volgograd blast. they're not really a corporate structure. they're separate cells, often very young, a lot younger than some of the militants we've seen in the past decade, often in their early 20s. the oldest ones get to 30 before they're killed by russian special forces, but they're the ones with the radical ideology, organization, and in cases the sheer will to die in cases like these. we've seen people who sought the culture, sought the fundamentalist underground that they provide and possibly if you see some of the more recent acts they've done, the bombmaking seems to be a little more sophisticated. possibly this may be with where the concerns are emfa naturing from. >> nick paton walsh on the ground in sochi. ivan watson watching what's going on as well. thanks to both of you for your excellent eyewitness accounts for what is going on. that's it for me. thanks very much for watch. "crossfire" starts right now. >> this is cnn breaking news.

>> welcome to "crossfire." i'm sally kohn on the left. >> i'm s.e. cupp on the right. there's breaking news tonight. cnn learns that airlines are being warned to be on the lookout for possible bomb ingredients in toothpaste tubes that travelers are taking to the olympics. moments ago peter king, a senior member of the house homeland security committee, gave this disturbing account of russia's failure to fully cooperate with the united states. >> they are not sharing enough intelligence or virtually any intelligence with us as to what's happening within russia. they're afraid that somehow we will use that to our advantage. we are getting some information about what's happening outside of russia, some external threats, that type thing or potential threats. i don't want to overstate that. but we have very close relationship with our allies other than the russians, but the russians the, for instance, are cooperating nowhere nearly the british did, the chinese did, the greeks did. >> let's bring in cnn's wolf blitzer for new details.

wolf, what's the latest? >> s.e. and sally, a government source tells cnn the threat is real, adding -- and i'm quoting now -- we have very good information from a credible source. the threat involves either a toothpaste tube type bomb or some other types of concealed explosives in cosmetic tubes. officials also assume the explosives would be on a plane coming into russia from europe, shall we say, rather than from the united states, but that's an assumption. the source saying the u.s. is taking this threat seriously, so are other countries. so there's a lot going on right now certainly only hours before the start of these winter olympic games. back to you. >> indeed, thanks, wolf. so my question is why are we having the olympics in sochi anyway? it's already a target for terrorists and host country russia is an untrustworthy bad actor with a history of human rights abuses. we're sending them our olympic athletes while al qaeda might be

sending terrorists with bombs in toothpaste tubes and vladimir putin sits with his leopard harboring edward snowden and mocking us. >> except for maybe the snowden part, i kind of fairly agree with you there. it's not like russia was rolling out the red carpet for us gays. >> that's right. >> and now all of these mounting threats, you know, is just deeply unsettling, why we're even supporting these olympics. >> i agree. in the "crossfire" tonight, lawrence kor and michael reagan who is a critic. larry, let me start with you. today we heard congressman peter king say he would not go to the olympics. we heard mitt romney say that he would go. john kerry said go if you want to go. let me ask you, would you go? would you thake your family? >> yes, i would. you can't buy perfect security. i think every time you get on a plane you're taking a risk. i think what was important today, what was our department of homeland security who

probably got the information from some intelligence sources who warned american airlines and european airlines watch out for this. you go back and you take a look. underwear bomber, shoe bombers, they figure out what they can do to get around the existing system. the problem with the boston marathon, they like big events like this. if not the olympics, they'll pick something else, the world cup in brazil. >> do we know that it was u.s. intelligence? >> that's classified, we don't know. but we know the warning came from dhs, that we do know. >> larry made a great point of we can never be 100% protected. interesting to me in this post-9/11 environment we try to comfort ourselves that we can be. we take off our shoes, dump out our water. there's only so much we can do and only so much the united states government can do to protect americans and others in sochi, in russia. but be honest, michael -- >> i'm not going to be honest? >> god forbid if something

happens in sochi, how are republicans going to blame this on obama? >> i don't think you can blame it on obama. >> that's refreshing. >> this is all set up for vladimir putin to take credit for everything in russia. he's pulling the strings so much today in the world that we live in, whether it's syria -- >> iran. >> whether it's the olympics, iran. i call him the puppet master. we're all on the strings of this puppet master. he makes sure once you arrive in sochi, nothing will happen. the safest place on the planet because he's been given the authority to kill if he needs to. >> i hope you're right about the safety. i'm glad there's some good news today coming from michael reagan that republicans will not blame problems in russia on president obama. >> it seems the united states has empowered russia to be a bigger player on the international stage than maybe they deserve credit for. let me show you some numbers, larry. russia is ranked among the worst

countries when it comes to all kinds of international terrors. top tier for human trafficking and worst ranking for human rights, when it comes to corruption they rank 127th out of 175 countries. have we enabled russia? have we empowered them to have an outsized place of significance on the world stage? >> no, we haven't. for example, one of the things we've done under the bush administration and clinton continued it was to enlarge nato. we move right up to the -- they were not happy about that. basically what we've also done is we've got them to put sanctions on iran. you know, the sanctions against iran, they were part of it, and they're part of the negotiating thing now, so we've got that. nations don't have permanent friend ors enemies. they have permanent interests.

we work with the russians where it helps us. and our congress would not even republicans wouldn't support syria, so we had to get the russians to help -- >> we also great about what the russians are -- but can we trust putin to keep our athletes af? >> yes, they will. because michael's right. if it doesn't work well, it's bad for him. he wants it to be secure. >> but here's what's interesting, when you think about the fact that our president, our leadership has said to putin, we'll let you be in charge. you pull the strings. we'll come along with whatever direction you in fact want to take us, whether it's syria or wherever it might be in fact in the world today. remember, it was president obama that sat down with the president of russia who said, wait till after the election. i can work with putin a lot differently than i can today. i think he's proven that out, whether it be syria, iran or any place else. the fact that all of a sudden we trust them now to be negotiating on the world's behalf.

russia only negotiates on russia's behalf. >> we'll come back to that in a different segment. >> that was another era. >> that was reagan. >> putin was not the president when the president said that. >> but it was the puppet of putin who was the president. >> it goes back to the administration i think you know a lot about and i do, when your father was negotiating with gorbachev, he was no day at the beach either. you've got to do what's in your interests. one of the things obama did with the russians was cut down the nuclear -- number of nuclear weapons, something that your dad started working there with them. not because we like them, but because we both have them and it's in both of our interests. >> my father also said trust but verify. >> we are verifying just like we are in iran. >> verify the fact that syria is already a day late and a dollar short. >> i agree. you heard what kerry said, if you don't keep it, then everything is back on the table.

>> we'll find out. >> michael, you criticized the fact that he even had the conversations. we'll come back to a in a second. i have to say -- >> you like me, don't you? >> i'll get the hate tweets out of this one. >> uh-oh. >> but the whole notion of the olympics, come on. we know they don't stimulate the economies of the cities that host them. in fact countries pour billions into them. >> you are going to get hate mail. >> russia already has the horrible anti-gay laws, shouldn't we just pull out? >> why don't we get rid of the super bowl because human sex trafficking is rampant in new york during the super bowl. let's find a reason not to have any anything, whether any competition amongst anybody. >> i'm not talking about the super bowl, russia. >> forget about the money it brings in. the relationships that are built for the future, you don't know who you're going to meet at the olympics who ultimately may be a leader in their own country in the future that you will become a leader and you will have built a relationship that happened at the olympics.

>> you'll support us talking. >> don't you see the olympics as some sort of self-diplomacy. >> in theory, and in general, but in this case the united states and other countries said that they're going to politically boycott the olympics, they won't send those high level delegates. >> we made one in the '84 and 96 olympics. they're not a capitalist society, but we made money in the '84 and '96 olympics because of the way it was run. >> i'm sure their books will still read profits. >> diplomacy through curling, i can't wait to see it. >> i have the broom handle. >> republican ps reflexively criticize everything president obama does, but next i'll explain why the president is just george bush 2.0 and why it's progressives who should be upset. open to innovation. open to ambition.

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welcome back in the "crossfire" tonight lawrence korb and michael reagan. we're following tonight's breaking news. cnn has learned airlines are being warned about possible bomb ingredients in toothpaste or cosmetics tubes travelers are taking to the olympics. let's go to sochi, russia, with cnn's nick paton walsh for the latest. nick, we've heard so much about the ring of steel, a security blanket around the site of the games there. do you know if the russians are recalculating their security plan now in light of the toothpaste tube threat? >> they certainly say they've done everything they possibly could already to make this games the safest. 37,000 security officials coming here. we've seen helicopters yesterday rotating around the sky, three at a time. three surveillance balloons up in the air as well. and an internet dragnet as well

as the literal one on the ground here. they'll surely say this is the most security that they can provide in first place. should point out, though, there's a whiff that they may have known about this threat highlighted today by u.s. officials. liquids have been banned on the flight that i took from moscow to sochi. and there are other flights it seems, too, where these have been banned. there's been a history of explosives on russian aircraft. in 2004 two suicide bombers blew two aircraft out of the sky simultaneously and many thought they brought the explosives on in face cream tubs. concern already for the russians but they've done as much as they can at this point although i'm sure the new warnings may cause some new concerns here. s.e.? >> thanks, nick. >> we know about this toothpaste threat because of intelligence gathering. which might suggest we should emphasize gathering more intelligence internationally rather than on blowing people to bits with unmanned drones. of course, the irony is that while progressives like me don't like drones, republicans actually love them.

as well as the general thrust of the president's foreign policy. in fact, their only specific complaint is that president obama isn't a republican. >> i have a long list of complaints. the fact that he isn't a republican isn't one of them. i think at least my position on drones is a little bit more nuanced than that. but let's get our guests to weigh in. >> well, i think drones are an act of war. you need to understand that. so before you use them, you should say would i be willing to send in troops or use artillery? i think they're very effective because they play to our strengths. we're technologically ahead of like with the smafrt bombs we used in the first gulf war and it enables us to accomplish our objectives of killing a lot of these terrorist leaders without putting american -- >> yeah, but larry, let me just push back a little bit because i'm confused about something the president said in the book "double down."

he told his aides make him really good at killing people. since he took office u.s. drone strikes have killed thousands including hundreds of civilians and children. shouldn't he return his nobel peace prize? >> i think he has modified his policy. >> we saw so many unanswered questions about the drone policy. what are signature strikes? who gets targeted? what about targeting american civilians? none of that has been answered since refining the program. >> well, again, i agree. what we need to do is repeal the aumf, the authorization to use military force, because both president bush and president obama have used that to justify -- i mean, we just killed an al qaeda leader in somalia two weeks ago. that's much better than sending american kids in there. >> yeah, but we're killing so maly kids. >> i think it's the out that the president of the united states has been given by the bush administration to some dwhat fl his muscles to the conservatives

say see, i can kill people, too. and playing the military doesn't respect me, well, look what i'm doing approximately ip using military -- >> let me say something. in his campaign, he said, if i have information there are al qaeda leaders in pakistan and musharraf won't do anything, i will take action. president bush criticiediiticiz senator mccain, which is using the drones, which he has done. he was very honest about it. >> the point i'm making is i think because of the drone program that's there, it's given him that place to be able to use those drones to prove to his detractor, hey, i can pull the trigger when i want to pull the trigger. >> it's something that to protect americans without doing what bob gates, bush and obama secretary of defense said, you're not going to -- anybody recommend sending large numbers of american kids into third world countries ought to -- >> there's two other. >> and americans.

>> we're killing americans oversea, we're killing untold numbers of innocent people including other people's children in those attacks and not being honest about how many we're killing, but also, michael, don't you think we're actually creating more terrorists with these drones than we're killing? >> no, you can make that argument with everything and anything. these terrorists are being created -- they're being raised from childhood in fact to be terrorists. they're learning how to wear bombs from their first birthday on. i mean, this is the reality of that area of the world. people like to believe that everybody is like america, everybody grows up like us, we're free, we go to mcdonald's have a splurpee, we're having a wonderful world. that's not how it is in the rest of the world. you might not want to believe it but in the rest of the world the leadership doesn't give a doggone about them. they put them on the front lines so they can come out and say, americans are killing women and they're killing children so you'll talk about it on cnn

"crossfire." >> i think we're missing an important point here. the problem we had was the cia was running this. we're trying to bring it back to the military. the military has much stricter criteria for using it. a month ago we had special forces in somalia when they came across this leader and there were women and children there, they left. >> right. >> am i not right when i say leaders from other parts of the world, iraq, what have you, will hide behind women and children. >> shu, but we're better than that. and i like drones. i like drone technology. i really do. and i want to be able to use it effectively. but the point we're trying to make is that codifying our drone program, which we just recently admitting to having, by the way, codifying that to make us an example for the rest of the world gives us a lot more credibility when bad actors use

the same technology. >> i would tgo a step further saying we're overrelying on it. >> i'm ordering an ak-47 on that was part his legacy. yet, republicans have been praising this over reliance on sort of easy, you know, and horribly destructive unmanned drones and actually condemning president obama for trying diplomacy in iran, russia, syria as you just did in the last segment. why is it that republicans are turning their back on your father's legacy? >> i don't think they're turning their back. the fact is my father couldn't get us into a cold war. he got us out of a cold war. i've talked about that for a long period of time, but we're in a war. we have been in one. i think one of the frustrations about that, the exit strategies,

when do we know we've won a war? $19 a month, help a wounded warrior. i play golf with them. spanky, a shout out to you. he's a great guy. what happens -- and i look at these kids and i say to myself, when's this going to end? when's the end game? when is it that we've won? >> president obama is trying to do that. >> i seriously walk away from iraq and afghanistan and we haven't won anything. >> before you go in you need to do a cost-benefit analysis which they didn't do in either place. i'll tell you what your dad did, i was there. when it did not turn out well in lebanon, he left because he didn't just keep surging and doubling down. >> my father lived with those marines dying in lebanon. >> there was no benghazi-type investigation. we had an admiral long did a study and then we passed a new bill called goldwater.

>> don't compare benz. >> you don't think it's worth finding out why benghazi happened? >> they have. >> benghazi and lebanon are not on the same page. >> worse than lebanon. >> larry. real quick. in 2016 if assad is still in power, al qaeda has taken over iraq, iran has nuclear weapons, will you still seau bomb ma's foreign policy works. >> it won't happen. >> stay here next. more outrages of the day including someone who ignored the final wishes of a future saint. we also want you at home to weigh in on today's fire back question. under president obama's policies, is america a safer or more dangerous place? reply with safer or dangerous using #crossfire. we'll have the results after the break. liking your flat rate shipping. fedex one rate.

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we're back with lawrence and michael reagan. now it's time for our outrages of the day. today we learned george zimmerman wants to compete in a celebrity boxing match for profit. yeah, this is the same george zimmerman who beat a murder charge by claiming he feared for his life due to an unarmed 17-year-old kid. even more outrageous, it was announced today which would have been trayvon martin's 19th birthday if he hadn't been shot and killed by the poor defenseless boxer. michael, don't you think this is just disgusting? >> it makes the side that

supported zimmerman look stupid. >> just go away. >> well said. >> just go away. he keeps getting into trouble. my outrage today, he resembles discomfort. if in my last will and testament i want to be buried in my fire suit, i expect that request to be honored. pope john paul ii had a will. he asked his personal notes to be burned and instead the cardinal has turned them into a book. while it's outrageous that someone ignored the will of the pope, i've got to admit i'm kind of interested to see what the notes say. he is one of the most beloved popes of the modern era, but i know i'll feel a little dirty reading those notes. would you read that? >> i would. i think he's -- and without him and president reagan, i don't

think we would have ended -- >> i am going to be at the canonization of pope john paul after easter this year. >> you have to read up. >> i said, the outrage would be to not go and die and go right to hell. >> i think you're okay. >> i'm thinking that -- >> that would be worse than publishing -- >> you've got to go through one gold medal in the half pipe. >> he is entitled. >> thanks to laurence korb and michael reagan. under president obama's policies is america a safer or more dangerous place. right now 62% of you say safer. 38% say more dangerous. the debate continues online at cnn.com/crossfire as well as on facebook and twitter. from the left i'm sally cohn and imthanks for joining us. from the right, i'm s.e. cupp.

join us tomorrow. erin burnett "out front" starts erin burnett "out front" starts right now. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com breaking news. terror warniterror warning ton air lines. what they believe terrorists are preparing. four people under arrest for the drugs found in philip seymour hoffman's apartment. the links linking them to his death. live happening right now in honor of hoffman. fans and fellow actors remembering an incredibly talented man. let's go "out front."