evenly split at 46-46 whom they would vote for. while the president was given a three-point everyone over romney in another poll. the cnn poll showing president obama trailing romney in florida, and he's leading in 11 other battleground states. including an eight-point lead in iowa and a six-point lead in wisconsin. just as we begin to focus less on the national polls and more on the swing states, so the unemployment numbers can be broken out state by state with some good news for the president. the bureau of labor statistics reports unemployment dropped sharply in nine swing states over the past nine months, and no, it's not a conspiracy, but it may explain why the president's numbers remain more solid in those critical swing states. while mitt romney was off the campaign trail to prepare for monday's debate, an energized president obama campaigned in

fairfax, virginia. while he admitted he was no doctor, he offered a new diagnostic term for his rival's flip flopping on the issues. >> he's changing up so much and backtracking and side stepin' we got to--we got to name this condition that he's going through. i think--i think it's called romnesia. >> eliot: nice line but when it comes to foreign policy the gap between mitt romney and the president is closing according to a recent pew poll. giving the president obama a four-point lead over romney, down from 15 points a month ago thanks in large part to the attack in bengahzi on september 11th that killed four americans including ambassador chris stevens. president obama was requested about who was to blame for the attack on the jon stewart on "the

daily show" with jon stewart. >> obama: every piece of information that we get as we got it we laid it out for the american people. >> i would say even you would say it was not the optimal response at least to the american people as far as us all of us being on the same page. >> obama: here's what i'm going to say as far as four americans getting killed, it's not optimal, and we'll fix it. >> all of it. >> obama: all of it. >> eliot: john mccain is it not like either response on the fox news this morning. >> the optimal line was regrettable and makes me feel sad. for him to say that every piece of information they got they laid out to the american people was one of the most disengenius statements i her heard. >> eliot: reporting within 24 hours of the attack that there was evidence it was carried out by militants and not an

mob-angered anti-muslim video. it's unclear who had access to that information in the days that followed when the obama administration was claiming publicly that the video had triggered the attack. i'm joined by nicholas burns at harvard's kennedy school former secretary of state for political affairs and ambassador to n.a.t.o. and to greece. ambassador, thank you for joining us. >> hi there eliot, thank you. >> eliot: looking forward to monday, what do you expect? the motion emotions are high, willisthere any significant divide between president obama and governor romney how they would handle foreign policy. >> foreign policy is at a complex time. there are a lot of issues that they'll talk about the global recession and its impact on power, how to end the war in afghanistan, the euro debt

crisis, climate change, there is a lot to talk about. i do expect that governor romney will try again to confront the president over this libya issue. but governor romney is on thin ice in my judgment. when the attacks occurred, eliot, against the conflict in bengahzi and the embassy in cairo on september 11th, governor romney issued what was a very rash and temperate statement, and he was roundly criticized for it. remember last week in the second debate he tried to pin president obama down on whether or not he had used the order counterterrorism. and he had. governor romney was wrong about that. the republicans have have reacted and i think there is a danger in going after the president on this issue. frankly i think the president has managed this pretty well. that ought to be the central issue, i would think, of this

debate. >> eliot: the risk of the republicans, they overpoliticize an issue that americans do not want to see politicized and then romney bungling that lawyering against the president and candy crowly said you're wrong, governor romney. and then for a record that is not pristine i will say in how the president has spoken about this. and you said it was unfortunate where you rattled off a litany of issues that has been brought to this assault in bengahzi. how do we bring in relationship what we want to do globally with the economic power. that is something that has not been discussed at all in the course of the campaign. >> and it's facing the united states internationally. where the preeminent global power, no doubt about it. but as we go to the fiscal

cliff, we might cut the heart out of our defense and diplomatic budget. you can't be a global power if the foundations of your country are shaking and if you don't have a healthy economy to support that's a huge apparatus of power as you've seen so the central question to our campaign how does the united states remain the number one power and how do we act in the world. i do think there are substantial differences between the two candidatescandidates on these issues. >> eliot: i heard a bellicose language when it comes to iran and syria and i have a hard time understanding what i would do. take iran, for instance. i don't know what he could do to stop with any greater certainty iran's march towards nuclear air bomb. >> president obama by any

objective standard has had a very successful first term in foreign policy. he got us out of the war in iraq. he took down osama bin laden. i say this as someone who served in the george w. bush administration, a professional diplomat, he raised the credibility of the united states where we want it to be after the difficult years of 9/11. governor romney, what is unfortunate in his foreign policy is its slogans and one liners, and you don't have a sense where his judgment would be in some of these issues. well i'll sanction china the first day. i think russia are our greatest adversary. those two statements they have not produced a winning foreign policy. >> eliot: it's good marketing but not a coherent foreign policy. nicholas burn, so many things for your joining us tonight. >> thank you very much. >> eliot: for more on politics

of this past week i'm joined by reuters columnist david rhode and wayne barrett. thank you both for joining me. it's great to have you both here. david, let me start with you afghanistan not as much in the news now as perhaps north africa and syria. are we getting out fast enough? >> i think we are. i think we got to get out. i think in this debate you're going to see romney hammer the president on this. the strategy will be this is president jimmy carter not president barack obama. he'll play on this reaganist theme. the world wants to be led by america--which isn't true--but that's the theme you'll see and he'll talk about bengahzi and we're leaving afghanistan too quickly. >> eliot: the unfortunate imagery of our foreign policy has become bengahzi and our absence of a presence in syria so mitt romney is using that as

exhibit a and look we're not doing anything and we're not flexing our muscles. that does not seem to be an accurate representation of the president's foreign policy. >> it's just the media fever. the only way you can break a story that anybody will pay attention to in this libya context is by disagreeing with the obama narrative in some way. frankly, i really--when romney was actually pressed at the debate to say well what did the administration do wrong what did he say? he said, obama got on a plane and went to a fundraiser in las vegas after the event. that was his big critique. his big critique was that susan that susan wright got on the shows and she also said extremists took over and caused the attack.

i don't know what the point of this critique is. >> eliot: i'm willing to concede that the information flow was not optimal to used president's word under jon stewart, but put that aside, has not the arc of our foreign policy in africa been more correct? it seems that you could not calibrate it much more than they have the real question is syria. it is really dangerous. you have this war between turkey and syria. there are complaints from the turks that the u.s. left them singing as they left the site of assad. right or wrong, mitt romney was a good politician. he's so vague he hammered the president. he has moved to the middle in his speeches recently, and he'll do that in the debate. he'll want to bring up syria and that we have not been strong enough there. >> eliot: syria is the soft underbelly. >> what is the strong suit? what he did with gadhafi in

libya, which he's not getting any credit for, of course a little chaos is going to follow the overthrow of a regime that lasted that long. but he was able to successfully topple a tyrant that presidents have been pursuing for decades. >> and romney's people will be saying we should be doing the same thing against assad, and they're specifically calling for missiles. we should be giving missiles to anti-assad fighters. they said, you know, what if they want to suggest that, we're going to point out those same missiles could be used to shoot down israeli airliners. >> eliot: this is a complicated area that does not lend itself to the back and forth rhetoric of the campaign. mitt romney is proving himself smart, capable and deft. >> and a good debateer. >> eliot: let me ask you this, did he make a mistake? that he is essentially now campaigning against paul ryan. is there a piece of him that

wishes he hadn't embraced paul ryan and he had run to the middle before he chose his vice presidential candidate? >> i was astonished after the reporting after the first debate. i'm not saying that the president performed ably. but how does a guy who changes his position on every conceivable issue be praised for it this late in the game? we're used to presidential candidate moving to the center, but never this late, and never on such a broad array of issues. >> eliot: i want to go deeper than that. the old saying that consistency is a hobgoblin of a little mind, but what happened to the notion that people should have a core set of values that someone carries through. they are all over the place. what have we lost in our politics. >> we have lost that. to be fair the president has not laid out a clear vision of what he wants to do domesticcally or in foreign policy.

that helps mitt mitt romney the president was better in the second debate where he was saying mitt romney, specific in your tax plan. can the president shows romney's vagueness again on foreign policy and will that wear thin. >> eliot: can you buy that argument? sometimes i step back and say tell me i'm wrong hasn't the president given us an domestic agenda between the jobs act and what he wants to do in terms of education and infrastructure, there is something there. >> i couldn't agree more. i couldn't disagree more with david. >> eliot: you're giving a dirty look. >> no, i would say that he the president has not articulated it very well. >> he proposed all these things. i'm amazed he has not run more of a harry truman campaign against these guys who have blocked things that could clearly have delivered jobs to

americans. he doesn't want to look like he can't get along with these guys because that's a negative for him in the second term. he doesn't say the truth about what is happening here. >> eliot: i think that's true, but there is another hidden trapped door. the republicans turned back and said hey for the first two years you controlled both houses. >> that's not true. in the filibuster they blocked anything that is real in terms of an agenda, david? >> no, he has not. not on debing about the president's performance. did he not hold mitt romney accountable. he did a better job in the second debate but he should be runningrunning against its house republicans. it's surprising, it's a crucial debate. this is a very close race i do not. >> eliot: last question, the poll numbers from the white house this week, do you think we're in the home stretch and he'll make it? >> yeah, i think so. if you run a campaign the way

romney has run a campaign and win then you've change american policies forever and nobody has to at the time the t >> eliot: you presume that they ever do. my great friend, two-time two-time pulitzer writer, thank you. coming up monday, i'll be covering it live with governor granholm, check uygur, john fugelsang, we'll have your thoughts only on current tv. we have jobs returning but not the same jobs as before. more "viewpoint" ahead.

only on current tv.

>> eliot: this has been one long bitter election for president. we ought to admit what this competition it all about. the number of the day $1,457,734,190. that is the estimated value property of the white house according to today's wall street journal. we bet that doesn't even include the money you could raise by renting out the lincoln bedroom. it has 100,000 square feet of living space, 13 bedrooms, 35 bathrooms located on lush park land plus it's event to mass transit. who wouldn't want to be in

possession of that for the next four years especially now that housing prices are coming back. certainly puts the campaign spending in perspective even though sheldon adelson promised to commit $100 million to romney's campaign, that is still buying the place at a bargain. yourself. with governors granholm, spitzer, and vice president gore, watch the only truly experienced presidential debate coverage. >> eliot: all jobs are not created equal. in the aftermath of the cataclysm of 200860% of the jobs lost were middle-wage jobs. as we've bounced back only 22% of the new jobs fall into that category. most of the new jobs are distinctly lower wage level accentuating the pain felt by the middle class.

but diagnosing the problem and solving it are two completely different things. last fall the president proposed the jobs act to cure the jobs crisis. the bill was filibustered in the senate before pieces were broken out and watered down with a few passing. meanwhile governor romney has been campaigning with a plan of his own. >> romney: that's why i've a five-point plan that gets america 12 million new jobs in four years and rising take home pay. >> eliot: but will either plan make a difference? joining me now who recently wrote a fascinating article analyzing these president bush, job trends. thank you for coming in. >> good to be here. >> eliot: your article really broke out what happened in the cataclysm of 2008 and there after in terms of the jobs we lost and what it showed, describe for us where the jobs were that disappeared. >> a lot of jobs were middle income jobs, construction manufacturing, mortgage brokering and that sort of thing thing.

>> eliot: mortgage brokering, it was a low, low considering the time thatthejob they did. >> the jobs went away. these middle class jobs disappeared. in the recovery since then, what we've seen of a recovery, we've seen a greater resurgence in jobs in food service retail and low-skill, low-income jobs. >> eliot: the wages, what this is doing is increasing the income disparity that had already begun to manifest itself in 2005, 2008, or even further back. now it gets worse and worse. >> this hollowing out of skill sets and income has been going on for decades actually. there is a reason to believe that this will continue despite whatever economic policies we put forthright now. that's partly because of the mid-skill, mid-wage jobs some of them were supported by the housing bubble, so those jobs are not coming back.

but the types of jobs that are sustainable in the united states they're easier to keep at home are high skilled. america is better at producing engineering, scientific-type jobs that pay better but not everybody has access to. >> eliot: and a perfect example of that is apple. you have people creating the software, doing the design work out in california, silicon valley, then you have 10 million jobs in china where they're putting together the ipods. >> and you have people working in the retail stores as well, and you don't have a lot of people filling in the middle ranks. >> eliot: you have this real segmentation of our society and this is the reason why it is happening. to pivot to the politics at the moment, president obama has put together his american jobs act. it did not go far because of the republicans in the senate. would it solve the problem. you look at the pieces of it. one big piece is extending the payroll tax cut. we already have that. so we'll continue without extending t will it make a

fundamental difference at all in bringing back middle-wage jobs that we care so much about. >> it will give for money to paychecks. they'll have more money to spend and if they spend more money at their local businesses, then local business also hire more people, that sort of thing. there were more detective things that got to this question of mid-level jobs disappearing. one was more infrastructure spending putting more construction workers back to work. a lot of construction workers lost their jobs when the houseing bubble collapsed. it also targeted people who were part of the long-term unemployed. >> eliot: retraining them. >> retraining them. >> eliot: which is something that they have talked about as well. >> both parties have talked about retraining. retraining is very important for the american people. the higher-skilled jobs is where the higher income is at. but getting people in the right

program-- >> eliot: not to be skeptical of what the president is proposing but it is a kinsian stimulus. the retraining the government spends a lot of money but it does not do terribly well because it doesn't know what jobs you're supposed to be retaining for. and the in this, infrastructure, we're all for it, but then there is the stimulus all over again. you run into this question of will it really fundamentally transform our economy. >> again i think the big picture looking at all of this is if we get going and sweep up these jobs, hopefully it's more high paying jobs than low-paying jobs. >> eliot: hopefully not flipping hamburgers, not that it's a bad job. >> but retain something a big retraining is hard of it.

>> eliot: it's hard to retrain a construction worker into a computer engineers. they say we need thousands of computer engineers but we're not churning them out in our schools. romney's plan is to cut taxes. >> basically if you look at what his five points or what he has been emphasizing on the campaign trail, he mostly talks about cutting taxes. if you cut taxes that will help the job creators have more money to hire more people. and you know, in classical kinsianism that true, it could work as an stimulus but it's a less effective stimulus than spending on benefits or putting money in people's pockets in middle and lower income who would spend that money. >> eliot: and neither one is going to do anything dramatic overnight. >> absolutely not. >> eliot: it's going to take year to work our way out of this.

>> absolutely. the things that would help overnight require much more money. things like helping people with whether retraining or even just job placement services. a lot of people who were unemployed don't have a lot of help getting connected with employers, proving to employers yeah, i've been out of work for two years but i'm employable, i can get up and get into the office at 9:00 in the morning. >> eliot: the election may be two weeks from tuesday, but the problems will go on way i don't know beyond that. >> probably. >> eliot: from "the new york times," thank you for coming in. >> thank you. >> eliot: obama and romney in viewfinder coming up next.

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i have these great pictures from the two debates, but i don't know which debate they're from. if you could--i have two pictures. there's one picture, i don't know if you can get that. and then there's another picture. >> obama: this is the third time that governor romney and i have met recently. as some of you may have noticed i had a lot more energy in our second debate. i felt really well rested after the nice long nap i had in the first debate. >> after the recent town hall debate it's time for reflection. >> i got my swagger back! boom! >> romney: you're right, a campaign can required a lot of wardrobe changes. blue jeans in the morning suit for lunch, but then it's nice to finally wear what ann and i wear around the house.

>> matthew fox stars. [ ♪ music ♪ ] in mitt romney and the dockers of destiny. >> okay, taggert. let's have a little talk just you and me, you. you want to take a swing at someone for calling your old man a liar? take a swing at me, come on. don't worry there won't be any secret service involved. >> romney: i've already seen early reports from opportunity's dinner. headline obama embraced by catholics. romney dines with rich people. >> eliot: great performance by both of the candidates. are we cheating our kids to pay for retirement? that's coming up next.

(vo) so we gave him a weekly show. >> thank you.

>> eliot: there is a massive political battle that no one wants to talk about seniors versus kids. and our kids losing. in the game of budgeting dollar you give to one group is a dollar you don't give to somebody else. what does it battle mean for the next generation? and when you cut through all the rhetoric how well do we care for our kids. joining me now columnist for "the new york times" author of the book" the price of everything: solving the mystery of why we say what we do" and a fascinateing article titled "cut backs for the young." is it an economic battle between kids and seniors. >> there is this tension but it's not a battle because there

is nobody representing the kids. for the battle you need two armies. in this case you basically have a very powerful political group which is seniors which vote very heavily and are very interested in two things, medicare and social security. then you have kids who are perhaps represented by their parents but their parents are not really that focused on one or two issues that have to do with their children. they have many issues at stake in the political process. there is no one really pulling for the kids, i would say. >> cenk: so the political voice for kids is defused. the political foist voice for seniors aarp, and medicaid a bit less, are very powerful and organized. you're right there isn't an equality on either side of the sense. yet in terms of the rhetoric, politics like to talk about kids. >> oh, yes, kids are great to talk about and they come up in this campaign, they came up in the first debate when governor romney said that we had to

protect them from future big debt. >> eliot: right. >> and hence we had to cut spending. >> eliot: which was interesting because he raised the debt saying we cannot leave our kids this enormous burden, yet he has not laid out an agenda for children in terms of education or healthcare. >> that's right. if you do what he would like to do with public spending you're going to decimate a bunch of the programs that low-income and disadvantaged children rely on. >> eliot: before we do what we ordinarily do on this show which is to bash romney but spending on kids has gone down. >> there was a jump because of the fiscal stimulus. the fiscal stimulus had a big increase in medicaid spending, and medicaid is the biggest federal program for kids these days. it jumped up in the first year in 2009, and it has been declining since as fiscal

stimulus has been withdrawn. >> eliot: right. >> it is expected to keep falling. that's part of the problem as you look through the next ten years, and it will keep falling and falling. >> this is not as much a part partisan issue as a political problem. the spending for seniors politics does not favor sending for kids, and as you pointed out we're lagging way behind the countries we ordinarily compare ourselves. >> yes, we have the highest poverty rate for children in the industrial world. we have the highest infant mortality rate and among the highest child mortality rate for children under 20. and literacy scores, across a whole universe of indicators of social dysfunction we're really at the bottom of the pile.

>> eliot: at a simple information level i think those data points are completely outside the consciousness of most americans. we don't realize that we simply are doing a terrible job for our kids when compared to these other nations. when i read that i guess theoretically i've dealt with it more than others because of the jobs i've had, but we're really failing. >> we are. and you can see a lot of these industrial countries, they tend to have bigger public sectors and better funded programs for children. >> eliot: what they've done better is control their healthcare spending. >> oh, that's right. we spend a lot on kids but we spend it very badly because the healthcare spend something through the roof, and it does not deliver in terms of outcomes. >> eliot: if you were to prescribe and answer to this, what do you suggest? i'm not saying how do you change education for the individual kid, but how do you change the budget and political thinking on

this so we refocus for the next generation. >> you have to focus really on the very early years. if you bring elementary school education and healthcare in the pot, we would look at it very differently. in the overall numbers, we might be a little shy but it's not. >> eliot: dramatic. >> yes. when you look at nutrition family leave, care at home, that kind of stuff there we are terrible. that is at a very important stage of life for children, zero to three years old. >> eliot: what you're saying is interesting and vastly important because most of the studies prove that those are the most critical years. >> yes, there is a group of people who have estimated that a return on investment of kids in those years yields 6% to 10% a year. that's more than the stock market has yielded since the world war ii. that's the best investment you can do.

in terms of crime rate, more productivity when they're adults. this is very well spent money. >> eliot: is there a reason ideological that we have avoided that very early childhood spending? >> well, i think that that is a spending that would have to come from the federal government. most of the big items of spending come from states and local government. education is mostly funded at the state. >> eliot: do you offer some sensibility that that is the family zone, and it's only when kids begin to go to school. >> i think that's right. it's the family's responsibility to take care of their kids. >> eliot: early nutrition, and that is really where some of these fundamental issues-- >> absolutely. that makes it much different than the spending in the world. the other issue is we need more money to spend on kids. that's clear, and where that money comes from will be a big political battle. >> eliot: that does not seem like it will emerge from this

policy moment when negative-sum budget is the word of the day. >> certainly. >> eliot: we'll continue this conversation. thank you for stopping by. >> thanks a lot. >> eliot: the c.i.a. officer who smuggled people out hostages out of iran. coming up. cook what you love and save your money. joe doesn't know it yet, but he'll work his way up from busser to waiter to chef before opening a restaurant specializing in fish and game from the great northwest. he'll start investing early, he'll find some good people to help guide him, and he'll set money aside from his first day of work to his last, which isn't rocket science. it's just common sense. from td ameritrade.

>> eliot: the presidential election could end in a tie. that's unbelievable. once again we have the amazing the electric governor jennifer granholm. welcome governor, what have you got on the show tonight? >> because we are heading into this debate, the final debate, and we are coming out of a week of just bizarre polls, we're going to have a session focused on what the debate spinning forward has to do to solidify this for the president and then what do these polls mean? we have linda lake who is a fab pollster, and then we'll go to the polls in the swing states

which are going one way and the national polls going another and that crazy gallup poll and try to figure out what that portends. there is an awful lot to talk about. >> eliot: are there those who want to reject it just in a state of denial? >> you would hate for the progressives to be discounting the gallup polls the way that they were doing a couple of weeks ago. you know. >> eliot: we're becoming the jack welchs of pollsters. a reminder we'll be back here monday night along with vice president al gore, cenk uygur and john fugelsang. we have more "viewpoint" coming right up. politics. >>science and republicans do not mix. >>now it's your turn at the only online forum with a direct line to eliot spitzer. >>join the debate now.

>> eliot: it hasn't happened in two212 years but it might happen in two weeks. a college tie. if mitt romney continues to pick up votes in the swing states we may look at the possibility that the electoral college will give votes to romney and to obama.

just as much. >> it is expected to remain democratic. as a result there is a 269 tie in the electoral college, the next president could be mitt

romney and the vice president would be joe biden. maybe it's time for the constitutional amendment to rethink some of this. that's my view. become so toxic, beverly hills housewives are now injecting it into their foreheads. (vo) so current gave him a weekly show. >> i love romney's debate style, but i tell you, if i could be that stiff for 90 minutes, i'd ... (vo) we probably won't regret it.

>> eliot: 56 americans were taken hostage by islamic revenues leaser from the embassy in iran. they would be held for 444 days. this story is well-known. what is less well-known is that

six diplomats working managed to escape and spend the next three months hiding out in the private residents of two canadian diplomats. the rest were taken in a plan plan, an unbelievable rescue is drama advertised in the major motion picture called "argo" in which mr. men dead is portrayed by ben affleck. >> i'm tony men dead. this is what i do. i get people out and i never left people behind. >> eliot: i'm joined by the real tony mendez and author of the new book orgo, how the c.i.a. and hollywood pulled off the most audacious rescue in history. thank you for joining us. >> thank you for inviting me. >> eliot: for those of us who

are old enough the bond movies you're q and bond all in one. you create the disguises the exciting way to get people out of a country. you go in, you do it all this is incredible. >> well, i think somebody needs to do it. and guess what, they're doing it better than i did these days. >> eliot: it's a fascinating thing. you joined the c.i.a. in 1965, am i correct? >> that's right. >> eliot: and at the time because of your artistic skills you were in charge of disguises. tell us about that. what was that all about? >> the way you work in the field you need to be invisible half the time. so you got to have alternate identities and the various ways of using and making those is a big part of the espionage business. it's kind of like robbing banks when nobody knows the money is gone. you go back each week and take more money. >> eliot: again i think you're eagle extraordinarily modist.

you were devicing, building these tricky devices. i saw one reference to cats with microphones on them. and high tech, high tech has changed between 1965 and now. but you were on the cutting edge to get the c.i.a. to do all this stuff where in movies we only see through the eyes of hollywood. >> yes it's certainly a big part of the business. the way you characterize it is pretty much the way it is. the only way i would say is i didn't do it alone. there were a bunch of talented people in that office, and i work for some of them, and some of them worked for me eventually, but it was a team. >> eliot: look obviously i applaud and appreciate your modesty, but it was not a false modesty, but what you did is portrayed in the movie and in your book is absolutely remarkable. getting the six u.s. diplomats out of iran back in 1979. a spectacular story.

how did you get up with the cover. the hard part was creating the cover to get into iran and then get them out. how did you come up with this crazy idea? >> well, you're looking at the product of each one of your projects, and you measure it for what it needs to make it succeed. i have to tell you that there are very few times we didn't succeed. but it's a full-time job in that we have to sort of be from cradle to grave, if i may be so bold. our operatives and our sources had a contract. that was we would keep them in place and communicate with them until the day came that we had to extract hem. >> eliot: in the movie, which is to a certain extent a dramaization but is true to life in terms of the drama the tenseness, what was the tensist

moment as you lived through this effort to get the diplomats out of the iran. >> we were in the airport and they called a mechanical problem. we hoped to be out of there early in the morning and now we were in a crowded airport. all sorts of things like that were taking place as we went along. we were at the point where we had amateurs playing six different new personalities. we would try to keep them ahead of hostile pursuit, but very quickly the atmosphere was being poisoned and the guys in pursuit were getting closer. now, the way it was dramatized in the movie and in the book, that was all done in an active car chase kind of thing. in fact, a lot of that was taking place internally.

that's where you either succeed or fail. you have to have the right demeanor or you're in trouble. >> eliot: all i can tell you is that it's an amazing story. it is true. you pulled off one of the great c.i.a. operations, and we're all lucky you have now written this book and the movie as well to let us see the remarkable accomplishments that you led as a c.i.a. officer. so to you i say thank you. you're a hero in the real sense of the word. the author of the new book" book "argo" and new movie tony mendez. thank you. >> a pleasure to meet you, eliot. >> eliot: thank you, sir. that's "viewpoint" for tonight. i'll see you back here monday with cenk cougar, john fugelsang fugelsang, and general granholm, and vice president al gore.

for the big debate. [♪ theme music ♪] >> john: good evening, i'm john fugelsang, and welcome to "so that happened" the week in review show that looks back on all of the events of the week you may already be trying to forget. we kr have shelley wrighted. and lizz winstead. filmmaker, and a visit to comacon new york cit