on the broadcast tonight, winner take all. tonight after a bruising fight, republican voters and the biggest prize of all among swing states. florida finally have their say and mitt romney wins big. iran's threatt. not just the nuclear program tonight, u.s. intelligence warns iran may be prepared to strike on american soil. more jfk tapes not heard until now. tonight, the conversation on air force one as the president's body was flown home after that awful day in dallas. and disappearing act. here's the picture a year ago. here's the picture now. it's been a january for the record books. we know we're tempting fate, but why is this happening? "nightly news" begins now.

captions paid for by nbc-universal television good evening and for the good people in florida, it's all over tonight, at least until the general election. mitt romney becomes the first republican to win more than one contest in this wild gop political season thus far. nbc news declared romney the projected winner at 8:00 eastern time tonight with a convincing margin over newt gingrich. santorum third, ron paul fourth, notably, fboth of those last tw candidates have already moved on to nevada, site of the next contest. but tonight, the most valuable of the biggest swing contests gave a big boost to mitt romney who now can declare front-runner status. our reporters are cofferi icove all tonight at romney

headquarters in tampa. peter, good evening. >> brian, good evening to you. even as we speak, romney is taking the stage to a raucous crowd here, celebrating two things tonight. number one, what they believe will be a double-digit win here in the state and number two, that they can take a punch, bouncing back after that defeat in south carolina. officials are telling us tonight they hope to have demonstrated a broad victory here, showing support from women and hispanics as well. as diverse coalition of support, they say. and the other thing that's clearly proven after this is the fact that negative advertising works. mitt romney and his supporters spending more than $15 million in negative ads, almost all of them attacking newt gingrich. the romney campaign in the last week aired just a single positive ad, speaking in spanish to the audience here. they believe they have the electability quality covered. they believe they're number one

in the republican field, but the negativity does not end. this campaign is not wasting any time as they move to colorado and nevada. already in the state of nevada, brian, they are airing negative ads and today put out romney sr. ga surrogate ads to attack newt gingrich. >> thanks. to the interstate, i-4, ron mott is to the east, gingrich headquarters. good evening. >> hey, brian, good evening to you. there's festive music playing in the background as the crowd awaits newt gingrich to address them. he's probably going to tell them to keep their chins up. i'm not sure they expected this type of defeat in florida, but he still believes there's a path to nomination. he's saying over the past few days, when you add up his votes with rick santorum, the other conservatives in the field, they believe they' got more votes than mitt romney in the first

four contests. off to nevada tomorrow, where he will be campaigning until the weekend. they have caucuses there in saturday. it's a stretch in february, seven states in all. that could be just as difficult for the gingrich camp. a lot of the states are favoring mitt romney for one reason or the other. he's going to fry to get the vote out and tell folks don't give up on campaign just yet. what also is interesting for the narrative is we don't have a debate until february 22 and up until florida, that had been considered the best vehicle for success for newt gingrich. >> seemed like we were having one debate per day a while there. ron mott at gingrich headquarters in orlando. ron, thanks. we already have a lot of numbers in, and we already know a lot at this hour about what motivated florida republican voters tonight. tamron hall in our studios. standing by with that. tamron, good evening. >> good evening. our nbc news exit poll finds mitt romney dominated newt gingrich amongst most voter

groups in florida, quite a reversal to what happened in south carolina. in south carolina, he got equal votes with men and women as he easily beat mitt romney in that primary. but take a look, romney is wallops gingrich among women, with a 22% lead over gingrich, and romney has a five-point edge over gingrich among men. and another big factor, electability swung back in mitt romney's favor in florida. take a look. tonight, romney is winning voters who think the ability to beat president obama is most important by 25 points. in south carolina, gingrich won that group by 14 points. so much better performance among women, and being seen as the most electable were among the keys to romney's victory tonight, brian. >> tamron, hall, looking at the exit poll numbers tonight, thanks. our political director and chief white house correspondent chuck todd here in our new york studios with us. in our washington bureau, the moderator of "meet the press" david gregory. david, let's begin with you.

as you look at tonight, and as you look at what we knew the challenge was for the romney campaign, are they going to be able to claim a lot of goals met? >> well, i think the big one is electability. if you look at the last couple of weeks, ten days coming out of the south carolina, what was the big question? why was romney so defensive? why would he allow himself to be bruised so much on the campaign trail over wealth, over taxes. those are really defensiveness brought on -- defensive responses brought on by himself. he really righted that. very strong debate performances, and he went ugly. he went mean against gingrich and that paid some dividends here. but there's still, where does he go from here, among conservatives, brian. i still that's a test. how does romney use this next period to make the case and the connection to conservatives who still have a lot of doubts about him. until he can do that, newt gingrich is going to look at some of these exit poll number, he's going to look at the calendar and say i've got some room to run here, particularly

the way the delegates are apportioned. >> and chuck todd, the polling folks like to say, if you add up the conservative alternatives to romney, does it exceed or equal what romney himself got tonight? >> well, it is going to about even it or maybe exceed it, we'll see. but we found out that santorum voters were split between romney and gingrich, partially over the gingrich personal history. but what strikes me over south carolina and florida is they were about notes. romney made a campaign about not being newt gingrich. it was solely against him. the question is, at what point does one of them figure out how not to just be the not guy, and somebody be for, you know, able to do something that is for them going forward. we'll see. i agree with dafd. the gingrich is going to look at these numbers and say i can keep going. there's no reason i can't. >> financially? >> financially is going to be another question. he's going to look at it, if i

can get to super tuesday in march. february is going to be tough. because newt gingrich may finish third in more contests than he does first. that's a problem. >> it's the lack of debates that ron mott mentions, is that a bad thing in any way for any single candidate? >> it's probably worse for the one when you're trailing. the romney people are ready to end this debate psyccycle. they think if it's just a game of money, they win. >> they've said everything they want to say. all right. chuck todd with us in our new york studios. david gregory in washington. thanks to you both. we move on tonight to a story that affects both overseas and domestically u.s. intelligence has a chilling new assessment about the scope of the threat from iran. officials today told the u.s. senate they believed iran in anticipation of an attack either by israel or the u.s. or perhaps both on its nuclear facilities

is now more willing to attack the united states at home or abroad. we get more on this story tonight from our chief foreign affairs correspondent andrea mitchell. >> reporter: intelligence officials told senators the first warning was last year's alleged plot to blow up the saudi ambassador at a washington restaurant. israeli officials say another attempt, a busted iranian plot in bangkok earlier this month, to blow up israel's embassy and a synagogue. >> a plot in october really did change, i think, the u.s. intelligence community's views as to what iran was willing to do here in the homeland. >> reporter: why would iran take such a risk? it feels threatened. three weeks ago, a fifth iranian nuclear scientist was assassinated in the streets of tehran. economic sanctions are beginning to bite hard, and israeli's leaders are signalling they think time is running out this year to stop iran from getting a bomb. >> iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, period.

>> reporter: in fact, only days ago, the head of mossad, israel's top spy, secretly briefed congressional leaders and the head of the cia. >> israel does see this possibility as an existential threat to their country. >> obviously, this is a very sensitive issue right now. we're doing a lot with the israelis, working together with them. >> reporter: experts warn that the u.s. is even more vulnerable than israel if iran retaliates or launches a preemptive bomb plot. >> israel is relatively small. getting at israel is hard to do. and it has very formidable defenses for it. america has assets and vulnerabilities around the world. >> reporter: soft u.s. targets like embassies throughout the persian gulf. and 90,000 american troops in afghanistan, next door to iran. still, intelligence officials told the senate today, they don't think iran has taken the final step, deciding to build a bomb. but israel does think iran has

crossed that red line. and u.s. officials say if attacked, iran would not hesitate to retaliate against both israel and the u.s. andrea mitchell, nbc news, washington. in italy tonight, officials there say they have called off the search for missing people in the submerged portion of that costa concordia vessel because it's just become too dangerous for the divers on the job. they'll continue to search the portion above the water line and around the coastline. 16 people are still listed, remember, as officially missing. that still includes the american couple from minnesota. back in this country, we learned today that among the ten people killed in that awful chain reaction wreck on the florida interstate, five members of the same georgia church, including the pastor, his wife, their 17-year-old daughter. another daughter survived. she is in critical condition. friends say they were driving to make sunday services the next morning. florida's governor has ordered an investigation into why the highway patrol reopened the road

with a smoky brush fire burning nearby. big news in the business world tonight. our friends and colleagues over at cnbc have confirmed facebook will file initial paperwork tomorrow morning for a $5 billion initial public offering. the company is looking at a valuation worth of the firm of between $75 billion and $100 billion, which would vault it right into the ranks of the largest public companies on the planet. up next here as we continue tonight, another january day that looks and feels a lot more like june to some folks. why has this winter been so warm in much of the country? and later, a man with a big heart, making a huge difference by getting people back on their feet.

what a difference a year makes. if you live anywhere from boston to chicago or points in between and you walked out the door this mourning and turned right around to take out a few layers, who would blame you? some people did put their coats away here in new york today. it was so warm today across much of the country. as you know, they're calling it june-uary. it's got a lot of people wondering whatever happened to winter? again, realizing we're tempting fate, we get the story tonight from our chief environmental affairs correspondent, anne thompson. >> reporter: in new york central park today, it might as well be spring. >> i heard it was so warm out, i had to come out and take a walk. >> reporter: this most unusual january ending on a remarkably

mild note across the country. today they hit the links in north platt, nebraska, took to skateboards in northern virginia and sported shorts in st. louis. >> i would much rather be walking on the hills than sledding down it. >> reporter: this is a january for the history books. 2,890 daily high temperature records broken or tied. more than four times the number of highs reached or exceeded last year. while today is certainly worthy of a walk in the park, it's also a good time to take a stroll down memory lane. a year ago, the nation braced for 2011's first billion dollar-plus weather event, the groundhog day snowstorm. it trapped glenn in his car on chicago's lakeshore drive. >> how long have you been in here? >> 7 1/2 hours. >> reporter: today it was a perfect day to get that same car washed. >> i have no jacket, i have no glues, i have no scraper in my hand, and i can see my car.

>> reporter: the difference is the jet stream. last year, it followed a typical la nina pattern, bringing warmer and drier temperatures to the south and colder and wetter conditions to the north. >> what happened this year is this pattern has shifted a little bit further to the north and so now almost all of the country is covered by this warmer, drier la nina pattern. >> reporter: add warming because of climate change and it stacks the deck against a traditional winter. >> we just shift the odds towards a better chance of record warmth and a reduced chance of record cold. >> reporter: leaving much of america with a very early case of spring fever. anne thompson, nbc news, new york. and up next here tonight, for the first time, the voices of those still in shock aboard air force one after the jfk assassination.

it was for a generation or more the darkest day anyone in america could imagine. our young president, john f.

kennedy, had been assassinated in dallas. people wept in public. they huddled around tvs and radio and a three-day vigil began. but thanks to new tapes found in a box of a former kennedy aide and never heard before, never part of the official assassination public record until now, we get to hear the machinery of government dealing with a shock to the system. as you hear the following portion between the president's physician on air force one and the surgeon general back in washington concerning the handling of jfk's body, remember this was happening in real time and all of it was unimaginable talk just hours earlier.

as it happened, because the president was a navy man, a decorated war hero, in fact, he was taken to bethesda naval hospital where the postmortem was conducted on the president's body with guards looking on. you can hear all the audio released in this -- this certain release by going to our website. we put links to it there at nbcnightlynews.com. there is also news this week regarding the stretch of massachusetts coastline always referred to as the kennedy compound in hyannis port. americans who couldn't get enough of the kennedy period pored over the photos of their dashing lives and their touch football games on the beach. now the 21-room home where senator edward kennedy died will be devoted to charitable use as something of a conference center. the family will still own the other houses within the compound. and a big change is coming to the white house.

the west wing is in for a big renovation and that includes the oval office. so no matter who the occupant is after inauguration, the president will use a temporary office while the oval and all the other offices are redone. the president's office was last redone by fdr. this is all part of a massive multiyear modernization of the people's house. peyton manning is denying a report that he will never play football again. the son of archie manning, the brother of your new york giants starting super bowl quarterback eli manning, peyton manning, one of the greats in nfl history has been recovering, as you may know, from a neck injury. today, he told espn he's waiting to be cleared to get back in the game. we just don't know if he'll continue to play with the colts. he's been named mvp of the nfl four time, something no other player has done. up next, a doctor bringing hope to those who need it and making a difference in the process.

>> our final report tonight is about a guy helping a lot of folks get back on their feet again. they're chronic pain patients, in constant pain. like many american, they've fallen on tough times of late and they can't afford to pay for the care they need. that's where one doctor and his doctor friends come in.

they're making a difference in a lot of lives. we got the story from our chief medical editor, dr. nancy snyderman. >> reporter: orthopedic surgeon dr. larry drr does more than fix bones for a living. for years, operation walk, the charity he founded, has provided free surgeries for thousands of vulnerable people around the globe. now with tough economic times in this country, dr. dorr is bringing his charity home. during a recent two-day span, he and 60 other orthopedic surgeons operated on uninsured patients, replacing their bad hips and knees. >> these people all have lost their hope for their tomorrows. >> reporter: 85 people have regained the ability to walk for free in what would normally be a $30,000 to $50,000 operation. this recording artist needed both hips replaced. in the '90s, terry had her own band and hit song that climbed the charts.

then came difficulty walking and pain. terry couldn't even stand up long enough to sing. >> feel like you're 100 years old, right? she gave private lessons instead to pay the bills. steven robertson's pain was so severe, he contemplated ending his life. >> when things narrow, you start feeling hopeless. >> reporter: with nowhere else to turn, he and others wrote to dr. dorr, pleading for help. >> you can almost see the patient leaning over the paper writing with their pen, dropping their tears on to the paper. ♪ lean on me >> reporter: and for these patient, down on their luck until now, dr. larry dorr is the man to lean on. for the price of a postage stamp, they got back on their feet. dr. nancy snyderman, nbc news, los angeles. >> great story to end on for this tuesday night.

thank you for being here with us. i'm brian williams. we hope to see you right back here tomorrow evening. good night. and good evening, everyone, i'm jessica aguirre. >> i'm raj mathai. he was a fathers of three working in the bay area to support his family in mexico. tonight we're learning more about the man killed in a construction accident in the south bay. >> now the city had ordered the contractor to stop work because of the dangerous conditions at the site. and now the contractor is facing serious fines. that accident happening on calaveras ridge drive in