General Alexandre News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

To thank you for that. thank you for your patriotism, thank you for continuing to serve to protect the united states. again, you have that great burden of knowing lots of classified information you cannot talk publicly about. i want you to know thank you on behalf of america for yourself to your country. the committee has been extensively briefed as part of our ongoing oversight, over the 16 elements of the intelligence community and the intelligence program. in order to fully understand collection programs, most of these briefings and hearings have taken place in classified settings, nonethel...

All of us. i hop this hear -- over the past several days. before recognizing general alexandre for his opening statement, i turn the floor over to the ranking member for any statement he would like to make. we're going to step away from this, the ranks member on this committee, then we'll hear from the nsa general keith alexandre. we'll be back with much more after this.

Happened very fast. it was really put together late yesterday to have them come here in open session, which is really rare, and come talk. so chairman rogers is beginning his opening statement. let's listen. >> still not working? >> oh, that's got to hurt, especially with the chief sitting there, right? i'm sure they'll get together pretty soon. dana, head of the nsa, this has to be strange for him. >> 'em people who don't great say they're pretty impressed with the way he kind of

Rubber stamp. the fact that the fisa court is reviewing this and that's been yew as the imp ra matt you are imprimatur, and finally in terms of metadata, people shouldn't be rest assured by that. you can get a lot more from the metadata than you can get from the content, i i know is counterintuitive, but the case. >> back to dana bash, soon the chairman mike rogers will make this opening statement. do you think he'll look, you know -- he knows the american people are watching this hearing. will he look out and say this program is definitely needed and the general will tell us why? >> reporter:...

All right. you're looking at a live house hearing on capitol hill, and specifically you're looking at james cole. he's a deputy attorney general. he's explaining the rules under which the nsa is allowed to collect phone numbs, information from the internet and how it's overseen, but the real star of this nsa hearing, of course, is general keith alexandre, head of the nsa, he is expected to reveal and what all the fuss is about. i want to ask peter berken bergen a question.