the premise you're going to have people come in because we disagree with what the administration did. >> or what a commander did. you can imagine democrats about a command decision, where to send a battalion of marines. eric boehlert of media matters and congresswoman caroline maloney, thank you both. that is all for this evening. "the rachel maddow show," a breath of fresh air on cable news apocalypse day. >> i'm the breath of fresh air? i'll be back in an hour. i got to go prep that. thank you, chris. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. we will try to be a breath of fresh air or at least try to breathe through this next hour. all right. at exactly this time last night on this show, we reported that the dow jones industrial average had hit its highest point ever. yesterday was the first time ever that the dow had closed over 15,000, which is a remarkable achievement for that

collection of numbers. it had never been that high ever. even more remarkable, turns out maybe it wasn't a fluke or wasn't a one-day fluke, because today the dow went up even further and it stayed up above 15,000, so we have not only hit the 15,000 milestone, we are staying above it, and whether or not you care about the stock market or think that is an important economic measure of either the stock market as a whole or of economic behavior as a whole, it is undeniably a new high, a landmark achievement. and on the day that the stock market hit that high, citizens united, yes, the same group from the supreme court case, conservatives who signed up to receive citizens united e-mails, got this e-mail from the group in their inbox yesterday. subject line, "obama's latest screw up may lead to impeachment." impeachment? click, open.

dear concerned reader, fearing the very worst, the nation's super rich are unloading their stocks at an alarming rate. the super rich are unloading their stocks because obama has wrecked the stock market. so, on the day the stock market went through the roof and crossed 15,000 for the first time ever, subscribers to the citizens united mailing list received this damning indictment of the obama presidency and how it has tanked the market. see what this communist socialist marxist president has done to sink the market, you have to impeach him now. he's done it on purpose. i think progress is the one who noticed the timing of this appeal sent out to this e-mail list, but the timing irony of this one really does just put an exclamation point on what is always true about these things, which is their resistance to factual confrontation, right? apparently there is a right wing conspiracy theory that president obama is tanking the stock market on purpose as a way of destroying capitalism. against that conspiracy theory, the record high achievement of

the stock market under president obama is just no barrier to making that claim. for the birthers, no fact, no birth certificate, no birth announcement in the local paper could never disprove to them the self evident conspiracy of the president's birth being faked. from our conspiracy theory clearinghouse friends at world net daily, which is where rick santorum works now. over at world net daily, nothing could ever disprove to them their conspiracy that they uncovered to hide the fact that president obama is not only secretly gay, but president obama was secretly gay married, even before everybody knew there was such a thing as gay marriage and he killed all his gay boyfriends, obviously. to you, the facts may appear otherwise about president obama, but other at world net daily, they have proved this one to their own satisfaction using photos and things. and photos of things.

is this stuff crazy? yes, of course, it is crazy, but it feels great, doesn't it? ideologically it's comforting to kind of wrap yourself up in this stuff, and there is a market for this stuff because of it and the market of this stuff does not stop at the fringe. and watching that fringe weave itself into the mainstream of republican politics has been one of the most important ideological hallmarks of the obama years. and in that spirit, i want to take a moment here to give some unsnarky and serious kudos to laura ingraham, who is a conservative talk radio host but one who i think does a very good job, and last week she had on her show oklahoma senator james inhofe, pushing a conspiracy that the obama administration is buying as much ammunition as they can get their hands on so there's none left for the rest of us. see, that's how they are really going to disarm us, by taking away all the bullets, then the obama government can wage unopposed violent war on the disarmed populous of the united states. open your eyes, sheeple.

but in hosting senator inhofe to spell all this out, laura ingraham, the talk show host, god bless her, actually asked the senator useful follow-up questions to try to get him to explain exactly how this conspiracy works. listen. >> what are they going to do if they want to violate our second amendment rights, do it with ammo. >> can you explain this to me, what do they need it for? >> well, they don't. that's the point. >> but it had been purchased before obama by the federal government. >> no, not these numbers, now, laura. not these numbers. and the best evidence of that is look what happened to the supply. the supply is gone, and where did they go, the supply some of it, of course, people knowing -- >> buying up. >> -- wants to take it up, buying it up, but not to those proportions. now, i know this for a fact because i know the people that are, you know, are concerned

about this, and so there's no downside, if i'm wrong on this. >> the last part of this, i feel like i want to preserve it in lucite and make a plaque out of it and give it to people as an award. i know this for a fact because i know people are concerned about this, so, you know, there's no downside if i'm wrong. it's perfect. but this is not just something that has hatched from the mind of senator james "mountain" inhofe of oklahoma that he says to get people excited, even though if he does occasionally confuse the host. it's called the ammunition management for more obtainability act of 2013. among other things, it would prohibit the federal government to purchase or possess at any one time more rounds of ammunition than the monthly average of the number of ammunition during the period of january 1st, 2001, and ending on

december 31st, 2009. in other words, the obama administration will henceforth be disallowed from buying anymore ammunition than the bush administration did. how terrifying would it be if the first black president bought more bullets than the previous white president? we have to stop that from happening, america. today, the other republican senator from oklahoma, senator tom coburn, withdrew at the last minute his proposed legislation that the administration is buying up all the ammo. senator coburn's legislation would have created a federal registry for federally owned guns and ammunition. it's a federal registry, but only for the guns and ammo owned by the federal government. when senator coburn started getting asked why exactly he wants to start tracking guns and ammo, senator coburn withdrew the legislation today showing it was, quote, a show of goodwill.

even if it's a seemingly political event, the political reaction on the right, you can see it at work, goes very quickly to the question of whether it could possibly be an obama administration conspiracy. it comes with the territory these days. it's been woven into even day-to-day news. so, when the boston marathon bombing happened, the story for the right and for some members of the republican party in congress was not that the boston marathon was bombed, the real story there, the real story we ought to be talking about there, is the boston marathon bombing conspiracy and scandal. three days after the boston bombing before the suspects were caught, before the city of boston was under that lockdown just days after the bombing, homeland security secretary janet napolitano testified in front of a committee that was supposed to be about the department's budget, but because of what was going on in boston and around the country, the secretary ended up answering

questions about the investigation into the bombing, or she tried to when she could make sense of the questions, which proved to be difficult in the sense of south carolina republican congressman jeff duncan. congressman duncan seemed to be trying to make the case that the obama administration was deporting someone that they should not be deporting, well, for reasons that made no sense at least to janet napolitano. >> we've got this guy who was there, we know he was there. he was arrested -- detained in the hospital, covered with blood. he was at the scene, yet we're going to deport him. >> if i might, representative, i am unaware of anyone who is being deported for national security concerns at all related to boston. i don't know where that rumor -- >> i'm not saying it's related to boston, but he is being deported. >> like i said, again, i don't even think he was technically a person of interest or a suspect.

that was a wash. >> wouldn't you agree with me that it's negligent for us as american administration to deport someone who was reportedly at the scene of the bombing and we're going to deport him, not to be able to question him anymore. is that not negligence? >> i'm not going to answer that question. it's so full with misstatements and misapprehensions that it's just not worthy of an answer. >> obviously, she's hiding something, right? for clarity, let's turn to where the congressman got this conspiracy theory in the first place. let's turn to glenn beck. >> janet napolitano yesterday was asked about the saudi national and his pending deportation. she refused to answer. why was the president meeting with somebody unscheduled earlier this week, a saudi official? who is this saudi man who was in the hospital, given a new

international cell phone and apologized to, according to him in saudi press, who is he, i wonder? why would anyone link to the bombings be deported? let me just say this to those at the highest echelons of government that know the tagging system. they know all about events, not files, events. let me send this message very clear, we know who this saudi national is. you have until monday. we have information on who this man is, and listen to me carefully, in your little event world, we know he is a very bad, bad, bad man. i know that doesn't make any sense to you right now, but on monday, it will. >> that was friday, april 19th. then the monday after that

passed, does it still not make much sense? that's okay. i can tell you, it apparently involves something about michelle obama and visiting a person in the hospital and maybe he was from saudi arabia and maybe he was the real bomber and maybe it was a huge coverup who was responsible for the bombing and michelle obama was protecting that person because maybe the white house arranged the bombing of the marathon for political purposes that obviously are too obvious to have to understand. if that is the theory, glenn beck, you have until monday and then it will all be exposed. remember right before the election the reaction on the right to the unemployment rate going under 8%? obviously, the answer cannot be, yeah, the unemployment rate is dropping, and it can't be, yeah, it's good for the country but we on the right, that would be a normal political reaction. today, there has to be a conspiracy by the obama administration to rig the unemployment rate for political purposes.

the same congressman, jeff duncan, who asked janet napolitano about the real bomber and the boston bombing conspiracy coverup, that same congressman has also now sponsored legislation that would get rid of the unemployment rate. it would effectively eliminate the unemployment rate and any measure of economic growth or the size of the economy by prohibiting the census bureau from gathering the information, including the unemployment rate. because who needs that, and besides, that gives them less to manipulate for political purposes. today in congress, the attack on the diplomatic mission in benghazi in libya, the attack that killed four americans, today the line from the republicans in congress was that was not something that should be seen as an attack, that is something that should be seen as a conspiracy and a scandal. this investigation is perhaps the most organized concerted effort that house republicans have made on anything in congress since they took control of the house. they have voted to repeal obama

care 39 times. they just announced there will be a 40th vote to do that next week. you know, why not? but in terms of working on their own ideas, the benghazi hearing is pretty much it. this is the most ambitious thing they have done, and the idea here is this was not an attack on the u.s., what happened in benghazi should be seen as a political conspiracy engineered by the obama administration and maybe hopefully by hillary clinton, but maybe only if she's going to run for president. the attack in benghazi was engineered by the administration because somehow it was good for them. so, if president obama's not going to be impeached because he tanked the stock market, he will definitely be impeached because of benghazi. or actually, you know what, he'll resign because of benghazi. that will be perfect. >> as the information and facts begin to come out, it will become so obvious that there was a concerted and very, very

deliberate attempt to mislead this country and its people to lie to congress, as well as to you, and i believe that before it's all over, this president will not fill out his full term. >> can't exactly explain how it's going to happen, but i'm pretty sure it's going to happen. it's magic, if you say benghazi enough, if you tell people to spell benghazi, that "h" is really hard, then eventually president obama will be impeached, or he will resign, and then we will get all of our ammunition back and finally get to meet his gay husband. joining us now, frank rich, latest column "whitewash," looks at the republican party's attempts to change its image while they enact restrictive new voting laws. frank, thank you so much for being here. >> great to be here, as always. >> i am looking forward to meet the secret gay husband. >> do you think we've met him before? i wonder if he's working on a

sitcom in hollywood. >> the benghazi conspiracy theory is one that i cannot reverse engineer. i can't follow it to the conclusions of its accusers to figure out why it is that the obama administration would have before an election faked their response to the attack in the way that they did so as to gin up better political consequences for them. >> the accusation makes no sense politically at all, and why the republicans keep beating it is also unclear. it was supposed to win romney the election, right, he was supposed to make a great show about benghazi at the debate. that backfired. then hillary clinton is actually a democrat who's popular now with republicans and no longer in office. and so they keep beating her up and she's taken responsibility for, obviously, the mistakes that did happen there, and so i keep hoping they are going to

back track to the 9/11 and find out what bush was doing in texas when he got intelligence reports saying al qaeda was going to attack america in the summer of 2001. >> one of the big smoking guns that the republicans have been waving on this week is the damning assertion from former vice president dick cheney, that because it was the anniversary of september 11th, everybody in the world should have been on such high alert. he said, we were always on very high alert on every 9/11 anniversary. >> except the original 9/11. >> anniversary is the very important modifier there. >> the idea this can be written out of history, that it was on cheney and bush's watch that the biggest domestic attack of our lifetime happened and somehow that's off the ledger, we'll just begin the accounting on september 12th, 2011, it's so

preposterous and amazing in normal public discourse they kind of get away with it. you saw it a little bit during the bush library rollout. nobody is quite really calling them on it enough. >> do you think that is because on this stuff, on their hording ammunition and we have to get the real boston bomber and the, you know, benghazi was a scandal, not just an attack on the united states, on all of this stuff, because we've got sort of a bifurcated media universe, nobody else takes it seriously, therefore, there's no journalistic interaction with those stories, do they get away with stuff they wouldn't otherwise get away with assert something. >> they do, but really only with their base. they should know by now for all the pounding in benghazi, including on the hill now, it really has just not seeped past their media sphere, the fox news fear. >> they see it, but they can't explain it. >> they can't explain it and

they are just not winning over any converts to their position, but some of it, i think, even though it's very insular is dangerous. go back to those two oklahoma senators who are talking about, you know, the government buying ammunition. this is exactly the kind of conspiracy mongering that led to timothy mcveigh in oklahoma, for goodness sakes, they had ammunition, concentration camps, black helicopters to come after you, to come after the second amendment. that sort of playing fire means some of these crazy right wing militia types are very much still out there, and these guys don't even see the irony and two republican senators from oklahoma, where that atrocity happened fanning these flames. >> frank rich, "new york magazine" writer at large. can you stay with us for just a moment? we have another story coming up that is exactly on what you are writing on at the moment and i would like to get your take on it. >> be delighted.

>> all right. we'll be right back.

former south carolina republican governor mark sanford, the day that did more to make the appalachian trail famous than anybody that's hiked it is on his way to congress after winning a special election for the first congressional district seat last night in south carolina. that seat became vacant earlier this year when the guy who previously held it was promoted up to the senate by governor nikki haley. she picked tim scott to fill the senate seat. jim demint quit his senate seat late last year because he got a better offer, he took a job as the guy that runs the heritage

foundation, a conservative think take, policy analysis and research from a right wing perspective. it was kind of a weird hire for the heritage foundation, not because jim demint is not a famous guy, but jim demint was not the thinkiest united states senator out there. previously, he had owned an advertising firm, his legislative agenda was things like sponsoring the commemorative coins reform act. it would have forced senators to pay for the printing costs of commemorative resolutions. earth shifting policy wonkery was not what jim demint was known for in the senate. he was a campaigner, tried to get other super duper conservatives elected. sharron angle in nevada, those can still be seen in another galaxy today, but the heritage

foundation is in the news today because it is trying to kill the prospect of immigration reform. they are trying to kill it. the heritage foundation is not supposed to be a campaigning foundation, they are supposed to deal with policy, facts, figures, and complex data sets that can't just appear to be killing immigration with straight-up politics, but use something that looks like research, something that looks like a study of some kind. this is the heritage foundation's brand spanking new study on immigration reform, a study on immigrants really. looks very serious and has a boring name and everything. the fiscal cost of unlawful immigrants and amnesty to the u.s. taxpayer. cracking it open to look at the report's conclusions, we see that immigrants are always on welfare, they just take, take, take, take, take. immigrants are low achieving and

uneducated and won't contribute to the economy in any way because they have a serious case of the poor's. based on those conclusions and math so fuzzy it might as well be television static, the heritage foundation assigned a random number to what would be the cost of immigration reform. guess what, it would cost a bazillion dollars. $6 trillion is what they came up with. the basic argument is immigrants are parasites and their children will be, too. wait, there's more. one of the two authors of the report is a guy named jason richwine. not a billionaire bond villain, he's a doctor. mr. richwine has a ph.d from harvard, had to write a dissertation. his dissertation was called "iq and immigration policy." "washington post" reporting that dissertation was a treasure-trove of ideas, quote, the average iq of immigrants in the united states is substantially lower than that of

the white native population and the difference is likely to persist over several generations. quote, no one knows whether hispanics will reach iq party with whites but they'll have low iq children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against. the solution he proposes is an immigration system based on iq selection, but said don't call it that. instead, it should be called skills-based immigration. people won't freak out if we call it a skills-based selection process. this was academic research on immigration from back in 2009. basically, the foreign foreigners immigrating to the united states lack the intellectual capacity to properly contribute to white american society. it's innate. they are uneducated. they will always be uneducated, so will their children be, based on those conclusions that he made back in 2009.

it is not difficult to see where the basic idea where the new study from the heritage foundation came from. when asked about the authorship of their new immigration report and his past dabbling in, well, what seems like eugenics, the foundation put out a statement, quote, dr. richwine provided quantitative support to the lead author. so, don't worry, our report is still totally legit. he just did the counting part. he just did the quantitative part. so, mark sanford, welcome to washington, where you amazingly do not have the most terrifying past. and immigration reform with enemies like these, i think you might be just fine. back with us now is frank rich, "new york magazine" writer at large. frank, thank you for sticking with us. >> glad to do it, of course. >> the heritage foundation is operating here more as a political operation than as a think tank operation, which should not be that surprising. >> of course.

>> the racial ties of the authorship of this report to current politics, are those not going to be a big deal, or does this still have the power to shock? >> it does still have the power to shock, because first of all we're in this climate where the republican party, after the election, is claiming great outreach to minorities and they are behind immigration reform. marco rubio and demint were at one point joined at the hip, but this just keeps coming. remember in the 1990s when charles murray, excuse me, another academic, did essentially a version of the same study, only it was about african-americans. the bell curve, it was sponsored by conservative foundations. it made the case that essentially they tried to downplay it, that blacks would never have the same iqs as white, so had ratifications for affirmative action. so, here's the same history repeating itself, and it's a

fascinating battle within the base exemplified by these clowns, if i may use that word. how are they going to do this, how are they going to square the circle? they claim to be welcoming latinos and are literally insulting their intelligence and even unborn children's intelligence, grandchildren that aren't even here yet, already being called mentally inferior. >> exactly. not only can i identify your racial inferiority as a class, but i can tell you it will persist and, therefore, be very expensive. the question, i guess, i have about how this moves forward in the republican party is where the self policing mechanism is. it's easy to be on msnbc and be a liberal and be horrified by this information and to be shocked by it and talk about this as the basis, the basic intellectual argument that heritage is making here. can republicans make arguments against racism in republican contexts?

>> i don't think they can. i mean, a few talk a good game, but presupposes that there is a republican establishment that somehow is going to be that policing mechanism, that they are going to be people that stand up, but they are really afraid of the base, and i think right now we're seeing chaos really within the republican party, different groups and heritage is just one of them, vying for power and everyone is sort of standing off of everyone else and the center doesn't hold. there's no governing brain, indeed, the iq problem may be at the very core or cortex of the republican party, because it just isn't there. >> one of the things you've been writing about, frank, is the calculation may be they've decided that they need a better shine on policies, but they don't actually need to numerically appeal to minorities they don't appeal to now in order to win the elections they think they need to win. >> i think that's always been the game. when i was writing my piece, i came across a quote from a

reagan pollster in the 1980s saying as the reagan administration was formulating policies, while we don't actually have to win over african-american voters, black voters, we just have to look as if we would like to win them over with spin. and that's what's going on now. you have the head of the rnc doing -- it's hard to believe in this day and age it's still happening, a listening tour where he'll parachute into brooklyn and go to a black church and actually meet with 20 bona fide african-americans and that's outreach and supposed to substitute for policy or substantiative change. >> watching what happens with this heritage report, whether there is actually a condemnation of where this came from is going to be interesting. >> i don't expect it, but we'll see. >> frank rich, "new york magazine" writer at large, always great to have you here. >> thanks for having me. the unlikely request for republicans in congress to give

even more power to democratic president obama. that story's coming up. stay with us.

i have two things to tell you about. first, i'm going to be on the jimmy fallon show tonight. if you want to know why i woke up with the new york city fire department this morning or want to make a rye old fashioned cocktail, "late night with jimmy fallon," i will be there wearing this jacket. that's one thing.

the other thing i have to tell you is, heist. heist, there's an amazing heist story in the news today that is not ending the way that anybody thought it was going to end, but we now know how it's going to end. it's amazing, heist, that's coming up. ♪ i'm your venus [ female announcer ] what does beauty feel like? find out with venus embrace. every five-bladed stroke gives you 360 degrees of smooth for goddess skin you can feel and feel. ♪ i'm your venus only from venus embrace.

the white house today announced nominations for a couple of people you have probably never heard of to serve on a court you have probably never heard of. nothing wrong with that. now, officially for the record we know president obama would like these two to sit on the united states tax court. not casting aspersions on the tax court or on these very accomplished nominees, but one measure of the fact these guys aren't the highest profile nominees in the world is in the headline announcing these nominations today, they misspell one of the guy's names. the other guy's name does get spelled right, but he is obscure

enough if you google what he is, what pops up on google is this nice picture of a band playing music at a california winery in 2006. if that's what you're competing with for google search results on your own name and you're losing that competition to music festivals at california wineries from seven years ago, you may be a very esteemed potential tax court judge, but you are not a high profile guy and your nomination is not a high profile thing. but even for nominations like this that are relatively insignificant in the greater scale of governing, the

president still needs permission to go ahead with hires like this. he can't just pick the appointees he wants. he can only nominate people. the president has to ask the senate to let these guys have those jobs. the presidency's power to do even the very mundane stuff of governing is pretty sharply constrained in lots o waging war since 9/11, though, is not one of those areas. three days after the 9/11 attacks, congress passed a very short piece of legislation that authorized the president of the united states to use all necessary and appropriate force against those who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on september 11, 2001. three days after 9/11, president bush got that authorization. within weeks, we invaded afghanistan, where we still have today, but that authorization is still in effect now, 12 years later. it is still the underlying permission cited by both president bush and by this president for military actions of lots of different types all over the world. we're now nearly 12 years out from that decision by congress. washington is still today operating under the premise that the president is still authorized to wage war anywhere in the world on his own say so if after 9/1 m aut joining u w b t ent k sta i t to pr about five sec t t thi f i'm cautiously have at ge thanks o made off with 13 works o con maybe he would fess up to happened to that $500 million worth of art stolen fro every once in a while when that's coming up nex more than 80 plundered by a ring jewel thieves. they got in through the rear of they had to beat a combination lock, a key lock, a heat detector, a mot light detector and every other freaking detector known to mankind, but the next morning, they fou alr stolen in th loot all linked tonight or wait for t i the held the passengers on the jet were settling in, outside the aircraft, brink security guards finished loa air they of the plane, snatched the auth n it wa on the fligh

hund >> i feel like this is raising very big questions about what kind of country we are and what kind of constitution we have. wouldn't this change the basic balance of power as laid out in the constitution about how we have wars? >> you know, i guess congress

thinks they've got too much else to do and they'd rather just delegate the whole war making policy to the president entirely. it's funny, yeah, the constitution gives congress the power to make war and make rules regulating the army and navy and so forth, but to the extent we might get an expanded authorization to use military force, which has a kind of forever war quality to it, that does look a lot like congress saying we can't be bothered, you go figure it out, mr. president. >> does it mean in practical terms we're kind of -- this sounds dramatic, though, we're kind of declaring a permanent state of war that the president can turn on and off at his own say so and therefore we never find out when our wars start or end anymore? >> i'm not sure we find that out anyways these days regardless. i think the whole thing is a bit of a red herring here. i don't actually think there is, even if the aumf is repealed tomorrow, and that's something i think should happen, but even if

it went away completely, nobody doubts that the president has the inherent constitutional authority to use military force to prevent some kind of imminent attack against the united states and nobody doubts that if there was an attack against the united states, even something remotely close to the 9/11 scale of the attack, that congress would take about five seconds to pass a new authorization to use military force if it was needed. i think that's a little bit of a red herring. i think you're right, the real issue here is we seem to have totally separate from the issue of the aumf and what happens to it, just drifted into a state of permanent undefined conflict with an enemy that is equally undefined and that's got all kinds of problems with it. >> if we are going to have hearings on this next week and if it seems like from the roster it's going to be big, serious hearings on this subject, do you think we're going to get at some of those central issues? the fact that we know a permanent authorization for use of military force is on the table makes me feel nudgy about what direction that's all going,

but you're right, i wrote a book about us drifting into that, i called it "drift." i think these issues are big and need a debate and maybe even need a big partisan debate to get some attention. >> i think that's right. i think in some ways the shocking thing is it's taken us 12 years to start having this debate in a meaningful way. maybe it's a good sign, though, that we're now ready to have it. i think for a long time after 9/11 you couldn't even ask the question anymore of, gosh, is the eternal war, law of war paradigm the right way to think about the threat posed by terrorism, because you would immediately get, what, do you think it's an ordinary crime? obviously, that's insufficient, you fool. >> why do you love terrorists? >> yeah, and i think we have moved past that to have, i hope, a somewhat candid and serious minded debate, gee, global terrorism's threat today is sort of like war in some ways, it's sort of like crime in other ways, maybe we need to get past this either/or stuff and figure

out realistically what's an effective strategy for dealing with this that doesn't over rely on using sledge hammers and military force and undermine the effective tools we do have to disrupting terrorist finance, for instance, disrupting terrorist communications. i'm cautiously optimistic these hearings do represent some renewed willingness to take a serious issue seriously. maybe i'm -- i hope i'm not wrong, but i would like to think so. >> your optimism about it, you have moved me to feel more optimistic about it. i guess i should feel that way about the fact you agreed to speak at hearing, but it still freaks me out. we shall see, rosa brooks, national security law professor at georgetown university, former counselor to michele flournoy, thanks for being here. >> thanks, rachel. straight ahead, the coolest action move heist/caper story from belgium that you will hear all week. or at least all day. c#  r

i live in massachusetts most of the time and that means that i, like all people who live in massachusetts, have been slightly obsessed with an art heist that happened there in 1990. thieves dressed like boston cops made off with 13 works of art from the isabella stewart gardener museum in boston. art valued at a half billion dollars.

the fbi thinks that these guys were the culprits. february last year, an alleged connecticut mobster was arrested on weapons and drug charges and the fbi thought at the time that maybe he would fess up to being connected to the heist. he did not fess up. and a search of his house found none of the stolen art. this year, this march, the fbi came out to say they had new leads in this case. they offered a $5 million reward for the return of the art work. meanwhile, that connecticut mobster is scheduled to be sentenced tomorrow on other charges that are not related to the art heist, but every time he appears in public, somebody hopes that this time he's going to fess up to saying what happened to that $500 million worth of art stolen from boston. obsessions with art heists are fun. every once in a while when you're obsessed with some pre-existing heist, an even shinier heist comes along to distract you, one that gets solved. that's coming up next.

more than 80% of all the diamonds in the world pass through belgium, specifically they pass through the city of antwerp in belgium. about a decade ago, in february 2003, the diamond vaults inside the diamond center were plundered by a ring of italian jewel thieves. they got in through the rear of the main building, once inside they had to beat a combination lock, a key lock, a heat detector, a motion detect, a light detector and every other freaking detector known to mankind, but they did it. the theft was so seamless, so professionally executed that when the security guards came to unlock the main vault door the next morning, they found it already open, littered with jewels that the thieves had left behind. and that heist, a decade ago, they made off with an estimated $100 million worth of diamonds and other jewels. the gang of five burglars that carried out that heist were headed by the guy with the best name in heists ever. his name was leonardo notarbartolo. he got caught, but what was

stolen in that heist was never found. $100 million worth of diamonds and gold and jewelry and other loot all poof. even after he was arrested, he denied his involvement in the crime for a long time. but in 2009, he did a tell-all for "wired" magazine including the details about how he cracked the vault. all of that is in "wired" magazine's article, which is linked tonight or wait for the movie, the forth coming film will be produced and possibly directed by j.j. abrams who made "lost" and "star trek" and "ghost protocol." it happened again in the same place, and this is the heist that took the big surprise turn in the news today. so it was february this year, the held vet ca air ways passenger jet was on the runway. the passengers on the jet were settling in, outside the

aircraft, brink security guards finished loading on to the cargo hold of the plane a very valuable shipment of cut and uncut diamonds worth 50 million bucks. as they were finishing loading the diamonds from the armored car into the plane, suddenly out of nowhere, two what appear to be police cars roared up to the aircraft, lights flashing, eight armed men in police uniforms exited the vehicles, and that was first sign maybe they were not actually police, because they were covering their faces. they pried open the cargo door of the plane, snatched the diamonds with the diamonds in tow they got back into their vehicles, sped away. they cut a hole in the airport fence, they drove right through it. authorities later found a van they think was used as the getaway car, found it burned and abandoned on the side of the road. from tip to tail, the whole heist lasted five minutes. it was like clock work. nobody got hurt. nobody got caught. it was over basically as soon as it started. it went off so seamlessly that the passengers on the plane saw

nothing. they had no idea anything at all had happened until somebody got on the p.a. and told them their flight was canceled. i'm going to be late, my flight got canceled because i was part of a $50 million diamond heist that gene hackman planned in a good movie in the late '70s. that was february. for three months since then it has been nothing, it looked like these really very organized thieves got away with it. but now, after three months of silence from the police, today we got the surprise ending. police in belgium, france, and switzerland, without warning, hundreds of police swooped in on suspects simultaneously in three countries. 31 suspects arrested. all at once in belgium, switzerland and france. police say they recovered large sums of money and luxury vehicles and some of the diamonds. they do say they got the guys who did it, though, all of them. even if they didn't get all the diamonds, they got enough of them that they're value is still too much to add up as yet. and as steven soderbergh has not already optioned the movie

rights for this heist, somebody should text him tonight, antwerp is spelled a-n-t-w-e-r-p and it is pronounced heist. heist. >> the sentencing phase begins today. plus, emotions ran hig