that we seize it. my presidency is entering the fourth quarter. interesting stuff happens in the fourth quarter. and i m looking forward to it. going into the fourth quarter, you usually get a time-out. i m now looking forward to a quiet time-out. christmas with my family. i want to wish everybody a measure wrimerry christmas, a happy hanukkah, a happy new year. i hope that all of you get time to spend with your families as well because one thing that we share is that we re away too much from them. and now, josh has given me the who s been naughty and who s been nice list and i m going to take some questions. reporter: thank you, mr. president. starting with north korea since that seems to be the biggest topic today, what does a proportional response look like to the sony hack? and did sony make the right decision in pulling the movie or does that set a dangerous precedent? let me address the second question first. sony is a corporation. it suffered significant damage. there were threats against its employees. i m sympathetic to the concerns that they faced. having said all that, yes, i think they made a mistake. in this interconnected digital world, there are going to be opportunities for hackers to engage in cyberassaults both in the private sector and the public sector. now, our first order of business is making sure that we do everything to harden sites and prevent those kind of attacks from taking place. when i came into office, i set up a cybersecurity interagency team to look at everything that we could do at the government level to prevent these kind of attacks. we ve been coordinating with the private sector but a lot more needs to be done. we re not even close to where we need to be. and one of the things in the new year that i hope congress is prepared to work with us on is strong cybersecurity laws that allow for information sharing across private sector platforms as well as the public sector so that we are incorporating best practices and preventing these attacks from happening in the first place. but even as we get better, the hackers are going to get better too. some of them are going to be state actors. some are going to be non-state actors. all of them are going to be sophisticated and many of them can do some damage. we cannot have a society in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the united states. because if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary that they don t like or news reports that they don t like. or even worse, imagine if producers and distributors and others start engaging in self-censorship because they don t want to offend the sensibilities of somebody s sensibilities who probably need to be offended. so that s not who we are. that s not what america is about. again, i m sympathetic that sony as a private company was worried about liabilities and this and that and the other. i wish they had spoken to me first. i would have told them do not get into a pattern in which you re intimidated by these kind of criminal attacks. imagine if instead of it being a cyberthreat, somebody had broken into their offices and destroyed a bunch of computers and stolen disks. is that what it takes for you to suddenly pull the plug on something? so we ll engage with not just the film industry but the news industry and the private sector around these issues. we already have. we ll continue to do so. i think all of us have to anticipate occasionally there are going to be breaches like this. they re going to be costly. they re going to be serious. we take them with the utmost seriousness but we can t start changing our patterns of behavior anymore than we stop going to a football game because there might be the possibility of a terrorist attack. anymore than boston didn t run its marathon this year because of the possibility that somebody might try to cause harm. let s not get into that way of doing business. reporter: would you consider taking some sort of symbolic step like watching the movie yourself? i have a long list of movies i m going to be watching. reporter: will this be one of them? i never release my full movie list. let s talk of the specifics of what we now know. the fbi announced today and we can confirm that north korea engaged in this attack. it says something interest about north korea that they decided to have the state mount an all-out assault on a movie studio because of a movie starring seth rogen and james flacco. i love seth. i love james. but the notion that that was a threat to them i think gives you some sense of the kind of regime we re talking about here. they caused a lot of damage, and we will respond. we will respond proportionately and we ll respond in a place and time and manner that we choose. it s not something that i will announce here today at a press conference. more broadly, this points to the need for us to work with the international community to start setting up some very clear rules of the road in terms of how the internet and cyber operates. right now it s sort of the wild west and part of the problem is you have weak states that can engage in these kind of attacks. you have nonstate actors that can do enormous damage. that s part of what makes this issue of cybersecurity so urgent. again, this is part of the reason why it s going to be so important for congress to work with us and get an actual bill passed that allows for the kind of information sharing we need because if we don t put in place the kind of architecture that can prevent these attacks from taking place, this is not just going to be affecting movies. this is going to be affecting our entire economy in ways that are extraordinarily significant. by the way, i hear you re moving to europe. where are you going to be? brussels. helping politico start a new publication. congratulations. i think there s no doubt that what belgium needs is a version of politico. [ laughter ] the waffles are delicious by the way. sheryl, you have been naughty. go ahead. reporter: thank you, mr. president. looking ahead to your work with congress next year, you mentioned as an area of possible compromise tax reform and so i m wondering, do you see a republican congress as presenting a better opportunity for actually getting tax reform next year? will you be putting out a new proposal? are you willing to consider both individual and corporate side of the tax ledger there. also, are you still concerned about corporate inversions? i think an all democratic congress would have provided an even better opportunity for tax reform, but i think talking to speaker boehner and leader mcconnell, that they are serious about wanting to get some things done. the tax area is one area where we can get things done. and i think in the coming weeks leading up to the state of the union, there will be some conversations at the staff levels about what principles each side are looking at. i can tell you broadly what i would like to see. i would like to see more simplicity in the system. i would like to see more fairness in the system. with respect to the corporate tax reform issue, we know that there are companies that are paying the full freight, 35%, higher than just about any other company on earth if you are paying 35%. and then there are other companies that are paying zero because they ve got better accounts or lawyers. that s not fair. there are companies parking money outside the country because of tax avoidance. we think it s important that everybody pays something if in fact they are effectively headquartered in the united states. in terms of corporate inversion, those are situations where companies are headquartered here but on paper switched their headquarters to see if they can avoid paying their fair share of taxes. i think that needs to be fixed. so fairness, everybody paying their fair share, everybody taking responsibility. i think it s going to be very important. some of those principles i heard republicans say they share. how we do that, the devil is in the details. i ll be interested in seeing what they want to move forward. i m going to make sure that we put forward specific proposals building on what we already put forward. one other element of this that s important is i ve been on this hobby horse now for six years. we ve got a lot of infrastructure we ve got to rebuild in this country if we re going to be competitive. roads, bridges, ports, airports. electrical grids. water systems. sewage systems. we are way behind. and early on we indicated that there is a way of us potentially doing corporate tax reform, lowering rates, eliminating loopholes so everybody is paying their fair share and during that transition also providing a mechanism where we can get some infrastructure built. i would like to see us work on that issue as well historically obviously infrastructure has not been a democratic or republican issue, and i would like to see if i can return to that tradition. julie pace? reporter: thank you, mr. president. i wanted to ask about cuba. what would you say to dissidents or democracy advocates inside cuba who say policy changes could give castro regime benefits without addressing the human rights or political system. when you lifted sanctions on miramar, you sought reform. if i could follow up on north korea, do you have any indication that north korea was working in conjunction with another country, perhaps china? we have no indication that north korea was working in conjunction with another country. with respect to cuba, we are glad that the cuban government has released slightly over 50 dissidents, that they re going to be allowing the international community red cross and united nations human rights agencies to operate more freely inside of cuba and monitor what is taking place. i share the concerns of dissidents there and human rights activists that this is still a regime that represses it people. as i said when i make the announcement, i don t anticipate overnight changes. what i know deep in my bones is that you have done the same thing for 50 years and nothing has changed, you should try something different if you want a different outcome. and this gives us an opportunity for a different outcome. suddenly cuba is open to the world in ways it has not been opened before. it s open to americans traveling there in ways that it hasn t been before. it s open to church groups visiting their fellow believers inside of cuba in ways they haven t been before. it offers the prospects of telecommunications and the internet being more widely available in cuba in ways that it hasn t been before. and over time, that chips away at this society. i believe offers the best prospect then of leading to greater freedom, greater self-determination on the part of the cuban people. i think it will happen in fits and starts. but through endpajment, we have a better chance of bringing about change than we would have otherwise. do you have a goal of where you see cuba being at the end of your presidency? it would be unrealistic for me to map out exactly where cuba will be. but change is going to come to cuba. it has to. they ve got an economy that doesn t work. they ve been reliant for years on subsidies from the soviet union and then on subsidies from venezuela. those can t be sustained. and the more the cuban people see what s possible, the more interested they are going to be in change. it s country specific and culturally specific. it could happen fast. it could happen slower than i would like. it s going to happen and this change in policy is going to advance that. leslie clark? reporter: i have a number of questions as well. do i have to write all these down? how many are they? reporter: as quick as i can. i want to see if you have any assurances from the cuban government that it would not revert to the same sort of sabotage as it has in the past when president presidents have made similar overtures to the government. be specifically. what do you mean? reporter: when the clinton administration made overture, they shot down planes and have this pattern of doing provocative just general provocative activity. reporter: any time the u.s. reached out a hand to them and what s your knowledge of whether fidel castro had any role in the talks and when you spoke to raul castro, did fidel castro s name come up, have you asked about him? how is he doing? people haven t seen him in a while. and given deep opposition from republicans in congress to lifting the embargo to embassy to any changes that you re doing, are you going to personally get involved in terms of talking to them about efforts they want to do to block money on a new embassy? leslie, i think i m going to cut you off here. this is taking up a lot of time. all right. so with respect to sabotage, my understanding of the history of the plane being shot down, it s not clear that was the cuban government purposely trying to undermine overtures by the clinton administration. it was a tragic circumstance that ended up collapsing talks that had begun to take place. i haven t seen an historical record that suggests they shot the plane down specifically in order to undermine overtures by the clinton government. i think it is not precedented for the president of the united states and president of cuba to make an announcement at the same time that they are moving toward normalizing relations. there hasn t been anything like this in the past. that doesn t mean that over the next two years we can t anticipate them taking certain actions that we may end up finding deeply troubling. either inside of cuba or with respect to their foreign policy. and that could put significant strains on the relationship. but that s true of a lot of countries out there where we have an embassy and the whole part of normalizing relations is that it gives us a greater opportunity to have influence with that government and not. so i would be surprised if the cuban government purposely tries to undermine what is now effectively its own policy. i wouldn t be surprised if they take at any given time actions that we think are a problem, and we will be in a position to respond to whatever actions they take the same way we do with a whole range of countries around the world when we do things they think are wrong but the point is that we ll be in a better position to actually have some influence. they may be carrots and sticks that we can then apply. the only way that fidel s name came up, i think i may have mentioned this in the interview i did, i delivered a fairly lengthy statement at the front end about how we re looking forward to a new future in the relationship between our two countries but that we are going to continue to press on issues of democracy and human rights which we think are important. and my opening remarks took about 15 minutes, which on the phone is a pretty long time. at the end of that, he said, mr. president, you re still a young man. perhaps you have the at the end of my remarks i apologized for taking such a long time, but i wanted to be sure before we engaged in the conversation that he was very clear about where i stood. he said don t worry about it, mr. president. you re still a young man and you still have a chance to break fidel s record. he once spoke seven hours straight. and then president castro proceeded to deliver his own preliminary remarks that lasted at least twice as long as mine. and then i was able to say obviously it runs in the family. that was the only discussion of fidel castro that we had. i sort of forgot all of the others. reporter: i have a few more. how personally involved are you going to get with respect to congress, we cannot unilaterally bring down the embargo. that s codified in the act. what i do think is going to happen, there s going to be a process where congress digests it. they re bipartisan supporters of our new approach. they are bipartisan detractors of this new approach. people will see how the actions we take unfold i think there will be a healthy debate inside of congress. i will weigh in. i think ultimately we need to go ahead and pull down the embargo which has been self-defeating in advancing the aims that we re interested in. i don t anticipate that happens right away. people will want to see how does this move forward before there s any serious debate about whether or not we would make major shifts in the embargo. all right. reporter: under what conditions would you meet with president castro in havana? would you have preconditions you would want to see and on the hack, i know you said you re not going to announce your response but can you say whether you are considering additional economic sanctions on north korea? can you rule out the use of military force or some kind of cyberhit of your own? i think i m going to leave it where i left it, which is we just confirmed it was north korea. we have been working a range of options. they ve been presented to me. i ll make a decision on those based on what i feel is proportional and appropriate to the nature of this crime. with respect to cuba, we re not at a stage here where me visiting cuba or president castro coming to the united states is in the cards. i don t know how this relationship will develop over the next several years. i m a fairly young man. i imagine at some point in my life i ll have an opportunity to visit cuba and enjoy interacting with the cuban people. there s nothing specific where we re trying to target some sort of visit on my part. colleen mccain nelson? reporter: you spoke earlier about 2014 being a breakthrough year and you ended a year with executive actions on cuba and immigration and climate change. you didn t make much progress this year on your legislative agenda and some republican lawmakers have said they are less inclined to work with you if you pursue executive action so aggressively. are you going to continue to pursue executive actions if that creates more road blocks for your legislative agenda or have you concluded it s not possible to break the fever in washington and the partisan gridlock here. i think there are real opportunities to get things done in congress. as i said before, i take speaker boehner and mitch mcconnell at their words that they want to get things done. i think the american people would like to see us get some things done. the question is going to be are we able to separate out those areas where we disagree and those areas where we agree. there are tough fights on areas where we disagree. if republicans seek to take healthcare away from people who just got it, they will meet stiff resistance from me. if they try to water down consumer protections that we put in place in the aftermath of the financial crisis, i will say no, and i m confident i ll be able to uphold vetoes of those types of it provisions. on increasing american exports and simplifying our tax system and rebuilding our infrastructure, my hope is that we can get some things done. i ve never been persuaded by this argument that if it weren t for the executive actions, they would have been more productive. there s no evidence of that. so i intend to continue to do what i ve been doing, which is where i see a big problem and the opportunity to help the american people, and it is within my lawful authority to provide that help, i m going to do it. and i will then side by side reach out to members of congress and reach out to republicans and say let s work together. i rather do it wou. immigration is the classic example. i was really happy when the senate passed a bipartisan comprehensive immigration bill, and i did everything i could for a year and a half to provide republicans the space to act and showed not only great patience but flexibility saying to them, look, if there are specific changes you would like to see, we re willing to compromise. we re willing to be patient. we re willing to work with you. ultimately it wasn t forthcoming. so the question is going to be, i think, if executive actions on areas like minimum wage or equal pay or having a more sensible immigration system are important to republicans and they care about those issues and the executive actions are bothering them, there s a very simple solution and that s pass bills and work with me to make sure i m willing to sign those bills. because both sides are going to have to compromise. on most issues in order for their initiatives to become law, i m going to have to signoff and that means they have to take into account the issues that i care about just as i m going have to take into account the issues that they care about. all right. i think this is going to be our last question. reporter: thanks so much. one of the first bills that mitch mcconnell said he ll send to you is one that would authorize construction of the keystone excel pipeline. i wonder if you could tell us what you would do when you receive that bill and also what you see as benefits and given the drop in oil prices recently, does that change the calculus and whether it makes sense to go ahead with that project? i don t think i ve minimized the benefits. i think i ve described the benefits. at issue in keystone is not american oil it is canadian oil that is drawn out of tar sands in canada. that oil current ly is being shipped out through rail or trucks and it would save canadian oil companies and the canadian oil industry an enormous amount of money if they could simply pipe it all of the way through the united states down to the gulf. once that oil gets to the gulf, it is then entering into the world market and it would be sold all around the world so there s no i won t say no. there s very little impact, nominal impact on u.s. gas prices, what the average american consumer cares about, by having this pipeline come through. sometimes the way this gets sold is let s get this oil and it s going to come here and the implication is that it s going to lower gas prices here in the united states. it s not. there s a global oil market. it s very good for canadian oil companies, and it s good for the canadian oil industry, but it s not going to be a huge benefit to u.s. consumers. it s not even going to be a nominal benefit to u.s. consumers. now, the construction of the pipeline itself will create probably a couple thousand jobs. those are temporary jobs until the construction actually hams. there s probably some additional jobs that can be created in the refining process down in the gulf. those aren t completely insignificant. it s just like any other project. when you consider what we could be doing if we were rebuilding roads and bridges around the country, something that congress could authorize, we could probably create hundreds of thousands of jobs or a million jobs. if that s the argument, there are a lot more direct ways to create well paying american construction jobs. and then with respect to the costs, all i ve said is i want to make sure that if in fact this project goes forward, that it s not adding to the problem of climate change, which i think is very serious and does impose serious costs on the american people. some of them long-term but significant costs nonetheless if we have more flooding, more wildfires, more drought, direct economic impacts on that and as we re rebuilding after sandy for example, we re having to consider how do we increase preparedness in how we structure infrastructure and housing and so forth along the jersey shore. that s an example of the kind of costs that are imposed and you can put a dollar figure on them. in terms of process, you have a nebraska judge determining whether or not the new path for this pipeline is appropriate. once that is resolved, the state department will have all of the information it needs to make its decision. i ve just tried to give this perspective because i think that there s been this tendency to hype this thing as some magic formula to what ails the u.s. economy and it s hard to see on paper where exactly they re getting that information from. in terms of oil prices and how it impacts the decision, i think that it won t have a significant impact except perhaps in the minds of folks when gas prices were lower maybe and less susceptible to the argument that this is the answer to lowering gas prices. it was never going to be the answer to lowering gas prices because the oil that would be piped through the keystone pipeline would go into the world market and that s what determines oil prices. in terms of congress forcing their hand on this, is this something where you say you re not going to let congress force your hand on whether to approve or disapprove this bill. we ll see what they do. we ll take that up in the new year. reporter: any new year s resolutions? april, go ahead. go ahead. reporter: thank you, mr. president. last question i guess. six years ago this month, i asked you what was the state of black america in the oval office and you said it was the best of times and the worst of times. you said it was the best of times in the sense that there has never been more opportunity for african-americans who have received a good education and the worst of times for unemployment and the lack of opportunity. ending 2014, what is the state of black america as we talk about those issues and race relations in this country? like the rest of america, black america in the the aggreg is better than when i came into office. the housing equity that s been recovered. 401 pensions that have been recovered. a lot of folks are african-american. they are better off than they were. the gap between income and wealth of white and black america persists. we have more work to do on that front. this is a legacy of a troubled racial past. it s not an excuse for black folks. they are out there trying to get an education sending their kids to college but they are starting behind often times in the race. and what s true for all americans is we should be willing to provide people a hand up and not a handout. help folks get that good early childhood education. help them graduate from high school. help them afford college. if they do, they ll be able to succeed and that s good for all of us. we ve seen some progress. the education reforms that we ve initiated are showing measurable results. we have the highest high school graduation that we ve seen in a very long time. we are seeing record numbers of young people attending college. in many states that initiated reforms you see progress in math scores and reading scores for african-american and latino students as well as the broader population. but we ve still got more work to go. now, obviously how we re thinking about race relations right now has been colored by ferguson, the garner case in new york, a growing awareness in the broader population of what many communities of color have understood for some time and that is there are specific instances at least where law enforcement doesn t feel as if it s being applied in a color blind fashion. the task force that i formed was supposed to report back to me in 90 days not with a bunch of abstract musings about race relations but concrete practical things that police departments and law enforcement agencies can begin implementing right now to rebuild trust between communities of color and the police department. and my intention is to as soon as i get those recommendations, to start implementing. some of them we ll do through executive action. some will require congressional action. some will require action on the part of states and local jurisdictions. but i actually think it s been a healthy conversation that we ve had. these are not new phenomenon. the fact that they are now surfacing in part because people are able to film what have just been in the past stories passed on along a kitchen table allows people to make their own assessments and evaluations and you re not going to solve the problem if it s not being talked about. in the meantime, we have been moving forward on criminal justice reform issues more broadly. one of the things i didn t talk about in my opening statement is the fact that last year was the first time in 40 years where we had the federal prison population go down and the crime rate go down at the same time, which indicates the degree to which it s possible to think smarter about who we re incarcerating and how long we re incarcerating and now are we dealing with nonviolent offenders and how are we dealing with drug offenses, diversion programs, drug courts. we can do a better job and save money in the process by initiating some of these reforms and i ve been pleased to see that we ve had republicans and democrats in congress who are interested in these issues as well. the one thing i will say, and this is going to be the last thing i say, is that one of the great things about this job is you get to know the american people. you meet folks from every walk of life and every region of the country and every race and every faith and what i don t think is always captured in our political debates is the vast majority of people are just trying to do the right thing. and people are basically good and have good intentions. sometimes our institutions and our systems don t work as well as they should. sometimes you ve got a police department that has gotten into bad habits over a period of time and hasn t maybe surfaced hidden biases that we all carry around. if you offer practical solutions, people want to fix these problems. it s not a situation where people feel good seeing somebody choked and dying. i think that troubles everybody. so there s an opportunity of all of us to come together and to take a practical approach to these problems. and i guess that s my general theme for the end of the year, which is we ve gone through difficult times. it is your job, press corps, to report on all of the mistakes that are made and all of the bad things that happen and the crises that look like they are popping and i understand that. but through persistent effort and faith in the american people, things get better. the economy has gotten better. our ability to generate clean energy has gotten better. we know more about how to educate our kids. we solve problems. ebola is a real crisis. you get a mistake in the first case because it s not something that s been seen before. we fix it. you have some unaccompanied children who spike at a border and it may not get fixed in the time frame of the news cycle, but it gets fixed. and part of what i hope as we reflect on the new year, this should generate some confidence. america knows how to solve problems. and when we work together, we can t be stopped. and now i m going to go on vacation. thank you, everybody. the president of the united states at a news conference a year-end news conference. he s off to hawaii tonight with his family for a little r&r. a little vacation. we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer reporting from washington. the big headline, the president of the united states saying sony pictures made a mistake in canceling the release of the film the interview. a film about north korea, the north korean leader kim jong-un. i want to play the clip. here is the sound bite from the president saying sony pictures made a mistake. sony is a corporation. it suffered significant damage. there were threats against its employees. i am sympathetic to the concerns that they faced. having said all that, yes, i think they made a mistake. we cannot have a society in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the united states because if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary that they don t like or news reports that they don t like. or even worse, imagine if producers and distributors and others start engaging in self-censorship because they don t want to offend the sensibilities of somebody whose sensibilities probably need to be offended. the president also saying he wishes sony pictures had discussed the issue with them before they decided to pull the release of this film. he also said north korea was responsible echoing what the fbi said earlier in the day that north korea deliberately did this. he promised the u.s. would respond but he refused to say how the u.s. will respond. he said only it would be proportionate and the u.s. will respond in his words when we choose to do so. he s not going to release that information in advance. jake tapper, strong words from the president. he surprised a lot of us by going as far as he did. i thought he would be more cautious and talk about how he knew where sony was coming from as a business. he gave a sweeping statement about free speech and not giving in to threats from people like kim jong-un especially when it came to a comedy film and then he started talking about the precedent it set. what happens if they don t like documentaries? what happens if they don t like news? where does it go from there? it was very strong pro-free speech statement from the president and you re right. i m very surprised. evan perez, you have new information. you re learning right now, you re our justice reporter, about the fbi and how they came up with this decision that it was in fact north korea no doubt about that. reporter: there was no doubt, wolf. i have to tell you one thing real quick. what the president just said echoes what i m hearing from u.s. law enforcement intelligence officials. they are outraged. they understand sony did what they did but they are outraged that a dictator won censoring the american movie industry as a result of this hack, wolf. the fbi pretty quickly thought they knew where this hack was coming from and they said that they they say that there was some telltale signs despite that north korean hackers did a very good job to try to mask where this was coming from. they tried to route the attacks through several countries in asia and europe and even latin america. in the end, what the fbi found was telltale signs and lines of code, encryption cal algorithmst show where it came from matching an earlier attack from last year that was carried out against south korean banks and media companies and so this is one way they were able to very quickly this is unprecedented for them to make a determination so quickly and go public with this. the president also said that there is no indication any other countries were working together with north korea. he said he has seen nothing along those lines. this was a north korean operation. gloria borger, you know, the president almost seemed liberated, if you will, to go out and speak cannopenly about many issues. he didn t want to engage. he said when we respond it will be proportional at a time and place of our choosing. i won t raise their profile anymore than it already has been raised over a comedy satire. i can t remember the last time i saw the president so cheerful other than when we won re-election actually. he went out of his way to say i m energized and excited and this is the fourth quarter and great things will happen in the fourth quarter. a lot of interesting stuff happens in the fourth quarter, which it often does. he was clearly sending a message to the american people as we ve been talking about before he had his press conference. they may call me a lame duck, but i m going to keep quacking here. this is not over by any stretch. i think he is boyd by what happened over the last several years. what will the united states do to retaliate against north korea? no question the president is setting out an unyielding position. we ll decide how to respond and it will be on our own time and had a dismissive comment for the north korean leader. it tells but the tells you about the regime if they are upset over this movie. he had a message to the american people saying we as a country have to respond to this dismiss it, go on, go to the movie theaters, et cetera. despite that, north korea because of this hack rocketed to the top of the national discussion even in a year 2014 when we have all of these other grave international challenges. he only had brief mentions of ukraine and russia. ebola. the fight against isis. we ve got two ground wars in asia still going on. afghanistan and iraq big commitments of u.s. troops there. not a single question about those issues. and consider all of the stories and discussion we were doing on that earlier this year. he only took seven or eight questions. all from print reporters. really typical style, he gave lengthy answers. he tends to do that. something else that s interesting that i suspect a lot of republicans in congress are paying attention to is the fact that he basically issued veto threats. he said if republicans in congress bring me bills that weaken wall street reform legislation, he ll veto it. he also while not saying he was going to veto the keystone pipeline legislation that republicans in the senate said would be the first order of business, he made the case for vetoing it saying it will have only a nominal effect on u.s. gas prices. this will benefit canadian oil companies but not really have an effect on the united states. he didn t say i ll veto it but he laid out the case for doing so. let me bring in jay carney. jay, did you get the same sense that he s laying out the case to veto that keystone pipeline legislation because republicans clearly want to put it on the table very, very quickly in the new session. woflf, i know he s ambivalen about it. in many ways both sides of this argument have turned it into a much bigger issue than it factually is. keystone if it s built will not create the number of jobs that proponents claim it will. nor will rejecting it save the global environment the way some environmentalists claim it will because tar sands will be exploited regardless if the pipeline is built. i think he s been of two minds of this and it s hard to predict where he will go. it s true that some of the senators, democratic senators, who would have been most vulnerable if he vetoed it will no longer be in the senate so that may give him more political leverage. i tell you, i think gloria said earlier talking about how upbeat he was and buoyant he was. i was there as press secretary for three end of the year press conferences and this one was quite different. what was going on at the end of the year. no fiscal crisis. no international crisis. at least not yet knock on wood. he does clearly feel in the wake of the midterm election that he s been able to demonstrate that he s relevant and that he can execute and get things done and he feels good about it. let s get some reaction from a different perspective. cliff may is joining us, president of the foundation for defense of democracy. on north korea specifically, cliff, what did you think of what he said? i was glad that he said that a dictator shouldn t be imposing censorship on the united states or on the free world. i don t think it s sony s battle to fight primarily. i think it s our battle. he said that there will be a response. less so he assured north korea that it would be proportionate and that it would not be beyond that because there needs to be some deterrent. cyberwarfare is a dangerous thing. in this case it was used to shut down a movie and there were terrorist threats and cyberwarfare could shut down our entire society. we re not where we should be on cyberwarfare and there has to be a very strong response to such an attempt. this was on a company in the u.s. but it s really an attack on american freedom. in the past, we in the u.s. and in the west have not responded effectively to attempts to shutdown free expression. imagine if there had been nuclear weapons. his successor may have nuclear weapons and that was a subject not at all discussed and i think it s the most important national security threat we face today. let me get bobby into this conversation. another big issue that came up, cuba. the president pleased with what s going on in this improved u.s./cuban relationship although he played down this notion he was about to fly off to havana any time soon. he seemed to suggest it was much more likely he would return to being a private citizen than during his presidency, which is probably wise. it would be pretty bad optics for the president to go to cuba or have raul castro over to the white house. raul castro is not welcome to the grand halls of the world and major war leaders don t go to havana because everyone recognizes he is as the president said, a dictator. repressive regime. makes sense to get rid of an embargo that doesn t work. it was very interesting. the president started by invoking the cuban people rather than the cuban government. i think that was the key point. it s not the regime. it s people to people relations. he s hoping that just by allowing that to happen, the u.s. will have greater leverage, greater say in cuba s activities in the future. that s bank shot. it s better than no shot. that s a good point. if he goes to cuba, he would like to engage with the cuban people. doug brinkley, how did he do in this end of year news conference? who would have thought on midterm election day, he would sell this was a great year 2014 in america and it was a great year for him and it s all about the economy. you can almost feel how optimistic the president is in. he feels the country is moving in the right direction. dwight eisenhower with the great missile gap crisis in 1957 ended up creating nasa. i think this situation with north korea although newt gingrich calls it a war, it may be a cyberbattle with north korea, he may need to create cybersecurity agency or something. i think he would get bipartisan support. not that people want to see more government on the right, but we have to address this. i think something important and significant that we ll have to watch. i m writing on fdr. i m writing about public works projects. this is a president that is not green lighting keystone. i don t know how other ways you could tell him. you don t talk down your product and say, okay, i m going to do it. let s get a thought from dana bash. i m sure members of congress, democrats and republicans watching very closely. how is what the president said today likely to play with them? first of all, he s somebody who a lot of members of congress are looking at saying who is this guy and where has he been for the last six years? he s somebody as everyone mentioned in various ways who feels free to say what he wants and do what he wants. on what doug was just talking about, we should note that s the very first legislative battle in january in just a couple weeks. the new senate majority leader mitch mcconnell said he ll do it right out of the gate. if the president is going to use his veto pen and leaning into do that, it will probably be the first thing that we ll see. the other thing i just think that s worth noting, it may seem to our viewers to be naval gazing from reporters, he not only talk to print reporters, he only asked women for questions. he only called on female reporters. that s very telling for a white house that has gotten a lot of flak, maybe as they should have, for the women inside the white house not rising to the top and not having a seat at the table. the fact that he ended this year only calling on female reporters was no accident. let me ask jay carney, former white house press secretary, our cnn political commentator now, was that just coincidental or deliberate? what do you think? i m sure it was deliberate. i m sure it was discussed beforehand among the president s advisers. i think it was an excellent decision to make. there are a lot of superb female reporters that cover the white house every day. i think it was a fun way and smart way to end the year by calling on only female reporters. as a former print journalist even though i m on tv now, i like to see print journalist get
thought the most important story was the reaction of the death of a petty street criminal and it was most reported but not close to a story that is rocking your world and you probably didn t feel the tremor. the international monetary fund revealed that china s economy surpassed that of the united states and now china is now the world s largest economy. they reported on this story and it could should have caused demonstrations in our streets. we are losing our country and no one seems to notice. less than 15 years ago, the u.s. economy was three types the size of china. and americans since 1945 have grown used to having the number one economy and must have taken it for granted. get ready to the new ranking or get angry and we ll do something about it. our current president said running up the huge debt on children and dprand children was irresponsible and unpatriotic. if so, he is the least patriotic president in history. our debt topped the 18 trillion mark. that is more than double than it took the first 43 presidents to create. his solution. keep borrowing and then give out free cell phones and paying people additional money to not work. and he wants to ignore the constitutional process of law and open america s door to cheap labor and make its harder for the american family to stay afloat or get ahead. and he thinks we ought to punish productivity of works by putting in the largest corporate tax rates. they are higher than those than france and they elected a real socialist to be their president. and while china is building up the free market, the u.s. letses environmentalist fight to save mice and minnows and mud puddles at the expense of farmers and workers. and building trades. redistributing wealth and instead of encouraging people to earn them some. i was stunned by the level of consumerism that dominated the chinese cities and people. they are building for a robust future and as of this week, we should realize what we are are doing is not working. surely america doesn t want to learn the new chant, we are number two? it is not mere pride of being first but economic freedom to it be a military power capable of protecting our nation against any threat. and being the moral power to set the table for a lawful and just civilization. i am not satisfied with america being number two and i sure hope you are not either. (applause) well, we sent huckabee correspondent brian reese to talk to holiday shopper ares and peek in their bags. we wanted to so where their gifts were made? christmasornaments made in china. what is more americaa than cowboy boots. where are they made? made in china. made in china. this is made in china. made in china. christmas is huge in china and made by chinese children for american children and that s what santa had in mind. american girl, take a quick look where it was made. made in china. and we came to the united states and we could have dpn to china. american by design and made it china. that s right. but it is american by design and we charge more. yes, that s correct. oh, man. my next guest said that our government is not making it easy for manufacturers to stay in business or expand business. joining me is william marsh who owns a steel manufacturing company. i think of what happened, and the surprising turn of china being the largest economy, how surprised are you when you heard it? it is not a surprise. if you look at head winds that businesses are fighting today, it is difficult to so the economy improving. the past five years or so the growth is a nemic and the fact that the american economy is doing as well as it is a testament to the workers. my guys work in a loud and difficult environment and they put bread on the shelf. when an american goes to the gas station. it is not for the government that we owe the goods and services that exist. it is our workers. but it is disheartening that our economy could do better if we were not pushing against the head winds. what should we do differently that make its better for the worker. the guy working on your factory floor, how does he get the next it is not just the worker, but companies and managers and workers must all be on the same team if they are going to succeed. if the company is divided, the company will fail. what do we have to do? what is the government doing wrong or right? it is well known that america has one of the most aggressive and highest tax policy in the world. that strips companies of capitol which is necessary to grow and it is necessary to reinvest in equipment and workers. we have a overzealous regulatory burden that other countries don t face and from our perspective, if you listen to the rhetoric on the part of the political spectrum, we are told that private companies didn t create that. and we are told that private companies aren t responsible for the jobs created and you shouldn t be allowed to keep what you earn. that is disheartening to the american business. when you talk about the regulatory environment specifically. what makes it hard and what regulations in your business are characteristic and make it tough to go forward. i have a great example. our company has an excellent safety record and we receive refunds because we are so safe. and nevertheless ocea, a dpft safety bureau came in our plant to do a hearing test. turns out the threshold level is 90 decibels. and the recording was 91 decibels. the remedy we have by government standards is a costly program. days off of work for education and testing. monitoring solutions that are expensive and the company solution that we have, tens of thousands of dollars and also in lost production, the solution that we have is a $0.01 earplug that workers put in their ear and drop the noise level by 30 decibels. it is crazy. william, it is great to have you here. thanks for being here. new york mayor bill deblasio suggested black men like his son ought to be worried about being boat up with cops. our next guest has his own concerns. stay with us. i am joil band band. mary landrieu is fighting for a fourth term against bill cassidy. cassidy is opening to expand the gop majority in the u.s. senate. fox news senior corspopdant john robert system in baton rouge to tell us how it is going. reporter: julie, it will not be long now if mary landrieu will know she will go back to washington for six years or six weeks. we ll get the results quickly i believe. landrieu goes in the run off with a disadvantage. bill cassidy, the republican challenger has a lead in the the polls. she is battling stiff head wientds. she was first elected in known 96. and then the deep unpopularity of the president. and pulling out of the race and loving her to battle this on her own with a help of a few friends like bill and hillary clinton. she is vastly outgunned by the republican machine that swept over america on november 4th. she is outgunned in the adfront by len thousand ads in the last month. it will be a difficult campaign for her to win. but don t count her out, she has won difficult campaigns before. and she said she would prevail in the election, but did allow if she does fail, to get a fourth term it will be her fault and no one else s, julie? i am julie bandaras. thank you for watching and back to huckabee and you are watching fox. go to fox news.com. have a great evening. you don t need to think about the energy that makes our lives possible. because we do. we re exxonmobil and powering the world responsibly is our job. because boiling an egg. isn t as simple as just boiling an egg. life takes energy. energy lives here. i m the prothreed of messy kids they get stains like you wouldn t believe. this tide ultra stain release and zap!cap helps me get out pretty much any stain can i help? aww try our newest ultra stain release helps remove 99% of everyday stains. new york city police officer in the choke hold death of eric garner. the 43-year-old man who resisted arrest for selling loose cigarettes. deplaceio said centuries of racism led to motives like this and he fears his biracial concould be a victim of police brutality. we shouldn t teach our children they should be afraid of new york city police officers, because we are the ones, we, too, are fathers and mothers who go out in the streets and protecting our children, your children and all of the children from the criminal element. that s who our sons and daughters should be afraid of. we have the managing editor of above the law redline. he wrote a opinion piece for police officer for not speaking out against expressive force. thank you for being here. thank you for having me. you wrote about it passionately, but when you so deplaceio that he is more afraid of his son being boaten up by the cops than a beaten with a crime. i am more afraid of being boat up by a cop than a victim in my neighborhood. if we don t like that answer and that to be the case, then it is it on the cops to make me not feel that way as me magically feel like the cops are my friend when i have evidence they are rntment there are more minority cops than white cops in new york. is it because of the incident you are afraid. who says that black people are not racist against others. i think al sharpton said that and that would be my answer. you have fear because of the conflict resolution. the cops are only allowed to use deadly force if they feel threatened. there is little i can do to make a cop not feel threatened by me. walking around and living my life, i am perceived as a threat. nwouldn t you have to resist arrest. i think it is horrible what happened to garner. it was not the intent for the cops to say we ll kill and take his life. i don t think the stand orderard is comply or i will kill you. i try to comply with the police and if i get stopped. i try to be nice to policece. if i had a harvard mouth on me one day, it shouldn t result in my death. but arrest. besides killing me. but i understand. that they didn t pull a gun or taz him and kill him. the choke hold was not helpful to him because of asthma and other things going o. but i don t think that anybody suggested that that was their intent. this is the decision about the grand jordecision. they didn t have to find that the cop intended to kill him. they had to find the cop intended to choke him which they did. the medical examiner that the choke led to his death. now it is it a question for a regular juriy to decide if that was justified or excessive or murderous. all of the grapped jory had to do was find an entend to choke. he didn t do i of high cholesteral or choking on a ham sandwich. but from being choked by a cop. i understand. is there a difference when a cop take a person s life. like when someone t- bonus me in a car versus someone who did it intentionally. i think the from the video it is a manslaughter. i don t so intent to kill. but i would like a jury of my peers. what would i see as manslaughter they might see justified or murder. we have s public way of figuring this out. it is not a proved closed hearing where the witnesses like the cop was not cross examined over his own attack. and people don t understand this. they so the criminal trial and understand that the defendants don t take the stand in their own defense. one of the reasons why they don t, they will be cross examined about their prior history kwh which they don t want out at trial. and so when the cop is able to testified in front of the grand jury without his prior history coming up. that is a disadvantage. and i would like to be tried as a cop. hopefully we will not have to try you. elle, i am delighted to have you here. the candor is refreshing. thank you for coming, thanks. and coming up next, we lly get a different perspective from a black police officer from flint, michigan. and then later. president obama is forcing nuns to pay for contraceptives or pay huge finds. that is coming up next. 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listening to what elle had to say and put in the context of the garner decision and you have the video that the world sees the police officer employing an illegal tactic and taking a life of a season, it should be a clear case where there should be a indictment and i agree with him. what we are wondering was it si racial issue or bad policing on the part of the cop that brought him down? well, sometimes it matters whether it is racial or not. police have power. and you have the power of the government acting against the citizen whether he be white or black. the police officer is an agent of the government and then he takes a citizens life. it is an agent of the government it doesn t matter whether black or white. one of the things is his concern that cops are more interested in protecting each other than the public. is that a fair criticism? i thinkñi it is fair. there is long gown that there is a blue wall of silence within police ranks, and that also police officers work in a political environment in which if you speak out against certain activities regarding the police there could be retribution within the ranks for doing it and why most people will shy away from it, that type of activity. brian, we talk about the things that could be helpful. i don t think anybody likes the consequences of what happened in the garner case. i can t imagine anybody seeing the tape and being horrified. it didn t matter if he is black or white. it is unsettling to watch. what can we learn and should we be doing as a society and culture and community to before the bridge between cops and citizens and blacks and whites, give us thoughts there. one there has to be accountable equally for our people. again, we look at garner situation, and i think there is a blatant case of misconduct by the police. and in the ferguson case, i felt that the young black man may certain decisions that brought about the circumstances that ended in his life being taken, and so i think we have to have accountable on all sides, from the police and from citizens, to heal this divide. you see a big difference between what happen in staten island versus ferguson and michael brown? i do see a difference. again, there is denial on both sides of the fence. some whites may deny racism by the part of the police, and with the ferguson case, there is denial in the black community that we have a problem in the inner cities with young black males that are out of control and create negative circumstances. and so if we could maybe deal with that denial on both sides of the fence in america, perhaps we could come to a point of healing. nbrian, i hope we can do it. and i appreciate your unique perspective. and thank you for joining us. thank you for are having me. two more americans, a teacher and a journalist was murdered this week by terrorist. the battle against radical islamist, we ll talk about it next. honey, isn t that the dog s towel? (dog noise) hey, mi towel, su towel. more scent plus oxi boost and febreze. it s our best gain ever! you drop 40 grand on a new set of wheels, then. wham! a minivan t-bones you. guess what: your insurance company will only give you 37-thousand to replace it. depreciation they claim. how can my car depreciate before it s first oil change? you ask. maybe the better question is, why do you have that insurance company? with liberty mutual new car replacement, we ll replace the full value of your car. see car insurance in a whole new light. liberty mutual insurance. and cialis for daily use helps you be ready anytime the moment is right. cialis is also the only daily ed tablet approved to treat symptoms of bph, like needing to go frequently. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, as it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. side effects may include headache, upset stomach, delayed backache or muscle ache. to avoid long term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours. if you have any sudden decrease or loss in hearing or vision, or any allergic reactions like rash, hives, swelling of the lips, tongue or throat, or difficulty breathing or swallowing, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis for daily use and a free 30-tablet trial. show them they re not alone. and show off a pair of depend. get a free sample at underwareness.com another american hostage held by radical islamist has died. luke somers was held by al-qaeda in yemen after 2013 and he was murdered after a second brave attempt to rescue him. ed is a senior fellow in the council of foreign relations and author of islamic and why i became a islamist fundmentalist and what i saw inside and why i left. . thank you for having me. i started with a comment of what hillary clinton. it was scripted and it was not impromptu. she spoke of smart power as being emthetic with our enemies. how are you emthetic of people who cut heads off of children and put their heads on a stake. you are not. and muslims that are the vice-presidents of the extremist and so called islamic state would agree with you. there is no space for empathy and sympathy. in the mineds of the extremist is weakness of america and strength for them. so i am completely with you in not trying to be empathetic and the smart, and smart power we ought to support. if you are writing the speech for hillary clinton what would it say differently? i would not use the word empathy. but deepen the understanding in order to beat them. understand we understand their motivation. religious and we will not beat them. we don t talk about religious ideology in the public domain in the west. on the other side they do. to understand the now form of communism, america was well equipped to defeat extremist ideology. that s where the debate should be. undercutting the strength which the be extremist had. you said something significant. it is a religious issue and you can t combat it without looking at that. we are pushed to the side and said that is politically incorrect and never bring up it is a religious passion for that. are you blowing that by not acknowledging it is drip by radical islamist? you are right to identify it. and one of the reasons i was keen. you understand power of religion as a motivation and form of behavior. our political correctness on this front is our weakness and they poke fun of the west and having analysis paralysis. we analyst and are not blunt in saying, you represent an extreme fridge of is extremist islam. we are to defeat you. and for example, they believe in oneness of god. that is not enough because unless they have their form of government they think they are sinful. and they believe in suicide boerms that is not the end of life but the beginning of new life. and we say they are not martyrs and they are murderers and they are going to hell. we ll not force them to think. hold on, is the message from my mosque or university campus correct or not. empowering mainstream normal muslim to hit the message in campuses and in prisones and website system where the investment should be. that is not what my government is focused on. your perspective is valuable. i hope they understand you are speaking truth in a way not many people are. please come back. i give you my word, governor. it is a delight to have you here. my latest book. god, guns and grits and gravy and releases in january. if you order on the link before december 10th. you get a family recipes and card and put them under the tree and when the book releases. it will be shipped to the recipient. go to mike huckabee.com. and go to the link to get the christmas edition. nask the obama care advisor said americans are too stupid to recognize the deceptions in the law. is he smart enough to dig himself out of the hole he has dug himself in? 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[do more than ever before with re-imagineit.uickbooks. make any place your place of business with it. get paid faster with it. run payroll with it. sync this stuff with that stuff with it. turn on only what you need with it. sample from our smorgasbord of apps with it. take in the big picture with it. see your finances in a whole new way with it. this is your business on intuit quickbooks. run with it. abe! get in! punch it! let quicken loans help you save your money. with a mortgage that s engineered to amaze! thanks, g. it is the stupidity of the american voter. and exploitation of the lack of the understanding of the american voter. oh, yeah, he called americans stupid and then caught on camera admitting the obama administration was misleading selling obama care to the public to make sure it passed. economist johnathon gruber a major advisor in drafting the law will have to testify before the house over sight committee. the ohio congressman sits on that committee. johnathon gruber will be testifying before the committee. this guy said the american people are stupid and that s why they were lied to regarding obama care. were you shocked when you heard from his own mouth these statements? yeah, we want to bring him in front of the congressional committee. he used taxpayer dollars to sdoef taxpayers and once it became law he made fun of them. this is the guy to answer the questions. what can you do and what matters can you have when he comes before the committee? i know you can ask him questions, but is there recourse? it is continuing to show how bad the law is and deception that was used to pass it. remember all of the false statements regarding obama care when they were trying to get it passed. if you like your plan you can keep. it premiums going down and the website is going to work and it is secure. and itcontinuing pattern of these guys sdoefing the american people and the gig is up. americans know the law doesn t work and they were deceived when it was passed and now we have to put pressure so ultimately, i know it is a ways off. if we get a new president we can get rid of the law altogether. and do what needs to be done in health care. chuck schummer just before thanksgiving, coming out and publicly saying it was a bad political move and it hadn t worked out like they wanted. are democrats falling off the wayingon themselves? nchuck schummer s comments we heard those. but no, and maybe some understand they should have done it differently. but they are committed to the law because they believe in big government. we have to show why it hurts family and why we need to get rid of it. when we watch the hearings this week and a lot of americans will want to see johnathon gruber squirm in his chair. what kind of questions are posed to him? each member the try to get what they need to get across. and what i do know is this. he was called the key player and architect of romney care and obama care and went to the white house 21 times and he was in the oval office discussing obama care and all of that took place, and now pelosi said, just some advisor and the president said he is an advisor. and amazing how they used him to pass the law and now distance themselves from the individual. there will be questions along those lines as well. if he is the architect the bridge is falling down. thank you for being here. little sisters of the porand catholic nuns that cared for the poor in america for 150 years and the federal government said it is not a religious employer and not exempt and forcing them to provide contraceptive coverage. if they don t they will pay million in irs fines and penalties. it will be heard in denver on monday. they represent the little sisters of the porand he joins me now. josh, great to have you back on the show. thank you. here is my simple question. how can the obama administration think that the little sisters of the poor are not religious enough to meet the criteria? you know for 175 years, the little sisters of the poor cared for the elderly, poor and dying people who don t have anywhere else to go and in the last days and care for the folks of the catholic faith and different faith and people of no faith and now the government said that is not good enough. if this kind of service inspired by their catholic faith is not religious service i don t know what it is. i was thinking knowing the little sisters of the poor if they are not religious there is not a baptist in america that has a shot. this is astonishing to me. you are going before the 10th circuit court of appeals and tell us what you hope will happen. the little sister s case is just this. the laws and constitutions of the united states do not permit the federal government to force a catholic nun to violate the church s teaching just to go on caring for the sick and poor. that s what the federal government wants. they are requesting them to provide drugs and devices that contradict catholic church teaching or authorize their insurance company to provide it on behalf of the little sisters. neither of those things can they do in keeping with their faith and neither are consistent with the laws and constitution of the country and for me, neither are necessary. expanding access to the affordable contrait acception is a worthy goal. and the government doesn t need to force the little sisters to violate their faith to accomplish that goal. it is very clear, if the little sisters lose, we all lose. now we have the government telling us, it is okay to believe as long as it is in the context of the limits of what the government said is enough. best wishes and delighted to have you back. thank you for having me. well, it s time to cut loose and kick off your sunday shoes. the young and talented a j ray will be joining the little rockers and we ll be performing footloose when we come back. you don t need to think about the energy that makes our lives possible. because we do. we re exxonmobil and powering the world responsibly is our job. because boiling an egg. isn t as simple as just boiling an egg. life takes energy. energy lives here. i have $40,ney do you have in your pocket right now? $21. could something that small make an impact on something as big as your retirement? i don t think so. well if you start putting that towards your retirement every week and let it grow over time, for twenty to thirty years, that retirement challenge might not seem so big after all. i order b14. i get b14. no surprises. buying business internet, on the other hand, can be a roller coaster white knuckle thrill ride. you re promised one speed. but do you consistently get it? you do with comcast business. and often even more. it s reliable. just like kung pao fish. thank you, ping. reliably fast internet starts at $89.95 a month. comcast business. built for business. . are you ever heard of the game six degrees of kevin bacon. it s base odden the concept that every person who has ever starred in or worked in a hollywood film is no more than six steps away from being connected to kevin bay kon. her s an example of the game. kevin bay kon was in the movie sleepers. de niro was in the deer hunter which featured christopher a walken. walk enwas in wedding crashers which starred bradley cooper. bradley cooper was once a guest on this show. who was interviewed by me. i play bass on the show and a.j. ray is going to perform the song foot loose. please welcome a.j. ray. great to have you here. great to be here. thank you very much. i want to say i met you in israel when your family was there with me last year. you blew me away as such a young man with your talent. how old are you? i m 15. i m a little older than that and i still tonight have the most you have. you dance, you sing. has music always been a part of your life? yes, it has. i ve been singing since i was this tall. singing has been in my blood, it s in my family and i love it so much. there s nothing like it. how do you get the dance moves? did you teach yourself how to do that? i have a teacher back in dallas. if you want to learn some dance moves i can teach you the becausics real quick. you think in. yeah. let s see something you can teach me. okay. all right. well this simple move right here. i think we re going to do that the next time you come back. how s that? give us something to shoot for, fair enough? fair. i think we ought to rock the house. ready? yeah. all right. louise, shake, sake whoa my, come on, come on, let s go loose, you re loose, everybody cut, everybody cut everybody cut, everybody cut foot loose. a.j. ray, wow, what energy. i m worn out completely. completely worn out. i m too old for this. no doubt about it. i ll be back with closing thoughts right after this. vo: you get used to pet odors in your car. your hepatitis c.forget it s slow moving, you tell yourself. i have time. after all there may be no symptoms for years. no wonder you try to push it to the back of your mind and forget it. but here s something you shouldn t forget. hepatitis c is a serious disease. if left untreated, it could lead to liver damage and potentially even liver cancer. if you are one of the millions of people with hepatitis c, you haven t been forgotten. there s never been a better time to rethink your hep c. because people like you may benefit from scientific advances. advances that could help you move on from hep c. now is the time to rethink hep c and talk to your doctor. visit hepchope.com to find out about treatment options. and register for a personalized guide to help you prepare for a conversation with your doctor.
they don t know yet how far with this. but people are were tired already of this not having a relationship with america and now they will see an opportunity to increase business and things will come from america that will create jobs. people in cuba believe that we have so much in common with america. and with americans. and so this is certainly good for both partners we believe. cuba plays a very important role and now they are expressing how happy they are and they see america with different eyes. so it opens a new market for american producers is good for the american business with the congressman, your thoughts as alan gross comes home and the possibility of normalization with cuba. first of all, we re always elated when an american gets to come home, so i congratulate alan gross. he got his freedom, he got to spend hannukah with his family. that s wonderful news. what is not wonderful news is that the families of the brothers to the rescue shootdown, those four wonderful american patriots, they are spending yet one more christmas without their loved ones and they died at the hands of fidel and raul castro. what is sad is that tomorrow the cuban people will wake up and they will still have no political freedom. they will have no human rights to be expected. there are no political parties that exist in cuba, that has not changed. obama has given away the store. has given everything to the castro regime. of course the regime is happy. we got nothing in return. congressman-elect carbello, you are a new generation of cuban american. your generation, does it feel in south florida, does it feel the same way as the older generation or are they looking forward to some sort of normalization? we all wanting the same thing for the cuban people. we all want the same thing for the united states and that s a strong america that leads and a free cuba. nothing that happened today gets us closer to those goals. the president of the united states has made every american serving abroad less safe today. he s provided a blueprint for dictators throughout the world. if you want to extract unilateral concessions from the united states, all you have to do is hold an american hostage and be patient. we have given cuba everything at the president s disposal for alan gross. we re happy that he s back. we re happy that he s back. but alan gross wins today, that s a good thing. the cuban government wins. but u.s. national security loses. freedom and democracy throughout the world lose. congresswoman, was our foreign policy with cuba working? we have this 1996 act where we have this embargo and i guess the president is trying to sort of soften up some aspects of it. i m not even sure if the law allows him to do it but that s a wh whole other debate. was our foreign policy working? you bring up a good point about him possibly breaking the law. i believe he has broken the law. there are three laws that he has violated. we re going to do an investigation about the clarity of how he got the mission to do this. but what it shows, greta, when you ask a key question, has our policy been working. well, the policy of 190 other countries who have been wheeling and dealing and going to tourist trips and doing everything with castro, they have not brought cuba any closer to freedom or democracy. so it s not that the united states policy has not worked, the other policy of engagement has not worked. and in fact what president obama has done today, normalizing relations, that will not bring the cuban people any closer to democracy either. the one that will not change is the cuban communist dictatorial regime. these guys are not going to change. congressman-elect, i started to ask you before about men and women ine. you re in your early 30s if i remember from the last time we talked. do they feel the same way you do about it or is that more of an older generation thing as we look towards cuba? yeah, greta, i told you our generation wants the same thing that all generations living in this country want. we want to see the cuban people free. my parents were born in cuba. they had to leave. my grandfather served a political sentence, prison sentence in cuba. so we feel it in our hearts. and today we are very sad because we feel that for the first time in this 56-year-long drama that the cuban people have lived, for the first time the person in the white house is on the wrong side of history. we want the president of the united states to stand with the cuban people. we want the president of the united states to stand with those heroes that are sitting in castro s jail today, and we want the president of the united states to stand for a strong united states that leads with a clear voice and with moral authority, and that is not what happened today. and we shouldn t be surprised, greta, because this is the same president that s at the table with the iranians. this is the same president that draws red lines and ignores them. so what happened today is alarming, but it s not surprising. thank you to both of you for joining us. thank you, greta. thank you, carlos. congressman chris van hollen has more on the government plane that lifted alan gross out of cuba after a very tough five years in prison and landed back on u.s. soil. he joins us. nice to see you, congressman. before i get to the question about how the flight was, what did we gain out of this? what we gained is a change in policy that might finally have a chance might finally. to enpower the cuban people. what we know the policy has been a failure. what was the failure at spent of it? the failure was that by isolating and punishing cuba, you were somehow going to get a change in regime from the castros or have an opening in cuba clearly failed. what it did help do is sustain the castro regime. the castro brothers have survived eight presidents. except that we re sort of getting to the end of this biological clock with the two castros. i mean they can t last forever. they re both getting to be pretty elderly gentlemen. and cuba isn t a threat to us in any way. but we now have an opportunity to empower the cuban people because the one thing that they re probably most afraid of is more engagement, more travel from americans, more trade, more communication, opening up the world to the cuban people. no one is talking about the castro regime changing their mind, that s not the issue. they didn t change their mind with 54 years of the failed policy we have. more engagement with the cuban people, a little more taste of free market and free ideas will, i think, encourage more demand for change from the cuban people. what was that plane ride like? did alan gross when did you first see him? we first saw him when we walked off the plane and the tarmac into a build in havana. as you can see from the pictures he s lost a lot of weight, he s very fragile. where was his wife at that time? she was the first to come in the room. that s why his face lit up. judy has been fighting for five years to bring alan home. you see that picture? it s a great picture. i can tell you he was in great spirits. obviously even greater spirits when he got on the plane and it lifted off. he s maintained some strength, even though he s wiry and gave everybody a big bear hug. this is not new to you. he campaigned for you years ago. alan was one of the people who helped go door to door in my first campaign. after he was taken prisoner, i worked very closely with his wife, judy, and his entire team to try and make this day come about. but there were lots of ups and lots of downs you got a good phone call the night before this election, i hear. one of the things that happened is as we got over the years we were ail to get alan more privileges, including calling. it used to be once a week and then he got to be on the phone so, yes, i got a call from him in october saying best wishes in the election. so he did bring me luck. it mm-hmm been amazing after you left cuba airspace. when they leave that airspace and enter the u.s. airspace, what a thrill that is. it was. you can see a great weight lifted. did they announce that? and he kind of said yeah, you know. so it was a great moment. it s always great to have an american home who was held overseas. congressman, thank you. i imagine it was a great trip and lots of fun. it was fun, but everyone was very, you know, on edge until we actually got alan on the plane. i don t doubt that. congressman, nice to see you. thanks. thank you. while alan gross finally got his freedom today, so did three cubans. many republicans and some democrats are calling it prisoner swap. the white house denies it s a prisoner swap. ed henry joins us live. ed, what difference if we call this a prisoner swap or not? i know the white house denies it, but what s the big deal about this? well, the deal, greta, is the white house is saying getting alan gross out was separate from the swap. they don t want to be tied up and look like there was a trade there. they re saying that cuba on a humanitarian basis let alan gross out, then the u.s. was able to make this swap of three cuban spies, as you say, let out of american prison and then there was an intelligence asset to the u.s. government, we believe a cuban man, who was helping the u.s. from cuba thrown he was caught by the cuban authorities at some point and thrown in prison, been there for some 20 years. so that was the swap. look, that might be a distinction without a difference. all of this was happening around the same time. it was a deal between the president of the united states, the dictator from cuba. i think the big question moving forward, you ve got democrats, not just republicans but democrats like bob menendez saying they think it was a direct swap and how that might matter moving forward. will someone like bob menendez go along with formally lifting the embargo with cuba. he s saying no. while there are republicans not normally aligned with the president, congressman plake wants to see the embargo lifted so this is scrambling the parties a little bit. ed, thank you. while some are jumping for joy, some are blasting president obama for the plans to normalize economic and diplomatic things with cuba. lindsey graham said i will do all that i can to block the use of funts to open an embassy in cuba. even senator robert menendez is not wild about president obama s plan. he said trading mr. gross for three convicted criminals sets an extremely dangerous press denting. and joining us john, what did we get out of this? we got a chance, an opportunity to turn the page. for what, though? he s talked about this going back to 2007-2008. he d wanted to say let s get rid of the old policy and start a new policy. that wasn t possible as long as alan gross was held captive. releasing him gives you the chance for the new page but there are limits to what he can do. senator graham is going to try to hold up funding. the idea of full normalization, a lot of lift has to happen and that s where the give and take has to happen with the castro regime. you wouldn t see that at all without these first steps. susan, i m all for making friends with everybody and i think it s important everybody be friends, but the fact is that this regime, they re monsters. i mean we re not talking about the human rights violations going on in cuba right now. i d love to have a great place and everything. but they have the worst record for freedom of the press, they lock people up for political opponents. so i m not quite sure is the idea that maybe if we re a little bit nicer they re going to release prisoners and they re going to stop locking people up and all of a sudden let newspapers flourish? i think the point congressman van hollen made is a good one. no one is expecting the castro regime to change. but no rights are going to be added to people s lives because of what happened today. but they are getting near the end of their biological clock as you said and there may be an opening in the future where people will want freedom and a freer society will evolve. but the points made today by rubio and menendez and others who are opposed to this are that this is not going to change anything. people aren t going to get more rights. they re still going to be human rights violations. whatever freedoms are provided by the u.s., the internet or travel, the cuban government will control tightly. that s a really important thing to be aware of. so essentially, john, susan is saying we re trying to get our foot in the door for when the castros die. we re trying to get ahead of the game. that s the theory, but i mean what the people who support the embargo have always said is this is our last and always leverage point for when they re gone. that is when we want to negotiate with their successors and say you want normalization, you want greater economic interaction, then give some more freedom to your people. let them speak freely, worship freely, move freely. you got none of those things today. i don t really see there s the theory if we engage a little more, they will be inspired. i hope that s right, i fear it s not and i fear the cuban people will be owe pressed longer than they would have. i think they think the cuban people themselves will force change in the government by having more exposure. we ve had some bad luck with the arab spring where we have the expectation. it s really hard to predict what people are going to do. panel, stay with us. straight ahead, former florida governor, jeb bush, and he s a potential presidential candidate. he says the obama administration s decision to restore diplomatic ties with cuba undermines america s credibility. you ll hear more from him. plus a long-time friend of governor bush goes on the record next. also there s developing news. sony cancelling the release of the film the interview. that s coming up too. patented sonic technology with up to 27% more brush movements. get healthier gums in two weeks. innovation and you philips sonicare save when you give philips sonicare this holiday season. that s all i crave.e that s where this comes in. only nicorette gum has patented dual-coated technology for great taste. plus nicorette gum gives you intense craving relief. and that helps put my craving in its place. that s why i only choose nicorette. dad,thank you mom for said this oftprotecting my future.you. thank you for being my hero and my dad. military families are uniquely thankful for many things, the legacy of usaa auto insurance could be one of them. if you re a current or former military member or their family, get an auto insurance quote and see why 92% of our members plan to stay for life. you don t need to think about the energy that makes our lives possible. because we do. we re exxonmobil and powering the world responsibly is our job. because boiling an egg. isn t as simple as just boiling an egg. life takes energy. energy lives here. governor coming out one day out of the gate and skewering the president? well, jeb bush just a few weeks ago said the problem with the restrictions on cuba is that they re not tight enough and we should be tightening the screws, not loosening them. with this, this goes back to a feeling he s had for a very long time that we cannot give an inch. we cannot give anything to cuba until castro gives freedom to the people of cuba. keep in mind jeb bush s background. he moved to south florida in the early 1980s, established connections, friendships, worked closely with cuban exiles who have very strong feelings about this. oppose the castro regime. later when he got into politics he worked very hard to bring them into the gop fold in florida and he s succeeded to great extent. this became a very important part of his political base and later the gop political machine after he left office. that said, the political climate here in florida, polls do show a shift of opinion in favor, more people wanting to see us improve relations with cuba. but you have to keep in mind those who oppose the direction that we saw the president take today are very fervent and very passionate about this. they tend to be very loyal voters and often can be single issue voters when it comes to this. we only have 20 seconds left. what does this mean having if governor bush gets in, what does that mean for senator marco rubio? it s going to be a problem for marco rubio. if this debate advances to the senate, it can elevate his profile. but keep in mind they re very much aligned in terms of how they believe with respect to this issue and in terms of donors and support with jeb bush out front. this continues to be a problem for marco rubio if he chooses to run for president. craig, thanks. all eyes on florida, of course, as always as we approach 2016 in two years now. thank you, craig. sure thing, thank you. our next guest is the chairman of the american conservative union and he has been friends with former governor jeb bush for decades. good evening, sir. greta, good to be with you. i noticed you ve told us about the fact that governor jeb bush might run for president. you said you have mixed feelings and you go on to say but he ll be a difference maker. what did you mean by that? a difference maker meaning, look, we live in an area of gridlock, less people turn out to vote than they ever did before. more people are registering no party affiliation. folks don t seem to be happy with either party. so jeb bush, who s a conservative problem solver, is coming and saying, look, it s time we get together, we heal our nation, we move forward with a positive vision, but we ve got things to do. we ve got energy policy to put together. we ve got tax reform. we ve got to balance our budget. we ve got to deal with our entitlements. i m going to be the candidate with ideas. i m not going to go out there with a strategist telling me precisely how to win. i m going to share my vision and i hope the american people buy into it. i hope they do. if they don t, i ll go home in peace but i m not going to be led by a group of strategists who tell me what to say, what not to say and end up in a process where i m part of this toxic environment that politics is all about today. he s just not going to do that. i can tell you, i hear the consultants in these races all the time and so i get the frustration that candidates can have with the consultants but i m curious, there s a big difference from being a great governor or great president than being a great campaigner, which office. in iowa, you ve got to go door to door, you ve got to be in kitchens, you ve got to talk to the people. some people are better talking to audiences. is he the kind that can sit in a kitchen and is he willing to do that? i ve seen jeb bush walk down a street with me in the dark of night and stop to see a homeless man and see how he was doing. this is a different kind of candidate. one of the most caring, one of the most compassionate candidates you re going to see in the trail in your lifetime. i m curious, what s the downside for him? what s going on in his mind why he might not? it sure looks like his toe is in the water, but why might he not run? well, look, he s proud of his family. he s got one son who just won statewide office in texas. he s got another son who s by his side every day in business. he loves his daughter, loves his wife. he travels a lot but is more at home than he was before. he s dangled a bit in business, he s done well there. he gets to play golf on sundays. he s going to give up a lot of this life to try to help america get back on its feet and to heal our country, and that s a major sacrifice and he s giving up a lot to do that. does he have the fire in the belly to do that? he s the most competitive guy i ve ever met. i ve been with him and two campaigns for his dad, three campaigns for him, two campaigns for his brother and he s the most tireless worker, most compassionate and competitive guy i ve met in the process, so he ll be ready for anything and anyone if he decides to do it. we just saw a picture of the two of you and of course i hope you ll come back because if he does get in, we ll need to talk to you a lot and find out what s going on in the governor bush campaign. thank you, sir, for joining us. my pleasure, thanks, greta. and you can see our complete interview with al cardenas. executive orders by any other name. president obama finding another way to bypass congress. that s coming up. here at fidelity, we give you the most free research reports, customizable charts, powerful screening tools, and guaranteed 1-second trades. and at the center of it all is a surprisingly low price just $7.95. in fact, fidelity gives you lower trade commissions than schwab, td ameritrade, and e-trade. i m monica santiago of fidelity investments, and low fees and commissions are another reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. call or click to open your fidelity account today. and i quit smoking with chantix. i had tried to do it in the past. i hadn t been successful. quitting smoking this time was different because i got a prescription for chantix. along with support, chantix (varenicline) is proven to help people quit smoking. the fact that it reduced the urge to smoke helped me get that confidence that i could do it. some people had changes in behavior, thinking or mood, hostility, agitation, depressed mood and suicidal thoughts or actions while taking or after stopping chantix. some people had seizures while taking chantix. if you notice any of these, stop chantix and call your doctor right away. tell your doctor about any history of mental health problems, which could get worse while taking chantix or history of seizures. don take chantix if you ve had a serious allergic or skin reaction to it. if you develop these, stop chantix and see your doctor right away as some can be life-threatening. tell your doctor if you have a history of heart or blood vessel problems, or develop new or worse symptoms. get medical help right away if you have symptoms of a heart attack or stroke. decrease alcohol use while taking chantix. use caution when driving or operating machinery. common side effects include nausea, trouble sleeping and unusual dreams. i love myself as a non-smoker. ask your doctor if chantix is right for you. katy pesoft and fullntrary, how dlike a flower,grow? with new covergirl full lash bloom mascara. finally! volume that s soft - not spiky. new full lash bloom mascara from easy, breezy, beautiful covergirl so tell me your thoughts on this. yeah, i think this is a big victory for the bad guys. i think that s the dangerous precedent in this. this was essentially a terrorist act and by sony now giving in after equivocating a little bit, you go back to the original making of this movie, if you re going to make the movie and not stand by it at the end. my colleague talked to president obama even today and the president s advice is go to the movie. obviously this was the intended effect was to squelch this movie, to make it not happen and it s worked. you know what, i ve told both of you during the break, i actually i ve been to north korea, as you know, three times. north korea looks at this they have nuclear weapons and they are so erratic, you can t even point at a picture of kim jong-un without risking going to some prison camp. i don t know why sony didn t make this a fictionalize movie about some make-believe country because we re not dealing with normal people. we re not dealing with a normal situation. we re dealing with people who see us as complete enemies and we re trying to kill them every single day. i m noticing on social media people are joking can they make requests to producers about what kind of pictures sony can produce because it looks as though they re being dictated in terms of what they are going to put out there. i think that s the sad fact about all of this. we should not have a foreign country dictating the terms of what comes out, no matter who they are. of course we shouldn t, but we re not dealing with a full deck on this. i mean that s the problem is that, you know, this is a predictable response. if you ve ever been there, literally they think we are training seven days a week, all three of you and i m training every day to try to kill them when we re not doing any of that. but they see that and see this as such an insult, they re going to go nuts. but what does going nuts mean? this, this. are producers upset about the hacking. it s a terrible thing to hack. look, they did a terrible if they re the ones that did it, it s a terrible thing to hack. it s a terrible thing for us to bow to the pressure. it s a terrible thing to have the terrorists act on the movie, but it s all going back to the judgment of making that movie, knowing that we were dealing with a situation that wasn t quite normal. i mean i think north korea is the most brutal regime in the world. it s run by a totalitarian psychopath. i think if hollywood had any decency, they would make a serious film detailing the brutality that is going on. that s a great idea. an i think right now i hope they re just delaying this. we don t know all the details. maybe there is some credible threat we don t know about. imagine if isis isis is actually carrying out terrorist attacks against americans. what if they threaten an american mall or football game? i know, it s terrible. they caved to pressure because they feared people would not show up on one of the most profitable days for movies. i am not defending north korea. i m just saying it s a very dangerous situation sony got into without using good judgment to begin with. i am not defending north korea in any way. they made a movie they aren t prepared to stand behind. does it even look funny? what exactly is the joke in all of this? i think sony has a lot to explain to the american people and to the world community about the making of this movie and of course this halting and contradictory response. and all their embarrassing e-mails too. we didn t even get near their e-mails. anyway, panel, thank you. if you are outraged over president obama s use of executive action, brace yourselves for this. turn out it is not just executive orders. president obama also using something called the presidential memorandum to bypass congress. according to usa today, president obama has issued the memorandum more often than any other president. gregory courty joins us. nice to see you. we have presidential memorandums and executive orders. what s the difference? the differences can be subtle. executive orders are what we re probably all familiar with. they re numbered. executive order 1033 or something like that. mem memorandums are called by scholars executive orders by another name. they re more regulatory in nature but very similar and both carry the same force of law. they re essentially the same then, right? they re used a little differently. but you could you could use them interchangeably? there are some areas where previous presidents have used an executive order. for example, nixon had an executive order on let s get rid of some of these federal properties we re not using and save some money. president obama did that by memorandum. so the fact is that all these things that they re doing by executive order or presidential memorandum, are there instances when they can only use one and not the other? they tend to only use executive order but there is any restriction? if you re going to amend an executive order, you re going to use an executive order to do that. neither of these terms are defined anywhere in the law much less the constitution. so it s precedents. president obama says the truth is even with all the actions i ve taken this year, i m issuing executive orders at the lowest rate in over 100 years. he s not mentioning the presidential memorandums so i m wur wondering if that s a slippery quote. he said people didn t have a problem with george bush when he uses executive action. he uses the terms executive order and executive action somewhat interchangeably. so slippery, transparent and deceptive? i have no evidence to suggest this is a deliberate misdirection by the white house. he must know the difference between presidential memorandum and executive order. he s got to know the difference. he signs them. and when you add presidential memorandums and executive orders together, is president obama on the low end or has he done more? he s certainly signed more presidential memoranda than others. when you call them both executive actions, he s on pace to take more than any president. the reason i ask this because as i read this, it seems that they re essentially the same thing. whether they have historically been used for different purposes or not. you can amend executive orders with executive orders. it seems when the president says i m issuing executive orders at the lowest rate in more than 100 years, he s being a little slippery because he s not mentioning the presidential memorandums which he does so much more than other presidents on the presidential memorandums. no. these are precise terms that even the president, even the president s press secretary sometimes slip up. josh earnest said he s issued an executive order on immigration. there was no such thing. the immigration executive action that republicans are so upset about were not done by executive order, they were done by memorandum. last year when he took executive action on gun control, those were not executive orders, those are presidential memoranda. if he s going to tell the epa how to enforce the clean air act, that s done in a memorandum not an executive order. right now are democrats on a desperate search for a message for 2016? plus we re trying to solve a mystery that has to do with the release of alan gross and sergeant tahmooressi finally released from a mexican prison. celebrate what s new, the bigger, better menu at red lobster! with more of what you love! try our newest wood-grilled combination! maine lobster, extra jumbo shrimp, and salmon! so hurry in! and sea food differently. it s one of those things i think that went away from that democrats didn t do a very good job of in the 2014 election. we talked about everything but the economy and that s still going to be it s still going to be a driving issue in 2016. there has to and change has to happen. we have a changing economy. there have got to be some new ideas out there about how to effect its impact on the american people. like what? how do you convince the middle class america that something good is happening? what s the message to them? it s about how we re going to adjust to it. kodak when kodak went bankrupt, it had 187,000 employees. when instagram sold itself to facebook for a billion dollars, it had 13 employees. both parties are not addressing the how technology and how fast paced we re moving forward into the future is actually hollowing out jobs there. it s not just attacking wall street. like that s one of the things that is a go-to populist liberal you know, elizabeth warren attack wall street. wall street does need to be reformed. republicans may offer tax cuts. the tax system does need to be reformed but no one is addressing the economic consequences of where this tech economy is taking us and how do we get the american people to participate in it and whether that s job retraining, other things, but somebody has got to speak to it. but that requires a long vision. it seems to me the voters are looking more right now. can i put food on the table and pay the tuition, so that s the problem. that s right. and, you know, everybody is going to offer up really quick, simple solutions that no one believes anymore. or you ve got to take a step back and really talk to the american people with what we have to do to be competitive, to move forward and to get people it s not the same old, same old. a lot of the ideas look, i was a ted kennedy liberal and, you know, there are a lot of populist liberal progressive economic ideas i believe in but a lot of the ideas on both sides are obsolete now. you need to take those principles but apply them to the issues that are for us right now economically and lead the american people there. joe, thanks. good to be with you. remember that outrageous convention government employees spending your tax dollars on themselves, face hotel suites and mismatched wine glasses? you didn t like that. you need to stick around for our next segment. soy buddy here is going to help me find it. here we go. woo who, woah, woah, woah. it s out there somewhere spreading the word about america s favorite potatoes: heart healthy idaho potatoes and the american heart association s go red for women campaign. if you see it i hope you ll let us know. always look for the grown in idaho seal. [ female announcer ] you ve tried to forget your hepatitis c. but you shouldn t forget this. hepatitis c is a serious disease. left untreated, it can lead to liver damage and potentially liver cancer. but you haven t been forgotten. there s never been a better time to rethink your hep c. go to hepchope.com to register for more information. then talk to your doctor about scientific advances that may help you move on from hepatitis c. gsa s lavish las vegas convention, complete with photos of the gsa s regional commissioner that fancy bathtub on your dollar? well, after outrage was over the abuse of your tax dollars, omb issued stricter requirements for spending reports. makes sense, right? but listen to this. the cfo of hhs now says accurate spending reports won t help taxpayers. really? sarah westwood joins us. nice to see you. nice to be here. you wrote the article. why does hhs s cfo say that? well, what happened here is the hhs inspector general discovered millions of dollars in unreported conference funding, and in defense, pushing back on the inspector general s findings, the cfo ellen murray said the cost of. getting the right information? right would outweigh the benefit to taxpayers. how does she figure that? how could it possibly be we don t want exact information? well, she cited difficulties in actually gathering the information and keeping track of it. and said, basically, you can either have an accurate report or a timely report, but you can t have both. okay. so why can t we at least change the time requirements a little bit? i think most taxpayers want to know whether or not they re partying on our dime again. right. it s essentially the bureaucratic answer of we can t get this data because we don t have it because these services are being provided by contractors. i read your story and it said that hhs had 140 conferences last year. that seems like a lot. i don t know why they re having all these conferences. go figure on that one. the ig, the inspector general, looked at only four of them. so out of 4 out of 140. and out of the four the ig looked at found hhs had failed to list $1.4 million. so is there a discrepancy in each of the four? yes. each conference had a discrepancy. and that 140 number that you just cited, those are just the conferences that cost $100,000 or more. they actually have more conferences than that. and hhs actually spent $56 million on conferences alone in 2012. it s stunning, though. if you look at four conferences, if you sort of the inspector general looks at four of them and finds 100% mistakes, they have 136 more at over $100,000 a year a conference, and nobody is going to bother to look at those? right, exactly. you can only imagine that there is similar waste in all of the other conferences. and keep in mind that this was two years ago. so there was, you know, two years of additional conferences that we don t know where the money went. and the cfo at hhs doesn t see this as a problem? evidently not. it s just kind of evidence of the bureaucratic culture that leads to so much waste in our agencies today. but it s worse than bureaucratic culture. it s our money. la-di-da. why does she get to decide that? exactly. she cited the fact that there are already guidelines in place to produce reports that have estimates. so she said that sufficient accurate reports aren t necessary. well, there is our government working for us. anyway, sarah, thank you. thank you. and coming up, after the release of american allen gross from cuba, i m not trying to solve a mystery. i ll tell you what i mean, off the record next. but here is a hint. it has to do with sergeant andrew tahmooressi. at 10:00 p.m., senators marco rubio and ted cruz talking about cuba. tonight 10:00 p.m. on hannity. people with type 2 diabetes come from all walks of life. if you have high blood sugar, ask your doctor about farxiga. it s a different kind of medicine that works by removing some sugar from your body. along with diet and exercise, farxiga helps lower blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes. with one pill a day, farxiga helps lower your a1c. and, although it s not a weight-loss or blood-pressure drug, farxiga may help you lose weight and may even lower blood pressure when used with certain diabetes medicines. do not take if allergic to farxiga or its ingredients. symptoms of a serious allergic reaction include rash, swelling or difficulty breathing or swallowing. if you have any of these symptoms, stop taking farxiga and seek medical help right away. do not take farxiga if you have severe kidney problems, are on dialysis, or have bladder cancer. tell your doctor right away if you have blood or red color in your urine or pain while you urinate. farxiga can cause serious side effects, including dehydration, genital yeast infections in women and men, low blood sugar,kidney problems, and increased bad cholesterol. common side effects include urinary tract infections, changes in urination, and runny nose. do the walk of life yeah, you do the walk of life need to lower your blood sugar? ask your doctor about farxiga and visit our website to learn how you may be able to get every month free. you don t need to think about the energy that makes our lives possible. because we do. we re exxonmobil and powering the world responsibly is our job. because boiling an egg. isn t as simple as just boiling an egg. life takes energy. energy lives here. let s all go off the record for a minute. there is something that absolutely mystifies me. but before i tell you, let me say this. i am very happy alan gross is home. it s been five years too long. it was wrong that cuba held him in prison. so how did he get out? because president obama s administration held secret meetings in canada with cuban officials and cut a deal. then today president obama sent a government plane to pick him up. the obama administration packed that plane with members of congress. and as he landed at andrews air force base, secretary of state john kerry was there to hug and meet mr. gross. but that s not all. president obama even placed a call to mr. gross on that plane as he flew back to the united states. and while i m absolutely thrilled he got that treatment, i m thrilled he is home where he belongs, i don t get it. i would love to know why didn t president obama help sergeant andrew tahmooressi when he was held in a mexican prison? i know a president can t help everybody. but a u.s. marine who got hit with an ied, did two tours for the u.s. in afghanistan and just made a wrong turn? not only did president obama not help, but he never called sergeant tahmooressi s mother, or even sergeant tahmooressi after he got home. maybe there is a reason, but i remain left in a big mystery. why didn t president obama help our marine? and that s my off the record comment tonight. thanks for being with us. we ll all see you again tomorrow night here at 7:00 p.m. eastern. and follow me on twitter at the handle @greta. and a reminder, go to greta wire.com. check out our complete interview
hello, i m john berman. michaela pereira is off today. we d like to welcome our viewers to the united states and around the world. breaking news at this hour. a highly anticipated and extremely controversial report due out any minute details just what cia interrogators did to terror detainees after september 11 and if it worked. any minute now senator dianne feinstein will present this report. you re looking at live pictures of the senate well. the senator will detail tactics and policies used during the bush administration against al qaeda suspects waterboarding, sleep deprivations, reservations about secret overseas prisons. the so-called black sites, all that expected to be included. what is in the report is controversial, releasing it at all is controversial. heightened security around the world because of fears the report could spark anti-american violence. evan perez has a preview of what s in the report. also, dana bash who just spoke with senator dianne feinstein. senior white house correspondent jim acosta, pentagon correspondent barbara starr and with us from cairo where there are security concerns is ian lee. first, we want to go to evan perez with a look at what this report will say. good morning, evan. good morning, john. there s no doubt this is going to be a really ugly day for the cia. this report has been fought over for years now. for the last few months the cia has been working with the white house and with the senate to try to decide what to release in this report. the findings are going to be really ugly in the sense that we re going to learn a lot more about what went on in this program. we know for a fact that there s going to be more information about the detainees, what they were subjected to. we also know that the report will portray the cia as going beyond what the methods that were authorized by memos that were done by the justice department and that it misled, according to the democrats who did this report, that it misled the justice department, misled the white house, and misled congress about what it was doing with the detainees. we expect we ll get details about detainee deaths that occurred while if this program and overall it s going to portray the cia as mismanaging this program and didn t produce much intelligence according to the democrats and, in fact, the big question is did this program help find osama bin laden. as you know he was killed in a u.s. raid. that s going to be still in dispute when the day is done. we expect that the cia will produce its own report, john, that will say that it did, indeed, provide intelligence that led to the capture or to the finding of bin laden. the senate democrats are going to say that it did not. so that s what we re going to have at the end of the day. probably much in dispute about this program. indeed. divisive to say the least. as one senator put it this morning, this report will say the cia did use torture and it didn t work and now evan you are reporting that this report will also say the cia was misleading to federal officials as well. we ll check back with you as you get more details of what s inside the report. i want to go to dana bash, our chief congressional correspondent. at the center of this whole something senator dianne feinstein. she will be speaking on the senate floor any minute. it s really senator feinstein who has decided and pushed for the release of the report today. you just spoke with her. that s right. as you know we ve been reporting all morning about the fact that military personnel, m boosy personnel and other u.s. personnel around the world are on high alert because of the fear of repercussions from the release of this report. so i just caught up with the senator, the chairwoman of the intelligence committee as she was going from her office to the senate floor where she ll give her speech and i asked her about that. how do you respond to those who worry that releasing this will put american lives at risk? well, i ll respond to that in my remarks. . there really is no good time and i think the greatness of this country is that we can examine mistakes and remedy them. and that is the hallmark of a great and just society so anything can happen at any time without a report. there s no question about that. and there will be a very good chance that because of the change in the senate, the report will not do anything. reporter: so you re doing this because you re going to lose the chairmanship? not necessarily. reporter: or because democrats are going to lose control? no, but there that s obviously a factor. there are a lot of factors that you weigh. this hasn t been an easy decision to move ahead and i ll make that clear. just to button that, we should remind our viewers that as of likely this thursday when the lame duck session is over democrats will effectively not have control, republicans don t formally take control until january but there won t be any business done so that was what the senator was referring to is that this is her chance, her last chance as chairwoman of the committee. she referred, john, to the fact that this hasn t been easy. boy is that an understatement. this has been years in the making. the senator and the intelligence committee, mostly on the democratic side, have been very much pushing for information. there has been a lot of controversy, tension about it. there have been accusations from senator feinstein herself about the cia hacking into senate commuters. it s, again, not been easy and she is no dove. she is very hawkish but she feels this is important to do as others have said because we re not north korea, we re not russia, we are a transparent society and this is why it s important. dana, there s been out and out acrimony between the committee and cia which is something you almost never see. dana bash, thanks so much again. we are waiting to hear from senator dianne feinstein the chair of the senate select committee on intelligence. she will be revealing new details about what is in this highly an patriotanticipated controversial report, called the cia torture report, what went on after september 11 to get information from terror detainees. i want to go to the white house. jim adocosta is there. jim, president obama, then senator obama ran largely on releasing the details of what went on. he was adamantly opposed to it as a candidate. now that he s been president for a number of years it is much more complicated. it is much more complicated and it would be interesting to do a then and now because i think they see more grays at the white house. make no mistakes, when president obama came into office in 2009 one of his first executive orders was to ban these so-called enhanced interrogation techniques which included waterboarding which, by the way, arizona senator john mccain, president obama s republican rival in 2008, he has referred to waterboarding as torture. the president in recent years has said we tortured some folks. so there s no dispute as to where the president stands on this. however we should point out and dana was talking about that somewhat. in the last several days you have noticed a hesitation on the part of this administration and that they knew this would be problematic in terms of releasing these results. we should point out that just yesterday the intelligence community after vetting and reviewing the intelligence committee s report returned that back to congress, returned that become to feinstein so she could release this redacted version and according to an administration official i talked to last night, john, this is 93% unredacted so there are some redactions in this 600-page executive summary of this 6,000 page report but according to the official nothing will be lost in the narrative. so there is going to be some detail here that perhaps the american people haven t seen before. but the chief complaint, the chief, i guess, technique in all of this that is really objected to by a lot of democrats is this use of waterboarding. it was used extensively on a number of detainees during the bush administration. president bush, vice president dick cheney when they were in office they maintained over and over again that this was not torture. president obama came into office and that s what happens when presidents change parties. when a president coming into office he can do what he wants to do when it comes to conducting war and peace and the president decided he was going to ban these techniques. make mo no mistake, i think this is a very difficult decision for white house to release this information. not only because of the unforeseen consequences that you might see around the world, violence, attacks and so forth, but keep in mind this president won t be in office much longer. he ll be gone in two years. the next president can come along from a different party and go back and decide and review what happened during this administration, drone attacks and so forth, so it does set a precedent and i think makes this administration a little uneasy, john. jim acosta, stick around. we will want the white house reaction when senator dianne feinstein, the chair of the senate intelligence committee, is due to speak in any minute. she will reveal new details of what s in the report. you heard jim mention it. waterboarding, the enhanced interrogation techniques that were used to get information from terror detainees after september 11 during the bush administration. again, the details of what is in that report will be released any minute. but even before those details are released, the report is controversial and all around the world u.s. marines have been asked to be on a heightened state of alert to respond if there are any protests or violence directed at americans because of this report. i want to bring in our pentagon correspondent barbara starr to give us details about 24 heightened security. barbara? john, good morning. the pentagon may make the case that much of this has been out there in the press in recent years, that the world knows an awful lot about this. but not really, because starting last week an order came from the joint chiefs of staff, general martin dempsey, the chairman, out to the worldwide combatant commanders to be ready when the report is released. the concern is a lot of material may appear online now. it will be read around the world. whether it is accurate, ink context or propaganda put out y about the cia by isis, there may be may be violent repercussions. the concern is u.s. embassies, u.s. military bases around the world, u.s. troops in afghanistan, in iraq, in the middle east. so what has happened since last week is u.s. marine which is basically run the emergency response forces in africa and in the middle east have been put on this heightened state of alert. they are now ready to go faster than ever before if a violent situation was to break out. look, let s be clear. the pentagon, the white house, congress, everybody hopes it does not happen. but it has happened in the past. u.s. embassies have come under attack and, of course, ever recalls the situation with the u.s. government compound in benghazi, libya. that is what they are trying to avoid. a violent backlash that the military could not be ready to respond to so these marines now on alert, ready to move if something were to happen. john? on alert and ready to move. one place you can bet the united states has its eye on right now, thanks, barbara starr, one place the united states no doubt has its eye on is cairo. cairo, of course, it was site of violent demonstrations after the video many people saw as anti-islam, the u.s. embassy in cairo came under attack there. i want to check in with ian lee in cairo to give us a sense of what precautions are being taken and if there is concern and visible concern that you can see there today. ian? john, i had a conversation with the u.s. embassy and they re telling me they won t comment on just procedures. in 2012 there was a breaching of the perimeter by anti-american demonstrators, the breaching of the u.s. embassy perimeter since then rts, security has been stepped up, there s more barriers, a larger police presence and the military is close by if needed. but when we talk about the street and the genre action, there s mild interest, not very much what we re hearing that people are saying. where the real damning reports could come from are egypt, for example, was one of the cia s rendition program. if they are mentioned this could be embarrassing for the government and as well for their intelligence community. we haven t heard any reaction from the egyptian governments yet but we re also waiting to see what are in the details. if something is very explosive in this report, then that could we could see the effect of that in the street. john. ian lee in cairo. yes, the details so important, what is in this report. and any minute now we will hear from dianne feinstein, senator, the chairperson of the senate select committee on intelligence. it s that committee that is releasing this report that talks about what they call cia terror techniques that were used to get information from terror suspects after the attacks on september 11. what will the details be? what will the reaction be and what will the accusations be about? how they were presented or misrepresented to the u.s. government. stay with us. that speech very controversial just ahead. i lost my sight in afghanistan, but it doesn t hold me back. i go through periods where it s hard to sleep at night, and stay awake during the day. non-24 is a circadian rhythm disorder that affects up to 70% of people who are totally blind. talk to your doctor about your symptoms and learn more by calling 844-844-2424. or visit my24info.com. dad,thank you mom for said this oftprotecting my future.you. thank you for being my hero and my dad. military families are uniquely thankful for many things, the 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angieslist.com today. welcome back to our viewers in the united states and around the world. any minute now, senator dianne feinstein, the chair of the senate select committee on intelligence, will give a speech on the senate floor outlining her committee s report on what is being call cda torture techniques. how they question terror suspects after september 11 during the bush administration, what these techniques were, whether they were effective and now we have just learned also how they were represented to the administration and the government at the time. again, that speech any second but the report just posted online. we have the details of what it says. i m going to go to our justice correspondent evan perez. evan, it says the techniques were not effective and not only that it says what they were doing, the cia, was misrepresented to the government at the time. that s right, john. as i mention, this is going to be dark for the cia because all along they ve said this program produced valuable intelligence. this report that s been done by the senate democrats which looksed at six million pages of documents in the cia is concluded otherwise. the senate found there were at least 119 prisoners who went through the cia program that s a bigger number than we have ever known. the cia has previously only said about 100. we know a third of them were suggest to what the cia called enhanced interrogation tactics, eits, this is what people call torture. waterboarding, slapping b, sleep deprivation. other thing s things we know so prisoners died as a result of these tactics. led me read to you the main finding from the senate. that the enhanced interrogation did not produce otherwise unavailable information necessary to save lives. that s something the cia will push back very hard on because they believe that people in the bush administration and the cia believe this program did save lives. they say it s a program they disavowed. that they would never do this again and that it was wrong but they can t they say you cannot say it produced valuable intelligence and that it s unknowable whether it would have been gotten otherwise. as you mentioned, the findings are that the program was ineffective. that the cia misled the white house, it misled congress and the justice department about what it was doing. that the program was far more brutal in the tactics being used against these detainees. we know one detainee at one location died after he was held naked for days chained to a wall and that he died of hypothermia, for example. so that s another finding in this report. we also are told from the report that the program produced inaccurate information. it led to the fbi and the cia having to chase down leads that turned out to be nothing because people misread information, because, for example, khalid sheikh mohammed, while he was being waterboarded, admitted to things that the cia wanted him to admit to which turned out to be false and not true. so, again, these are some very ugly findings that we expect. we have a bunch of people here at cnn poring over the details of this report. we ll expect to have some more. evan, stick around. we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. we are getting the details of what is inside the senate intelligence committee report on cia techniques to get information from terror suspects during the bush administration evan perez outlined what the techniques were, harsher than what the situation was told at the time. misrepresented, evan just reported to the administration at the time. evan also inside this report there is an open question about what the cia was telling the president. whether the president, in fact, knew what the cia was doing at some of these black sites. that s right, john. that s something i think we re going to end the day here without really knowing the full answer. we know that president bush in his own biography says that he knew full well what was going on. he was in control and he authorized this program. we know that the justice department authorized this program. however. the cia documents don t indicate that he was ever briefed until 2006. so while a lot of the abuses that are described in this report are going on, 2002, 2003, 2004, the president was not being briefed. we know that at some point the cia was preparing to brief some of the top officials in the bush administration but then they decided not to in part because according to some of the documents they were afraid that it was going to leak and in particular the colin powell would blow his lid is what i think one description of this the way how this was described in reaction to what was being done. to be clear, president george w. bush in an interview can w candy karolyi made it clear he stands behind what the cia did and what happened during his administration. vice president dick cheney very publicly as well. evan, stick around. i want to go to our chief correspondent dana bash. already i can see republicans lashing out at this report. some republicans where you are are calling it fiction. that s right. and you just saw senators were voting. our team is talking to senators while they re coming off of the senate floor. one of whom is senator richard brr. he is going to be the next chair of the senate intelligence committee, the next dianne feinstein, if you will. republican. he called it fiction. he told our ted barrett that he does not believe that this is an accurate portrayal of what really went on because he says that the committee and its staff didn t interview everybody involved, the operatives in particular. he said that they got their facts wrong and it went on from there. it s no secret that most of the republicans on the intelligence committee did not like this, did not cooperate and they re going to have their own kind of rebuttal report, if you will. so that is exactly the kind of thing that we are hearing. not just concern about the fact that this information is being released and what it could mean for the security of americans but questioning the actual content of this report in general. dana bash, thanks so much. i want to go to the white house. they, of course, are watching very closely what is happening on capitol hill and we are awaiting a speech any minute now from senator dianne feinstein, the chair of the senate select committee on intelligence. jim acosta at the white house. the link to the report is posted. the cia has had days to look at it already. what is their official response now that it s been posted. well, there is a response from the president to this report that s being released by the senate intelligence committee, john, and it is pretty scathing, i have to tell you. at the beginning of this statement the president says that he understands that the previous administration, the bush administration, had agonizing choices to make but that some of the choices they made were contrary to our values. and then the president goes on to say about this enhanced interrogation technique program and about the report, it says the report documents a troubling program involving enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects in secret facilities outside the united states and it reinforces my long-held view that these harsh methods were not only inconsistent with our values as a nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interesting. moreover, these techniques did significant damage to america s standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners. john, we should mention that the cia has also released its own response to this senate intelligence committee report and it also in a statement from the cia director john brennan says that they did not always live up to their values at the agency in carrying out this program. so it is a as e van said, a dark day for the cia and at the same time the white house will be doing a lot of explaining. at the same time, because it took years for this to come to light the white house will face question about why it took so long. it s a scathing report from one administration about the previous administration. jim, what is the white house response about whether president obama has spoken to former president george w. bush about this? they have had dealings over the years. we don t know whether or not president obama and president obama have talked about this. my sense of it is that they have not. but this is an interesting question for this president because as we were saying earlier, john, you know, president obama came into office seeing things in a black-and-white fashion. when it came to this program and over the years as he s had to wage for what the war on terrorism and as he tried to wind it down and now he s ratcheting it back up again and the war on isis, he is finding that he also has to do things that perhaps might make people crazy on capitol hill. in terms of snooping on americans, the surveillance going nonthis country and around the world. so those are tactics and programs and thing this president has done that make civil libertarians tear their hair out and might have made a former senator obama tear his hair out when he was running for president in 2008. so it s interesting to see how they ve tried to get this information out there. knowing there could be ramification once it makes its way around the world, john? jim acosta at the white house, stand by. i want to bring back evan perez who has been going through this report which has just been released. evan, in addition to outlining the details of what techniques were used and where they were used, one of the most scathing claims is the cia misrepresented what they were doing to policymakers and the american public. can you give my specifics about what exactly they said and didn t say and the extent of these misrepresentations? if you look at this program, it was authorize bid this president. i van, i m sorry, i need to cut you off, senator dianne feinstein, the chair of the senate select committee presenting the report right now. the senate intelligence committee s five and a half year review of the cia s detention and interrogation program which was conducted between 2002 and 2009 is being released publicly. the executive summary which is going out today is backed by a 6,700 page classified and unredacted report with 38,000 footnote which is can be released if necessary at a later time. the report released today examines the cia s secret overseas detention of at least 119 individuals and the use of coercive interrogation techniques, in some cases amounting to torture. over the past couple of weeks, i ve gone through a great deal of intro special election about whether to delay the release of this report to a later time. this clearly is a period of turmoil and instability in many parts of the world. unfortunately, that s going to continue for the foreseeable future. whether this report is released or not. there are those who seize upon the report and say see what the americans did? and they will try to use it to justify evil actions or incite more violence. we can t prevent that. but history will judge us by our commitment to a just society governed by law and the willingness to face an ugly truth. and say never again. there may never be the right time to release this report. the instability we see today won t be resolved in months or years but this report is too important to shelve indefinitely. there there has been a campaign of mistaken statements and press articles launched against the report before anyone has had the chance to read it. as a matter of fact, the report is just now as i speak being released. this is what it looks like. senator chambliss asked me if we could have the minority report bound with the majority report. for draft that is not possible but in the final draft it will be bound together. but this is what the summary of the 6,000 pages look like. my words give me no pleasure. i m releasing this report because i know there are thousands of employees at the cia who do not condone what i will speak about this morning and who worked day and night long hours, within the law, for america s security in what is certainly a difficult world my colleagues on the intelligence committee and i am proud of them, just as everyone in this chamber is. and we will always support them. in reviewing this study this in the past few days, with a decision looming over the public release, i was struck by a quote found on page 126 of the executive summary. it cites the former cia inspector general john held gerson who in 2005 wrote the following to the then-director of the cia which clearly states the situation with respect to this report years later as well. and i quote. we have found that the agency over the decades has continued to get itself intoes mes related to interrogation programs for one overriding reason. we do not document and learn from our experience. each generation of officers is left to improvise anew with problematic results for our offices as individuals and for our agency. i believe that to be true. i agree with mr. helgerson. his comments are true today but this must change. on march 11, 2009, the committee voted 14-1 to begin a review of the cia s detention and interrogation program. over the past five years, a small team of committee investigators pored over the more than 6.3 million pages of cia records the leader spoke about to complete this report or what we call the study. it shows that the cia s actions a decade ago are a stain on our value and history. the release of this 500 page summary cannot remove that stain. but it can and does say to our people and the world that america is big enough to admit when it s wrong and confident enough to learn from its mistakes. releasing this report is an important step to restore our valuings and show the world that we are in fact a just and lawful society over the next hour, i d like to lay out for the senators and the american public the report s findings and. when i complete this, i asked that senator mccain berecognized. before i get to the substance, i d like to make a few comments about why it s so important that we make this study public. all of us have vivid memories of that tuesday morning when terror struck new york, washington, and pennsylvania. september 11, 2011, war was declared on the united states. terrorists struck our financial center. they struck our military center and they tried to strike our political center and would have had brave and courageous passengers not brought down the plane. we still vividly remember the mix of outrage and deep despair and sadness as we watched from washington. smoke rising from the pentagon. the passenger plane lying in a pennsylvania field. the sound of bodies hitting canopies as innocents jumped from the world trade center. mass terror that we often see abroad had struck us directly from our front yard, killing 3,000 innocent men, women, and children. what happened? we came together as a nation with one singular mission bring those who committed these rackets to justice. but it s at this point where the values of america come into play, where the rule of law and the fundamental principles of right and wrong become important. in 1990, the united states senate ratify it had convention against torture. the convention makes clear that this ban against torture is absolute. it says, and i quote no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, including what i just read. whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency may be invoked as a justification for torture. nonetheless it was argued that the need for information on possible additional terrorist plots after 9/11 made extraordinary interrogation techniques necessary. even if one were to set aside all of the moral arguments, our review was a meticulous and detailed examination of records. it finds that coercive interrogation techniques did not produce the vital otherwise unavailable intelligence the cia has claimed. i will go into further detail on this issue in a moment, but let me make clear, these comments are not a condemnation of the cia as a whole. the cia plays an incredibly important part in our nation s security. and has thousands of dedicated and talented employees. what we have found is that a surprisingly few people were responsible for designing, carrying out and managing this program. two contractors led the interrogations. there was little effective oversight. analysts on occasion gave operational orders that interrogations and cia management of the program was weak and diffused. our final report was approved by a bipartisan vote of 9-6 in december, 2012, and exposed brutality in stark contrast to our values as a nation. this effort was focused on the actions of the cia from late 2001 to january of 2009. the report does not include considerable detail on the cia s interactions with the white house. it does including, excuse me, considerable detail on the cia s interactions with the white house, the departments of justice, state, defense, and the senate intelligence committee. the review is based on contemporaneous records and documents during the time the program was in place and active. now, these documents are important because they aren t based on recollection. they aren t based on revision and they aren t a rationalization a decade later. it s these documents referenced repeatedly in thousands of footnotes that provide the factual basis for the study s conclusions. the committee s majority staff reviewed more than 6.3 million pages of these documents provided by by the cia as well as records from other departments and agencies. these records include finished intelligence assessments, cia operational and intelligence cables, memoranda, e-mails, realtime chat sessions, inspector general reports, testimony before congress, pictures, and other internal records. it s true we didn t conduct our own interviews, and let me tell you why that was the case. in 2009 there was an ongoing review by department of justice special prosecutor john durham. on august 24, attorney general holder expanded that review. this occurred six months after our study had begun. durham s original investigation of the cia s destruction of interrogation videotapes was broadened to include possible criminal actions of cia employees in the course of cia detention and interrogation activities. at the time, the committee s vice chairman, kit bond, withdrew the minority s participation in the study citing the attorney general s expanded investigation as the reason. the department of justice refused to coordinate its investigation with the intelligence committee s review. as a result, possible interviewees could be subject to additional liability if they were interviewed and the cia, citing the attorney general s investigation. would not instruct its employees to participate in interviews. notwithstanding this, i am really confident of the factual accuracy and comprehensive nature of this report for three reasons. first, it s the 6.3 million pages of documents reviewed and they reveal records of actions as those actions took place, not through recollections more than a decade later. second, the cia and cia s senior officers have taken the opportunity to explain their views on cia detention and interrogation operations. they have done this in on-the-record statements, in classified committee hearings. written testimony and answer to questions and through the formal response to the committee the in june, 2013, after reading the study. and, third, the committee had access to and utilized an extensive set of reports of interviews conducted by the cia inspector general and the cia s oral history program so while we could not conduct new interviews of individuals we did utilize transcripts or some reis of interviews of those directly engaged in detention and interrogation operations. this covered the exact topics we would have asked about had we conducted interviews ourselves. these interview reports and transcripts included but were not limited to the following. george tenant, director of the cia when the agency took custody and interrogate it had majority of detainees. jose rodriguez direct o of the cia s counterterrorism center, a key player in the program. cia general council scott muller, cia deputy director of operations, cia acting general council john riz strkso and cia deputy director john mclaughlin. and a variety of interrogate pors, lawyers, medical personnel senior counterterrorism analyst and managers of the detention and interrogation program. the best place to start about how we got into this and i m delighted that senator rockefeller is on the floor is a little more than eight years ago on september 6, 2006. when the committee met to be briefed by then director michael hayden. at that 2006 meeting, the full committee meeting learned for the first time of the use of so talled enhanced interrogation techniques or eits. it was a short meeting in part because president bush was making a public speech later that day disclosing officially for the first time the existence of cia black sites and announcing the transfer of 14 detainees from cia custody to guantanamo bay, cuba. it was the first time interrogation program was explained to the full committee as details had previously been limited to the chairman and vice chairman. then on september december 7, 2007, the new york times reported that cia personnel in 2005 had destroyed videotapes of the interrogation of two cia detainees. the cia s first detainee, abu a buy da souix bayda. days later, on december 11, 2007, the committee held a hearing on the destruction of the videotapes. director hayden, the primary witness, testified that the cia had concluded that the destruction of videotapes was acceptable in part because congress had not yet requested to see them. my source is our committee s transcript, december 11, 2007. director hayden stated that if the committee had asked for the videotapes they would have been provided by but of course the committee had not known the videotapes existed. and we now know from cia e-mails and records that the videotapes were destroyed shortly after cia attorneys raised concerns that congress might find out about the tapes. in any case at that same december 11 committee hearing, director hayden told the commit teal that cia cables related to the interrogation sessions depicted in the videotapes were, and i quote, a more than adequate representation of the tapes and therefore if you want them, we ll give you access to them. that s our transcript, december 11, 2007 hearing. senator rockefeller, then chairman of the committee, designated two members of the committee staff to review the cables describing the interrogation sessions of abu zubaida and al nashiri. senator bond similarly directed two of his staffers to review the cables. the designated staff members completed their review and compiled a summary of the content of the cia cables by early 2009 by which time i had become chairman. the description in the cables of cia s interrogations and the treatment of detainees pressed a starkly different picture from director hayden s testimony before the committee. they described brutal around-the-clock interrogations, especially of abu zubaida in which multiple coercive techniques were used in combination and with substantial reputation. it was an ugly, visceral description. the summary also indicated that abu zubaida did not provide the kind of intelligence that led the cia to stop terrorist plots or arrest additional suspects. as a result, i think it s fair to say the entire committee was concerned and it approved the scope of an investigation by a vote of 14-1 and the work began. in my march 11, 2014, floor speech about the study, i described how, in 2009, the committee came to an agreement with the new cia director, leon panetta, for access to documents and other records about the cia s detention and interrogation program. so i won t repeat that here. from 2009 to 2012 our staff conducted a massive and unprecedented review of cia recor records. draft sections of the report were produced by late 2011 and shared with the full committee. the final report was completed in . and approved by the committee by a bipartisan vote of 9-6. after that vote, i sent the full report to the president and asked the administration to provide comments on it before it was released. six months later, in june of 2013, the cia responded. i directed them that if the cia pointed out any error in our report, we would fix it. and we did fix one bullet point that did not impact our findings and conclusions. if the cia came to a different conclusion than the report did, we would note that in the report and explain our reasons for disagreeing if we disagree. and you will see some of that documented in the footnotes of that executive summary as well as in the 6,000 pages. in april 2014, the committee prepared an updated version of the full study and voted 12-3 to declassify and release the executive summary, findings and conclusions and minority and additional views. on august 1, we received a declassified version from the executive branch. it was immediately apparent that the redactions to our report prevented a clear and understandable reading of the study and prevented us from substantiating the findings and conclusions so we obviously objected. for the past four months, the committee and the cia, the director of national intelligence and the white house have engaged in a lengthy negotiation over the redactions to the report. we have been able to include some more information in the report today without sacrificing sources and methods of our or our national security. i d like to ask, following my remarks, that a letter from the white house dated yesterday conveying the report also points out that the report is 93% complete a that the redactions amount to 7% of the bulk of the report. without objection. thank you, mr. president. this has been a long process. the work began seven years ago when senator rockefeller directed the committee staff to review the cia cables describing the cables of abu zubaydah and that this nation should never again engage in these tactics. let me now turn to the contents of the study. as i noted, we have 20 findings and conclusions which fall in the four general categories. first, the cia s enhanced interrogation techniques were not an effective way to gather intelligence information. second, the cia provided extensive amounts of inaccurate information about the operation of the program and effectiveness to the white house, the department of justice, congress, the cia inspector general, the media and the american public. third, the cia s management of the program was inadequate and deeply flawed. and fourth, the cia program was far more brutal than people were led to believe. the first findings talk about the effectiveness or lack there of and found that the coercion techniques were not an effective means of acquiring accurate intelligence or gaining detainee cooperation. the cia and other defenders of the program have repeatedly claimed that the use of so-called interrogation techniques was necessary to get detainees to provide critical information. the study concludes that both claims are inaccurate. the report is very specific in how it evaluates the cia s claims on the effect i haveness and necessity of its enhanced infair gags techniques. specifically, we used the cia s own definition of effectiveness as ratified and approved fts office of the legal counsel counsel. they claim that it was necessary to obtain, quote, otherwise available, end quote, information. that could not be obtained from any other source to stop terrorist attacks and save american lives. that s a claim we conclude is inaccurate. these include cases of terrorist plots stopped or terrorist captured. the cia used these examples in presentation to the white house, in testimony to congress, in subfigures missions to the department of justice and ultimately to the american people. some of the claims are well known. the capture of khalid sheikh mohammed and the takedown of osama bin lad d osama bin ladin. in each case, the cia claimed that critical and unique information came from one or more detainees in its custody after they were subjected to the cia s coercive techniques. and that information led to specific counterterrorism success. our staff reviewed every one of the 20 cases. and not a single case holds up. in every single one of these cases, at least one of the following was true. one, the intelligence community had information separate from the use of uits that led to the terrorist disruption or capture. two, information from a detainee subjected to eits played no roles in the claimed disruption or capture and, three, the purported terrorist plot either did not exist or posed no real threat to americans or united states interests. some critics have suggested the study concludes that no intelligence was ever provided for any detainee the cia held. that is false. and the study makes no such claim. what is true that actionable intelligence that was, quote, otherwise unavailable, otherwise unavailable was not obtained using these coercive interrogation techniques. the report also chronicles where the techniques that do not involve physical force were effective. specifically, the report provides examples where they confront detainees with facts. know when they were lying and when they applied rapport building techniques that were developed and honed by the united states military, the fbi and, more recently, the interagency high value detainee group, that these techniques produced good intelligence. let me make a few other comments on the claimed effectiveness of the cia interrogations. at no time did the cia coercive interrogation techniques lead to the collection of intelligence on an imminent threat that many believe was the justification for these techniques. the committee never found an example of this hypothetical ticking time bomb scenario. the use of coercive technique methods regularly resulted in fabricated information. sometime the cia new detainees
just a job to provide for myself and his parents, but a career that he enjoyed and more importantly passionate about it even though he spent a lot of hours working, he was always love for his work. we spoke about the law and how he applied the law. he was objective in his determination of the law with courtesy, we areith respect and with the highest professionism. although he worked often, he always took time to spend with me his number one fan and his pamly and friends. he was always there when somebody needed something. when wenjian was not working, he cared a lot for the chinese community. he wanted to always do his best to help and support. the very community that he was part of wenjian s kind heart loved by his friend and colleagues and our extended family ha isthat is here today. the caring son, a loving husband and a loyal friend. you are an amazing man even though you left us early, but i believe that he will have his loving spirit to continue to look out for us. he will keep an eye over us. wenjian is my hero. we can always count on him. again, i thank you, my extended family my fam ily of blue for attending today s services, thank you. wen wenjian will always be in my hearts. i love you, i love you forever. [ applause ] ing breaking news, the ongoing funeral service for new york police detective wenjian liu and you heard the widow, and the two with were married for four month, and gave what is a remarkably brave eulogy about her slain hudzsband and talking about how she was his soulmate and best friend and only son of immigrant, and very, very dedicated to his parents and mot to mention the people of new york city whom he risked his life and then died trying to protect them. there are thousands of people crowding the streets outside the brooklyn funeral home where this service is under way, and the police officers are standing shoulder-to-shoulder and notably some officers did turn their officers as the new york mayor bill de blasio did deliver a eulogy. inside the drekirector fbi and the police commissioner and as i mentioned, officer liu s widow and his father. and his father did not speak in english, but you did not have to understand the language to feel his pain. it was really a heartbreaking, heartbreaking event. liu and his partner rafael ramos were gunned down december 27th when they were gunned down in their squad car, and we will be joined by miguel marquez who is outside of the funeral services. miguel can you tell us about the scene there among the thousands of men in blue who came all around the country to at tend this funeral. reporter: for the bulk of the entire ceremony there was a contingent of asian officers just outside of the church here, and we believe that the coffin of officer liu is coming out soon and nypd officer did come up and ask whether we will be broadcasting live or speaking at that time, and that is something that they want to keep very somber event here to honor this police officer as his casket moves towards its final resting place. with the are regard to the police officers turning their back here in front of the funeral home there were zero. no police officers who turned their back. just down from here, on the processional route where the casket will go there with were some police officers who did turn their backs according to our sara ganim who is down tlhere and other producers who saw them but much smaller number than last week, and the police commissioner asking by memo to the police force that it was not an appropriate thing to do. that it is a time for grieving and not grievance and that when they turned their back on the mayor during officer ramos funeral last week they did no valor to the officer s sacrifice and honor of his job in doing so. so he has asked them not to do it now. you can see now the police officers are lining up now. this is the ceremonial unit of the nypd lining up in order to receive the body the casket of officer liu. we expect to see that coming out of here shortly. it looks like they may be slightly ahead of schedule and though it is a little unclear that the family did arrive an hour before the ceremony began and several speakers to listen to his father speak, and i don t speak cantonese, but to listen to him speaking and trying to get through the words and emotion, and it was hard to watch that. this was meant to go for another hour and he may be coming out soon. the ceremony they had in there was a lot of individuals bringing food to the location of the casket and also burning pieces of paper or cardboard to symbolize things from the physical word the food and those symbol ss are things that officer liu in the buddhist tradition would take on to the next life. dana? miguel i agree with you to watch his father to lose any child is just defy sies the laws of nature, but to lose your only son as he did is just words just can t can express how much grief he must be feeling right now. thank you very much and stand by us miguel because we want to go to cnn correspondent sarah again mim who ganim who is outside of the funeral home. can you hear me? yes, it is dana bash sarah, and can you hear us? we are having trouble getting her ifp working, and we will go inside of the studio to tom fuentes, and you are a law enforcement analyst, but also a cop on the beat where you started outside of chicago for six years. and for those of us who have never served or had the honor of serving, talk about what is it like, and what has drawn thousands of people around the country including towns like chicago for this funeral? well to understand police officers it helps to have been one and having been in the life of a police officer. it is not a job but a way of life and not just for you, but the family. it is what has been carried through for the ramos and liu families they have to live with the life and the fear and the threat, and i know my mother who had passed away now, she had a husband and two sons who were police officers at the same time, and she had this worry every day. i cannot imagine. i cannot imagine. the koncontroversy about what these officers faced when it came to racial protests and some of the protests getting personal when it came to the police officers after the killings in ferguson missouri of black teenagers in new york city. as somebody who has bp on the street and been on the beat what strikes you when you see all of this? what strikes me is that the one message that people don t really realize and the one thing about being a police officer is that you realize in the entire criminal justice system, and in the entire medical system and the entire community leader ss, the police officer deals with the victim. the victims die in your arms and the victims die in the ambulance with you in the hospital or in the surgery at the hospital after they have been shot is or stabbed or involved in a terrible accident and it is the police and there is an image that the police have no empathy or sympathy for the members of the public and in the arereality, they have more. the hardened exterior to cope with that is the fact that the police see itt everyday. if the they have animosity, and the the guys carrying the guns in the community, and the gang-bangers gunning down other members, it is because they are seeing the the people shot by the gangs, and the people victimized by the crime. absolutely. so i want to turn back to the scene so that the viewers know what we are look ging at, the funeral just concluded, and we are watching the sea of blue police officers from all over there, and you will see the color guard getting ready, and looks like we are waiting for the casket to come out to take wen wenjian liu to his final resting place. miguel marquez is there. these funerals are so tough to watch and to see this brotherhood and sisterhood to come together. if you can pan over here, ricky, this is the ceremonial unit inside of the funeral home. they are now lining up outside of the funeral home and the co color guard with the u.s. flag the new york citying in ing inand the nypd flag are going to line up in front of the hearse that will take detective liu to his final resting place. the level of mourning and the sense of the sol lumemn nature of what is happening here is unmistakable. what we saw here today is a service that we are not accustomed to and to hear his father speak in cantonese, and even though none of us spoke cantonese, it was very clear and the love of his son was very clear. they did some translation afterwards to talk about how his son would heldp him come work in the garment district after his school work and he would call him and very conscientious and good son. the mayor talked about detective liu s love of fishing. and his cousin spoke about, and we all called him wenjian liu, but his family called him joe. it is how they have become an american family in their own way, and now with the ceremonial unit out of the the funeral home it seems that they are now waiting for the mayor of the other dignitaries and the other director to come out, and then we believe we will see the casket of wenji aan liu come out of the funeral home to make its way. and what miguel is talking about is so true in that what you heard in the eulogies and throughout the service is that people were humanizing him, and he was not a number or a cop on the beat that was killed, but a human being with a family who loved him so much but another thing is what truely american story this is. and so classic new york. and so specific new york you have the son of immigrants coming in and really wanting to be a good american as they called him joe, and looking at the line of work that he chose. and for many of the immigrant families especially when a son or daughter says that i want to be a police officer, the families coming in from other countries, they say, you can t be a police aufofficer in the united states, and this is the wild west and the rest of america looks at us with our 300 million gun s ins in a population of 320 million looks at us as violence and out of control and the violence on the streets and the wild west atmosphere and so in some ways when they hear that their family members want to be a police officer, they rare terrified, and that is probably why he had to call his dad after every shift to say he is still alive he made him. and i would want my son to call me after his shift everyday too, so i understand. and we have a sea of oblue and police men from all over the country to attend the funeral, and sara can you tell us what you are seeing? yes, dana this is the procession route, and i have stepped away from the route to be respectful not to disrupt the officers who are lined up to watch the ceremony, but they have lined up here and listened to every single speaker, and tens of thousands is of officers are here to pay their respects. it is not the brightest or the warmest or the driest of days here in brooklyn but they did not come out in any less numbers as they did last week for officer ramos funeral. you heard are from wenjian liu s father who spoke in mandarin and he said that he was so proud of his son to be a member of the nypd and to help the immigrant community when he was not working. and we heard a couple of notable things prfrom the fbi director james comey and new york mayor bill de blasio and we wondered if there would be an honor of the commissioner to not turn their back on the mayor as he spoke, and we did see some officers turn around and not a majority and not even half of the officers where we were standing, but some. and more than the nypd and some officers who were from out of town who also turned around for the speech. this tepgs between the nypd and the mayor have been growing since the protest in new york, but many of the officers i have spoken to here from nypd and out of town say they don t believe that the funeral for a fallen officer is a place for that. and to give you the idea of how many officers are here this is a sea of blue for nearly a mile and this is how long the route is for those who want to pay their respects. jetblue flew in more than 1,100 officers from all over the country for free. i have seen badges and vehicles from cincinnati and virginia and connecticut and california and it is a long way to come. i have talked to three officers who came from outside of new orleans and they said it was incredibly important for them to be here for this, and not to show support for the fallen officer, but also because they feel that they do still get the re respect and earn the respect of the majority of the nation, and they wanted to show that to the world by coming here to this funeral, and just another note dana about security here because it is not just police officers, but it is a lot of the communities here in the streets, and we are seeing the patrols on the roofs, and canine units and helicopters and many of the units are blocked off on the procession route where the casket is going to be driven down to the cemetery. it is not the only roadblocked off here. they are making sure that it is a safe place for them to hold this ceremony and to hold a proper funeral for one of their fallen. dana. thank you and great the information and color there. i should mention that as you were speaking sara we saw some of the congressional delegation exiting the funeral home there. is another one, peter king, the republican from new york coming out, and some other well known republicans, charlie rangel and congressman joe crowley who was on the show earlier today whose father and grandfather who were both new york city police officers and so we are watching the dignitaries come out, and that probably means not too far behind will be the casket of the slain officer, and while we are watching that i want to turn back to tom fuentes. and you heard sara talking about despite the commissioner bill bratton asking the rank and file not the turn their backs, some did. she reported very important to note that it was not the number that it was at rafael ramos funeral, but it happen ded nonetheless from a treatise from their leader because it detracts from the respects of their fallen comrade. and tom, what do you make of that as a former officer? i think they should not have done it in my opinion, it is not the time or place as mentioned by commissioner bratton. and i thought that commissioner bratton s request to not do it and he said that he would not discipline any officers and no repercussions that way, and he requested it as a fellow officer, and he was a fellow officer in the 1970s when we were pigs and spit on and he thought that police officers out there out of respect for him, and despite the feelings for the mayor which are neg thetive and deep, but out of respect for him, they might honor that respect. and let me play the devil s advocate they defect the freedom of speech everyday and why shouldn t they have their freedom of speech? why shouldn t they display their ainge anger if they are angry? they should, but by doing it today, they are talking about that instead of the great life of officer ramos, and their parents, and the other great officers in the world, and talk act this issue and that is the reason enough not to do it. i get that. and the big picture, and the years you were a cop? yes, in illinois, and 1970 to 1973 when i became a member of the fbi. and racial issues have changed since then, and society has changed since then but is this something that the police force focus odd n? absolutely. the idea that when people say we need community policing. they have had community policing. my father was a police officer and it was a kid going with him to community events and chaperoning field trips and dances and all of that and i was 1 years old when he was a police officer, and the idea that the police need to get into the community and work them, and when you talk about what officer liu and ramos did in their communities tashgs i are a part of that as well as thousands of nypd officers engaged everyday in their community and in the neighborhoods talking to the people trying to help in the policing that they are doing. i the think that is part of what the police are upset about with the public rhetoric that they have not done community policing or they need training because they don t know how to talk to people. police aufofficers have a phd in street psychology and if they don t talk to somebody properly it is because they don t want to and not because they don t know how. it is not because they need to take classes on wrestling, because the modern police officer has to be a wrestler and telling somebody they are under arrest and the person won t comply that is not going to cut it. and the rhetoric about policing needs to be that we need to have a discussion and not accusations back and forth by sound bite. and on that note, we need to return to the solemnity of this moment and hopefully we can see another picture of the sea of blue because it is powerful and poignant. and there it is. and before we go to t rehe reporters in the sea, tom, as a former police officer, yourself and what goes through your mind as you see that e remarkable scene. the brother 450d and the sisterhood of law enforcement, and why it is close, and why the remind minder of it. 115 police officers have died in the line of duty this year, and it is because of the recent amount of public discussion that has been so negative about policingch that is actually contributing to the police officers wanting to travel from california and canada and new orleans to come to be a part of this because they realize that they need to show the solidarity of being in the profession and calling together. well, it is looking like solidarity and achieving that by looking at the pictures. miguel marquez, i want to bring you back in, and listening to tom fuentes and being a police officer, and looking at the police officers from all over the country, and i would believe that is the sentiment that you are seeing there on the ground? yes, it sis, and i can see a half mile down and you can see a fine line of blue all of the way down. they have created just enough space in the very wide street so that the funeral cortege can make its way down that way. the mayor is speakingt that funeral in a personal way about detective liu. also this attack on both detective liu and ramos was not just an attack on two individuals, but it was an attack on the city of new york. the police work the police department being the bedrock of civil society, and the necessity to honor police officers and to have a good relationship between the political set and the police set. so my sense is that the rancor that we have seen in the recent weeks, and the anger in recent weeks h will find ss will find a newer and bet better level, and we have seen in the last half hour not only dignities, but police officer s to come out of the funeral home, and we expect to see the casket of detective liu to emerge shortly for the final ride to its final resting place. and miguel, you have sort of been experiencing the whiplash of emotions there in new york city and now more the past couple of weeks, because of the assassination of these two police officers but then just prior to that the anger at the justice system and in many ways, the cops that we have heard, but the justice system because eric garner who was now everybody knows was killed during an arrest after he was trying to illegally sell cigarettes and the uproar about no indictments about that. that is the ancillary and i have logged many miles as they have angrily taken over to the streets here and that is where a lot of the rancor between the mayor and the nypd comes from. there were beat cops walking alongside the protesters and stopping the traffic to make sure they could be safe and making sure adds they were taking over the streets and the city were safe. governor cuomo said it in his remarks last week probably best there is no better sign of what a great police department that we have that they were at the butt end of the anger of the protesters, and yet, they were protecting their fest first amendment rights while they were taking their abuse at the same time. so that s the sort of stuff that we saw for many, many miles through the streets of new york, and i am sure that those beat officers told their buddies by text and social media and everything else you should hear what they are calling us and hear what they are saying. there is already upset with the mayor before these two officers deaths, but afterward ss, it took it to another level. and i want to tell you that the towers to tunnels program that offered to pay off the home loans for them and they needed $800,000 and they have $700,000 and so they can almost pay off their home loan ss. and hundreds of thousands of dollars have been raised for these two individuals. for people who felt they were left out in the cold, and bereft and not loved in the city, and last week s funeral, and this week s funeral is showing a different picture. thank you, miguel for the insights and as you were speaking former mayor rudy giuliani is there to pay his respects as well. i want to go back to sara ganim who is there in the crowd, and by way of the context and the background, we have been talking about the new york mayor bill de blasio and the anger that he has apparently incited among these many of the cops the reason most recently is the reason that he taught his biracial son how to handle whether when he is approached by a police officer, because he would be approached differently, because of the color of his skin. and sara, that is what sparked the people turning their backs on him when he spoke last week and to a much lesser extent just this morning. reporter: that is right, dana and some say it goes back to his opposition of stop and frisk when he was running for mayor. and being here, and not just here for the wake yesterday and the funeral today, but going back a few weeks to the very public memorial site in brooklyn sorry, sara, i am sorry to interrupt, but i want to tell you that the family and the widow and the father of wenjian liu just exited the funeral home. keep going, i apologize. no, that is okay, dana. the days after were emotions very raw where the members of the community where where the members of the community had marched in the community had marched in the protests and they said this is not the time to criticize the mayor. there was a scene from the memorial and i witnessed it and it was so incredibly powerful where a woman came with a sign for officer ramos young son who said that your father had nothing wrong and she was having a hard time to tape it to the brick wall and officer came up to put it up on the wall and they put it up together and it was representative at the mood of the memorial, because it was interesting at the same time that some of of the police unions were criticizing the mayor, and now a few weeks remove d removed from here at the funeral here at the wake, and i heard many officers some of them former nypd who work in other departments in other states who had come back for this say, look, it is a political issue, and also a very personal issue for many of the officers but this funeral is not the place for that. and that comes from this feeling that last week at officer ramos funeral, the pictures, the the photographs of the nypd turning their backs on the mayor, those were incredibly powerful pictures, and they changed the narrative of that day away from the funeral, and away from the celebration of his life and towards a more political issue, and people did not want to see that happen again today. and sara i have been in those situation, and it is physically difficult to move around but have you talked to any of the officers who defied commissioner bratton and turned their backs nonetheless? well shgs, i have not, but dana, from where i am, it was not a whole lot of them around certainly mot the numb lyly not the numbers that we saw last week and in the crowd of about 450 where i can see and count from where i am standing maybe 50, or maybe even less, and then some of them were not nypd at all, and they were officers from other jurisdictions who wanted to make the point that they stand alongside the nypd on this issue, but it wasn t a majority and it was not half. it was a few. and their commissioner william bratton, when he made this plea for them not to do this today, he said look it is not a mandate and i won t discipline anybody over it, but i am asking that this day not become about this conversation that we are having right now, that it become that the narrative stay with officer liu and his family and the nypd and like i mentioned before when i talked to officers who came in from out of town i did get the feeling that one of the reason ss that they wanted to come was because they wanted to show that solidarity and they wanted to show that they do feel the support of the nation and while this is a personal issue, a lot of them felt that it was an issue for today. thank you, and that is the case for today. for the viewers who are tuning in we are looking at a cold and rainy day in new york city, but one that is not deterring the thousands is of police officers and dignitaries who have come from around the kuncountry to pay their respects to officer wenjian liu who lost his life and killed on desemcember 20th along with his partner rafael ramos. there was an incredibly moving funeral service that included speeches not just from the dignitaries such as the mayor as we have been discussing or the police commissioner, but hi father who spoke cantonese, and did not speak english, but you did not need to speak that language that to understand the sorrow and the pain of losing his not only son, but his only son and his only child, and then from his widow who he was married to for two months who called him her best friend her soulmate and somebody who really gave his all for not just her and his family but for the city of new york. i want to bring back tom fuentes, and as we look, we are as i mentioned, we heard the ceremony and seeing everybody leave. what we are waiting for right now is for the casket of wenjian liu to exit the funeral home and make its way down to what the reporters on the scene have been describing over a mile of people just lined up on the procession route. what are your thoughts as we areing at this now? just how moving and solemn and the emotions of the officers are of everyone who is attending this. and you know if any good came from the last two weeks of the funeral s funerals, it is that when you have got to know officer ramos and the family better and officer liu and the family better you realize that they are not just people but great human beings and great people and the things they stood for, they are the best that our society has, and they are police officers. it makes me proud to have been a police officer and fbi agent and 36 years sworn in both positions, and makes me proud that i was one of them. tom i have seen you on our air talking about a lot of really, really horrible things unfortunately over the last couple of years, but this is personal for you, i can tell. this is so thank you, for doing this and you are bringing a sense of what it is like for those of us who again didn t have the honor to serve can understand. i want to go totoer errol louis and tom verni, and what are your thoughts? well listening to e dedetek detective liu s family and his wife speak, and like you said you don t have to speak the language to know the raw emotion they are channeling. it is unbelievable tragedy that many of us can t wrap our heads around what took place a couple of weeks ago. i know that as seen earlier on cnn there were a number of nypd officers that did turn their backs when the mayor was speaking, and then when the police commissioner came up to speak they turned back around, so it is important to note that the officers out of respect for commissioner bratton did turn around and for the entire funeral were faced forward. the only time that some of them did turn around is when the mayor was speaking. what do you make of that? well, you have to remember that the police are not allowed to strike here in new york. there is a law that prevents them from striking. they are working pour or five years without a contract, and aside from the political rhetoric that mayor de blasio has come out not only as mayor, but as a candidate when he was running for mayor, and also his comments after the no true bill in staten island for the eric garner incident he has come out in a very anti-nypd specifically set of rethetoric. and the officers, you can t not take that lightly, because this is somebody that you are working for, and aside from the fact ta they are working for years without a contract which in and upon itself is ridiculous, this is the only way that they have a chance as a group to have a silent protest to show their discomfort with the mayor and disagree with him. they are basically giving him a no confidence vote is what it is coming down to. they don t have any confidence in the mayor to prept them in a favorable light to represent them in a favorable light, and it is not just based on the perception but on the mayor s actions in the last year or two. ander roll and errol, you have covered the police department for many years, and new york city and does this strike you as more raw and intense than in the past? well, it is unusual, and not more raw. anybody who was around in 1992 when 10,000 cops essentially rioted on the steps of city hall sort of stormed the building and caricatures and that was a time of very high crime. crime is at a historic lows and as tom points out, there are underlying workplace issues that need to be resolved and not by bill de blasio s making and he has been there for one year and five-year no contract is something that he inherited and trying to e negotiate, and for this department to be as upset as they are speaks to the difficulty of changing the culture of the very large, very respected and very proud organization and there is no question that the change is endorsed by the citizens of new york. they voted in bill de blasio for a reason. this is not some side plank or side print in his agenda, because it is central for what he ran on, and he won in overwhelming votes to make change. and speaking of mayor de blasio blasio he did speak in the funeral in the last hour. i want to play a little bit of what he said. let s listen. detective wenjian liu was a brave man. he walked a path of courage. a path of sacrifice and a path of kindness. this is who he was. and he was taken from us much too soon. i want to go back to you, tom. as a former member of the nypd and as a detective, when you hear the mayor say that does that make you feel more feel better a about the mayor and the tension that we have seen thus far that he is trying hard obviously to mend the fences? well, it is something that i have not seen in quite a while. i honestly, you know, me, personally, and i think that i speak on behalf of a number of officers, and i can t speak on behalf of the entire department of course but i don t really put a lot of, you know credibility into the words that he came out with. i mean, he is really trying to back pedal as best he can. i think that he knows that on a lot of levels that he, you know spoke, i h think, out of turn and especially after the grand jury made their verdict out of staten island and you can t take back what you said and you can maybe offer the retraction and come back and say, listen maybe i spoke out of turn and maybe not saying that the entire nypd is a bunch of racist storm trooper, because that is what he was saying. what happened in staten island had nothing to do with the race, and it was an arrest of a career criminal who chose to resist arrest and the officers used physical force to arrest him, and unfortunately result ed ined in that man s death, and that is in part of itself a tragedy. you won t find any officers glad that person died but it is certainly not the result of the officers looking for, and quite frankly, the officers that day were enforcing quality of life law has the mayor and the city council are out there wanting them and demanding they enforce. turning away from the politics for a moment and back to the solemnity of the moment. what we are seeing now, and waiting for casket of wenjian liu to come out, and while we do, i want to come back to remarkable and the brave eulogy that his widow, and the two were married for two months gave during the funeral ceremony. listen to this. i thank you for sharing this moment with me. with us. with our family. to reflect the goodness of his soul. and the wonderful man that he is. many of you know as joe, especially at work. but to me he is my soulmate. tom, back to you in new york. you know, while you are on the beat, i m guessing as tom fuentes here in the d.c. studio said to me a short while ago, your family is on pins and needles everyday even though things like this don t happen very often, and you are always in the line of fire and it is your duty and what you do? yeah, i had a full head of hair when i started the police department and for those who have seen me it has taken its toll and i did 22 years in the nypd, and i was a beat cop, and community policing and so the concept of the communeity policing that some people have talked about and maybe trying to e restore here in new york i think it is a fantastic way of policing neighborhoods. it absolutely is. and when it is done correctly, and the nypd unfortunately have lost 7,000 or 8,000 police officers since the time of 9/11 and so the physical bodies that you need to conduct that, it is going to be taking some fancy footwork to reassignment personnel to do that the, but that would be a great way to do that to reconnect with the communities in the city. but either way, whether you are doing the community policing or the narcotics tails or chase canning after gangsters, any time you are walking around, you are a walking target. so until you finish the stint that you are slated to do whether it is 20 or 25 years in the police department and until you get out and retire do the families breathe a sigh of relief that you are finished and do your duty. i can imagine. miguel marquez, back to you at the scene. we are looking at the two flags from the color guard, and the ceremonial and now they are going up so perhaps we are going to be seeing the the casket coming out soon. but miguel, it is cold can and rainy and still packed with people there. they are not going anywhere, and this is a solid blue mass that want toss to show the support. the rain has been going on, and it has stopped now shgs, and the trumpeters have come out so we expect taps will be played soon. there were a number of things that we learned in the service. the the mayor gave two examples. clear ly clearly he spent a lot of time with the liu family in the last couple of weeks. clearly a man who loved to fish and when he got a big fish he loved to share it with with the family. and two was the call he went on and there was a call of a man who had fallen and he spoke chinese and when they needed help he would be called in and the man was on the floor and he didn t want to get up or move and liu spent hours with this man and turned out that it was a guy who was elderly and just wanted some company, and liu was more than happy to play along and help this guy up, and those tiny things. and this is a guy who studied accounting but he wanted to become a cop. and he did. bill brotton, the police commissioner spoke about being a cop. he came to the profession late, but the pool was just as strong as someone like brill bratton who joined very, very young. perhaps the most telling sign of this family and the remarkable life was his cousin who said that we didn t call him wenjian but we called him joe. this is a family that arrived here 20 years ago from china and has become fully american family as we wait for the only son of this family wenjian liu to make his way out of the funeral home here in brooklyn. dana. absolutely heartbreaking to watch and think about. and while we are weight, werare waiting, we want to go to another portion of the funeral home and hear from the new york police commissioner bill bratton and hear what he had to say. officer liu believed in the possibility of making a safer world. all cops do. it is why we do what we do. and it is why we run towards danger when others run away. we believe in the possibility of keeping disorder controlled. we believe in the possibility of a city free from fear. pretty emotional from him, and at times in watching his speech even somebody who has seen a lot in his many decades on the police forces across the country look like it was hard for him to sort of keep it together understandably given the gravity of the moment and the speech that he had to give for the loss of his rank and file. we are looking at the color guard and the ceremonial moment when wenjian liu s casket comes out of the funeral home to begin a procession in what the re reporters on the scene there have described as remarkable a mile long the sea of people and not just police officers around the country, but the everyday average new york citizens out there, and sara is out there with the people. sa sara, as they are ready for the moment for the processional and what are you hear prg the people hearing from the people on the street there? reporter: dana i am here with a group of toronto officers who have collected badges from a group of the people here who have handed them out the the members of the community and not souvenirs, but handing them out as a remembrance of the day, a it was a really good moment. it was a great moment to see the officers first of all from so far away and not even part of this country and the united states interacting with the members of the community who came here from far away places who are here to just pay their respects and as they wait along the procession line, they are exchange, and the worlds are colliding. it was a sweet moment. mostly you know officers are standing out here. and it is driz canzling on and off, and they are waiting along a packed processional line, and they are waiting to pay their respects. off officers are here from all across the country, and more than 1,100 came in on jetblue for free, but i would venture to say that i would take the guess to say that there are more than 1,100 officers here from out of town. i have seen so many with my own eyes from departments across the country, and not just the officers are here dana and something that i have noticed is that i have seen patrol cars from as far away as ohio. i saw a group of sheriff s deputies on motorcycle who clearly came here from cincinnati out of state, and that is showing that they drove all of this way on the motorcycles to be here today. i have seen the patrol cars from other states as well not as far away as ohio, but there were a group of motorcycle officers from new jersey today traveling in a group. so we have seen a lot of nuggets that sew that this is really a community event, and when i say community i mean not just new york but community of support and community of within new york as well but a lot of moments today that are indicative of why people want to be here. the events in new york in the last couple of weeks, that is part of it. there is a feeling that they need to come here to show support because of the recent events here. that is clear to me. a couple of the officers here who talked to me from out of state and had been members of the nypd prior to leaving the state told me that they wanted to make it clear that nypd is very diverse, and very diverse and large department. they didn t buy into this idea that there is you know widespread racism. they wanted to come to show and stand alongside their follow officers officers, and show their support because of that reason, and i have to say it is something that is very clear as we stand outside here today. dana, finally, i want to say that it does appear that things are going to be moving along here shortly. as you look down the sea of blue i want to make it clear that this is a very, very long procession line because there is nearly a mile worth of police officers standing here filling up more than half of the street so that they can be here and witness officer wenjian liu s final drive to the final resting place. they are waiting here to pay their final respect ss. dana? and is sara talked about the solidarity as they say, and they all bleed blue. that is very clear in watching these pictures and these images. solidarity is not just about the local police from new york and around the country, but the federal law enforcement. james coalmymey is the drekirector of the fbi, and he spoke. i was not lucky enough to know detective liu. but i have listened to other people talk about how deeply he cared about being a police officer. and former fbi officer, tom fuentes, why so important for the director of the fbi to be there to speak? well to let people know that it is an international issue, and he represents the federal law enforcement, and it is more than the thin blue line, because all of the international partners stand together the as well. the fbi is a conduit the rest of the world through the legal at ta attache program, and they can get assistance from each other, and it is a worldwide fraternity and not just within the ud or within the united states or new york. and errol louis, as you look at the pictures the perception of outside of new york city is a rough and tumble place, but when push comes to shove, the new yorkers get together and they hold hands and really there for each other. i noeknow a lot of the people that we are seeing in these pictures are cops from out of the city but errol, as somebody who has covered new york city, and been a resident of new york city for a long time i m guessing that is probably not a surprise to you? oh no not at all. the thin blue line is pretty thick and long as you can see. i mean, i should mention that my dad is a retired nypd inspector, and my older sister is a retired detective. there are lots and lots of people who have lots and lots of close relationships to the cops. new yorkers are extremely proud of the nypd and it is an important institution in the town. one thing that is important, dana, the protesters who were doing a lot of the black lives matter one of the slogans and organizing all over the country, and they inspired sort of a not quite backlash but a parallel movement, and there were lots of people who have been out there doing their own marches in surprising number of jurisdictions all over to the country, and from massachusetts to utah, to seattle and everywhere in bewean, these sort of spontaneous citizen rallies in sup role for policing. and one of the central democratic institutions in our country. and as you said your father was or is on the police force, and what is your opinion in regard to the national racial tensions? well, i called up my dad, and i call him up anyway but i asked him about some of the events and what he thought, and he said that he was surprised that the cops had turned the backs and so forth and he read that as them being ma nup lated by the union relationship in a way that would not have happened in the day. it is fine to be angry with the political leadership and fine to do something about it but you don t do it when you are in uniform, and not because it is the thing to do. these things tend to work themselves out, and his perspective which is valuable is that it ebbs and flows, and the cops get upset about one thing or another, and whether it is creation of the civilian complaint review board which is a hot button issue a generation ago or appointment of the new inspector general which is a recent fight and court fight or the stop and frisk, and now body cameras and other procedural questions, and it is something that plays out in the public, but it is not supposed to divide the city. as i mentioned here in new york and you have it right up there on the screen there is not so fundamental of a breach that the whole town is going to fall apart. it is the kind of dispute that comes up every so often do we need to tweak it a little bit. my friend tom mentioned eric garner as a career criminal and they would say, he is a guy selling loose cigarettes and trying to scratch outt a living on the wrong side of the law, but you give that guy a ticket a warning. you don t swarm him with six cops and end up killing him, and these are the indkind of fine-tuning questions that need to go on at the the community level. that is where this gets solved andt not so much the politicians. no question, err oshgtsol and as with we await the casket coming out of the funeral home, i want to get back to the human element here as we are seeing a young man slain in the line of duty. and i want to go to what his cousin officer liu s cousin said about him speaking at his funeral earlier today. he was the most caring and thoughtful cousin that anyone could have. he would go out of his way to make sure that we were always happy and taken care of. he brought pride and honor to our family. he was a role model for many. myself included. and will continue to be. oh. that is just incredible and poignant. miguel marquez is standing outside of the funeral home and he watched the entire funeral, and you are watching the the scene right now, deskribcribe it. oh, it is always tough to take take, the drum corps has just come up from a side street. they have specialized vehicle that they have filled with the flowers from inside of the funeral home with a badge of the city of new york police department and the drum corps may be the most chilling of everything that will happen today as they march down the street, and the steady beat and the steady dirge as they pass the line of blue. several members from inside of the funeral home have come out, and we expect that things have expected to get going here fair fairly soon. it is very, very difficult to watch. impressive in the mile or so that i can see, all blue.