thank you very much. >> thank you. >> the assessment is all in agreement. assad remains in control, in charge, commanding his forces. there is no break, they believe in the inner circle around him. this is not his critical inner circle. they have closed ranks, they have determined to fight, they have talked themselves into it, one of the officials says that

this is not his critical inner circle.

they have closed ranks, they have determined to fight, they have talked themselves into it, one of the officials says that they are fighting an insurgency and they believe right now they will win and sadly, anderson, the opposition remains fractured and unable to really mount an effective counter offensive according to these officials. >> does this surprise you? >> i'm not really sure about the quality of the american intelligence around syria. who's the inner circle? is it his brother? yes, his inner circle will be with him throughout, they will flee with him, they will fight with him and most likely they will die with him. he hears what the american officials are saying, he hears general dempsey saying their defense system in syria is robust. and president clinton rebuking the syrian people. you know, this has been a good run. >> and in homes now, basically they won. they were able to decimate and move in with their forces. do you feel that the assaad regime believes the danger has passed. >> we have taken the worst that our enemies can give us. and now they look and see what the international community has sent their way, the arab league and the united nations has sent their way, none other than former secretary kofi annan.

he's been a friend of dictators throughout. and he said something very remarkable as he prepared for his mission. he says we have to be careful we don't introduce a medicine that's worst than the disease. we don't have to go very far in the region to find an example of what i'm talking about, meaning iraq. so this is the envoy, already saying that no rescue is coming for the syrian people. >> you say the syrian military is basically built not to fight foreign wars but to put down uprisings like this. >> put down suppression, put down mainly coup detaus. i was there in the '80s and the only tanks you came out in the street were the minority regime. father huff has made sure that every single officer in control of every key unit that could overrule a colonel in those same units.

the same goes for the air force, the same goes for the helicopters and i don't think we're going to see any units, cohesive units deskting. another thing, anderson, is that the arabs are not helping all that much. these people really do need weapons, they do need supplies and they're holding back on it so far. >> what are u.s. intelligence officials telling you about the report that iran is giving you throughout the uprising. obviously they have a very good track record of suppressing their own people r they giving them the tool to do that in syria ". >> tools is exactly the right one. think about the computer tools that iran is giving to syria. the very same things they use to suppress their own people in tehran and on the streets of iran. the web searching, the social media tracking tools, all these

high tack computer tools coming from iran into the syrian regime so they can track down the people doing these things, putting out these social media messages and broadcasts that the world has been looking at for so many weeks now. syria is also now flying, we are told, uavs, the unmanned drones, some coming from iran in the past to fly over syrian cities and towns and look fog the opposition so they can better target, they are now targeting, we know from the imagery we saw today, mosques, hospitals even playgrounds that they saw the opponents of the regime were hiding out and they end up killing men, women and children on the streets of syria. what it will take to change it remains to be seen. and the u.s. military, very hard to go in there and do strikes on the military. >> the iranians understand that

there's a fight over the region as a whole and they understand that the center of that fight is none other than syria. they know they're committed to this fight and they know their access to the mediterranean, their access to beirut is dependent on a very friendly regime. the russians will fight for the syrian regime. but will the arabs finance? will the americans come to the rescue of this rebellion? and i think the syrian people are discovering they dwell alone in the world. no break has come their way. >> do you think that the syrians are probably believing that the worst for the regime has passed, that they are dodged any bullet that will be coming and convey they can cling to power. >> i think the chances are good, in a rebellion like this, you

don't want to make a -- they support bashar al assad, they may not like him, but they think he's weak. >> and whatever has been destroyed, that doesn't matter. >> they don't care about that. they only care about clinging to power and they're never going to give up. >> appreciate your expertise. barbara starr, your reporting. let us know you what you think. up next, claims that some of the republican challengers are making about president obama's handling of the economy and promises they are making like bringing back cheap gasoline. and it's been a year after japan's nuclear disaster, we have got under cover video from the crippled power station. and also why the man who made the video says the company is lying, those are his words, about the real danger proposed

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keeping them honest on campaign states. not to say that the economy is in great shape, it's a very mixed picture to say the least.

new numbers out today. show employers adding 227,000 jobs last month and 1.7 million since the recession officially ended back in mid 2009. take a look at the change in mid 2008 and 2009. you can see the progress since then, though to many it doesn't feel like it. to many the jobless rate after declining now remains stuck at 8.3% because more people entered the workforce. there's plenty for the republican candidates to challenge president obama on without having the choice the fact. mitt romney who's made his business experience and the economy two pillars in his exam pain today had no direct comment about the economic report. but he's slamming obama for something the president never actually said. >> don't forget back in january when the president had just been re-elected or elected for the first time. he said that if we let him borrow $787 billion he would

hold unemployment below 8%. the 8% was a frightening number. and it has not been below 8% ever since. >> president obama has never made that comment. but he's been quoted so many times by governor romney a lot of people think it's true. >> four years ago, a newly elected president obama said that if congress would allow him to borrow $787 billion he would keep unemployment below 8%. >> the 8% number came from a report done three weeks before president obama took the oath of office. it did predict that a $785 billion stimulus, might hold unemployment to 8%. but this was just an assessment and not a hard and fast prediction. and president obama never said it. and then there's newt gingrich

that put out a statement today on the jobless numbers. he makes a pledge almost daily on the campaign trail. >> i am suggesting to you that somewhere around $2 to $2.50 the oil companies make enough money to develop enough oil supplies that we are independent and we keep the price down to a level you can afford. >> keeping them honest, it's simply a promise that no president of either party has ever been able to keep. that said, there's plenty to hold the president accountable for without resorting to stretching the truth. the jobless picture is improving, but it's hardly good. let's talk about raw politics. i talked to robert reich. mr. secretary, adding new jobs is obviously a good thing, there's still millions of people out of work, the president is certainly not out of the woods,

right? >> no, there's still a long way to go, anderson, there's been about $10 billions either lost since the beginning of the recession or that should have been made up. even if the job market continued to do this well for the next, for the next five years, we would still just about get back to where we were before the recession started. >> and rich, rather than addressing today's job numbers, romney makes the argument that obama promised to keep the jobless number below 8%. but he's got to come up with something more than that, doesn't he? >> i think what he said a week and a half ago was a better argument. the unemployment numbers were better numbers. you can't root for higher unemployment. but if romney would say, look, the unemployment rate might go faster if businesses had more

confidence in what was over the horizon. every time they hear the kind of class warfare card being played by the administration, it stops them cold in their tracks, oh, wait another month, or wait another month. so i think romney has a good case to make that american business needs stability and needs kind of optimism. but talking about what somebody said, nobody's going to want to go back to what romney said, you know, back when he was massachusetts governor either. >> mr. secretary, newt gingrich, he responded to today's numbers by again touting his ability to get gas back down to $2.50 which by all accounts no president really has the ability to do. >> no president has figured out how to do that because the gas prices are set by global markets. there's nothing that the president can do in the short-term about gas prices but it looks as though consumers

have not been terribly bothered by gas prices, anderson. consumer spending has been increasing at a moderate level. inventories are being rebuilt by manufacturers and by wholesalers, a lot of that economic activity is translated into relatively healthy, slow, but relatively healthy job numbers. >> when you hear him say he can get gas prices down to $2.50 go you buy that? >> no. but it's something that he's been running on even when he wasn't running, drill here, drill now. there are things we can do to put downward pressure on gas prices, but to say that you can reduce them by a buck and a half any time in the near term just doesn't make any sense. there are a lot of things that are just out of a president's control, this president or anyone else, the european economy is not within the

purview of the president of the united states. he's wholly dependent on angela merkel to keep that going. there are a lot of things that can go wrong and because the president happens to be the president, it will fall to him. from a republican standpoint, if the president would just turn his attention to helping businesses understand that they can now begin to make longer range plans, i think that would go longer to helping the economy speed up, tick up a little bit. >> you were active in massachusetts politics when romney was governor, you know his ability to harness a specific message. is romney still a candidate that president obama should fear most? >> well, i would have said yes four or five months ago, anderson, i'm less certain of that right now. i mean romney certainly has more appeal to independents and

centrists than, say, rick santorum and newt gingrich. but the economy, when the economy was so clearly bad, when jobs were not being create, when people were so worried about jobs, having somebody like mitt romney who could come in and say, well, i was a business person, i know how to create jobs, i have created them before, was more of a challenge it seems to me than mitt romney right be right now. most people do believe and they see the evidence that jobs are coming back. >> secretary reich, appreciate your time, rich gallen, thank you. coming up a year after japan's nuclear disaster, a writer went undercover inside the plant in fukushima and found out why workers are risking their lives still. he says that the workers speak out for themselves, they'll be fired. and a chapter in american history that's hard to believe. sterilizing people against their will, it happened to millions of americans.

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it's hard to believe, this sunday marks one year since a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, tsunami changed everything in japan. the pictures from the tsunami are still hard to comprehend. more than 16,000 dead, more than 3,300 still listed as missing. damage in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

here's just a small part of the devastation we saw when we were in japan this time last year. last week there were some 20 homes in this area, now there are none. the house you're seeing here, he says, wasn't here before, it was swept here by the wave. the houses that were here, were completely washed away. this man was only one of his neighbors bodies has been found, he's not sure how many more may have died. there is no contact, he says, there are no phones, no internet, the people in the neighborhood, they haven't been back, those that died might be right over here under the water, under the wreckage. other than the sound of choppers, there's mostly silence, sometimes you hear a bird. or something rustling in the wind, but the silence always returns. in the wreckage you mind all manner of things, children's dolls, empty shoes, wedding

photos covered in mud. as we left a squad of japanese soldiers arrived to do a cursory search. there's just too many neighborhoods to search. the disaster could take up to 40 years to be completely under control. the meltdown at the puck fukushima daichi power plant. there was concern about the workers at the plant, the radiation levels they were being exposed to and whether tokyo electric power company was being forthright about the dangers the workers were actually facing. a year later, radiation is still leaking, there's still cleanup work being done at the plant, but not by nuclear engineers. to find out who the workers are and buy they're risking their health, a writer went under cover.

>> reporter: inside a nuclear disaster, these are the nameless men tasked with cleaning up the crippled fukushima nuclear plant. nearly this was the site of a triple meltdown, a force so powerful, radiation still leaks today. a 12-mile radius around the plant is a nuclear waste land, and these men work around the clock, trying to contain the nuclear fuel. this author wanted to know more about these men who risk their lives for so little in return. so he disguised himself as a fellow contract laborer. he's looking into a small video camera. disguised as a wristwatch. for six weeks he captured images of real life as a day hire. you can see the gaping holes left when nuclear fuel exploded

through the walls. he drove past tanks holding contaminated water. today 6,000 gallons of emergency water is still being sprayed into the reactor buildings so the melted nuclear reactor doesn't overheat and spill out again. what is the primary message of your book. stop lying he says. what is this lie that you're talking about? there's no way you won't be radioactively contaminated if you work at the fluke clear plant. tepco says it has nothing to say about the book, but the company maintains that worker safety is a high priority. this job puts workers at risk and it is that fact that explains why the men he met at fukushima are average people not nuclear engineers. we know little about the workers

who are working at the nuclear plant. they're afraid they will lose their jobs if they talk he hears that again and again. cnn was part of a recent media tour of the fukushima nuclear plants. you're a young man, you're 33 years old. why do you continue to work here? this accident happened at any plant, he says, it's my mission to keep working here. that sort of hero narrative is what tepco wants the public to hear, not the real story. why are people working here? for the money, he says, they're not worried about the health risks decades down the line. today's bread, tomorrow's meal, rent for next month. >> we talked to michael

freedlander in the days and months after the disaster in japan. he joins us live in new york. is this much more stable than it was a year ago? >> there's really two issues here, number one the reactor plant themselves as you have heard me say, they are as stable today as they were last april. they continue to pump water in, water is coming out of the bottom, they continue injecting it. >> you're saying they're not very stable? >> without splitting hairs, the situation is that the residual energy is quite low. as long as they can continue pumping the water into the reactors. >> the water itself is the issue. because essentially they're not processing the water, the water is basically being collected, it's going into these massive tank farms.

>> they're basically just holding radioactive water? >> and you can see that these are not seismically qualified tanks, what happens if we have another earthquake. what happens if a typhoon comes through. we were lucky last year, there was only one near miss with a typhoon, but we may not be that lucky this year. >> what are they going to do with the water? >> they clean it up as best as they can. but there are radioactive es, so at the end of the day, it has to be released into the environment, either dumped into the ocean or released into the environment. >> is that dangerous? >> when it's done in a controlled manner, where you're monitoring it, we can assess wind conditions and currents and things like that, it can be managed, and it can be managed quite safely. this is the issue, if they would start doing that and it can be managed, that's to the.

>> the government kof japan claims his reactors in cold shut jun a couple of months ago. or do you believe that or do you believe the writer who says nay need to stop the lies. >> i get my news the same place you do. what i think is going on, let me answer the first question, in terms of the plants being in cold shutdown, cold shutdown is a very technical definition in nuclear reactor plants. cold shutdown implies that the plant is in a stable condition and that you're in a situation that if you tier in an upset condition you're in a position that you can manage it. >> and that's not the case. >> that's not the case. >> to call this cold shutdown, they should not be using that terminology.

is the government lying? again, i get my news the same place you do, i think that a strong case could be made that they're stretching the truth. >> there have been a lot of reports of low level radiation on the ground. how big a concern is that in surrounding areas. >> sanjay gupta has indicated previously that there's a gap between what we know and what worries us and that is absolutely the case. chronic exposure to low level radiation has been studied ridiculously, millions and millions of dollars over the last 60 years. and the reality is all of the studies have been done globally and basically lead us to inconclusive results. we can't say it's safe, we can't say that it's not safe, we just don't know. because the studies don't give us any hard conclusions. >> and this could go on for a long time? >> this is going to go on for decades. so we're in a situation where we don't really know what the chronic affects of exposure to

low level radiation are. >> the state of california forcibly sterilized him when he was 14 years old, he's now 82 years old and he's battling cancer. and the documentary, it has exploded on the internet. the mission is to capture ugandan war lard, one of the new western journalists who has been face to face with him describes what he's really like.

keeping them honest report, last night we told you about one man's dying wish. he's asking the state of california to make amends for a wrong that can really never be made right. he was sterilized against his will, something that seems -- sheer numbers of forced sterilizations, california led the nation by far, but it hasn't paid a single penny to compensate any of the victims. elizabeth cohen went looking for answers. >> reporter: charlie was 14 years old when he had a vasectomy, if you think that sounds just a little young for the procedure, you would be right. he got it because the state of california forced him to.

>> first they shot me with some kind of medicine, supposed to deaden the nerve, and then the next thing i heard was snip, snip and that was it. >> he was one of 20,000 californians who were sterilized against their will back in the heyday of the state's eugenics population. he was chosen simply because he lived in a state run home. the governor of the state of north carolina proposed paying it's victims $50,000. but so far, california's offered nothing more than this, a statement issued back in 2003 saying in part, it was a sad and regrettable chapter in the state's history and it is one that must never be repeated again.

keeping them honest, i went to california to get some answers from the state's leaders. >> we have been calling an email in your office for a long time now. governor brown wouldn't talk to us, but did send a statement regretting the harm done to victims. we asked again about his policy on reparations, his office said we have nothing more to add. another person we have been trying to speak to, republican john perez. his spokesman, john viga. >> this is an issue i'm just learning about. i'm looking into it. >> senate majority leader ellen corbin wouldn't speak to us either. >> why hasn't anything happened since then? >> good question. >> he now has lung cancer and just celebrated his birthday in the hospital. he said he would use any money he got to buy a place of his own

and live out his last few days independently. >> the program worked exactly as depended. he has no children. whether he and other victims will get justice or just die away is up to politicians in california. >> elizabeth, you said 60,000 people were sterilizeded in the united states. why do you think that the california politicians are so unwilling to talk to you? >> i think there are a couple of reasons. i'm not sure how familiar the legislature fors are about what happened. you have severe budget tear problems in california. so the fact of having to pay people more money would not be very popular right now.

the poll situations respond to pressure and there's no cohesive organized movement on behalf of these victims. many of them are very, very roeld. >> nazi journey -- the nazis took notice of what they were doing in california, saw how successful they were, their numbers were really amazing and they actually, the nazis approached california's leaders and said, hey, can you help us? we have some questions for you. and california you general nicks readers helped the nazis. what's next for that man charlie? >> charlie just got discharged from the hospital so he's doing better, but he still has lung cancer, he is an older gentleman

and i think he's sort of feeling, what does he do next? he's already tried to contact the governor, the attorney general, the state assembly woman. he doesn't quite know what his next step would be. >> and he's on his own so the state of california made it impossible for him to have a family. and joseph koni is not the most wanted fugitive now. we're going to talk to one of the few western journalists who actually made the ugandan war lord face to face. and the so-called soccer mom madam speaks out and what she has to say.

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at meineke i have options... like oil changes starting at $19.95. my money. my choice. my meineke. more tonight on kony 2012. >> for 26 years, kony has been kidnapping children into his rebel group the lra. turning the girls into sex slaves. and boys introchild soldiers. >> he told me more about his

brother and what he would say to him if he were still alive. >> i love you, but now i miss you so it is better when we meet we are not going to meet, but we may meet in heaven, you see? so it is better. i mean it will start something, because if i saw my brother once again, i don't -- >> joseph kony tops the international courts most wanted list. the group called invisible children are calling for his arrest. they want everyone to know who kony is. arresting kony is not going to be easy. he's alluded capture for years

now. one of our journalists has actually been face to face with kony. matthew, kony has become the most hated man in a matter of days on this video. you went on a quest to find him. what was that like? >> it was an incredible journey. it took frankly months to track this guy down. he very rarely appears out of his jungle hideouts and it was only after a long and very protracted journey that i was able to keep up with him. it was a remarkable scene to see him finally emerge out of the bush dressed in a white suit and flanked by child soldiers sort of flopping along in their boots. it was a remarkable scene. >> what was he like?

>> the amazing thing was that this man is a man who inspires terror in an entire community. he takes order from a holy spirit. but when he appeared in person, he almost seemed more frightened of us than we were of him. he said in an almost quavering voice, i'm a man, i'm a human being, i'm joseph kony. as if to say that this was really him, that he wasn't some mythical figure, that he was in fact just an ordinary person. >> did he seem rational to you? many of his methods seemed extreme and horrific. did he seem a rational person? >> it was very difficult to tell, i have spent a lot of time talking to abductees who had escaped from his ranks a man who is personal would change in a heart beat, he would go from

being kind and joking with his abductee children to going to a raving and terrifying figure. but he saw different sides of him. when we first emerged out of this clearing, out of his kingdom if you will in the forest, he looked larger -- he had an incredibly captivating powerful figure, and it was clear that his audience were hanging on his every word. so we did get a glimpse of that charisma which is part of the reason his -- >> how is it that he has been able to survive out there for more than 25 years? >> it's bizarre to think that one man leading this organization kind of evaded,

pursued or evaded capture for such a long time. but of course the story of the army is long and complicated one. it's not a simple story. but bart of it is of course this man's incredibly magnetic, powerful personality. his methods are brutal. he doesn't hesitate to -- many have a sense of awe for this man, that he has some sort of mystical presence that makes him very difficult to resist. >> some have criticized invisible person, critics have also raised -- nonprofit groups finances, it's also posted the financial statements going back to 2006. you can find all that in invisible children.com.

as if flying weren't lots of commotion aboard a flight preparing to take off from dallas. a flight attendant got on the loud speaker and repeatedly declared that she was not responsible if the plane cashed. and the manhattan madam speaks out from behind bars. anna christina tells the "new york post" he was grilled repeatedly by prosecutors who demanded she spill the beans on powerful new yorkers. and the illinois house that was used in the popular movie

home alone, it was sold for $1.6 million. the buyer did get a pretty good deal. when the house did go on the market two years ago, it was almost $2 million. >> take a look at the shot, deborah. a baby learns early in life, the adage if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. take a look. >> the parents wondereder how he kept getting out of his crib so they put a camera on his dresser. >> now they should put padding on the back wall. i can't believe that little kid the way he went over there, he

got up and did it again. >> i know, it's incredible. coming up, how many bikinis does it take to get into the "guinness book of world records"? the answer is next.

> time now for the ridiculous list. and australia thought it was so cool back in october when it set the begin us in record for the largest bikini parade.

australia believes it's thong and winding road to victory would hold together for a long time to come. this week, the united states broke the record in the highly coveted bikini parade category. >> 450 people took part and set a new "guinness book of world records" panama city, usa. >> that was guinness, the guy from guinness, phillip robertson. you don't often hear about guinness on spring break, but it's not like they have a book of world records, so they had to make do. it was all very official there. interestingly, it also marked the phrase big keen any inspector has been used literally. >> i inspect bikinis, it's my job. i don't know why anyone would me

tend to be a bikini inspector, it's a menial job, you have to take a bus for an hour. you work in a danged factory. your guys start to go buggy and squinty. >> the bikini parade was all about patriotism. >> this is the most exciting day of my life. tears were coming out of my eyes, i was so proud of the united states. >> usa, yes, whooo! number one. it's been a long week. there's two piece thos this story, there's the patriotism and then there's the undeniable historical importance of the event. >> the bikini parade -- it's not like many women suffer parades in the early 1900st and i'm not 100% sure about this, but there

might have been a touch more w whooo! ing at the bikini parade. >> whooo! it's been a very long week, did i mention that? >> as spring break events go, this one is very mild. >> last year in a grill, they had giant shower heads that shot room in our mouth. >> we went to a place off the coast of the haiti because the place had an all you can suck beer hose. >> did she find it? >> i don't know, they can't find her. >> so let's lift our voices into a resounding whooo! for the title of world's largest bikini parade, belongs to the united states and here it shall remain for all time. that's it, thanks for watching.