Page 8 - Peter Bergin News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Trust their intelligence agencies to do the right thing. i understand we need a balance between liberty and our national security. but -- and i don't want to hold all of this metadata, but, by the way, i'm going to ask somebody else for the decision about just what we do with all of this large pile of information that we collect. so he raised all the problems, and it was a great speech that way. i think he did some things by executive order, but he did leave a lot of these decisions up to congress. and as we all know, congress can't decide what day of the week it is. so he think there are a lo...

Call from san diego to a known al qaeda safe house in yemen. nsa saw that call. but could not see that the call was coming from an individual already in the united states. the telephone metadata program, under section 215, was designed to map the communications of terrorists, so we can see who they may be in contact with as quickly as possible. >> all right. so when you heard that, peter, you're an expert on this subject. what did you think? >> you know, the real problem in this case was this khalid al madar was known to be in this country by the cia. and the real problem was not that cia miss...

Point, hey, listen, if i want to hear what angela merkel thinks -- >> there is a big loophole there if they want it open -- >> an enormous loophole and he made the point very firmly saying, hey, we have the most capabilities and i'm not going to apologize for that. and i'm not going to rein it in. he said we're not going to do unilateral disarmament on this, because we know others are doing similar spying. >> i was fascinated when he said -- peter, you'll appreciate this, gloria, you, as well, when he said you go into the white house situation room, there's a reason you can't bring a cell phon...

Given the understandable attention that this issue has received, i have made clear to the intelligence community that unless there is a compelling national security purpose, we will not monitor the communications of heads of state and government of our close friends and allies. and i've instructed my national security team, as well as the intelligence community, to work with foreign counterparts, to deepen our coordination and cooperation in ways that rebuild trust going forward. >> all right. let's talk about what we just heard from the president. those proposed changes and more. joining us, ...

0 right now, too far, not far enough. reaction pouring in about president obama's speech about spies. and a drought emergency. some cities see annual rain amounts 30 to 40 inches below normal. the danger is growing as wildfires spread. and right now with an aarp card and a dance party, the first lady of the united states, michelle obama, marks the big 5-0. hello, i'm wolf blitzer, reporting from washington. we start with president obama's big announcement of sweeping changes to american surveillance. in his highly anticipated speech just a little while ago, he defended the vault collection o...