that you, yourself has experienced and had to act on, looking down the barrel of genetic probability is something i think a lot of us are going to be experiencing for ourselves. author and journalist lizzie stark and congresswoman karen bass. thank you so much. that's it for this evening. "the rachel mad do you show" starts right now. good evening, rachel. >> thank you very much and thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. new york city is the largest city united states. we all think of it as a sprawling mega metropolis, and because it is so big, even while you are in new york city, it's very easy to forget that where you actually are is on an island in the north atlantic. manhattan is surrounded by water. staten island, is as the name implied, surrounded by water. all the new york city boroughs have coastlines and it is possible to do some very good fishing, some north atlantic fishing in, say, brooklyn new york. i know this for a fact because i caught this fish in brooklyn on

friday morning before i came to work. if i seemed unusually happy on friday night's show it's because look at that size of that striper that i caught in brooklyn! you can fish in brooklyn. there's good fishing in brooklyn, and there's a lot of people who do it for fun and there are people who do it commercially. on june 14th, 1917, at a fish company in brooklyn a very strange thing happened. the previous day, "the new york times" had started publishing the pentagon papers, a long four-multi-volume narrative history of the war in vietnam. this thing was never supposed to be made public, but it was stolen from the government by a whistleblower who thought the public should have access to the same information about the war the government had. it was smuggled to the "new york times," and the "times" made the very difficult decision to publish the pentagon papers despite the fact that it was classified materials. and when "the times" published the first installment on june 13, 1971, the paper must have

just been waiting for the other shoe to drop, right? i mean, they knew exactly what they were doing. they now how big a storm this was going to cause. they were waiting. they must have just been waiting for what would be the inevitable super angry response from the government, right, the demand that they cease publication and all the rest. but they published this thing on june 13th, and there was no response from the government. and that's because it turns out that on june 14th, the day after they started publishing the pentagon papers, there had been an angry, threatening telegram written by the attorney general to the "new york times" demanding that they cease publication of these documents but the fbi accidentally sent the telegram to a fish company in brooklyn instead of to the "new york times," and so what the "new york times" heard the day they published the pentagon papers and the day after was nothing, and this fish company in brooklyn must have been very, very confused by the angry telegram they got from the attorney general.

eventually the attorney general's office and the fbi got it together and they sent the telegram on to the actual "new york times" demanding the return of the pentagon papers and demanding no further publication. "the times" said no. "the times" kept on publishing. they published on the 13th, and they published on the 14th and they published on the 15th and then the government finally got a temporary restraining order blocking them from publishing anything further. pentagon papers was the first time that the government had ever used the courts to block the press from publishing something that the press wanted to publish based on national security grounds. that temporary restraining order that they got a couple days into the publication of the pentagon papers, that temporary restraining order, ended up becoming a major federal first amendment case. the newspapers involved in the case within a week had lost the district court level. they appealed to the circuit court level and by the end of

the month, june 30th, 1971, the case had gone to the supreme court. they started publishing it on the 13th. by the 30th, the supreme court had a ruling that the government could not block newspapers from publishing this stuff. the newspaper went ahead and hopefully the fish company in brooklyn framed the telegram so the government lost that effort to block the press from publishing something that the press wanted to publish but the government said would be dangerous to publish. the government lost at the supreme court. but that does not mean they got over it. you know how in watergate, the watergate burglars were called the plumbers? they were not called the plumbers because they like dressed up like plumbers and that's the way they snuck into things, right? they were called the plumers is because the reason they were breaking into all the various places that they broke into was that they were plugging leaks. they were plumbers dealing with leaks, but these were leaks of information. they were trying to find out who in government was providing classified or secret information to the news media, including the pentagon paper. that was the whole origin of the

plumbers in the watergate scandal. find the leaks and thereby stop press from publishing something that the government does not want published. this is a foundational conflict in our country. it has been really important from the important of our constitutional republic. there is a reason that the freedom. press is very first amendment to the constitution. it's because the founders knew how important it is to have the press telling as much of the truth as possible, and they also knew the temptations, the constant temptations for people in power to try to stop the press from doing that, even though in the long run we really need the press to be doing that. so the founders said right off the bat amendment one, we are taking sides in this fight. we know that this is a fight that's going to persist throughout the duration of this nation. we right here in the first amendment to the constitution are taking sides, and we are taking the sides of the press. the press has the constitution's protect clearly in these inevitable fight, and that is a fundamental part of what our

country is. i take it as a sign of their wisdom in being so clear on the matter and the constitution that these fights are not actually seen as settled, right? they keep happening over and over again in every century and every presidency just about. it turns out we need to constantly re-reference and re-read and demand the respect of the first amendment every year all the time because this is an important fight. the important fights are the ones that don't go away. this fight is a constant feature of a free press and a strong government in their inevitable collision course. at the end of 2005 during the president of george w. bush james reisen was one of the "new york times" reporters who broke the news that the government was wiretapping people without getting warrants to do that. they just decided that even though they always needed warrants before, they didn't need them anymore. the response of the administration to the publication that have story was not just to deny the story or to express unhappiness with the fact that this government policy was known and they wanted to keep it secret, the response from the administration was instead to demand that that

reporter be thrown in prison, that he be compelled by criminal law to reveal his sources, to reveal who had given him the secret information that was so important to keep secret but he made it public. they subpoenaed him to demand that he give up his sources and james reisen made clear in the filing with the court saying no to the subpoena to resist having to testify, he made it clear that the administration was really using everything it had to go after him, quote, the first subpoena issued to me was the culmination of a prolonged campaign against me by the bush administration and its supporters. president bush called the disclosures about the likely illegal wire tapping program a shameful act and the administration and its supporters thereafter publically speculated about prosecutions for me for espionage. shortly after that hate mail from right wing close with close ties to white house was launched inundating me with personal threats and supporters of the bush administration picketed my

office and right wing pundits and bloggers took to the tv and it net to call for the white house and the sdwrod prosecute me for espionage. failing that, they called for the justice department to subpoena me in a leak investigation which right wing pundits said would have the same effect as prosecution since it could force me to go to jail if i refused to testify about my confidential sources. going after reporters, using the full power of the federal government to stop reporters from publishing things the government did not want published, or to punish reporters for doing that, that became kind of a cause celeb on the right in the mid-2000. i remember congressman pete hoekstra campaigning in michigan telling his local paper that james reisen and the author from the "new york times" who reported that wear tapping story, quote, they will be sitting in jail by the end of the year unless they reveal their sources. around that time that the right had the torches and pitch forks out wanting to put all the reporters in jail, abc news

reported that the government was not just demanding that reporters reveal their confidential sources and threatening to put them in jail if they did not, they were secretly going through journalist phone records trying to figure out journalist sources that way. according to a senior federal law enforcement official the incoming and outgoing numbers were being monitored by the government as part of a widespread leak investigation. the title of that article was "federal source to abc news, we know who you're calling." it's chilling, right? i mean, you're a report. you are trying to find out what the government is doing, but if you find out too much when b what the government is doing, hey, you might end up in jail. you certainly can't tell your sources that you'll keep their identity safe. you can't tell your sources that they can trust you, to keep their identities out of it. if what you have to tell them is, yeah, they will probably put me in prison until i tell them. this is chilling. this is chilling on purpose, and those details reported by abc

news in 2006 to reporters to try to ferret out who was leaking to the damn reporters, right, it appears to be exactly what the obama administration is doing now to ferret out who is leaking to the damn reporters, exactly the same thing. in an investigation that appears to be related to a.p. reporting on the cia busting up an al qaeda bomb plot a few years ago, the justice department has notified the a.p. that at least 20 of their phone lines, including the personal and cell phone numbers of a number of their reporters was swept up in a dragnet by the justice department. two months worth of these phone records were obtained by the fbi, and it is over and done with. they only told the a.p. after it happened. when the a.p. published that story a year ago about the bomb plot being busted up by the cia, the response on the right was kind of a mini version of the torches and pitch forks that came out against the "new york times" reporters back in the mid-2000 but this time the outrage on the right was directed against not just the reporters, no, no, it was

against the government. republicans alleging that the government was leaking to these reporters on purpose for the obama administration's own political gain. they were alleging that the administration doesn't care enough about classified information being leaked. it helps them when it leaks. if they really cared about it, they would freaking investigate, it right? they would find out who was leak information to these reporters. they would chase this thing down. >> what the president ought to be saying is that this is very damaging to the country, and we're going to do everything we can to get to the bottom of it, whether it involves my white house or wherever in the intelligence community. >> well, we certainly need to have an investigation of what has happened. >> the question though is do we really have an independent and aggressive investigation because these leaks are very, very disturbing. >> republicans last june demanding a serious investigation into these dastardly leaks to these a.p. reporters. well, they got their investigation, and as part of that investigation the attorney general himself was investigated as to whether maybe he was the leak to those a.p. reporters, or

perhaps did he know who was the leak, and because the attorney general himself was interviewed as part of the investigation he could not himself head up the investigation so he recused himself in order to avoid a perceived conflict of interest but that month last year the a.g. appointed two u.s. attorneys to investigate the leaks. he appointed a deputy attorney general to oversee all of it. we now know as part of this investigation that we got this unprecedented tracking of 20 different phone lines from the associated press. we also know that the justice department just decided to do that on their own. they never had to get permission from a court. there had been a media shield law that would have said that if you want to wiretap reporters, if you want to access reporters' phone records, you at least have to get a court to sign off on it. prosecutors can't just do that themselves on the say so but the media shield law was defeated by a republican filibuster in 2007 so that's why the justice department can do that on their own say so. that's how we got to where we stand today. a few new details, one

additional name today in terms of a.p. reporters and editors who were individually targeted by the subpoena of their phone records. we know now that it was outgoing phone calls from the a.p. reporters and the reporters' phones speen ad, by the justice department, not necessarily the incoming numbers or the duration of those calls which had not been clear yesterday. the deputy attorney general who was in charge of this investigation also said today that supposedly the content of these reporters' calls was not monitored. it was just the fact that the call went out and what number it went to. we got the white house denying any involvement or even any knowledge that this was happening. we've got the attorney general saying none of this was his call, that he was out of loop. we've got the a.p. today, if anything, more livid today than yesterday that this was happening as they get more information from the government about what their news bureaus and their reporters were subjected to that they never found out about until after the fact, and we've got all of this happening in the context of this great american fight.

the inevitable prying and pressure of an aggressive free press reporting on what the government does whether or not the government wants it reported. the repeated familiar overreaching efforts of the government to stop the press from doing that, and most importantly the fact that the writers of our constitution knew that government would always be tempted to act this way, and that's why they made it very, very clear that our constitution takes sides. this fight is inevitable, but in america the winner of this fight is also inevitable. so how is the a.p. going to win this fight they are going to win? joining us now is david schultz, a media attorney for more than 30 years and now represents the a.p. mr. schultz, thanks for being with us tonight. >> thank you, rachel. >> i'm sure that long exposition of the facts and my take on them does not exactly comport with yours, but in terms of the a.p.'s role in all of this i should just ask you if your factual understanding of what's happened so far was at all in contrast there. >> i think you got it just

right. >> okay. it is a constantly balancing act in the united states, freedom of the press versus national security or anything that the government doesn't want disclosed. is the a.p. -- is it the a.p.'s position that the justice department is within its rights to be investigating these leaks? it's just that they are doing it in a way that is too broad. >> sure. there's no question that the justice department has the right to investigate leaks, by think the key, you put your hand on when you were setting this up. there is an inherent conflict between the government's ability to keep secrets and the ability of people to oversee their government, that you have to have access to government information. you need confidential sources to give you that information, or the only things you're going to know about the government is what they will tell you so we've always had that throughout our history. the real problem here is that in the mess after watergate, some of the circumstances you were just walking through, regulations were put in place to try to mediate that line to set

up rules that would help us not overreach one way or the other, to give the press a zone of protection that they could operate in knowing that they had some freedom from government interference, and those were in the form of regulations that were imposed -- adopted by the department of justice, and they had four main provisions. one was that the government promised or was required under the regulation not to go after reporters' information unless it was critical to an investigation, not just relevant or fishing. that was one. number two, they could only go after it if there was no alternative sources. they had to exhaust all the other alternative sources, and then, number three, if they were going to go after, it they had to make it as narrow as possible so that they weren't interfering unnecessarily with the activities of the press. and the fourth one, which is also key, is that they are supposed to negotiate with the press ahead of time, to go to the press and say we need this information from you. here's why we need it and have a negotiation over how broad it is, so they don't interfere with

the press. what happened here is that those regulations were just ignored, you know. the justice department today said we followed the regulations to the letter, but this is really an unprecedented action in terms of its scope. you mentioned 20 lines. they weren't just individual reporters' lines. they were bureau lines. they were the hartford bureau the new york bureau the washington bureau, the bureau in the house of representatives. in those bureaus, 100 or more a.p. reporters work, and for a period of two months the government got all the information about who they were calling relating to all their stories, not just >> when we say phone lines, somebody who is working like, for example, in my office, got a number of people who work in the office. somebody calls the mainline and you can get to any one of us. you're saying that hundreds of reporters were using these lines that had their outgoing numbers recorded? >> hundreds -- my understanding is that there were 100 or more, around 100, in the bureaus that had their lines taken the information seized. >> anybody using their desk phone. >> not all the lines, certain

lines but some were general numbers. it wasn't targeted to specific individuals, so that's number one. the other thing that you highlighted that's really problematic here was the evading this requirement of prior notice, and why is that important? because if prior notice had been given, it's not just negotiation, but it affords the press an opportunity to go to a judge and say we think that they are going too far and they are interfering with our constitutional rights, and you have an independent arbiter who can evaluate that. the government just chose not to do this. now, they will say they are entitled to under the regs, but what the regs say is they should only do it if it would undermine the integrity of the investigation. and it's really hard press -- we'd like an explanation from the department of justice how notifying the a.p. that they needed phone records with respect to a publicly disclosed investigation, this was not a secret investigation, over facts that happened a year ago would undermine that. >> they have asserted that they are within the -- within the grounds -- within the bounds, excuse me, of all of these

justice department regulations in terms of it being a last resort. they said that they did more than 500 interviews, reviewed tens of thousands of pages of documents before they decided that, no, they really, really needed to look at these a.p. reporters' phone records. obviously you don't find that persuasive enough. do you want more of an explanation, or do you want some further kind of recourse beyond explanation? >> well, there's two things. first, on that. it's not necessarily that we don't take them at their word that they did a lot, but a judge should be reviewing that. they shouldn't be deciding for themselves when it's time to interfear with the news-gathering acists. >> without a national media shield law though -- >> under the regulations, if they had been given notice to a.p., a.p. could have gotten a judge to review. that's what happened in other cases. there was a case involving phil sheehan, a "new york times" reporter and judy milner 2001 where there was an allegation that they had tipped off an islamist group about a raid and they wanted to know how that happened. they went to the "new york

times" and said we need your phone records. they went to court, and they got a court to review that. that whole process was short-circuited here and that's so troubling, the willingness of the administration to throw that all overboard in the zeal to go after this sdpleek what do you think your recourse will be here? >> first, we want information. we want to know what was done. we want an explanation. we would like to know from the justice department what else they got from the a.p. reporters. you know, under the regs they have to disclose if they subpoena telephone records. there is nothing in the regs. these regs were passed after watergate to address a situation that happened then. nothing in the regulations requires the department of justice to disclose if they sought e-mail from the reporters, if they did other sorts of investigating on these reporters, so there are a number of things we'd like to know, and once we have that, then we can assess what our recourse might be in the course, and we would also hope to open a dialogue with the department of justice about the drastic need to update and improve these regulations

and to talk with them about the seriousness of the impact on the reporters. >> in the long run, and i don't know how long the long run is, but in the long run in this country your side wins these fights, so i don't know how long it will take, but that is the way this ends. i'll tell you. >> i hope you're right. >> david schulz, thank you for helping us sift through this. i appreciate it. >> thank you. >> all right. we'll be right back. all stations come over to mission a for a final go. this is for real this time. step seven point two one two. verify and lock. command is locked.

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here's what things are like

in the nation's capital. here's how you know we're in the middle of a crazy news cycle. this is what it looked like at 1:30 p.m. eastern time here on msnbc. oh, it's a little -- seems like -- too much news to cover. not enough space on the tv screen. check out the banner at the bottom of the screen. left, doj briefing. right, white house briefing. this is news overload. on the left attorney general eric holder just starting his press conference to answer questions about the justice department's unprecedented seizure of a.p. phone records. while he's doing that white house press secretary jay carney trying to put out another fire entirely. >> if what we're seeing in some of these reports about specific targeting and actions taken by personnel within the irs turns out to be true, then people should be held accountable. >> jay carney there referencing the other big d.c. scannedal of

the week besides the a.p. thing, the scandal involving the irs. on friday we first started getting reports of alleged wrongdoing at irs. specifically wrongdoing when it came to how agents at the irs were evaluating different groups that were applying for tax-exempt status. the initial apology from the irs on friday indicated that the agency had singled out conservative groups, groups with the word tea party or the word patriots in their name, flagging those conservative groups for special scrutiny on their applications. well, since then, there's been some indication that the irs official who first apologized on friday also had tried to fix this problem when she first learned about it last year. also, the white house has denied any knowledge of what was going on in the irs -- at the irs on this issue. the acting commissioner of the irs appeared to have been briefed on the problem before fielding questions about it from congress, but when members of congress asked him about it, he did not mention he knew that there was a problem even though the irs said he had been briefed on, it and now tonight we

finally get the inspector general's report that purports to explain what happened. we're still combing through all of the details, but one of the things this report seems to address is the question of whose big idea this was anyway. according to the report released tonight, quote, officials stated that the criteria were not influenced by any individual or organization outside the irs. within the last hour, president obama has released a statement calling the report's findings, quote, intolerable and inexcusable. he said he has directed his treasury secretary jack lew to hold those who are responsible for these failures accountable, to make sure that each of the inspector general's recommendations are implemented quickly so that such conduct never happens again. the president's statement says the irs must apply the law in a fair way and employees must act with utmost integrity and this report shows some of those employees failed that test. joining us now is michael isikoff, nbc special

investigative correspondent. mike, thanks for being here. >> great to be here, rachel. >> one of the things i wanted to ask you about the ig report lays out irs criteria for who to target, how to target scrutiny for these applications using a bolo which is an acronym for be on the lookout. >> right. >> can you explain that? >> that was one of the most delicious parts of the report in reading it. i mean, we've all heard of bolos when the fbi issues them for terrorists or bank robbers. i was not aware until this -- all these disclosures that the irs issues its own bolos, in this case for people whose names -- organizations with names the tea party in it, but it's pretty chilling to learn that the irs would be issuing bolos, which really ultimately is a form of profiling in this case. they are saying anybody who has that name in it, we've got to look at and give special scrutiny so that was a bit

troubling, even if it was a little amusing, but beyond that the report -- you cut through all the bureaucratic language and it's pretty blistering. the people who did this in cincinnati, the determinations unit, didn't even understand what the rules were for tax-exempt organizations. the report says that -- on multiple -- in multiple passages, and these are the people making these decisions. the inappropriate criteria using tea party, tea party-like names in it lasts for 18 months. the high level officials bork aware of this and try to change the criteria. they are being asked multiple questions by members of congress, and they don't reveal anything about the problems that are -- that were going on, and i think that's where the first serious problem is going to be. you're going to see

congressional committees saying, hey, we wrote you multiple letters about this. we asked you questions about it. you wrote us back, and there's like three or four letters from the acting commissioner talking about the lengthy and painstaking process the irs uses for evaluating these sorts of applications, and there's not a whiff of a mention we've got a serious problem on our hands. >> even though those officials answering those questions, we now know, had been briefed on this problem happening at the lower level in the agency, right? >> exactly. look, you highlighted the part that the white house is certainly going to seize on which is that they did this in cincinnati on their own, but the idea that government bureaucrats operate in a vacuum without knowledge of what -- where the political winds are blowing is a myth. i mean, we've seen it -- you and i have talked on multiple

occasions about the run up to the iraq war where the cia was shaping intelligence to fit what it knew the white house wanted to hear. now, in this case, i'm not equating the two, but there is a parallel. everybody knew after citizens united. a lot of people were concerned about the abuse of 501-c 4s and the use of those sorts of organizations to pump big money into the electoral process. the president announced that leading democrats in congress announced, and then a few months later after the 2010 election these bureaucrats at the irs in cincinnati decide they are going to target the tea party. now, they targeted the wrong people, as we know. there were much bigger abusers of the 501-c 4 tax-exempt use than the tea party, but it's hard to divorce that from the larger political winds that were blowing at the time. >> absolutely. and had they -- had they -- had

they themselves made a decision that was overtly non-partisan and non-ideological and neutral on the ideological part of it, nobody would be peeping about this really, but the fact that they put this ideological spin on it themselves, yeah, this isn't over. michael isikoff, nbc news investigative correspondent, mike, thanks very much for helping us with it. >> appreciate, it rachel. >> one of the things to watch for tom, the big bottom line, none of the groups targeted by the irs got their applications denied but one of the things in the ig report is although they didn't get denied, they have may have been delayed, maybe unconscionably delayed by going through this process. was this a way of keeping people out of political process in a way they otherwise would have been able to be had they gone through the process quicker? watch for that tomorrow. we'll be right back. [ male announcer ] this is george.

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the obama administration is having a terrifically terrible week, but in the big picture how does this rank among other presidents' terrifically terrible weeks? dan rather is here tonight for the interview. that's next. i started a week ago going pro with crest pro-health. since i've been using crest pro-health, i've noticed a huge improvement. [ male announcer ] go pro for a clean that's up to four times better, try these crest pro-health products together.

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today, you will know you did something for your pain. cymbalta can help. cymbalta is a pain reliever fda-approved to manage chronic musculoskeletal pain. one non-narcotic pill a day, every day, can help reduce this pain. tell your doctor right away if your mood worsens, you have unusual changes in mood or behavior or thoughts of suicide. anti-depressants can increase these in children, teens, and young adults. cymbalta is not for children under 18. people taking maois, linezolid or thioridazine or with uncontrolled glaucoma should not take cymbalta. taking it with nsaid pain relievers, aspirin, or blood thinners may increase bleeding risk. severe liver problems, some fatal, were reported. signs include abdominal pain and yellowing skin or eyes. tell your doctor about all your medicines, including those for migraine and while on cymbalta, call right away if you have high fever, confusion and stiff muscles or serious allergic skin reactions like blisters, peeling rash, hives, or mouth sores to address possible life-threatening conditions. talk about your alcohol use, liver disease and before you reduce or stop cymbalta. dizziness or fainting may occur upon standing.

take the next step. talk to your doctor. cymbalta can help. prefer the taste of gevalia house blend over the taste of starbucks house blend? not that we like tooting our own horn but... ♪ toot toot. [ male announcer ] find gevalia in the coffee aisle or at gevalia.com for as long as there has ban federal organization that collects taxes, there have been people charging that that organization is going after them for political reasons or personal reasons. often those people have been right. under jfk it was the ideological organization project. 18 right wing organizations selected for special audits, although there was no evidence of tax violation. under richard nixon it was the special services staff set up to target the president's enemies and groups on the left. the fbi in the 1960s use the irs as a weapon to harass and try to

discredit martin luther king jr. and the southern christian leadership conference. in the late 1960s the co-intel program to disrupt and neutralize groups on the left using the irs as a weapon, using the irs as a weapon. the fbi directing the irs to investigate individual activists on tax grounds. "time" magazine recountinged up to today how the fbi picked out one college professor in particular who they told the irs to you had a knit 1968, explaining that the audit should be timed specifically to be a, quote, distraction during the critical period when he is engaged in meetings and plans for disruption of the democratic national convention that year in chicago. as we talked about on last night's showers, the irs under george w. bush went after at least one major liberal church threatening its tax status over excessive political activity while apparently ignoring the same or greater levels of political activity from conservative churches. famously in 2004 the naacp saw

its tax status threatened by the irs explicitly on the basis of them criticizing the presidency of george w. bush. tonight president obama says he wants the treasury secretary to hold accountable those responsible for subjecting conservative groups to extra scrutiny and delays in their applications to the irs for tax-exempt status. is it appropriate to contexturalize this current irs scandal amid the history, the long sordid dirty history using that agency and others as a tool of clear political warfare? or is this something else? joining us now for the interview is dan rather. he's anchor and managing editor of "dan rather reports" on axs tv. his latest report is operation streamline. mr. rather, thanks for being here. >> always a pleasure to be here. >> what is your big picture perspective on how big a scandal this current irs scandal is and how it relates to the very overt

uses of the irs for political ends that we've seen from other presidencies? >> well, first of all, no one should be surprised as you laid out. administrations have been doing this for many, many years, both republican and democratic administrations, but not all cases are the same. in the case of the richard nixon administration, it was the president himself, it was proven no, doubt about it. it was the president himself who said go after these people on their taxes. >> he's on tape saying that. >> he's on tape saying that. that's a far cry from where we are today. there is no proof that anybody at the white house, never mind the president himself, has been involved in this in the slightest so there's a great deal of difference. however, there needs to be, and i now think there will be, a long investigation into this case, and there are those who believe, you know, somebody at the white house must have blinked to somebody at the irs. if it reaches the level of even the mid-level of the obama

administration then it's serious trouble for him. until and unless it's done this, it's a benefit to the republicans because they can keep him on the defensive. it also helps the republican office holders bond again with the tea party and some of them were having some difficulty doing that, but i think in the overall picture, what we have right now is an embarrassment for president obama and a warning to him, if you will. you know what? you've got to be really careful up and down the line because even seemingly small things such as this, and make no mistake about it, it was no small thing in and of itself to target one side of the political spectrum with say we're going to make things difficult for them, particularly in this election year. serious business, but is it a case of people down the line and only those people involved? now, obviously many republicans and some who are not republicans think there had to be other people involved. what president obama needs, he doesn't need me to tell him what to do, but what he needs to do is he needs an immediate and

real fast and completely thorough investigation into this, and however bad the news is put it out, be transparent about it. >> what is the character of an investigation like that? does he name somebody from outside the administration to come in and some sort of special investigator capacity? does he count on, as his remarks indicated tonight, directing secretary lew at the treasury department where the irs ask located to make sure to hold those responsible for these failures, does he need to do -- does he need to direct that something else happen that might not otherwise happen in the normal course? >> in my personal opinion, yes, there will be pressure for him to do that. if not a special prosecutor some special investigator, but there's pressure to have a special prosecutor for observe reasons. he's making some of the right moves immediately now, but he needs to stay on top of this. but, you know, one smiles to this degree. the republicans are very good at this, and that's not a criticism. they are the out party. you'll remember when president bill clinton was re-elected?

they scrambled all over the clinton administration, and i won't say they ruined bill clinton's second term. the president himself, his actions did so, but they expose it had and they kept the pressure on. they are playing by that same playbook now. benghazi is by that playbook. this is by the playbook, and, again, as long as there's something to it, and there's a lot to this irs thing, that even if it turns out to be a few low-level people who didn't do what they were supposed to do and it's limited to, that it's very serious, us a pointed out and have been pointing throughout the program. you have to have integrity with the tax code operation. if you don't have that intellingity, then people lose trust in the government as a whole, not just in the parties. >> you have to act decisively to put a full stop at the end of it. on the a.p. story we were discussing earlier with the counsel from the associates press, i know that you have some experience of being gone after by an administration because of your reporting.

didn't you get -- didn't you get sort of nixon burglarized during the nixon presidency? >> yes. long story, but it turned out i didn't know at the time. our home wasburg rides by people that turned out to be part of the plumbers' operation, the know tore yougs plumbers' operation, didn't know it at the time, and it was a long time figuring out who did it. there are those who to this day said, no, it really wasn't that. but it was. our home was broken into. but this became common during the nixon administration. people's homes were broken into. doctor's offices were broken in to to get information, tapping telephone lines, tapping people's telephone lines, very noncommon. when people say well, watergate wasn't that big a deal. watergate is shorthand for a widespread criminal conspiracy led by the united states himself in which more than 40 people eventually served hard time so when people who don't like the hard facts of history about the nixon administration, every time some scandal happens, well, this

is equated with watergate. quite honestly, they don't know what they are talking about. >> dan rather, having you here is the best perspective that i get ever whenever you're here. thank you so much for being here. appreciate it. >> thank you. >> i should tell you dan rather's latest report "dan rather report" on axss if tv "operation streamline" airs tonight at 11:00 p.m. on axs. if you're counting a big number is now up to 12. big news for minnesota straight ahead. i had some lebanese food for lunch. i love the lebanese. i... i'm not sure. enough of the formalities... lets get started shall we? jimmy how happy are folks who save hundreds of dollars switching to geico? happier than dracula volunteering at a blood drive. we have cookies... get happy. get geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more.

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on december 9th, 1974, minnesota state senator allen spear came out on the front page of the "minneapolis star tribune." the article red "alan spear is a 37-year-old freshman member of the minnesota senate, a dfl err," he's an associate professor of history at the university of minnesota, a respected specialist in afro-american history. he has a doctorate degree from yale and has written a book on the making of the chicago black ghetto, long been active in dsl causes and alan spear also is a homosexual, and as of today he does not care who knows it. alan spear made history that day as one of the first ever openly

gay elected officials in this country. that 1974, that front page story. in the 28 years he ended up serving in the state senate, partially through his leadership, minnesota had some landmark achievements in gay rights, including a sweeping anti-discrimination statute passed in 1993. but although they did have some of landmark achievements as a state, minnesota never got around to recognizing marriage equality. then in the mid-term elections in 2010, it was the republican party that took control of both chambers of the minnesota legislature for the first time in 40 years, and with their new-found power minnesota republicans put on the ballot a state constitutional amendment to doubly triply ban gay marriage once and forever in the state, even though gay marriage wasn't legal there anyway. but republicans wanted a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, and they put it on the ballot, and then when it went up for a statewide vote last year in november, it lost. that had never happened before, ever. 31 states had voted on amendments just like that one, and all 31 had voted against

marriage equality until that all changed this past november. minnesota so thens made history when they voted no and decided not to change the state constitution to ban marriage rights and on the same elect day, same ballot, minnesota voted to return both houses of the legislature to the democratic party, to the dfl and the democrats in minnesota decided that the vote where the state had said no to banning equal rights, that vote deserved another vote, and so beyond just not banning same-sex marriage. state, they decided should legalize same-sex marriage. last week the house took up the question. passed by a quite surprising margin and even a handful of republicans voted yes and yesterday there was a parked rotunda for what everybody expected to be an historic day. the minnesota senate voted and the minnesota so thens who supported marriage rights ended

up doing much better than ever expected. >> members, in my humble judgment, this is indeed the civil rights issue of our generation. we are on the cusp of making an historic decision about what kind of civil rights we will live with, what kind of society we will live in. >> i vote first on the 1st and 14th amendment. i stand here quite honestly more uncertain of my future in this place than i have ever been, and when i walk out of the chamber today -- but when i walk out of the chamber today, i'm absolutely certain that i'm standing on the side of individual liberty. >> members, please, please vote yes. vote yes for freedom. vote yes for family. for commitment, for

responsibility, for dignity and vote yes for laugh. >> democratic state senator scott dibble who is an openly gay marriage of the legislature and the man who holds same senate seat that was once held by allan spear. senator dibble authored the marriage equality legislation and throughout the whole debate wore allan spear's campaign pin in tribute. took four hours of debate and the same-sex marriage bill passed the state senate yesterday by a vote of 37-30. lots of votes to spare, even some republicans, and that makes minnesota the 12th state in the country to recognize marriage equality and the third state to do so just this month. minnesota's democratic governor mark dayton signed the bill into the law a few hours ago on the steps of the state capitol, a big historic day in minnesota that was a long time in coming. for a whole group of minnesotans who could not be married before, bells will sound on august 1st, the first day that the new law goes into effect. rd c-max hybri. c-max one.

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some breaking news tonight. one week ago you'll remember that the lieutenant colonel who the u.s. air force had put in charge of the air force's sexual assault prevention office was himself arrested and accused of sexual battery. well, now a week later a second u.s. service member who is assigned to military sexual assault prevention is being investigated for sexual misconduct. this time it's the u.s. army sergeant first class from ft. hood, texas, assigned as an equal opportunity adviser and sexual harassment assault response prevention program coordinator. he is under investigation for pandering, abusive sexual contact, assault and mal treatment of subordinates. a defense official telling nbc news tonight that this sergeant first class is being investigated for forcing at least one subordinate soldier into prostitution and for sexually assaulting two other soldiers. now, the soldier has not been

charged yet. the army is not releasing his identity but special agents from the u.s. army criminal investigation command are conducting this investigation. again, just breaking tonight, but yet another u.s. soldier in this case in a leadership position in sexual assault prevention we have breaking news tonight on multiple fronts. first, a little over an hour ago, the president issued this statement in reaction to the treasury inspector general's report on the internal revenue service's handling of applications for tax exempt status by political groups. i have now had the opportunity to review the treasury department watchdog's report on the investigation of irs personnel who improperly targeted conservative groups applying for tax exempt status. the federal government must