this eighteen year old syrian was in the smugglers boats with his young the system . the police came up to us and that they told us you can cross they made us turn around the police who'd previously given us access to their fence and border patrols gave us a statement denying that it's had in any refugees around and claim that priority was human dignity. but human rights advocates say they know pushbacks happen all the time and accuse the greek government of breaking its national. in this. each one. wants to be seen. to be. a case. of the human.

freed from north korea three american prisoners are released in a goodwill gesture before new talks next month. alone chained up and this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up donald trump's pick to lead the central intelligence agency is appearing right now before a senate confirmation hearing. up. a show of anger in iran's parliament after u.s. president john chump pulls out of the nuclear deal. and vote counting begins in malaysia where the prime minister is seeking a third term despite corruption allegations.

u.s. president donald trump has announced the release of three american prisoners in north korea he'd sent the secretary of state on a surprise visit to pyongyang in the past hour tromp tweeted i'm pleased to inform you that secretary of state mike pump air is in the air and on his way back from north korea with the three wonderful gentlemen that everyone is looking so forward to meeting they seem to be in good health also good meeting with kim jong un date and place so it remains release has been seen as a goodwill gesture ahead of a planned summit between trump and north korea's kim jong un in the next few weeks kathy novak has more from seoul the release of the americans is another sign of the thawing relationship between pyongyang and washington and improves the climate for the proposed summit between donald trump and kim jong un the u.s. president has pushed the case for months saying there's been constant pressure like was fighting very diligently to get the three merkin citizens back. reports that

the three had been moved from a labor camp to a hotel in the capital was followed closely in south korea there they received better food and medical treatment this is what we know about the three men kim jong il is a south korean born u.s. citizen who worked as a religious minister in his early sixty's he was detained in twenty fifteen on spying charges a year later he was sentenced to ten years hard labor at a government arranged news conference he apparently confessed to stealing military secrets while working with south korea a claim rejected by seoul two of the men have been detained since donald trump became president kim hock song was detained on suspicion of hostile acts in may twenty seventeen believed to be an ethnic korean born in china he emigrated to the u.s. in the one nine hundred ninety s. he worked at pyongyang university of science and technology. who goes by tony kim was arrested in april twenty seventeen he also worked at the university and was accused of hostile acts trumper had been suggesting that unless the north koreans

take real denuclearization steps that he wouldn't go to the summit well the north koreans have given him something else very easy for them to give and now the summit will absolutely go ahead donald trump used to call the north korean leader little rocket men and warned of a hostile reaction to further threats of attack from their west career best not make any more threats to the united states. they will be met with fire of fury. like the world has never seen that in march there was a dramatic turnaround when president trump announced summit plans after a visit by a south korean delegation to the white house the man who is now u.s. secretary of state mike pump ale followed up with visits to north korea to lay the groundwork for talks with president trump as three americans celebrate their release the family of student a warm beer will be thinking of what could have been arrested in north korea and held for seventeen months he returned to the u.s.

in a vegetative state and died days later one because parents have lodged a wrongful death suit against the north korean government kathy novak al jazeera sole diplomatic editor james bays is at the u.n. headquarters in new york james do we know the state of the hostages well obviously the families will be deeply concerned given as you heard cathy mention there the case of auto warm beer a year ago who died less than a month after being released from north korean custody and they'll be relieved by the news that's coming through from the white house because it appears to be good news a statement a short time ago the three americans appeared to be in good condition and was all able to walk on the plane without assistance that is confirmed not just by the white house but by the two reporters who are traveling with secretary of state pompei o from the so seated press and the washington post one of those also

reporting that the three that were released the three prisoners actually had less than an hour after their release before they were on board a plane and a free showing us i think that this was the last thing that the north koreans did at the end of a series of meetings the very last thing this very important release and diplomatically a very important gesture and shows how quickly things are moving james. absolutely moving very fast indeed the white house has never actually said that this was a precondition for a summit between trump and kim but most diplomats i spoke to here in new york at the u.n. and also on the korean peninsula when i was in north korea and south korea in the last month believe there was no way really you could have a summit without this last piece being in place and the three americans being safely home and some diplomats predicted to me that perhaps that's exactly what the

north koreans were keeping these three prisoners for so that they could at the right time hand them over to the u.s. that has now happened and the other important news we have from the meetings that secretary pompei o had in pyongyang high level meetings including with kim jong un is that they have now fixed a time and a place for this important summit between kim and trump a summit that we expect to take place at the very end of may or the very beginning of june in a window between a visit by the president of south korea president moon to the white house on the twenty second of may and then president trump going to the g. seven in the first week of june we expect the summit to take place in that window we expect it to take place in one of two places either a repeat of the kim moon summit that we saw a couple of weeks ago in the d.m.z. or the other possible venue is singapore and we'll be waiting very closely to find out the announcement of where it is taking place thanks for that james they is.

donald trump's pick to lead the central intelligence agency is a pairing for a confirmation hearing in washington d.c. general hospital has been at the cia for thirty three years we're looking at live pictures coming from there moving from an undercover agent to the role of deputy director she's seen as the highest qualified candidate in decades but she's been criticized for her role in the use of hosh interrogation techniques shepparton z. joins us for more from washington what's been said about her so far as she had. what she herself is just about to begin her own testimony but we did get a sense from the opening statements what the arguments for and against those in favor of an organisation say that she as you said is the most qualified she's a loyal servant of the u.s. has worked her way up the cia she knows the cia better than of many other counties that use of a been nominated and that she shouldn't be held responsible for the policies of

administrations that she served post nine eleven so that means torture that means destroying evidence use of your she's just following orders we keep getting this nuremberg defense which failed spectacularly for the nazis it has to be said that she was just following orders and she shouldn't be held responsible it's interesting actually i wonder whether the subtext here is that the republicans or anyone else is saying that george w. bush and dick cheney should be held responsible have no doubt before but there that would be the implication of what this what you start arguments and that tussle has now begun so let's be we have an idea that you're going to find yourself in much the same way and say that you're going to talk about several sort of the two of you know it's chip and i want to thank senators chambliss and buying for the kind words and support i would also like to take just a moment to recognize a few guests who have come today including principal deputy director of national intelligence and my good friend sue gordon cia chief operating officer brian bull

a towel. mrs susan pompei oh thank you for coming the best ambassador i ever worked for ambassador louis susman and two dear mentors of mine senior cia officers and then later senior i.c. officials mary margaret graham and charlie allen i am here because i have been nominated to lead the extraordinary men and women at the central intelligence agency men and women who are our country's silent warriors these dedicated professionals bend much of their careers in difficult far flung out host of the globe striving to make our fellow americans more secure at home it has been the privilege of my professional life to be one of those cia officers now i have been asked by president trump to lead this work force and to continue

the work that my palm pale and i began a little more than a year ago ensuring that cia is postured to meet the complex challenges our nation faces those challenges include a changing but still lethal threat from terrorist groups a nuclear threat against the continental united states from a rogue state destabilizing iranian adventurism an aggressive and sometimes brutal russia and the long term implications of china's ambitions on the global stage while these challenges are daunting and offer few easy answers i am confident the united states and the american people have the resolve to meet them head on. if i am confirmed as director you have my solemn commitment

that i will position this agency to provide the intelligence support our navy our country needs to meet the challenges of today and those of tomorrow i welcome the opportunity to introduce myself to the american people for the first time it is a new experience for me as i spent over thirty years under cover and in the shadows i don't have any social media accounts but otherwise i think you will find me to be a typical middle class american one with a strong sense of right and wrong and one who loves this country i was born in kentucky and while my family has deep roots there i was an air force abroad and we followed my father to postings all over the world my childhood overseas instilled in me a deep love for foreign languages and cultures but also

a deep understanding of the vital role of american leadership and combating aggression abroad i joined cia in one thousand nine hundred five as a case officer in the clinton service from my first days in training i had a knack for the nuts and bolts of my profession i excelled in finding in acquiring secret information that i obtained in brush passes dead drops or in meetings in dusty alleys of third world capitals i recall very well my first meeting with a foreign agent it was on a dark moonless night with an agent i'd never met before when i picked him up he passed me the intelligence and i passed him an extra five hundred dollars for the men he led it was the beginning of an adventure i had only dreamed of. the man who ran cia in those days leaned forward in giving me the right opportunities to

succeed or fail when a very tough old school leader announced that i was his pick to be chief of station in a small but important frontier post a few competitors complained to me directly why would they send you i owe that leader much for believing in me at a time when few women were given these opportunities well i could have done without some of the long nights sleeping on the floor of my station i was proud of the work we did there including the successful capture of two major terrorist in the wake of the africa embassy bombings a counterproliferation operation that went our way and the dismantlement of the local terrorist cell all together i have served seven tours in the field for as chief of station including hardship assignments in distant post and more

recently in the capital of a major u.s. ally by any standard my life at the agency and it has been my life has exceeded all of my expectations from that january day when i first took the oath to today there were few senior women leading at cia in those days and we are stronger now as an organization because that picture is changing i did my part quietly and through hard work to break down some of those barriers and i was proud to be the first woman to serve as the number two in the clinton service. it is not my way to trumpet the fact that i am a woman up for the top job at cia but i would be remiss in not re marking on it not least because of the outpouring of support from young women at cia and indeed across the i.c. because they consider it

a good sign for their own prospects my experience and success as an operations officer led to three leadership positions in the clinton service and one year ago i was asked to serve as deputy director of cia the reaction of the workforce to a rare nomination of one of their own to be director someone who has been in the trenches with them has been overwhelming i am humbled by their confidence that i can successfully lead this agency and inspired to work harder than ever to maintain that trust they know that i don't need time to learn the business of how cia works i know cia like the back of my hand i know them i know the threats we face and i know what we need to be successful and our mission i have played a leading role this past year in setting us on the right path and i intend on

continuing on that path if i am confirmed as director our strategy starts with strengthening our core business collecting intelligence that helps policymakers protect our country and advance american interests across the globe it includes raising our investment against the most difficult intelligence gaps putting more officers in the foreign field where our adversaries are and emphasizing foreign language excellence and finally it involves investing in our partnerships both within the u.s. government and around the globe. we must do everything we can to follow through on these investments and to make cia as effective as it can possibly be because the american people deserve no less than cia's best effort this is especially true when it comes to confronting threats from north korea iran russia and china

today cia officers are deployed across the globe sometimes at significant personal risk collecting critical human and technical intelligence i have spent my entire career driving operations and if confirmed i will be able to leverage that experience beginning on day one i knew that accepting the president's nomination would raise questions about cia classified activities and my career at the agency i also understand that it is important for the american people to get to know me so they are able to judge my fitness for this position so over the last few weeks we have leaned forward to make more information about my record public we have also shared details on every aspect of my career through classified channels

with this committee as well as with the rest of the senate i think it is important to recall the context of those challenging times immediately following nine eleven for me i had just returned to washington from an overseas posting and i reported for duty on the morning of nine eleven i knew in my gut when i saw the video of the first plane hitting the tower in manhattan that it was bin laden i got up and i walked over to the counterterrorism center as the cia compound was evacuated and i volunteered to help i didn't leave for three years. we work seven days a week and i even had friends who postpone weddings and having babies the men and women of cia were driven and charged with preventing another attack the first boots on the ground in afghanistan were my colleagues the first casualty in afghanistan

was a cia officer in call league and it was cia who would benefit and captured the mastermind of nine eleven in a brilliant operation i am proud of our work during that time the hard lessons we learned from that experience and for my leadership of cia today in light of mine counterterrorism experience i understand that what many people want to know about are my views on cia's former detention and interrogation program i have the use on this issue and i want to be clear having served in that tumultuous time i can offer you my personal commitment clearly and without reservation that under my leadership on my watch cia will not restart the detention and interrogation program cia has learned some

tough lessons from that experience we were asked to tackle a mission that fell outside our expertise for me there is no better example of implementing lessons learned than what the agency took away from that program in retrospect it is clear as this is the majority report concluded that cia was not prepared to conduct a detention and interrogation program today the u.s. government has a clear legal and policy framework that governs detentions and interrogations. specifically the law provides that no individual in u.s. custody may be subjected to any interrogation technique or protein that is not authorized by enlisted in the army field manual i fully support the detainee treatment required by law and just as importantly i will keep cia focused

on our collection and analysis missions that can best leverage the expertise we have at the agency like i said we learned important lessons following nine eleven as both a career intelligence officer and as an american citizen i am a strong believer in the importance of oversight simply put experience has taught us that cia cannot be effective without the people's trust and we cannot hope to earn that trust without the accountability that comes with congressional oversight if we cannot share aspects of our secret work with the public we should do so with their elected representatives for cia oversight is a vital link to the open society we defend it's a defining feature of the u.s. intelligence community and one of the many things that distinguishes us from the

hostile services we face in the field if confirmed as director i will uphold the agency's obligations to congress and ensure that oversight works on behalf of the american people mr chairman i want to thank you in the committee for the hard work that is put into the oversight process and for the vital support that this committee provides of the officers as cia cia has given me a lot over the past three decades a calling in service to my country some real life adventures. and the profound satisfaction of serving with some of the most talented and honorable men and women in our government if confirmed i hope to repay the debt i owe to this remarkable agency by drawing on my experience i know what my fellow officers need from me and i know what our nation needs from cia and that is truth integrity and courage again

thank you for allowing me the opportunity to appear before you today and i look forward to your questions miss us will thank you for that testimony let me inform members that we will have a five minute round of questions we'll recognize members based upon seniority so i would ask all members to adhere to the five minute timeframe and i would remind members that we are in an open session therefore classified questions and or answers would not be appropriate for this period when we've completed the open session we will immediately move to a closed session where every question will be answered i am certain the chair recognizes himself for up to five minutes. this asshole let's just dig right into it.

there's been much debate and much news coverage about. jose rodriguez the former director of the national committee was to conduct clandestine service and his decision to directly to start destruction of the detainee interrogation videotapes. can you describe for members your memories of him senator yes i can. in two thousand and five believe it was fall of two thousand and five i was chief of staff to the deputy director for operations that is head of the clandestine service. the tape issue head lingered at cia for a period of about three years i believe the tapes were made in two thousand and two and over time there was a great deal of concern about the security risk posed to cia officers who were

depicted on the tapes those security issues centered on the threat from al qaeda should those tapes be irresponsibly leaked mr rodrigo's who was the didio at the time of the deputy director for operations has been very upfront and has made it clear on a number of occasions publicly that he and he alone made the decision to destroy the tapes. to i would also. make it clear that i did not appear on the tapes as has been mischaracterized in the press however as chief of staff and i believe like everyone at the agency at that time we were extremely concerned about the security risk that was posed to our officers we were aiming to do two things. to adhere to u.s. law but at the same time reach a resolution that would protect our officers there were numerous legal

consultations over a period of years at the agency. our lawyers were very consistent and saying to us that there was no legal requirement to retain the tapes no legal impediment to disposing of the tapes i'm not a lawyer but i believe the basis for that judgment was the fact that there was a complete and written detailed record of the interrogations and that cia the official record is the cable record we use that for all of our operations there were two reviews done of the tapes to compare them to the written record one of those was undertaken by the office of general counsel the second was undertaken by the office of the inspector general in both cases they found that the written record was detailed accurate and complete so the consistent legal advice it never changed was that there was no legal requirement to retain the tapes but there were

some a policy objections to disposing of the tapes so our job in in the office of the deputy director for operations was to arrange consultations with senior leaders at the agency at the time the tapes were destroyed mr rodriguez asked me to prepare a cable because he was going to have another conversation with then director of the agency to talk about this issue again i did so. a couple days later he released the order he believed on his own authority he took the decision himself and he said it was based on his own authority i asked him if he had had the consultation with the director at the time as planned and he said he decided to take the decision on his own authority. there were three

investigations three looks at the tapes inquiries that i know about one was undertaken by hip c. the house oversight committee i never saw a report on that but the chairman at the time said that he found no fault with my actions there was a department of justice investigation that was closed without charges after i think more than two years and then there was an internal investigation of the issue conducted by one of my predecessors mr morrell who found no fault with my actions and that my decisions were consistent with my obligations as an agency officer thank you for that action. trumps a nominee for the top job at the cia describing her role in the destruction of cia interrogation tapes in two thousand and soon she's

facing a committee then she's talking about the nuclear threat the terrorist groups and she mentioned the threats from north korea iran and russia and how she would be seeing that if she were to get the top job and she laid out her. time within the agency and what she done and what she'd learned and how important her role was as a woman let's bring in our correspondent she had her tonsils also listening and she also said that she's just a middle class woman she's anything but isn't she. several strands to this narrative now that she is this she's part of this american dream this feminist american dream of a small town kentucky girl who's now you know potentially at the top of international espionage agents see a typical middle class go as you said a family the success story that's one of the narratives that are being pushed but also when it comes to all the controversial things she said she did overseeing torture destroying those tapes which were evidence of torture she was just

following orders and at the time she says there was a legal framework that allowed her actions to take place the destruction of take this kind of kind of a hazy matter because she was those tapes were being destroyed when there were plenty of requests from senators and freedom of information requests for the tapes to be handed over nonetheless the cia destroyed it she drafted the memo she was following orders she says from her immediate boss at the cia we do know though that the question that mark warner for example is actually currently interrogating in interrogating the nominee is that's fine but what is the legal framework changes that can give donald trump now if you ask you to do something illegal and they gave you he said the department of justice get out of jail free card are you going to challenge it if it's quite obvious that it's illegal and that's going to be interesting to see what the white house says that particular question there's also something else that's just come up n.b.c. has got a copy of a ricky response to a question from senator dianne feinstein where the house will repeat something that

we've had quite often the church did did result in valuable intelligence so she says she believes torture is an effective means of valuable to us this goes against the whole you know the morality the lawfulness of torture but she still believes that valuable intelligence is clean the problem is that goes against everything that's in the massive senate intelligence committee's report on post nine eleven which found that there was no valuable intelligence to potentially that could be a bit of a controversy coming up about that because that's potentially put the buy side by some standards because that the senate intelligence committee found that there was no. valuable intelligence gleaned from daughter she's still sticking to that story and i guess these questions are relatively soft or will be relatively soft in comparison to what's going to be asked in the closed session. i do and we won't want to he was pretty hot in his opening statement already he was saying look look we we need some talk we need some real answers and specificities or what's going to interesting is how specific she becomes because so much of

a role is still possible we don't really know how much cooler she oversaw for example and maybe we won't know because it's all classified and how long is this likely ok chad i think we're going to have to leave it there because we are running out of time but the questioning by warner is still ongoing and i think they're going to buy five minutes of questions their time thing and then they go to a closed session we'll see if she is indeed nominated as tom's successor for the top job at the c i a that's the end of this pulitzer we'll have more on that but the news continues on al-jazeera but first let's turn over to the stream.