group, aircraft casually emotional support services at
indecisive. feckless. feckless. on the left, sally kohn, on the right, newt gingrich. in the crossfire, senator ben cardin, a democrat and lindsey graham, a south carolina republican. is the president being undermined by republicans or by his own decisions? tonight on crossfire. welcome to crossfire, i m sally kohn on the left. i m newt gingrich on the right. in the crossfire tonight, two key u.s. senators in the ukraine debate. more breaking news out of russia today. vladimir putin spent his day staging large scale war games near the ukrainian border and had the russian navy sink a ship to block in the ukrainians. how did president obama spend his day? imposing symbolic sanctions that will prevent russian thugs and oligarchs from vacationing at disney world. he could get rid of the symbolic liberalism and boost defense spending. that might start to convince put than the u.s. is serious. look, newt, the president has been taking serious steps all day, but no step seems to be enough to stop his republican critics. in the crossfire dpmt senator ben cardin and republican senator lindsey graham. senator graham, to hear republican rhetoric good evening. you would think that president obama s just been sitting around twiddling his thumbs. he s imposed visa restrictions, proposed sanctions proposed an ai aid package and sent planes. so would it be time to stop criticizing the president? in the last 24 hour he s done a very good job. my problem is the way the president engages not just putin but the world. i think the big problem with president obama, i don t think he has a vision of foreign policy. i think he s uncomfortable with the idea that we re an exceptional country, the voice for freedom and that putins of the world have to be dealt with. so i appreciate what he did today. thank god he s upping his game. but here s the test for president obama, at the end of the day with the crimea in russia hands in a direct or de facto way let me ask you two follow-up questions. sure. given the last 24 hours big improvement. you will stop criticizing him? i m not going to stop criticizing the president for foreign policy that s a failure from one corner of the world to the other, nor should i. when he was senator obama did anybody ask him would you stop criticizing president bush? look at president obama s foreign policy successes. he s gotten more support for our policies in iran, a coalition that s been put together. in syria we are standing up to the chemical weapons. now in ukraine president obama has been the leader in standing up for the rights of the ukrainian people. now, the bad guy here is putin. it s not president obama. putin is the person who invaded another country. putin is the person who is violating his international agreements. putin is the person that s putting so much at risk. ben, i agree with that distinction and i want to ask you a very specific area where the president could, i think, make a difference. three weeks ago in what seemed to be a somewhat safer and more stable world the president was proposing a budget which cuts the u.s. army below its pearl harbor strength for the first time really in a long time. we ve now had a pretty big seismic shift with what s going on in the world. secretary hillary clinton compared putin to hitler. shouldn t the president turn back to the joint chiefs and say, i want you to review this and tell me what you need now that we ve determined that we re in a much more dangerous relationship with the russians? obviously we need to always re-evaluate our military strength. we do spend more money than any other country by far on our military expenditures. we re in tough economic times as far as our budget is concerned. we reached a bipartisan agreement for this year and next that provides a certain cap on how much money we can spend on discretionary spending whether military or nondefense spending. a lot of us would like to see those numbers higher. in order to do that we ve got to reach a real budget agreement that deals with more than what we did earlier this year. i agree with you. i d like to have a long-term budget, but defense spending is certainly not out of line as far as the fiscal restraints as naub defense spending. would you say specifically vis-a-vis the situation in ukrainian, would more have changed what what s happening on the ground? we re on track to have the smallest army since 1940, the smallest navy, less than 240 ships, since 1950, smallest air force in modern history. we re gutting our military. it s not just president obama s fault. it s the congress fault. it s called sequestration. to my good friend ben who is probably the nicest guy in the senate, serious debacle. syria is stronger after the chemical weapons deal, not weaker. that s not me saying it. that s the director of the national intelligence clapper. my belief about the interim deal with the iranians is a disaster in the making. the prime minister of israel says the iranians got the of the century and they re watching us. president obama now is your time to reset the world, not just your relationship with russia but let the world know that the united states won t sit on the sidelines and watch people take over countries by force and the iranians are not going to get a nuclear weapon and now is the time to admit the iranians and putin enough is enough. i don t think anybody would say the united states is sitting on the sidelines. we re out in front in syria, we re out in front in iran, what wer doing in syria? we re out in front getting the coalition together to i mean, what are we doing to change the tide? the challenge in syria is that the assad regime needs to go. we all understand that. the opposition is not as unified as we would like to see it. there are parts of the opposition that you and i both would like 26,000 al qaeda fighters and three years ago there were 500. there s significant force. and 40,000 a year from now. and there s resources that are going to that part of the opposition. we ve got to make sure that our help goes to the right people. at the end of the day be have the right people in charge of syria. i think the president is very correct in the way that he is being cautious as to where our arms end up. we don t want it ending up against u.s. interests in al qaeda. if we re more cautious than syria, there won t be a man or woman alive that opposes assad. the question is much bigger than syria. i watched today both the president and the secretary of state make a commitment and a focus on crimea that i thought was sort of amazing because we have less leverage in crimea than we do in a lot of other places. it s much like the red line over syria and the red line over this and red line over that. the washington post, which is hardly a right wing publication, in a recent editorial said that for five years president obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he thinks the world should operate than on reality. and this strikes me that you re getting a very grim i mean, i agree with you entirely that this is putin. this is not obama s fault. this is putin. but the fact is this is the same putin who since 1999 has been in charge of russia. he is a former kgb colonel. he s a totally ruthless person. and doesn t that require his president and our foreign policy and our military policy to have a kind of realism that s very tough minded? oh, absolutely. you re absolutely right. putin is using his kgb tactics. this is a very, very dangerous situation. far beyond just ukraine and crimea. if you can use force to take over areas, look at what s going on in south china sea, look at what s going on in the western balkans, this can be used by others to justify the use of force. it s a very dangerous serious situation. i think the president, as lindsay said, is saying the right things, getting the coalition together. it s not even russia, it s putin, one person that s responsible. i would suggest that really russia appears to be strong, but they re not. they re an oil and gas company that s corrupt. he is ripping off his own people, his friends live like kings. so stopping their travel will make a difference. hitting them in the wallet will make a difference. but here s the problem. we re at a moment now where we ve got probably the last chance before iran breaks out and gets a nuclear capability. sending those fighters in did more to convince me that we re going to deal with putin differently than hitting them in the wallet. mr. president, keep it up. keep it up, hey, at least it s nice to hear you saying something good about the president s leadership even if it s only for a few minutes. next i ll ask senator graham whether running the president down with personal insults is undermining our commander in chief abroad. 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being on. let s reset at the top of the hour now. i m anderson cooper. thank you for joining us. we re following two major breaking stories that the hour. the downing of malaysian airlines flight 17 that killed 298 people in ukraine. and i m wolf blitzer reporting from jerusalem. the other major story, the breaking story we were following, the crisis in gaza, where israel launched a major ground offensive and it continues. a lot to get you up to date on in this hour. president obama today laying out the priorities and the aftermath of the airline crash in the ukraine. the priorities, learning the truth first, he say then acting. there has to be a credible international investigation into what happened. the u.n. security council has endorsed this investigation and we will hold all its members, including russia, to their word. in order to facilitate that investigation. russia, pro-russian separatists and ukraine must adhere to an immediate cease-fire. evidence must not be tampered with. investigators need access to the crash site. and the solemn task of returning those lost on board the plane to their loved ones needs to go forward immediately. here s what we know. when malaysian airlines flight 17 went down yesterday, most of the people on board, 189, were from the netherlands. president obama today identified by name one american who was also killed. the airline announcing today that they will make an initial cash payment of $5,000 to the family of each passenger. it sounds like very little amount of money. meant to cover travel expenses, immediate expenses, to the crash side. an audio recording ukrainian officials say they intercepted. and one of the voice on the tape describing debris falling from the sky and saying, quote, he s 100% sure the plane is a civilian aircraft. the question of course, did anyone know it was a civilian aircraft before they shot it down. whichever side of the you d cra ukraine conflict is found spons ashlgs these deaths were not involved in that conflict. an asian airliner filled with people from all over the world. and everyone agrees there will be some sort of backlash, certainly some impact. jim sciutto is our chief national security. the question now is where will that backlash come, who will feel it, what form will it take. most likely russia. the president clearly treading very carefully here in his comments about the white house. saying we have to be certain first of exactly what happened. so they re taking their time. but, more and more, the evidence coming from the u.s. side and the ukrainian side points to some russian involvement. the president said so in so many words. he said that this, in his words, is not an accident. a plane cannot be shot down without sophisticated equipment. and he says that sophisticated equipment, including anti-aircraft missiles, are coming from russia. we re just learning now that the working theory of u.s. intelligence now is that this missile system, which both u.s. and ukrainian officials believe was responsible for taking down this passenger yet, this buk system we ve talked a lot about, anderson, that it was supplied to the rebels by russia. that would be a shocking revelation if confirmed. because it means russia would not just be indirectly responsible for this, but directly responsible. and that means greater consequences. the trouble is, how severe are those consequences. just a day before this crash, president jim, i just got to interrupt you. there s a pentagon briefing. we ll go to that live. and that support has included arms, material and training. as we investigate who did this and why, this terrible tragedy underscores the need for russia to take immediate and concrete steps to deitescalate the crisi in ukraine. and i have one update on cape bray. the crew aboard cape bray continue their work to neutralize materials from the stockpile. as of this morning, the crew has neutralized just over 15% of the df, which is a sarin precursor. this amount has been verified by the international organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons. he s no longer talking about the aircraft itself. actually, let s listen as he is taking questions. let s just see yeah, let s listen in. of russian heavy weapons across the border into ukraine and the president spoke about training, all of that. can you go through this and tell us the latest u.s. assessment, u.s. military assessment, of what the russians have been doing in transferring heavy weapons, surface to air missiles, artillery, other heavy weapons across the border, to separatists on the ukraine side and the training and assistance that you believe russian elements, the russian military, is giving to these separatists. no hint that russian support for the separatists have ceased. in fact, we continue to believe that russia continues to provide them with heavy weapon, military equipment, financing as well. they continue to allow these russian fighters to enter the ukraine freely. there have been, as you know, we ve acknowledged that some tanks, armored personnel vehicles, have made their way across the border. it is a it has been a steady concerted campaign by russia s military to continue to support and resource, advise, these separatists. have you seen there is some video out there, i don t know that you ve seen the particular video, have you seen evidence that an sa-11 or buk missile system would cross the border at some point from russia into ukraine, and what can you tell us about that system and the sophistication and training that would be needed by russian separatists to actually be able to operate it effectively? i don t have specific information about a buk system making that transit. we re not ruling anything in or out at this point. it is it is a sophisticated that said, it is a sophisticated system. the missile itself, the saa 11, which is the one we believe was used to down flight 17, is a sophisticated piece of technology. and it it strained credulity to think it could be used by separatists without at least some measure of russian support and technical assistance. they didn t just do it on their own? it strain e eed crew duality think it could be used without assistance. you have evidence of that? we want investigators to do their work. i don t have an indication now that a system was brought over and we don t exactly know who is responsible for firing that missile or with or with what assistance. what i m saying is that system is fairly sophisticated. so what is the level of their training and assistance? does it include russian forces going across the border into ukraine to work as advisers or trainers side by side with the separatists? there s been russian there s been incursions across the border by russian aircraft so, i mean, i think we have we don t have any reason to suspect that they haven t provided some measure of support on the other side of that border. i mean, these paramilitary forces that we don t talk about as much anymore certainly didn t act or behave or like some ragtag militia. so nobody s suggesting that russian military advice and assistance hasn t somehow crossed that border. it s just unclear exactly how much and when and who. again, that s what the investigators are going to look at. we got to let them do it. are we to believe it was just a coincidence that the president announced sanctions directly on the maker of this buks system just the day before? i won t get into the thought process behind the president s specific decisions. clearly, these are another round of targeted sanctions. designed to change the calculation and president s putin s behavior and decision making. what you re seep m to think what you re suggesting [ inaudible ] i have no information that s the case. second question, what s the working theory about the intent? was this an intended military target gone awry? or was this simply an act of terrorism perhaps? we don t know. again, that s what we ve got to let investigators figure out. we don t know what the motive was here. what is your theory? what is your working theory? i don t think we have a working theory at this point. this just happened yesterday. there s teams of investigators now trying to get to the site and pore through this. we just have to let them do their job. admiral, people in this department have said before that there were about 10,000 to 12,000 regular russian troops inside the russian side of the border, which is a build-up from a couple of weeks ago. is that still your estimate? have those forces changed since this attack yesterday? can you tell us about, you know, as much as you can what they re doing or what their posture is in terms of a potential incursion? yes, that s a great question. i don t know of any major change to that presence. it s roughly, still, about 10,000 to 12,000. and it fleck wait fluctuates ae bit from week to week. the point is, it has been, over time, a steady increase of these combined arms tactical battalions across the border on the russian side but to the southeast of ukraine. and they are close to the border. in many cases, closer than those forces who were more aligned along the east. if you remember, we had tens of thousands that were along the eastern border with ukraine, but not as close as these units appear to be. all they re doing is further escalating tension. it s difficult to know what their intent is. that s a question you should ask the russian military defense. they re there. they re going by size week by week. they do nothing more than escalate tension. is that process separate from these regular i haven t seen any indication they re actively involved in the provision of support to the separatists. i haven t seencontinuing to mas along that side of the border. justin. two questions. do that massing of forces, does that include air, defense, artillery systems like the sa 11 that was used in malaysian have you seen air defense equipment on the russian side of the border in that build-up? i don t have an inventory of what they ve got with them, justin. we assess these are combined arms units. in other words, it s not just infantry troops, but they have artillery capability, they ve got armor capability. they re combined arms. and they re very ready. this is a very capable force. though smaller in number than what was aligned along the border before. i don t have a complete inventory of what they ve got. an estimate of about 12,000 russian troops on the border in the russian side. obviously, the u.s. has been tracking the work of russian special operations forces, russian advisers, russian intelligence services, in ukraine. is there an estimate of the size of that advisory presence inside the eastern ukraine by russian forces? is it a handful? is it 1,000 guys? i don t have the number for you on that. that s less important than the fact that they continue to do it. and we continue to see this support and resourcing and advice given to these separatist groups. we have every indication that support is russian, coming from the russians. in ukraine we believe there are there is russian support for the separatists inside ukraine, yes. admiral, when the general was here a couple weeks ago, he said specifically that the ukrainian separatists were receiving training on russian territory on using what he called vehicle born anti-aircraft systems. how much training, can you elaborate, has that intensified in recent weeks, and was he referring to an as-11-type system? i don t know what assessment he was referring to but we agree some separatists have received training in these vehicle born systems. there s no question about that. i don t have i mean, i don t have an estimate of how many and who s doing it. that would have to raise particular alarms, wouldn t it? it s one thing, small arms. but vehicle born anti-aircraft systems, that s pretty serious. it is pretty serious. we ve been taking it serious. we ve been monitoring the situation there as closely as we can. and we ve been nobody in the pentagon has been shy about talking about the continued threat posed by these separatist elements in ukraine or by those combined arms forces continuing to amass along the border. phil. has the pentagon or u.s. government increased its surveillance of the area along the border in the wake of this disast disaster? i would just say that we re monitoring events as closely as we can. and i really don t have any more to add than that. you don t want to say whether it s increased or not? we re monitoring events as closely as we can. i ll go back to the general s comments. were there any warnings given to the commercial airline companies or any civilian airline authorities about the existence or this level of training for those taking place there was a notice to airmen put out. i think you know that. that warns civilian aircraft to fly, to take care over the skies of ukraine and to fly at higher altitudes. not an expert on that entire process but there was an international notice to civilian air carriers about that. was that prompted by what the general said, the training of vehicle born you d have to talk to the faa and other agencies that handle that. i don t know what prompted it. i think it was obviously if you re going to issue a warning like that, it s based on concerns that you have about surface to air missile activity and capabilities. yeah. you said that you don t know what the intent was of whoever fired the missile. were there any indications there were other airlines, perhaps ukrainian military planes, in the sky at that time? also, is there any concern the president keeps saying put be wants to stop this, he can. are there any concerns perhaps this is a situation that is poised to spiral out control and perhaps russian doesn t have the control of the separatists and, if so, how are you preparing? on your first question, i don t know. this is ukrainian airspace. i remembfer to them to speak ab that. we wouldn t have that here. on your second question, i think the president s been very clear about what the responsibilities and obligation of president putin and moscow are right now. which is to deit s calculate the tension. respect the territorial integrity of ukraine. and cease support for the separatist activities. which i said at the outset, in some cases, is intensifying. even after yesterday s incidents? i don t know of any big delta between their support from yesterday to today. we haven t seen any sign that it s not that it s stopping. yes. admiral, there had been previous to yesterday s tragedy, there had been two or three, at least, ukrainian transport planes shot down. does your intelligence and your knowledge indicate the system that shot down the plane yesterday was a more powerful, more sophisticated system requiring more training, or was it similar to the system that was used to shoot down the ukrainian transport planes? it s again, we re investigating this right now. it s unclear exactly what brought down the other aircraft you re talking about. i mean, we know they were shot down, but those those incidents are still being looked into. i don t have any great visibility on what brought them down. but i d like to just kind of bring you back to the larger point here. that these aircraft are being shot down. and while it s unclear exactly who s pulling the trigger here, it s pretty clear it s doing nothing to deitescalate the tension inside ukraine and to bring to this crisis a peaceful resolution. now innocent people simply flying from one city to another have been killed. and brought into this. so let s not lose sight of the big picture here. it matters a lot less, you know, exactly what system it was and a lot more that it happened and it needs to stop. just a quick follow, do you believe whoever shot this plane down could have mistaken for a ukrainian military transport? ei m not going to get into te motivations, the intent, the reasoning that went into this. that s for the investigators to figure out. we simply don t have that level of detail at this point. ma am. normally friend or foe measures on systems like this? if it was an accident, would that reveal a dangerous lack of training on the part of whoever was using it? i don t know yet. i m not an expert on that system. i wouldn t begin to get up here and try to dissect it for you. investigators are going to pile through this. exactly who are these investigators? it will be it s an international investigation. does it include dod, does it include cia there s no plans right now for a dod representative on this. i won t speak for other agencies. i believe there will be some other entities from the federal government, individuals going over there to participate in it. i don t have the makeup of the team. it will be an international investigation. do you anticipate i have no expectation right now there will be a dod rep on this team. the president said he saw no role for the u.s. military in responding to this. but what ever happened to that list of requests for equipment that the ukrainians sent at the beginning of this? yeah, we continue to review requests for, or ukrainian requests for military assistance. some $33 million that the president has authorized of material has been getting to ukrainian, ukrainian armed forces and border services. the support continues to flow. we continue to take a look at their needs and addressing each in turn. last i remember, it was mres. is there any do you have a more complete list? yes, there s been more. the recent deliveries include radios, body armor, individual first aid kits, sleeping mats, uniform items. over the next few months, additional items will move through to include night vision goggles, thermal imageers, kevlar, some additional radios. there s been some other equipment given to ukraine s border guards. barbed wire, alarms systems. excavato excavators. trucks, generators. xun cations. communications. gear. part of a package of more than $33 million now that the president has approved and that stuff continues to flow. listening to a spokesman at the pentagon. want to bring in our jim sciutto. want to bring in our chief national security correspondent jim sciutto. one of the things the spokesman from the pentagon said earlier, said it strained credulity they could do this without russian assistance, it was a fairly sophisticated device used. although they certainly don t foe who pushed the trigger. that was exactly the line i was thinking, anderson, the most significant from that press conference. follows on with what the president was saying earlier, this is not an accident, in the president s words, that they can t shoot the separatists couldn t shoot down the plane without sophisticated assistance. that assistance coming from russia. then on the floor of the security council, saying the systems are complicated, it s likely the separatists would have needed russian help, russian training. and now in addition to that, anderson, you have the u.s. intelligence community saying it s their working theory at this point that that missile system itself, the actual launcher, came across the border from russia. we have some audio we ve obtained, again, from ukrainian officials, seeming to show that that launcher came across the border. so that gives direct, as popposo just indirect, goes to the question you asked earlier, who bears the consequence to this. the president, goingrd too, you have to envision him marshalling support for stiffer sanctions against russia. yesterday, there had been some thought perhaps there was a system captured by pro-russian rebels from the ukrainian military. but as you just said, a senior defense official is at thing cnn their work theory abeimong the military is russian military supplied this buk missile system. it s a if question. this is what i was told. their working theory is this missile system came from a ukrainian base in crimea and that it was transferred from crimea to eastern ukraine, but via russian territory. if you look at a map, it would have to go from ukraine, through, you know, one route would be to take it through russia. that was their working theory. one of the comeing, many questions that hasn t been established yet. based on the statement from the pentagon, the president, our u.n. ambassador, that they would at least need training to operate this thing as well and that adds more responsibility. we re going to talk, when we come back, to a reporter on scene at the crash site for the latest on exactly what s happening there. we ll be right back. great. but parallel parking isn t one of them. you re either too far from the curb. or too close to other cars. it s just a matter of time until you rip some guy s bumper off. so, here are your choices: take the bus. or get liberty mutual insurance. for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won t raise your rates due to your 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maps out and split up the territory. at the same time, it wasn t a sophisticated approach. they were still tying white cotton to stakes and basically walking through the fields and marking these spots. and the local population started emerging from their homes. people in the village down below sort of walking their cows trying to make sense of what had happened. many of them still in deep shock. there had been some reports of possible looting or removal of items or removal even of debris. did you see any of that? i myself didn t. i spoke to a colleague who had been sort of at the outskirts of the perimeter and saw a few guys going through suitcase that had fall en from the sky and talkin about whether to take a guide book. to say there s been extensive looting, at least during the morning period while i was there, is pretty difficult. you know, the perimeter there is being controlled. there s one rebel commander there who told me essentially by three groups. one is a set of fighters from nearby. the cosacks appear to be the wild card as always in this situation. so it s a little more difficult to say what s happening on their side of things. did yesterday you had talked that in some cases they were moving bodies, sort of trying to get all the victims together. does that continue today? did you see that? no, they haven t actually been touching the bodies at all from what i ve seen. they as far as we know have been asked through back channels. the prime minister of the donetsk people republic has been asked not to touch the bodies by malaysian and dutch authorities, suggesting people are still hoping there will be a chance for folks, international observers and investigators to enter the area. the concern of course is you have hundreds of bodies decaying in a field before anyone has a chance to get to them. it s summer here. it was raining actually earlier in the day. to put it simply, it s not ideal conditions. did it seem to you that most i mean, obviously, investigators are going to be looking at what kind of wreckage pieces of the wreckage and also even people themselves. are most of the people i m not sure how to ask this, are most of the people intact? i think it s about 50/50. i did a walk-through this morning and sort of in the daylight and counted roughly 50, 50 bodies, and i d say at least half of them are so mangled you simply couldn t identify them. some just kind of twisted corpses that look almost picasso-esque. but at the same time there are others that if handled properly, could be clearly identified. are there still we ve seen images of large pieces of wreckage. are most of the pieces very identifiable? most of the pieces of the debris? are there large chunks of the aircraft still intact? it seeps the debris split into sort of two clusters as it fell from the sky. the tail fin sort of further up the road. and some other debris scattered in that vicinity. and then the main crash site, which is closer to the village at the lower end of the field seems to be where the fuselage, the engines, landed. a lot of that has been burnt out. the flight hadn t taken off too long before it went down, so there was a lot of fuel still in the tank. you can really see that when you walk through the crash site. some of the alloy from the plane has sort of melted, resolidified. silver on the ground. in terms of do you have any information about black boxes or flight data recorders? there have been conflicting reports cy don t have anything that i could confirm. i ve heard the same conflicting reports that everyone has all day. and folks are continuing from both sides. to report at one moment that they have them and the next moment that they don t have them. so i think it s, again, a moment where it s worth waiting, not rushing to conclusions. and letting the situation play out a little bit in order to find out what s actually going on. ukrainian officials said they have been trying to get access to the site. in some cases, there work has been hampered. do you see any evidence officials from ukraine or accident investigators either doing work or trying to get access to a site? in the morning, there was nobody from ukraine or international groups there. i heard a group of observers visited the site. apparently there was an incident where some of the cosack guards either didn t understand exactly who the osce was or didn t appreciate their presence and caused some problems in terms of entry to the site. though rebel leaders have assured me that they will continue to and intend to allow international observers and journalists to work, they said their command is not to let locals on to the site. but beyond that, they don t plan to inpose any restrictions. i know you have also been talking to a number of pro-russian rebel leaders and spokespeople. what are they telling you, in terms of claims of responsibility, in terms of what they want to see happen? you know, it s an interesting question. it points to a larger problem. in terms of the long-term standing of eastern ukraine. most of the rebels here, i would say frankly across the board, deny responsibility for this. they claim it s a provocation conjured up by the ukrainian authorities in kiev. many of them claim they don t have is the equipment or that they don t have enough of the components of this missile system buk to actually hit this plane. when it comes to the fighters themselves, i think it s a moment where perception proves to be more powerful than reality. for these folks, even if evidence is presented by the western by western governments or by kiev, it s politicized in the eyes of the rebel fighters. these are men who have been fighting now for three months, if not a little bit more, and they ve given up their regular lives. there doesn t seem to be anyone saying that they re ready to rethink their position or to rethink their cause as a result of the malaysian airlines disaster. so the video posted by ukraine s interior ministry on its facebook page showing a buk system, according to the ukraine officials, heading towards russia, with one missile missing, things like that, that s all discounted by anybody in the rebels who you talked to? absolutely. to put it mildly, they don t trust a word that kiev says. i think anything that s released by the current authorities in kiev is seen in rebel eyes as fabricated, as intended to essentially to draw nato into ukraine. that s the understanding. the rebels think ukrainians want to establish more precedent to involve nato forces in ukraine in order to escalate western involvement and western attachment to the new government in kiev. is there anything else you want people to know about the crash site, about what is happening there right now? you know, i think one, for me, the important thing to note is there s still a lot of work to be done in order to secure the bodies. there s a lot of people talking about talking about the parts of the plane. talking about establishing evidence chains in order to have a proper investigation. and all of that is it s certainly important, but i think, especially for the for anyone who s walked through that scene, the bodies, the effects of the people on board, would receive as much attention as the more politicized debris are there capabilities there to properly handle the victims of this crash? are there morgue facilities? are there refrigeration, you know, mobile refrigeration trucks? can at this point, do they need all that to help? i think they do need all of that. i don t think they have it. the rebel quote/unquote minister alexander boridi mentioned today they don t have the proper equipment to store and secure and maintain the bodies so that s perhaps an area where the international community, observers could play a role, seems to be a point on which the separatist leadership is ready to cooperate. how easy is it to get to this site? i mean, is it because it s, you know, as we ve seen in past instan instances, it s very possible you may have family members wanting to come to the crash site as soon as possible. is how remote is it? how possible is it to actually get there? it s about 90 minutes from the regional capital donetsk where i m actually right now. it s off in a classic ukrainian countryside village, down sort of pothole-riddled roads, but the main issue i think for anyone traveling in this region right now is effectively the roads are controlled by the separatist groups. you have to pass through a series of checkpoints in order to move along the roads. i don t imagine they would be particular particularly happy or particularly kind to visiting foreigners. all journalists here have to receive accreditation through the separatist authorities. without that press card, you end up you end up held, held back from moving, moving around. it s not a at the same tie, there s still there s still fighting going on. there s still skirmishes. the city near to the crash site. so it s not an especially safe place to be traveling, although, again, i imagine on the issue of the bodies themselves and the folks impacted by the crash, the rebels seem a bit more willing to meet in the middle. noah schneider, i know, it s been an exhausting night for you. thank you. we ll continue to check in with noah in the coming days. up next, i ll talk to my panel about preserving what is a crime scene, multiple crime scenes, over a wide area, and the investigation of the crash. at every ford dealership, you ll find the works! it s a complete checkup of the services your vehicle needs. so prepare your car for any road trip by taking it to an expert ford technician. because no matter your destination good maintenance helps you save at the pump. get our multi-point inspection with a synthetic blend oil change, tire rotation, brake inspection and more for $29.95 or less. get a complete vehicle checkup only at your ford dealer. joining know new is the former inspector general of the nstb. our military analyst. and in washington, peter golz, a specialist in aviation and international crisis management. also joining us is david soucie, cnn aviation analyst. appreciate all of you being with us. david, we were just hearing from noah schneider about the crash scene. from what he said, in terms of trying to, trying to investigate this, what challenges lay ahead? this really isn t just one crime scene, this is multiple crime scenes spread out over a great distance. yes, it is. documenting it is a challenge just when it s a singular accident but now you ve got several different things that have to be treated as accident sites. if bodies are falling separately, those have to be documented as well, what tract tra jektry the object that hit the ground went what will give clues what type of explosion it was, what type of speed. there s a lot of conclusions to be had. if those are moved, it can lead you down the wrong path. even the conditions of the victims are important in all of this to determine what happened. that s absolutely right and of course the method of bringing down the plane, the residue. at this point, the air crash investigators can tell you it was a you know, a missile brought down a plane and how the plane came down. but at this point, i would be inclined to say this is not an article 13 iko accident investigation and treat it as an international crime scene explain the difference, how do you mean? at that point, like we did in 9/11, the united states, after the four planes on 9/11, the ntsb was not in charge, the fbi was in charge, because it was an international criminal investigation. you have many more powers. you have the power literally to seize evidence. you can go in and get what you want and what you need. they need that right now. just looking at the crime scene and the report, great report, but it s out of control. rick, how do you see it? well, you know, they need to get the evidence and as david said i think it s important we find out how that weapon impacted that aircraft, to find out what it did and that might give us a better clue as to the condition of the weapon. we re hearing different reports about where that came from. was it a front-line russian piece of equipment? was it something taken from a ukrainian base? was it modified? this would be important. peter golz, just as, you know, as noah was talking about, the priority is obviously dealing with the victims of this crash, dealing with them in a sensitive way, dealing with them in a humane way, in a dignified way. and right now they don t have the capabilities on the ground really to do that. no, they don t. what has to happen is there has to be international action to form a recovery team that goes in immediately. that is promised protection by both the ukrainians, the separatists and the russians. and if that kind of protection s not promised and not delivered, then there s got to be sanctions immediately placed. i mean, the evidence going to be there. after twa flight 800, we tested the explosive residue and the explosive evidence of a missile detonating near aircraft skin. the investigation will know what the marker is on that case, in this accident. they will see the evidence. but the most important thing is to get a team in immediately to begin recovering the victims and treating them with some dignity and that really is in the hands of the russians, the ukrainians and the and in terms of the black boxes, the flight data recorders, they are important, but even david soucie, even if they have been removed and again, we have not been able to confirm it, and noah has not been able to confirm the status of them, there is still the wreckage themselves, from the victims themselves. there is more to be learned than what the boxes would tell us. and at the very most with the black boxs, whether there was a warning or not, whether they had been tried to be contacted, taken evasive action to say we re off track, there is someone who doesn t want us to here, do they start to turn the other way. that would be the black box information. but as far as we have talked about earlier with the impact of what type of effect the ballistic missile that hit the aircraft or exploded outside the aircraft, that is important information to know so you can decide whether it came from. and have you ever seen a crash/crime scene like this? yes, i have. in terms of the different actors in play. yes, pan am 103, september 11, klo-7, and with the residue on the bodies and the plane, but now you re in an international criminal man hunt. and in the midst of conflict. in the midst of conflict and how they re going to secure even and the workers to come in and retrieve the bodies, they need to have security. they don t want to be harmed in that process. mary schiavo, david soucie, rick francona, we appreciate you being with us. president obama saying there were hiv aids advocates on board, committed to finding a cure. sanjay gupta looks at the global impact of their loss now. reporter: the health community around the world in utter shock. the international aids society says a number of its members were on board malaysia airlines flight 17. they were heading to the aids 2014 conference in melbourne, australia, scheduled to start this sunday. typically attended by thousands from all over the world. and among them, leading hiv experts. their loss, likely to have an impact on research regarding diagnosing, treating and curing the disease. president bill clinton is one of the keynote speakers at the conference. he says it s awful, sickening, what has happened to so many people. they were doing so much good. we do this on a regular basis, have these international aids conferences. and i try to go to all of them, because i m always so inspired by what other people are doing and what we can learn from them. and so since i left office, it s been a kind of a regular part of my life, thinking about those people being knocked out of the sky. it s pretty tough. reporter: one of the victims, prominent dutch scientist, lang. i first met him in 2004 when he presided in bangkok. those who knew him say he was a hard core scientist with the heart of an activist, who worked tirelessly to get affordable aids drugs for hiv positive patients living in poor countries. one small example of his work. he was the one that argued if coca-cola could get refrigerated beverages to places all over africa, then we should be able to do the same with refrigerated hiv medications. it s going to be a huge impact, both on people who worked closely with him, people in his lab, and on the society as a whole. it s an incredible loss. we are all just bracing ourselves to arrive and find out who else may have been on that flight. it s just unbelievable. it s really real yet. reporter: the world health organization tells us glen thomas was on board that flight. he worked with us here at cnn during our coverage of the ebowla outbreak. he was planning his 50th birthday celebration. his life and so many others cut tragically short. and dr. sanjay gupta joins me live from the cnn center in atlanta. what more can you tell us about the victims and the work that they were doing? this international aids conference has been around for some time. nearly 30 years now. and this is the one sort of conference where researchers from all over the world were working sometimes in large labs and small labs, funded in different ways, came together to try and share the research, to really accelerate what was happening in the world of hiv/aids. jep lang, one of the first people to look at maternal to child transmission of hiv, do some of the early research in that area. and trying to figure out how to prevent it. we ve covered these types of stories. it s impossible to try you could not overestimate the impact of the sort of work that many of these people did who were lost on that flight. i think more people will come in to fill those ranks, but it s going to really cast a pallor over the society s meeting. this is a brain trust of people who have dedicated their lives to it and spent years on it. and knowledge like that. obviously beyond the human tragedy for their families, for their friends, for all who knew them. for this has an impact on globally on efforts fighting hiv/aids. we re talking about the last 30 years, when we have really started to research and focus on hiv/aids since the early 80s. and there are people who have spent their entire lives, interprofessional lives doing nothing but this. as you say, they re wealth of experience, knowledge, brain trust, that s that was their whole life. and so those people, again it s not to say there aren t other people who can fill those ranks, but some real leaders. jep lang, i interviewed him in 2004 in bangkok, talked to him about some of the work they were doing at that time. and he was the president of the whole organization. so gives an idea of the stature of this man, as well. a huge loss. globally. dr. sanjay gupta, appreciate it. thanks very much. our extensive coverage of the malaysian flight 17 and conflict in the middle east continues with brooke baldwin after a quick break. and i ll be on tonight. the cadillac summer collection is here. during the cadillac summer s best event, lease this all new 2014 cts for around $459 a month or purchase with 0% apr and make this the summer of style. of swedish experience in insidperfecting the rich,ars never bitter taste of gevalia. we do it all for this very experience. 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