>> hi everyone, this is al jazeera america. i'm john siegenthaler. decision day: >> that process by the time we get through it, closes the window on mounting a realistic campaign. for president. >> vice president biden says he won't run for the white house. what's behind the decision. what does it mean for hillary clinton? brothers in arms. putin and assad, fighting

together in syria and now a very public show of unity in moscow. insecurity. the personal e-mails of cia director john brennan hacked. reports say a teenager was behind it. plus guitar man. g.e. smith. from playing with dylan to bowie to leading the snl band for a decade. he shares a life in music. his remarks were both political and personal. in some ways a lifetime in the making. joe biden said today that he will not run for president. ending the speculation. it's the news hillary clinton has been hoping for but what does it really mean for the 2016 race for white house? david schuster is here, david.

>> reporter: john after months of spanning the speculation himself, joe biden has ended the fears between the party's establishment and that's a very going boost for hillary clinton. in the white house rose guarantee with his wife and president obama by his side, vice president biden ended the uncertainty. >> unfortunately, i believe we're out of time. the time necessary to mount a winning campaign for the nomination. >> reporter: biden pointed to the grieving process oover the cancer death this summer of his son beau. his family has awe made progress, several family members encouraged him to run. but he spoke about the window of time needed to produce a competitive campaign. >> i have concluded it has closed. ing closing th closing one of the most significantin fights against

hillary clinton. at the first democratic debate clinton described republicans as her enemies. this week, biden who prides himself on his ability to reach bipartisan deals said repeatedly: >> yoabi don't believe like somo that it is nigh each to look at republicans. i don't think we should look add republicans as our enemies. >> he seemed to take a jab at clinton for arctic oil and our approach to syria. >> they should run on the record. >> clinton made no mention of biden's criticism. the vp is a good man, good friend. inspired by his optimism and

commitment to change the world for the better. vermont senator bernie sanders told reporters, joe biden, a good friend, has made odecision that he feels is good for himself. after the last 15 months in office he will fight for a host of policy goals including getting money out of politics and finding a cure for cancer. >> while i will not be a candidate, i will not be silent. i intend to speak out fearlessly and forcefully, to indicates where we stand as a party and where we need ogo as a inflation. >> reporter: but that influence will diminish now, since biden has directed a calm finish for a long and highly political career. the odds were stacked against him. after three months of soul-searching biden shut down

the speculation and ended some of the ambitions he himself had stoked. >> thank you all very much. >> the most meaningful portion of his announcement could come tomorrow when hillary clinton testifies before congress. even if clinton is damaged tomorrow there's little chance of changing the contours of the democratic nomination because without joe biden establishment democrats again have nowhere else to turn. >> all right david thank you. >> john nichols is the washington correspondent for the nation. john why do you think he made this decision? >> i think he was relatively frank about it in his own announcement. and that is, that the time had really run out. that's another way of saying that he couldn't see a route to the nomination. and i think he was right, to be

honest. a month ago, it looked very possible, looked very reasonable to suggest that biden could get in and potentially, supersede hillary clinton. >> why could he get in then? >> what? well, as he said, again, if you look at that discussion of the grieving process i think was sincere, this family was really ripped apart by what for them was a surprise, the loss of beau biden. they knew he had been sick but the loss took time. i don't think there was any question of that. i think biden would look to see what would happen with hillary clinton, how her campaign would go. the striking thing has been that october has turned out to be a pretty good month for hillary clinton, and as a result, that opening that seemed to be there in august and september, i think, closed a great deal. >> what's your sense of the relationship between hillary clinton and joe biden?

>> i don't think it's overly close. i don't think it's necessarily combative. you should remember they ran against each other for president in 2007, early 2008. and within the administration, there have been a number of points at which it has appeared that biden may have been on one side, clinton on another. i don't want to paint a picture of some stark rivalry or some birth disagreement but i think they may actually come from different places on handful of issues. and i think that one of the things that biden said in the announcement today was very, very interesting was the suggestion that he would be, to some extent, policing the presidential race on behalf of the obama administration. effectively saying, if these people try to distance themselves too much from president obama, biden might step up and say some things. my suspicion is that that was something of a warning to hillary clinton.

>> we're assuming or is hillary clinton you think assuming that biden supporters go to her? >> i think that she assumes correctly, that she will get a portion of them. remember: biden's concept was to come into the race and take supporters from others. and so it's not as if he has a great pool of committed backers. now that he is out, the likelihood is that people who were heading toward hillary clinton will go the rest of the way. but also, some folks who are headed towards bernie sanders will go the rest of the way to him. so i don't think you'll have a clear movement one direction or the other. >> john nichols always good to see you. we'll talk again soon, thanks very much. now to the house hearing on the deadly 2012 attack on u.s. diplomatic compound in egg benghazi, libya.

the clintons, the hot seat is a familiar place. mike viqueria reports. >> a clinton is caught up in a congressional probe. the line has a familiar ring. before benghazi, there was travel-gate. the firing of seven white house travel staffers. and johnny chung, writer of elicit checks. the suicide of vince foster and the pardon of mark relinquish, the fugitive financeer, whose wife denise was a donor. all involved bill clinton, hillary clinton or both. >> i know they don't want the rest of their lives investigating clinton and i'm one of them. >> dan burnett who with sometimes bizarre techniques led investigations into all these topics and more. as the burnett committee's top campaign staffer mark carolo had

a front row seat. >> you get into the investigative hearings where there's politics ton line real politics, watch out, welcome to ring linringling brothers. >> it can be rl performanc reale art. the swear swearing-in. raised right hand or not. congress often makes witnesses to show up to plead the fifth. invoking their right to self incrimination. but courts have ruled it is not necessary. are the probes and investigations just a political circus or do they serve some public good? the answer is most of the time a little bit of both. penn state professor lance cole says the system is unlike anything else. >> it's exhausting.

preparation is essential, it's fraught with peril, both for witnesses and the questioners. >> the complicated story of the clintons' arkansas real estate purchase gone bad. the question of the 1996 presidential campaign when bill clinton ran for reelection. the benghazi hearing says cole are at a fork in the road. >> will they be more like watergate where there were findings of significance and obviously are important consequences or will they be more like the whitewater hearings where over time will seem like largely politically motivated. >> hillary clinton spent a role in both of those probes. she was a 27-year-old staffer that led to president nixon's

resignation in 1984. in any areas, theatrics can score the issues. >> it's a toxic flammable imussiblcombustible event and ye hoping that some of the facts that come out of the hearing can make it out into the record. >> before she takes her place before the benghazi committee the hot seat will have a familiar feel. mike viqueria, washington. a major development in the race for the next speaker of the house of representatives. wisconsin representative paul ryan has said he is willing to serve. key obstacle seems to have fallen. michael shure is in washington, michael, the freedom party says it is supporting not endorsing ryan. what does it mean. >> it is like they wait for you to go on the air before they

release this announcement. they didn't know the rule until earlier today so when paul ryan made that one of his conditions for taking the speakership that he would be endorsed by the freedom caucus, they didn't endorse, they got a two-thirds majority and they seemed poised to put their endorsement behind that majority, and if you count every vote that he's already counted be on the road to the speaker of the house. i have congressman nick mulvaney, from south carolina. tell us a little bit about what went into that, if there was a sense in the room that it was time to come to a decision? >> we took a long time with it. we met four times with a group, we actually met with paul for an hour and a half earlier in the afternoon. we talked about putting it off until tomorrow but we had everyone there, we said let's decide, there was no reason to drag this out. there is no way we could get 80%

but we got more than two-thirds. as you said if paul ryan wants to be speaker we think now he has the votes to do so. >> not getting to 80% why is that a key reason for you? >> it's our rule, an abstract number, we've oanld use only uso or three times. not often invoked. he thought he could get it from others with 50% but our internal rules it is 80%. >> he said without the norm i'm not going to take the speakership. he didn't get the enforcement. endorsement. >> if paul wants an out, if he wants to be speaker he's got more than enough votes to do so. >> to vacate the speaker issue which is one of the other conditions he put on his willingness to be speaker, you

didn't come up with that. you didn't grant that to him either. >> we're not really interested in making the speaker more powerful as part of this process and this has all been about process, not about person. john boehner ran a bad shop. we supported dan webster previously. so this has been about process and giving speaker more ability is not something i think we're interested in. >> so you know while it is probably good news from where paul ryan is sitting, he last the numbers, he that is votes, he doesn't have specifically some of the things he is looking for, if he's thinking he's not going to get the job that's still out there for him. >> we can't make him make the decision one way or the other but we can say freedom caucus is not standing in the way. >> congressman thank you for joining us.

>> thank you for having me. >> the freedom caucus on the eve of being able to put an endorsement behind paul ryan hasn't but lacking asupermajority they are going to be voting for paul ryan. >> assad's surprise trip to moscow. how russia has changed the outlook in syria. how little we know about the lock term health effects of marijuana.

>> we learned today that syrian president bashar al-assad made a surprise visit to moscow. he met with president vladimir putin on tuesday as russia and syria continue their coordinated military campaign against regime's opponents. jamie mcintire has more from the pentagon. >> john, the united states and

russia are not just at odds in the skies over syria, they are also engaged in a raging public relations battle, each offering diverse representations what's happening on the ground. >> a video from state cameras went viral this week, jabar, a northeastern suburb of damascus. extent of the devastation near the syrian capital after four years of war. misery which the pentagon now accuses russian air power of simply adding to. >> the russians have been indiscriminate, they have been reckless in syria, they seem to have no difficulty dropping cluster munitions, around where civilians may be. they do not appear to be based on their actions, they do not appear to be interested in

defeating i.s.i.l, they appear to be interested in preserving the assad regime. >> the white house says syrian president bashar al-assad red car pet welcome in moscow ends the fiction that russian intervention is anything about other than keeping assad in power. the pengt pentagon insists russs lying exaggerating the number and effectiveness of the strikes. russia says it's conducted hundreds of air strikes since it began bombing three weeks ago. the u.s. says it's more like 140. meanwhile, the pentagon says it's putting new pressure on the i.s.i.l. stronghold of raqqa, in northern syria by air lifting 50 tons of ammunition to a loose alliance of fighters nearby. the syrian arab coalition is a group of groups between ten and

12 with about 5,000 fighters total and 20 leaders who were pulled out briefly the get a week of training to use the new supplies and ammo. in recommendation of the former defense secretary robert gates who told the senate committee the old u.s. plan of taking fighters out of syria for training was never going to work. instead gates testified the u.s. should find motivated tribes or ethnic groups and arm them. >> they may not fight in iraq, or outside of their own turf. again i.s.i.s. but they may well fight to the death to protect their own home land, their own villages. >> as u.s. and russian war planes now operate under agreed proceed cals in syrian aiprotoc,

senator john mccain called the memorandum of understanding with the russians immoral, saying it gives president putin clear skies to bomb u.s. partners. the pentagon today said it understands the frustration of some iraqi lawmakers who have been calling for russia to conduct air strikes in iraq as well as syria. but the pentagon says the u.s. and coalition air strikes are carefully coordinated with forces on the ground and designed to minimize civilian casualties. so far the iraqi prime minister has not asked for russian helped, something the u.s. says would be highly problematic, john. >> thank you jamie. one of several new attacks in the west bank as officials began a high profile diplomatic push to restore calm. at least 53 palestinians and 9

israelis have been killed in the last month. stefanie dekker has more from ramallah. >> shuttle diplomacy from israel to the west bank. dangerous escalation. palestinian president mahmoud abbas made it clear that palestinian people have a right to protect themselves. a message he will be bringing to the u.s. secretary of state john kerry when he meets him in jordan on friday. >> secretary of state kerry knows exactly what we want. we want to return to negotiations based on international legitimacy. settlement expansion is illegal, we all know that. let's put that on the table, let's do that then we will return to negotiations. >> reporter: abbas says, more specifically and crucially, the fear that israel wants to change the status quo at that time al-aqsa mosque compound known to jews as the temple mount.

many believe that jews will be able to pray there limiting palestinians access to the mount. what exactly international protection means? >> in the hands of the security council, what kind of international protection forces or presence, the president is asking that we give an international presence like monitoring. >> at the al-aqsa mosque exownt, templcompound, temple mount? >> yes. >> thank you very much. there have been a steady stream of protests and confrontations with the israeli army and a recent surge of incidence of stabbings by israelis by palestinians.

an injury after an attack in ramallah. one palestinian was arrested, another shot. this was the funeral for two palestinian teenagers shot dead tuesday night. local sources say they were unarmed. israelis said they tried to stab israeli forces. >> in jerusalem young men are being killed without committing a crime. a knife is planted next to them. this obviously has an effect on us and makes us demonstrate. >> reporter: two different narratives and two peoples becoming more suspicious of each other. serious diplomatic decisions, with the only way to calm a tense and violent situation. stefanie dekker, ramallah, occupied west bank. widely condemned today for

suggesting that a palestinian inspired the holocaust. netanyahu made the comment at the world zionist conference on tuesday. here is his description of a meeting between adolph hitler and the grand musti. mufti hajj. >> what should i do with them he asked? he said burn them. >> whether the two met in november of 1941, the holocaust was already underway. netanyahu later said he wasn't absolving hitler of responsibility. instead he said he was trying to suggest that palestinians targeted jews even before the state of israel was created. coming up next on the broadcast washington's latest security breach. the private pleals o e-mails ofa

director expose. and monitoring the progress of endangered whales from the sky.

>> this is al jazeera america, i'm john siegenthaler. intelligence tests. the director of the cia hacked. >> director brennan understands as well as anybody in the federal government the need to handle sensitive data with the appropriate level of caution. >> what the breach says about so-called cyber security. above and beyond. how toughe stunning new drone is give scientists a rare understanding of endangered species. >> plus g.e. smith. >> he's singing mr. tambourine man. i can't believe beatles are on the side stage watching us. >> from center stage at saturday night live. one on one with a rock 'n' roll master. is wikileaks has been making

private information public for years from classified u.s. documents to internal e-mails at sony. today, the group released what it said were e-mails from cia director john brennan's personal account. the hacker behind the breach reportedly a high school student. roxana saberi has the story. >> a security clearance application, a 2007 list of recommendations for next president on handling iran. a letter from a republican senator, advocating the cia's interrogation techniques. according to wikileaks, those are some of the contents of a hack from cia director john brennan's personal aol account. for now no classified information seems to have surfaced. making the hack of an agent potentially more damaging than embarrassing. >> the need to handle sensitive data with the appropriate level of caution.

>> the breach according to the new york post was conducted buy high schooler who says he also homeland security secretary jazz johnson. jess johnson. jeh johnson. >> when he was plietion fo appla white house counterterrorism advisor, people he knew from years of working at the cia. brennan's policy e-mail took a swipe at george w. bush, criticizing his representation of iran as a part of a worldwide axis of evil. the cia says the breaches are under investigation, on wed

it directly addressed the matter, saying the bre brennan family's hack was a fam family matter, could happen to anyone and should be condemned not promoted. roxana saberi, al jazeera. >> patricpatrick tucker, is in washington, d.c, tonight, patrick put this into perspective for us. how significant is this hacking? >> well, last has been mentioned, they don't seem particularly monumental. it is primarily a black eye for the agency and what it really does show is that an intelligence agency that's carnlgd witcharged with collectn

intelligence all around the world is rown b run by basicalla human being. all of that is vulnerable today. because as we create information, that information has to go somewhere to be relevant and that is vulnerabilitvulnerability to thf hack that we saw today. >> i understand that yet we think that the craze is almost impenetrable, supposed to be the most secure agency in this country if not the world yet the director's personal e-mail gets hacked, how does that say? >> the hacking per se only falls under the broadest possible definition of the use of a computer to steal information. the alleged assailants or criminals in this case posed as verizon employees in a phone call with verizon, used that misrepresentation to get the director's phone number, his aol

account, his credit card information then they went to aol and misrepresented themselves again. it wasn't an incredibly technically sophisticated act, it was shrewd act of intelligence-gathering. the director of the cia did not use two factor e-mail identification, cyber hygiene 101. a lot of people in government have to have differently accounts witdifferent accountswy don't know how to make them more secure. could it have happened to anyone. >> why the aol account, why did they go after that one? did they go after that because it was easy? >> it's very odd. aol has this reputation among olot of people who watch technology as not the most secure or modern way to communicate. at the same time, like i have an aol account among variety of

different accounts. and it's one that actually has a lot of enduring favor among the national security community. a form he deputy director of the nsa has one as does the form he director of darpa. this is an act of kind of laziness really, to use your aol account for exchanging personal level when you're at that level. when we interact and quickly receive it and send it somewhere else we enjoy all of these seemingly private moments and in fact they are anything but. this is sort of thing that i think the director just realized today and what's so odd that we all produce on the order of 5,000 megabytes of information on a daily basis to our accommodation and going. dlildigital strategies and thats just a forecast of what's to

come. >> patrick good to see you. obviously not a good news for the director or aol or verizon. president obama spoke about drug abuse in west virginia, a state that's all too familiar with that issue. west virginia leads the nation in overdose deaths. but prescription deaths and heroin deaths are at an all time high, encouraging addicts to seek treatment. >> this crisis is taking lives, it's destroying families, it's shattering communities all around the country. and that's the thing about substance abuse. it doesn't discriminate, it touches everybody. to soccer moms to inner city kids. >> the president called for more training for hundreds of thousands of health care providers. the goal is to help them prescribe drugs more

effectively. new york city is banning dangerous and deadly synthetic marijuana. mayor bill deblasio signed three bills today imposing jail and heavy fines on makers and sellers of the drug. new york state has launched a public service campaign to notify residents. >> listen up new york. >> it's trying to destroy our generation. >> it's called synthetics. >> some thought it would be a good idea to spray poison on herbs and sell it to you. >> the city has seen almost 5,000 emergency room visits linked to synthetic marijuana. the use of real marijuana has doubled in the united states since 2001. a new study shows 22 million adults reported using marijuana in 2013. that is a great portion of the population, for recreational and therapeutic purposes. but there are possible down sides to so many people getting

high. jake ward is in san francisco with that, jake. >> john, really there is no clear sense of the long term effects of marijuana and that's really the point of a new brookings institution report, to change the way the brookings institution is pointed out, to stifle marijuana in the united states. a lot of people are using marijuana in many cases as self medicating and yet we don't know the science of what is actually doing to them. >> aaron hind was 18 years old when he went to fight in iraq. >> couple of people in my company got killed. >> as always, the trauma of war followed him home. >> i would be in a park. all of a sudden my mind would be wandering, what would happen if a big bomb was dropped on it.

>> he started smoking pot. >> i.t. allows me tit allows men daily tas task tasks and my lif. even as the country consumes as much cannabis as it is, it is almost impossible to know anything for sure about the long term effects of consuming i.t. it. that's because federal law prevents its research. we certainly don't know if it can treat a soldier's ptsd. >> right now i could tell a curb doctor that i'm suffering from angst and i need marijuana and i could get it. and i could bring it back to my office and use it legally. but instead if i said, i want to study marijuana and its effects

on the body that would take me years and that's crazy. >> heroin, lsd, ecstasy, a lot of these are easy tore study than marijuana. if we are studyin studying aspir lsd, that's all we have to do, but for marijuana we have to go through a whole series of reviews. >> they face an open ended public health review unique to pot which could stall research for years. >> the pressure on the federal government right now i think is greater than it has ever been. to allow this research to go forward. and that's setting up a political opportunity now for obama administration, to step in. >> if i didn't have pot, as a coping mechanism if you took it away i would have turned to

alcohol and might have turned to something harder. i might have started inflicting self-harm. >> reporter: john really when you look at the sheer number of people using marijuana in the united states, the sheer number of people doing it, when we don't have an effective way of studying it, that's the time to make a change. that's what the brookings institution says here, move it to schedule 2, which would be easier to study and let us understand once and for all whether it has any medical benefit and whether there are long term dangers in the use of marijuana. >> jake ward in san francisco, thank you. there are indications that drug and alcohol addiction is taking a back seat. jonathan betz. jonathan. >> one recovering addict is former rhode island congressman

patrick kennedy some, son of late senator ted kennedy. i spoke to him earlier about his concerns over how substance abuse is treated. >> they don't wait until you have stage 4 diabetes and you have to have your legs amputated. but if you have addiction or mental illness that's when you're treated. you're not treated until you're really really sick and then you come in with the ambulance and parch people up. >> kennedy is concerned about how the health care act hadges aichandlesaddiction. you can hear more about that in my next hour. john. >> ann mari marie smith turned a promotion and gave away her fast track poks to spend time with family. now she wrote position to be wir

book. patricia sabga has the story. >> by any measure, ann marie slawrt islaughter is a role mod. when she turned down a high pro time position at the state department to devote more time to her sons. >> i deliberate said, we have two teenage boys at home, this is the last year they will be home and my husband and i both want to be here with them. i could see myself fall in the estimation of the person i was speaking to. i could see him thinking, she didn't do well in washington or she's not as ambitious, not as much of a player as i thought she was. >> reporter: so slaughter fought back. an article and a book, your honor finished business which

argues for aworkplace policy overhaul to allow women and men flexibility to care for famil families. >> 50% of men find i.t. somewhat or difficult to fit in families and work, 56% of women's . we have a 20th century, mid 20th century workplace. we still have a leave it to beaver workplace that assumes there is a full time woman at home. i want to say to workplaces, you are 50 years out of date. you are losing talent. you are stressing your workforce. you are not making room for the actual reality of your workers' lives. >> reporter: a call to change corporate structures. in contrast to facebook coo cheryl saunders advice to lean in. >> lean in is a manual how to

get ahead in a hierarchical corporate venture and you advocate something very differently. >> i dmies admire what cheryl ss did but i had every advantage under the sun, i had a lead parent husband i had money and even so, i suddenly could not -- i couldn't lean in, in my career, because my son really needed me. and that let me see how many people hit tipping points. >> reporter: so slaughter wants to tip the odds back in favor of working parents. with policies like six weeks federally mandated maternity and paternity leave. to keep more women on promising career paths. >> you have 50% women at the start you have five to ten to 15% at the top. all those women that you have lost that is talent you are losing and it's cost you because you have to hire other people

and train them again. can you make an economic case that says every -- you can make an economic case that every time you don't may rook for the reality of these people's lives you are losing money and we have to advance all women. that is where i say we need government action, right? if you are going to actually allow women at the bottom and men to be able to take leave for -- to take care of somebody and not lose a job or lose pay or not be promoted, then government has to require paid family leave. >> reporter: how much of a problem do you think it is that women who take time out to raise their children are stigmatized as not being serious about their careers? >> yes, it's a huge problem and talk about a waste of talent. we've got a whole pool of very talented women who are well educated, who started out in the workforce, got a lot of experience, were shut out, right? they didn't opt out. they would have liked to continue working flexibly but the workplace said nope, it's

all or flog. >> and much more of patricia sabga's interview with ann maria slaughter coming up in the next hour including why there are so few women in top level jobs in the state department and the impact that has on foreign policy. now to endangered whales on the west coast, some orcas are pregnant. allen schauffler is in seattle tonight, allen. >> and john as you know very well you can often if you are lucky come out here to the seattle public park, look out into puget sownd. ansound and see the orcas that we are talking about. they appear to be healthy but

the broader context, they are still under stress and extend on the endangered list. a drone lifts off in the san juan islands near the u.s.-canada border. researchers from both countries are targeted a small community of killer whales. known as the southern residents only 81 are still alive. the team took pictures of all of them allowing for detailed measurements of individuals, identified by distinctive fin shape and white markings. >> you couldn't get sharper than that. tail's down. we'll figure out who it is. >> similar studies have been done before but not with the almost silent low flying drone. >> look at his growth so that's great. >> reporter: the high resolution images from 23 hours of drone flights show these orcas in fairly good health over

the summer, five orcas were born. several more appear pregnant, good signs but orca watchers say this is no time for avictory a y dance. >> we have had a good salmon season. no way out of the woods. >> researchers say these images will provide baseline data for future health assessments and show details of orca behavior not seen this close this clear ever before. >> what we were able to see when we were flying the hex copter, is two family members came fleer mothernearthe mother, and she d. >> better way to study the species on the brinks.

this is going to be very important over the next couple of years. we're headed into an el nino weather pattern, fewer chinook sal monday, that'salmon, that's. telling us more about climate, fish, orcas and how they connect. john. >> how safe is it to have drones flying over these whales? >> this is not a drone you would buy through mail order or off the shelf at an electronic stores. it's a highly technical drone designed basically by the camera out by noa noaa. >> allen schauffler, still ahead, my interview with g.e. smith.

>> people say are you nervous when you go on stage in front of all these people? i say no, that's the only time i'm not nervous. >> from hall and oats to saturday nightly live. night live.

>> gang life...

>> in our arts and culture segment tonight, g.e. smith. you may recognize him as the former leader of the saturday night live band. he's also played a big part in rock 'n' roll history, playing guitar for hall and oats, roger dahdaltry and bob dylan. i asked him when he knew he would be part of guitar history? >> i said what's that? she says it's a guitar. i said can i have it?

she said go ahead, take it. that was it, i was obsessed. >> you probably would get the award for most talented guitarist with the most expressive face. did people ever talk about those poses on saturday night live. >> not everybody liked it. what are you going to do? you can't please everybody. you know? it makes me happy whether i play. people say are you nervous when you go on stage in front of these people? i said no, that's the only time i'm not nervous. the rest of my life i'm nervous i'm walking around without the guitar i'm nervous. >> what was it like in 1985? a lot of people wrote books about how wild and crazy saturday night live was. >> it's young people for the most part working there, younger people. not teenagers but certainly there were a lot of people in their 20s and 30s. and you get a bunch of people that age together and they have

fun. you know. but there was a lot of hard work. >> hard work. >> a lot of hard work, a lot of all-nighters 50 writers. good tell me how you got to know these artists, for instance david bowie. >> i met david bowie at a party. he was going to do a video the next day about fashion. he needed people with unusual facings, he said do you want to be in my video, i said sure. later on, he said, why didn't you say you played the guitar? you can be the guitar player. >> you were with hall and oats for how long? >> six years. >> you toured with them? >> allow wa how was that?

>> fabulous. they had some really big hits, sarah spliel, ric smile and ric. then not so good. we were playing bars. after sarah smile, things go up and down, show bis, right? lucky for me, they produced some great music and things went well ♪ ♪ ♪ >> you talk about the ups and downs of the business. what would you tell the young kid who has the same passion for music and guitar that you have? >> go become a doctor or lawyer. that's what i tell them. >> you don't really believe that do you? >> yes i really believe that. >> some person is going to come and become the next g.e. smith right? >> i hope so, but that person will not be dissuaded from that

path will they? >> what sort of travel do you do nowadays? >> waters, the wall tour for a few years, incredible experience, i thought did i big tours before, nothing like that, that was a gigantic production. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> do you have a favorite diplomat in your career, a favorite time in your career? >> yes, now, always now. right? that's all we've got is now. the memories are nice. i remember certain wonderful moments. there was a time in london with bob dylan we were on stage doing acoustic part of the slow, he's singing mr. tambourine plan, i can't believe there's beatles on the side of the stage watching us. i always get that how did george

smith from strassberg pennsylvania get to this spot? i've been very lucky. >> great to see you. >> thank you john. >> thank you very much. that's our broadcasts, i'm john siegenthaler. the news continues next with jonathan betz.

>> surprise visit. >> certainly we took note of it. >> bashar al-assad slips out of syria for a secret ren da rendes for a secret meeting with vladimir putin. critical link. >> he said if you expel them they'll all come here. what should i do with them