programs, together with other intelligence, have protected the u.s. and our allies from terrorist threats across the globe, to clue helping prevent the potential terrorist events over 50 times since 9/11. right now on "andrea mitchell reports" -- damage control. nsa director, general keith alexander, claims the secret surveillance programs foiled terrorists and gave few specifics. under pressure from the left and the right, the president wants to disclose more. >> what i've asked the intelligence community to do is see how much of this we can declassify without further compromising the program. the putin problem. russian leader blocks the g-8 summit leaders from demanding that syria's assad step down. and just check out the body language when obama met putin. >> with respect to syria, we do

have differing perspectives on the problem, but we share an interest in reducing the violence, securing chemical weapons. >> translator: of course our opinions do not coincide but all of us have the intention to stop the violence in syria. >> biden to the rescue. the vice president trying to keep hope alive for tougher gun laws. we'll bring you his report this hour live from the white house. off to the races. senator claire mccaskill, one of obama's earliest supporters in 2008, now declares for hillary in 2016. but will hillary even decide to run? and presidential approval. jimmy fallon shares what's really behind obama's swing in the polls. >> based on how he's done so far, we can actually see what obama's future ratings will be and the reasons why they may go up or down. it is pretty incredible. let's take a look. next week his approval ratings will go up three points. why? obama makes it illegal for your friends to post photos of your

babies on facebook. that makes sense. in july, his ratings will drop five points. let's see why. obama hires miss utah as his speechwriter. tough. that's tough. finally in august, his approval rating will rise 12 points! let's see why. obama appoints ryan gosling as secretary of handsome. good day, i'm andrea mitchell in washington. . top intelligence officials claim today that the surveillance programs unmasked by edward snowden prevented more than 50 plots since 9/11, including ten threats to the homeland. but nsa chief keith alexander still acknowledged they still don't have a way to block system administrators like edward snowden from taking secrets. william cohen served as secretary of defense during the clinton administration an joins us now. mr. secretary, thanks very much for being with us. one of the parts of the testimony that was so interesting was that alexander said they're still working on how to stop someone like edward snowden from accessing all of this. i understand that the damage

assessment is just climbing by the day as they discover more an more data that he took from the computers. they don't even know the extent of it, and he is threatening to disclose more. so, is this a profound problem within our intelligence community? >> i think the problem is we have too many people who have access to top-secret clearances. as a result of that, you have people who are not fully vetted, and this may be the case with mr. snowden, but i think they have to take much greater care in allowing the individuals who do have access to this information to be able to take it out. now it's clear to me that there has to be some process whereby you simply can't plug a drive in and pull out information and take it home and give it to our adversaries across the globe. so procedures have to be tightened up and i think one of the real aspects of this scandal is that someone like snowden can have access to that information

and then take it and before we even know it's gone, an then disseminate it to the world. >> at the hearing today, they disclosed four separate declassified four plots that they claimed were foiled. two of them we had discussed previously, zazi and david head ley. there is a new one today, using fisa to uncough a plot to bomb the new york stock exchange. another one involved a san diego man who was allegedly trying to finance terrorists in somalia. is this enough evidence to persuade americans that the trade-off is worth it? >> i think what we have to understand is that we have a republic, a representative government. we have people who are elected to hold high office who have access to these secrets that are vital to our national security. the notion that one contractor

can take the law into his own hands and simply take that information and disclose it to the world and become a hero to some is absurd to me. heroes don't break the law, they comply with the law. there is a process whereby they can voice their dissent and eventually have their views heard by elected members of congress. so we have senator dianne feinstein, for example, someone who's highly respected. congressman mike rogers and others who we elect to oversee the process whereby the government is collecting information to try and protect our security interests. and so i think it is a fundamental flaw that we have now to disclose all of the incidents whereby these things have been prevented in order to restore confidence. unfortunately, that's the case right now but we have to have a measure of confidence in our elected officials that proper oversight is being exerted. if it is not, they ought to be hell accountable. but i think we have some very

talented people who are overseeing these activities and making sure there is a right kind of balance between a government which simply is invading all of our privacy, and a balance being struck by protecting our security and having some concern, real concern, about maintaining privacy of communications. >> keith alexander, the head of nsa, actually was recruiting at a hackers convention because it is these young people who are whizzes on computers, who have the talent who can get ahead of the curve, who can really make the system work. do we have a fundamental problem here in that these are the talented people that we need to go up against the computer whizzes in china or elsewhere, and at the same time they may not have the values of the traditionally recruited cia employees. >> then if they don't have the values, then you can't hire them. and shouldn't hire them. they have to have not only talent but also integrity and if they don't have the integrity, then we'll just have to take our chances, we're not getting as

good information as we need. but to make a trade-off and say we've got brilliant young people who have no values and who have access to this classified information and then are willing to disseminate that to the world, then claim they are doing it as a public service, i think that's a poor choice for us to make. i'd say don't hire them and we'll make do with the young people who do have the values, the young people who join our military and our intelligence services who are committed to the security of this country. >> i want to ask you about syria. after the president's change of posture on arming the rebels, he went up against putin and putin basically blocked the summit communique at the g-8 from making any reference to assad at all. so are we stalemated here with iran and russia, both propping up assad who is actually now, according to some on the ground, winning against the rebels? >> i think there has been a power shift. i think there's been a power shift because we really haven't

had a policy that i can identify. it is sort of like churchill's pudding. it has no theme. what is the policy that we're seeking to pursue? have we demanded that assad must go? what have we done to try and achieve that? is it a question of establishing a democracy? are we prepared to make the kind of commitment to see that through? so i don't know what our policy is other than now saying, well, we must supply some weaponry which seems quite limited in terms of what we're prepared to supply. and then say, we'll see if we can buy ourselves some time. you're not going to buy any time unless you show there's been a shift in the military on the ground. until that takes place, neither putin, nor the iranians, nor assad himself is going to make any change of plans. and so i just don't think we have a coherent theme and i think as a result of it, we lost influence in the region. i think we've undermined ourselves with our allies in the region, the uae, the qataris,

the saudis and others an we haven't been very effective in trying to achieve our goals. only good news coming out is that there is a humanitarian catastrophe taking place and the president has in fact increased the amount of humanitarian assistance going into the region. it is some $800 million and far above anyone else that's contributed to that. absent that, i'd say our policy has been confusing, at best. >> former defense secretary, william cohen, thank you very much for being with us today. joining us now for our "daily fix," chris cillizza, managing editor of postpolitics.com, and amy walter, editor for the come political report. chris, first to you. the polling shows very little support for the syrian initiative and it seems, according to most foreign policy critics with whom i talk, you just heard bill cohen, too little to actually accomplish what they say they want to accomplish. >> yeah. i mean, look, i leave this sort of policy end to people like

former secretary cohen and yourself, andrea, because you know it better than i do. i will tell you from a political perspective you are exactly right. there's very limit appetite for these sorts of things. i would say after the iraq war and afghanistan, we've just seen sort of a souring of the american public toward significant american involvement in these places. i think there is a wariness out there in the country and i think that complicates the decision. not that politics define these things, but politics certainly factor in to them. this is not something that would be popular if the president was putting american troops in any way, shape or form in harm's way. american public simply doesn't want it in syria right now. my guess is they don't want it in most places right now after the last decade that they've seen in terms of armed conflict. >> amy, then we have the nsa scandal because this one really

is a scandal in terms of the torrent of leaks. threats now on his web chat for more leaks. the damage assessment i'm told is escalating in terms of how much he he's had access to. this was the president with charlie rose on pbs, kind of complaining, why does my base think that i'm the next dick cheney? watch. >> some people say, well, obama was this raving liberal before, now he's dick cheney. dick cheney sometimes says, yeah, he took it all lock, stock and barrel. my concern has always been not that we shouldn't do intelligence gathering to prevent terrorism. but rather, are we setting up a system of checks and balances. >> i think it's fair to say that barack obama is in trouble with his base any time he has to say i'm not dick cheney. >> that is certainly not something his base wants to hear. at the same time though, his

base is still with him. when you look at the new pew poll that came out the other day that showed that the american public does not like the idea that the nsa is out there culling through our e-mail records and phone record. democrats are much more supportive of these sort of efforts than they were when cheney and bush -- well, when bush was president and cheney was vice president and republicans are much less supportive now that barack obama is president. so there's still -- >> everyone's going to their partisan corners. >> that's correct. the bigger problem right now for the president is not how much is going to leak out and can he fix it. because i don't know that he can fix it when approvals of the institutions themselves -- government, the presidency, congress -- are as rock-bottom levels. voters just don't believe that right now these big institutions are looking out for their best interests. you can parade of whole host of look at all the things we solved

and all the terrorist attempts that we diffused by doing this sort of work. but if you don't trust the institution itself, you're never going to put a whole lot of stock in that. >> i want to ask both of you about this claire mccaskill decision. because chris cillizza, claire mccaskill has come out for hillary clinton before hillary clinton has announced she's running. the interesting thing is that claire mccaskill is one of the earliest, most prominent supporters of barack obama in 2008 and a harsh critic of bill clinton back in 2006. what's going on there? >> well, look. i did a little math on my computer, annia. 927 days between today and january 1st, 2016. this is a very early endorsement. what is it about? i think you mentioned it. claire mccaskill was not only a strong supporter of barack obama against hillary clinton. she also made comments that did not sit well in the clinton world about bill clinton back in

2006. and those comments were not forgotten. then they are not forgotten now. i think collar mccaskill looks to her political future and she sees the possibility of a very difficult re-election race in 2018. by all rights she should not be in the senate now. a republican's nominated in unelectable candidate in todd aiken. if they had elected someone else not named todd aiken, very likely that someone else would have one. think she looks at her political future and sees getting right with hillary clinton as early as possible is the right next step for her. maybe a cabinet position. maybe something else. but with hillary as the overwhelming favorite, if she does run, i think this is more about claire mccaskill than it is about hillary clinton. >> now back at that point, bill clinton had done a fund-raiser for claire mccaskill and hillary clinton was set to do a fund-raiser. then she went on "meet the press," mccaskill did, and said bill clinton had been a great

met me meetr but she wouldn't want her daughter around him. >> that's exactly right. this is claire mccaskill positioning herself for her next step. remember, she was on very early with barack obama, which in some ways help her a great deal. but also became a problem for her in her re-election because she was so closely affiliated with the president who had's obviously not very popular in missouri. what does she want to do next? where does she want to go next? i don't know. but certainly trying to get right with the person who right now is the front-runner for president, probably a good move. >> amy walter, chris cillizza, thank you. in afghanistan, a deadly blast in kabul as afghanistan marks a significant milestone in the 12-year war. the bomb targeted a prominent lawmaker. killed three civilians instead. just a few miles away, afghan president hamid karzai was announcing the official security handovers taking place. afghan forces will now fully

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for a store near you go to benjaminmoore.com/bayarea. one of the more damaging aspects of selectively leaking incomplete information is that it paints an inaccurate picture and fosters distrust in our government. >> intelligence officials told the house intelligence committee today that edward snowden's leaks have severely damaged national security. but should the programs be narrowed in scope and why do systems analysts like edward snowden have so much access to so many secrets? phillip mudd is senior research

fellow at the new america foundation, a former cia analyst and former member of the national security council for president bush and the former deputy direct he were of national security at the fbi. phil, good to see you again. thanks for joining us today. >> thank you. >> what do you make of edward snowden's access and his threats now to keep the leaks coming an keep pouring them out and he describes himself as a whistle-blower and a fighter for freedom and transparency. >> i don't understand the fighter for freedom comment he makes. initially while what he did i don't approve of, there should and debate in the 21st century on how much data we can gather about americans. but when you say this is how we go after the chinese, i'll reveal more secrets after a time, he's saying he thinks he's the savior of america. i don't get it. >> intelligence officials told me privately that p.r.i.s.m. is

a really important program, a limited program with foreign targets but the metadata collection of everybody's telephone numbers, while helpful in some of these instances that they have been testifying to, is perhaps too broad and that that needs to be revisited. what do you think of that? >> i'm not sure about that. americans have to understand we're in chapter 1 of a long book. it is not about intelligence. it is how do you understand a human being in a conspiracy. when you can look quickly at someone's atm records, phone data, what they've done on facebook, in contrast say to 30 years ago when you had to go on the ground, i can look at a picture of a person's life within a day and help me understand whether there might and conspiracy afoot and that will accelerate over time, i think. >> but the counterpoint to that would be, you can look at a person and find out whether they have a serious illness that they are not disclosing to people, whether they have a marital problem, personal information is

embedded in all of this and they could be totally innocent. >> i think that's right. there is a big distinction between what do you collect -- in other words, what information do you own in a box and what do you do with it. that is, when can you access that box and look at that information. then to my mind, the collection gb it is in a black box, is not necessarily a huge violation of privacy. if you want to look at it and potentially uncover information about someone who had's innocent, that's a significant issue. i would separate out what do you collect and what do you do with it. >> let me play an exchange today. you alluded to the fact that edward snowden went to hong kong and then disclosed information about our hacking of the chinese. this is congressman nunez and fbi deppdy director joyce. >> i find it odd right before the chinese president comes to this country all of these leaks happen and this guy has fled to hong kong, this snowden. i'm really concerned, just the information you parened us last week, that this is probably going to be the largest leak in

american history an there's still probably more to. come out. can you just explain to the american people the seriousness of this leak and the damage -- you said earlier it's damaged national security. can you go into a few specifics? >> no. really, i can comment very little other than saying it is an ongoing criminal investigation. i can tell you we've all seen these egregious leaks. egregious. it has affected. we are revealing in front of you today methods and techniques. i have told you the examples i gave you how important they have been. >> phil, were you at the cia for years. how does someone like edward snowden who had a lot of stuff on his message board, questioning the patriot act, very sardonic, sarcastic stuff. he was 19, 20 years old at the time and people don't get slammed for what they write at that age. but how does he get through the filter, the character filter, if you will, to become hired by the cia long before he was an nsa

contractor? >> look, i went through that process multiple times over 25 years in government and some of the most sensitive positions in government. you you can look at how somebody spends their money, whether they're doing inappropriate things, potentially in the office, whether they're downloading information inappropriately. but anybody who suggests that we can stop when you're clearing hundreds of thousands of americans with top-secret clearances that suggests you can stop someone from thinking that they should do something like edward snowden has done, and then stop them at the border before you know they're going to do it, i don't understand how can you stop this. you can't police somebody's thoughts. >> but he's taunting them now and suggesting that more to come and that if they try to stop him, there will be a flood of these leaks. >> one question you ask, how much access to you give them? you can control a little bit of that electronically. 12 years ago in the wake of 9/11 there were questions about information sharing. do people have enough information to keep their -- to

keep the country safe? do we share information across agencies? when i was deputy director of counterterrorism at cia we were under a lot of pressure. i think appropriately to share more information. so you got to be careful about swinging the pendulum too hard. don't give too much information to too many people. but if you don't share is appropriately, people don't have enough information to do their jobs. >> what do you think they need to do now in the aftermath of these leaks? >> first of all we have to put some brakes on and figure out how we got it. did he get a thumb drive in. was he downloading information he should not have had access to. i think there is obviously a big interaction that has to be done on specifics of how he was getting into systems. if we're going to walk out on the back end as washington likes to do and say there is a silver bullet solution to this, i'm going to say that's not going to happen. there will be people like this in the future. >> philip mudd, thanks for being with us today. anti-government protests turn violent overnight in brazil as demonstrators threw stones and molotov cocktails at police.

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intelligence community. >> i grew up in silicon valley before it was called that. >> really. before it was cool. >> yeah. it was just the ordinary santa clara valley, a boring middle class place. now it is the center of the universe. what i found writing about this t recently, there's been this historical distaste for washington, the desire to keep it at bay, let us make our marvelous engineering products and don't mess them up. more recently i think the industry's gotten so big and wealthy that they've had to deal with washington, with lobbyists, with advocacy groups. now we find out that there is this gigantic conduit of information from the biggest tech companies to the biggest surveillance agency and it's put the lie to the idea that facebook and google and these other companies still have this sort of rebellious spirit that says move fast and break things,

hack is their motto, which is sort of the idea that there should be something somewhat illicit about what you do. turns out that they have all kind of information. we knew that. because people have voluntarily surrendered it. i'm at least at creeped out by commercial companies knowing everything there is to know about my habits, my buying habits, everything else and much more about people who actually use facebook and twitter as i am by the government having it. they have a profit incentive. >> isn't that why you see in the polling at least that people are not as upset and offended. very vocal groups are, but not majorities of americans are as upset about this as they might otherwise be if they weren't already acclimated to the profit makers, corporate america having all this data. >> yeah. there's been this gigantic surrender of privacy. voluntary. it's not voluntary. they're coming in secretly and taking that information.

their purpose ostensibly and i think in practice is national security. the company's purpose is profit making. so there you have two different motives for having all this information about us. i think in a way the bloom is off the rose of silicon valley as a kind of revolutionary lifestyle. >> countercultural, in a way. >> yes. which was its origins with apple computer. >> "the new yorker" cover, which is uncle sam -- what is it? uncle sam is listening is the cover. it sort of captures all of that. i want to talk about the book. what you've done is try to pull back the covers, if you will, on the way the economy and what we've come through with this devastating recession has affected lives across the country. tell me what you were trying to accomplish. >> the unwinding is a portrait of america over a whole generation. it begins in 1978 which is when i think a lot of the things that we're very familiar with today, deindustrialization, political

polarization, the rise of lobbying, the information age had their origins. and it follows a handful of characters, most of whom readers won't have heard of. through their lives, as they move through america, through this incredibly tumultuous time, all these olden institutions and stru structures which used to support ordinary people's ambitions starts to unravel more and more. it is about the undoing of a social contract and it ends today. it is a whole generation of history. >> how has it affected our politics? >> i think what we've seen is, '78 was the year newt grichl in was elected to congress. there are profiles of ten celebrity americans to show what's happening in these institutions and at the elite levels. gingrich as much as anyone i think was responsible for the pretty toxic atmosphere that's now the normal way of doing business in washington.

before the late '70s, the two parties had to deal with each other because they both had liberals and conservatives in both parties and there were people in the senate and in the house who had an idea of the national interest. it was higher than their party's interest or their own re-election. obviously they were also selfish and narrow in their outlook and we had segregation and we had the southern bloc. but creative legislation got passed. and for a jen ration now there's been almost none of that because the capitol itself is so dysfunctional and blocked and because the two parties i think mainly the republican party and the democrats by response have entrenched themselves in positions that make it impossible to reach a compromise. >> which is the sad state that we are at today. >> it is. >> george packard, thank you very much. good to be with you. nice to have you here. you're looking at live pictures from the george zimmerman trial. when proceedings in sanford, florida commenced this morning,

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>> in addition to the fbi, we brought in the justice department overall. we brought in the -- instead we insisted that they sit down, together -- not separately, together and make sure they were all on the same page at to what were the single recommendations that could be made. there is a coherence to this. they have all had significant input in dealing with disasters. so we put them together in one room with more than 100 experts from law enforcement to higher education, from k-12 teachers to first responders, to emergency planners. and we said, all of you come up with what you think are the best practices -- the most concrete recommendations that you can give us that will enable us to

teach our prepare or lay out a menu for the school districts and churches. interesting thing is, i think it surprised most people a little bit -- remember eric and i sitting there and we had the faith leaders. the faith leaders not only wanted to talk about making schools safer, they know, they're worried that their congregations are at risk. so they want to know what should they be thinking about when someone stands up in the middle of a congregation and decides to do something similar than we saw in the schools? so, we gave concrete direction. we are going to -- there are three documents that are being made available today. a guide for developing high-quality school emergency operation plans, and that is for k-12. and a guide for developing high-quality emergency operation plans for institutions of higher learning. and a guide for developing

high-quality emergency operation plans for houses of worship. so toward that end, we took a very, very hard look and when a school principal gets in touch with the federal government looking for advice, as i said, they shouldn't hear from the justice department, and then the department of education, and the department of homeland security with -- we got to make this bite-size, we got to make it understandable and we got to make it available. the best thinking in the country. >> peter alexander joins me now from the white house. peter, the vice president seems to be trying to reinvigorate the gun debate. but what chance do they really have of getting something done? they have to get through immigration reform before they can even try to get something on the floor? >> yeah, let's be clear -- this is not even on the legislative calendar at this point. vice president was clear right

ow of the gates when he began these remarks in the exact same room where he and the president almost exactly five months ago announced their efforts for a sweeping overhaul of gun control in this country. the vice president said immediately as he began his remarks, "we have not given up." he made reference to the 45 senators who voted against the gun bill that was just two months ago, as you noted, two months and a day. he felt very confidently many were wondering whether this was prudent, their no vote at the time. a short time ago i finished a conversation with mark glaze, executive director of mayors against illegal guns. mayor michael bloomberg's group. he said specifically today to really focus on the executive actions joe biden has been speaking about. 21 of 23 that have either been completed or are on their way to completion, as the white house would say. mark glaze said to me that that's real and that is necessary, but it is not sufficient. he reiterated the fact that 33

americans, andrea, are murdered with guns each day in this country. he said on the background check issue, a 90-10 issue, he said eventually the public will get its way. >> peter alexander at the white house, thanks so much. major milestone today at the state department in the fight against the spread of hiv. >> i am honored to make a very special announcement today, an announcement that we could literally only have dreamed about ten years ago. thanks to the support of pepfar, we have saved the 1 millionth baby from becoming infected with hiv. that is a remarkable step. >> secretary of state kerry made that announcement while celebrating the tenthth anniversary of pepfar at the state department. he says new hiv and infections have declined by almost 20% over the past decade. in africa the new infections and aids related deaths are down by nearly one-third. ber you only need a few sheets.

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news today on the abortion fight front. house is expected to vote tonight on controversial new restrictions that would go against roe v. wade. and if they were to pass the senate, the president would of course veto it even if they got past the senate, which it won't. so what's the point? cosmopolitan magazine editor in chief joanna coles joins me now. great to have you here. great to see you in washington. i have enjoyed watching you on "morning joe." here we have another abortion fight that seems to be just house republicans -- or those who are against abortion rights picking a fight, even though they know they won't win. what is going on politically? >> it's very interesting. isn't it? if you look at what happened to the republicans at the last election, when they chose to make social issues -- they put it at the front of the agenda, it didn't do them any good. so one's asking why are they doing it again. we here -- at cosmo we have lots of republican young women readers who are baffled about why the republican party is

doing this. we know that they want women voters. we know they want young men and women voters. and yet this is an issue which is clearly going to turn off both kinds of voters. so really i think this is a play for the right and the economy does definitely seem to be getting better and one can't help thinking -- also, this was that awful case in i think philadelphia with kermit gosnell which was an unpleasant abortion doctor case and it gave people the opportunity to get back out in front of a very controversial issue. >> it was a horrific case. >> a horrifying case for everybody concerned. of course, the trouble is if you make abortion difficult to get, then you enable doctors like kermit gosnell to be doing it on the side in all sorts of unpleasant, horrible, you know, life-threatening conditions for the women who need these procedures. i think it is just politics at play but it is hard to see how the moderate republicans can think this is in any way good at

all. >> as we have more women in the senate, not that many women proportionally in the -- we see them trying to move the conversation about sexual assaults in the military. there's a division between claire mccaskill on one side and kirsten gillibrand on the other. at the haven't gotten what they wanted out of the senate armed services committee but they are getting the conversation more focused on protecting men and women, but primarily women, and giving them the opportunity to complain without having fear that it will end their military careers. >> yes. absolutely. you see today advances in women now being able to train for the navy s.e.a.l.s, for army rangers, and of course women have been in combat for several years now. they've been in the medics, they've been driving trucks and flying planes. so this finally gives them the opportunity to actually pursue a career and get sort of marks

along the way, which is actually very exciting progress, i think. but of course, the challenge is men and women living alongside each other and the sexual violence that goes on. and then how you investigate that sexual sexual violence in the armed services. >> what they're telling us is that they'll begin considering the possibility of having women in army rangers and navy s.e.a.l.s in training. whether they end up getting into the program will require getting through the roughest training possible. there are a lot of women who are, you know, physically strong and fit and able to compete, but this is going to be a real test as to whether they can get into these elite units. >> well, it is going to be a test. i don't have any doubt that many of them will make it, and also i sometimes think that the debate we have about women in the armed services is sort of based on a hollywood concept of what war is actually like. we know that in the iraq and afghanistan war, actually this is not about men rushing at each

other with bayonets, it's about intelligence gathering on the ground, working with local communities and it's about having your finest people doing this for you. and we know in every organization that the more diverse group of senior staff you have, the better the organization performs. we know it in business, we know it in politics, we know it in the military. we have 15% of women now in the military. we need to make it more. the tipping point for women, i think, or for all diversities actually in the military has been much better multi racial than it has with women. it's 20% to 30% where you begin to feel that this is not about tokenism, it's actually about proper integration. >> that's very exciting the changes at cauosmo paul tin as u bring it up to date by going back to first principles. >> we're trying to embrace the early idea of having it all and empowering women to really feel good about the choices they make

and what those choices are. and what's so exciting is you can make a choice to go into combat, you can make a choice to be a fantastic television anchor. you can have these choices, you can have families and embrace the whole chaos over it. >> and chaos it is in many cases. great to see you. 30 years today a space-age pioneer, sally ride, became this country's first woman astronaut aboard the space shuttle "challenger." >> we go for main engine start. we have main engine start. and ignition and liftoff. liftoff of sts 7 and women's first woman astronaut. >> now, get this, three decades later, another historic day for women in space. nasa has announced its new class of eight astronauts, four of them are women. that is the highest percentage of women ever selected for the elite program. nasa says this team will help push the boundaries of exploration.

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that does it for a busy edition of "andrea mitchell reports." join us on twitter. tomorrow on the show senator barbara boxer will be here talking about women in the senate and the military. my colleague, tamron hall, has a look at what's next on "news nation." >> in the next hour debate expected to kick off in the next 30 minutes as so what is described as the most restrictive abortion bill to come before congress in a decade. we'll have more on that bill and the heated reaction to it, including from one republican that referred to it as a stupid move by his own party. also the nsa says it has foiled more than 50 terror attacks because of the domestic surveillance programs that have caused so much controversy. this after president obama in a new interview says he's no dick cheney. congressman james clyburn of south carolina will join us. mr. clyburn believes some of these leaks are designed to make the president look bad. wee find out his thoughts

regarding the hearing. we're expecting an announcement from the pentagon. reports that women may soon be able to start training for special ops teams. we'll talk with one of the first female combat vets to serve in congress. ♪ i'm a hard, hard worker and i'm working every day. ♪ ♪ i'm a hard, hard worker and i'm saving all my pay. ♪ small businesses get up earlier and stay later. and to help all that hard work pay off, membership brings out millions of us on small business saturday and every day to make shopping small huge. this is what membership is. this is what membership does.

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safety, down to an art. the nissan altima with safety shield technologies. nissan. innovation that excites. ♪ hi, everyone, i'm tamron hall. "news nation" is following developing news. the house is right now debating the rules for what's being called the most restrictive abortion bill to hit the floor of congress in a decade. the bill bans most abortions after 20 weeks, claiming that's when the fetus can feel pain. it was recently amended to exclude cases of rape or incest if they are reported. it also excludes cases when the mother's life is at risk. congressman trent franks, the bill's sponsor, will not be leading the debate today. last week he sparked controversy