strategists are scratching their heads. plus, i spy a surveillance program that rivals even the nsa's. this hour, the secret's out. ♪ at what point do we say we need to confront actions that are violating our common humanity. and i would argue that when i see 400 children subjected to gas, over 1400 innocent civilians dying senselessly, the moral thing to do is not to stand by and do nothing. but it's difficult. this is the part of my job that

i find most challenging every single day. >> that was president obama today in stockholm, sweden, insisting the international community cannot be silent after the syrian chemical attacks. back here at home, it is another busy day on the hill as the president's team is trying to sell congress on this authorization of force. secretary of state john kerry, defense chief chuck hagel and general martin dempsey were all briefing congress, both publicly and in closed-door hearings. meanwhile, the senate foreign relations committee now has its own new draft legislation for authorizing military force. we're going to get into all this, including the global reaction, how the strikes would work and the politics of it all. we start with nbc's chuck todd traveling with the president in sweden. i'd like you to walk us through the reaction of the president and his aides to the senate trying to narrow this resolution as we've been reporting. narrowing it in terms of the geography of the strikes and

their duration. is this something that ties any hands, or is the white house already comfortable and expecting that there would be some of this back and forth on the hill? >> reporter: ari, i was just speaking with some senior aides on this issue. they said one of the reasons they wrote it so broadly is they figured it would get narrowed to a point. some of this isn't a surprise to them. i think they believe the process taking place in the senate is as transparent as it could be, catching too many people off guard. for example, menendez and corker didn't give anybody a heads up about their compromise resolution until they went public with it. if they're critical of what's going on, it's not that there's an attempt to narrow the scope, it's how they're going about doing it, basically surprising the white house, didn't know what the compromise was until after it was public. john mccain didn't know. that's why you get into sort of what i would call typical senate

combativeness, right. bob corker is sort of higher in seniority on relations. john mccain believing he's sort of the most senior voice in the republican party on foreign affairs issues. so there's a little bit of that buried underneath this back and forth. they're not surprised by the narrowing. they are concern a little that the process isn't being managed very well by the two top guys on foreign relations. >> all right. chuck todd traveling with the president, thanks for your reporting. let's bring in p.j. crowley. thanks for being here today. >> how are you? >> doing well. p.j., i want to dig right into the justifications here, something you know a lot about from your time at state and something that the president says he takes very seriously. is this in any way a humanitarian intervention, and what is the best justification for this proactive strike on a sovereign country? >> well, the best justification

is it's in the united states' interest, you know, to do it. the world has moved deliberately over the last 25 years towards an attitude, a norm that chemical weapons are beyond the pale. we have for the first time in 25 years a significant use of chemical weapons. in this case, you know, in syria where assad -- and i think the administration has made a convincing case linking the reality of an attack to syrian regime. so i'm comfortable with the red line the president has drawn. yes, you can look at it in terms of trying to contain the syrian civil war and obviously chemical weapons, you know, provides a potential escalation. but also, there is a humanitarian basis to this. i recognize that what the president said, the clip you played, you know, we're struggling with why are 1500 people different than, you know,

100,000. the united states has pledged we're not going to do a regime change through military means. we do hope that assad will leave but we'll try to do that through a combination of limited military activity but primarily through political activity. >> p.j., one of the key words or key phrases out of all this has been chemical weapons. another keyword out of all this has been credibility. the president was out talking about credibility earlier today. >> my credibility is not on the line. the international community's credibility is on the line. and america and congress' credibility is on the line because we give lip service to the notion that these international norms are important. i didn't set a red line. the world set a red line. >> p.j., this discussion of credibility really bothers me. it kind of suggests if we don't act tough here, suddenly iran will begin to think we're weak as if iran is not already aware

we will go to the mat to make sure they don't achieve their nuclear ambitions. more than that, what will be the blow to our credibility if we were to launch a strike and assad would brush it off and continue on with the civil war, which will almost surely happen? what will be the blow to our credibility there? >> well, let's start with the resolution that's being contemplated. i mean, if the united states has drawn a red line on chemical weapons, it has to be prepared to defend that red line with one strike and potentially, you know, with others. i do think that bashar al assad will challenge this red line at one point. we think of chemical weapons in horrific terms it. he thinks of chemical weapons as just, you know, one tool in his arsenal attempting to survive. i have no doubt that assad will at some point use chemical weapons again if he feels he needs to, and when he does, we need to be prepared to act over and over and over again within this limited mission. there you can do two things.

one, you defend the red line and the international community's credibility and america's credibility as well. also, you make bashar al assad pay a price, and that can over time perhaps give confidence to the opposition that they will eventually succeed. >> well, p.j., that's a question that still lingers on so many people's minds. what about the potential repercussions? what about the response from assad or from hezbollah? secretary kerry essentially dismissed this yesterday in the senate hearing saying that assad would not be foolish enough to retaliate. what we do know, though, is assad was foolish enough to use chemical weapons. wouldn't it be foolish on our part to assume assad would stand idly by and do nothing if we do, in fact, strike? >> well, that's a difficult calculation for assad. i think it is fair to say that he does not want to see the united states, you know, more

actively engaged in syria because ultimately the more the international community weighs in on syria, the greater the likelihood he will lose the fight that he's in. so i think he also has an interest in trying to keep the playing field where it is. so i think that's a fair calculation. although, i do think at some point in time, assad will step over the red line again, and we have to be prepared to respond to that, and the president has to have the authority to be able to respond to that in the future. >> p.j., as much as it might bother toure, i agree with you that the united states' credibility is on the line and we can't just stand by and do nothing, but you said we have a hope that assad will leave and that we'll support that through some military action, but mostly through diplomatic and political action. lay out for us what that could look like. are you optimistic we could see a political resolution to the conflict in syria? >> i am confident that there will be a political resolution at some point, although i don't necessarily think that point is

imminent. it could actually be years. these kinds of civil wars go on for 10 years, 15 years. we're only in year three and it's already a horrific tragedy. i think back to bosnia where there was some military activity in the early '90s, but you had to reach a point where the adversaries in the conflict had started to recognize that they could not achieve their objectives through military means. all of the players in syria, assad, the opposition, al qaeda, hezbollah, iran, saudi arabia, they all think that they can win this through military means. tragically, we may need to have this play out for a while before you have, like in the context of bosnia, it was the dayton accord that ended the what r. we'll get to that point at some point. the united states, russia, and others will leech political accommodation on the way forward together with the regime and the opposition, but right now, frankly, the regime and the

opposition are not at a place where they are prepared to negotiate. >> all right, p.j. crowley making the case for war. thanks for sharing some of your thoughts with us today. >> thank you. >> our special coverage continues overseas next from london. f cheese? [ crisp crunches ] whoo-hoo-hoo! guess it was. [ male announcer ] pringles, bursting with more flavor. does your dog food have? guess it was. 18 percent? 20? new purina one true instinct has 30. active dogs crave nutrient-dense food. so we made purina one true instinct. learn more at purinaone.com

as we convene for this debate, it's not an exaggeration to say to you, all of you, my former colleagues, that the world is watching not just to see what we decide, but it's watching to see how we make this

decision. whether in a dangerous world we can still make our government speak with one voice. they want to know if america will rise to this moment and make a difference. >> the world is watching. secretary of state john kerry echoing the words we heard from president obama this morning in stockholm. the question is, what are they watching for? that depends on where you are. nbc's jim maceda is on the turkish side of the syrian border. an estimated 460,000 syrians have fled into turkey. jim, what is it they are watching for and how are our allies reacting? >> reporter: hi there, abby. that's right. not just 460,000 refugees, but remember this is a nato ally as well. we haven't seen much reaction at all today, by the way, from turkey or jordan or israel to that top syrian official's threat of retaliation if syria is attacked. he made those comments this

morning. but they are comments that certainly echo what assad himself told the french daily on monday, that u.s. air strikes on syria could trigger a regional war and chaos. this is what these countries are afraid of. they're afraid of retaliation. it's ramped up tension here in turkey. turkey, by the way, was pushing to be part of a kind of shock and awe offensive to be led by the united states, something that would topple assad or at least force him to step down. turks know now that's not going to happen. so instead, turkey is watching carefully. it's officially backing the limited air strikes being debated in washington, but many turks here will tell you how disappointed and worried they are that it's simply too little, too late. nothing is going to change after these air strikes, especially now that it feels like they're going to happen, that things are going obama's way.

it's different now already than it was days ago in terms of the tension here. and it's ramping up not just on the borders of turkey and syria but also on the high seas off syria as well. we now have over a dozen u.s. french and russian warships, several nuclear submarines all within relatively close range. a russian missile cruiser reportedly today to be heading toward syria. the war drums are getting louder. turks and other allies are worried, but they're also disappointed and afraid that nothing is going to change. back to you. >> all right. thank you, jim maceda. with us now from london, professor of middle eastern politics at the london school of economics. is it still necessary for america to be the world's policeman? >> well, obviously our leadership has decided to be the

world's policeman. in fact, if you listen to the debate yesterday in the senate foreign relations committee, secretary of state john kerry made it very clear that we have some allies. yes, we have a lot of people who have told us publicly they support the u.s. mission. that it's the responsibility and the mission of the united states. the united states must uphold the principle of humanity and the principle of basically preserving humanity. as you well know, the world does not see it this way. if you look at the opposition to intervention inside syria, it's widespread, worldwide. you're talking about a solid majority of the french people, the british people, the pope, the chief general of the united nations, the arab league, germany, italy, poland, even a solid majority of americans do not basically buy the administration's case for the war. but that's the reality. the american foreign policy lead

has basically established a particular parameter, and they are making the case for inside syria. i think they're going to get a mandate from the u.s. congress. in fact, i would be shocked if the mandate is not forthcoming in the next few days. >> such an important point. we often speak in the american context about principles around the world when people see those principles applied so seleiv selectively by the united states military. i wanted to ask you about this reaction around the world to our actual internal process. we have seen presidents with very aggressive foreign policies like the last one and more diplomatically inclined presidents like the current one. both go to congress. i don't know that you can really read that much into that act. is that how it's being seen around the world? >> no, not really. i mean, i think there's a great deal of cynicism, as you well know, of america's intentions.

the iraq war is very, very much alive in the imagination of world public opinion, across the board, not just in the arab and muslim world. in russia and china, public opinion in britain and france and germany. in fact, president putin today in an interview, he made it very clear he does not buy the u.s. evidence, that he made it very clear that the americans made a similar case in 2003. look what happened. the question for all of us is why the rush to war. why not share the u.s. evidence with the international community, with the security council. no one is suggesting, no one should suggest that any leader, not just assad, should use gas and chemical weapons against his people. that's not the question. in fact, more than 100,000 syrians have been killed by conventional weapons. fewer than 2,000 syrians have been killed by chemical weapons,

allegedly. the question is, how do you basically punish president bashar al assad? i would argue that we, the united states of america, should use this particular heightened moment of threat to try to engineer a diplomatic settlement, to try to ease bashar al assad out of power, to convince the russians and the chinese and the world community it's in their interest that assad basically is out of this particular power. this is really the right way to go. ironically, american policymakers, as you well know, even john kerry after he made the case for intervention against bashar al assad, he concluded his statement by saying, there's no military solution to this struggle inside syria. it's the civil war. it's all-out civil war. it's a regional war by proxy. but american politics is not understood in the world the way that we understand it. >> professor, you're saying we should use this moment of crisis to try to use it as a leverage point to convince russia and china that it's in their best

interest for bashar al assad to go. is that realistic to think we could get china and russia behind us on some sort of a diplomatic resolution? >> i really do. i don't think -- i mean, as secretary kerry said yesterday trying to convince the senators, he said, russia is not ideologically committed to bashar al assad. syria is a very tiny state. yesterday the debate was surreal. this is a nation of 20 million people, one of the poorest countries in the middle east. it does not have any industry. it does not have any resources. russia has a very tiny, small naval base on the mediterranean. the russians are trying to defend a principle. the principle is that the western power should not have the right to basically topple a government outside of the security council. we want to preserve that interest. i think the united states, using this particular moment, i would argue given the threats to international peace and security, president obama and

the american leadership must engage putin and the chinese and the international community in order to broker a settlement whereby assad is out and the process of transition in syria begins. it's not impossible. the question is, it's a matter of political leadership and matter of political will. i think both have been lacking, not just in the united states, but also in russia and china and the international community. >> those are good points, professor. president obama continues to put pressure, though, on the international community saying this morning in his press conference that they cannot be silent in the face of a syrian chemical attack, saying that it is not my red line, it is the world's red line. you know, if the united states can come together, if congress can rally behind the president, behind, you know, this missile strike, how will that influence the international community? will they be influenced at all, especially in the u.k. to change their tune? >> no, i don't think so. in fact, putin today was very clear, and he said that russia would most likely respond, and

it has its own plans. the irony yesterday, really, when the watched the hearings, senator john kerry dismissed any kind of repercussions, as you asked your earlier colleagues. he said assad would be foolish to retaliate with strike. if assad were foolish enough to use chemical weapons, surely he would be foolish enough to retaliate against a major strike. when he was asked about hezbollah, what would hezbollah do? he said, well, i talked to benjamin netanyahu, and he reassured me that everything is under control. well, what does that mean? means a region-wide war if hezbollah decides to fire missiles against israel. and senator kerry, in fact, was a bit misleading when he said russia and iran basically understand our view because we have provided evidence. well, neither iran nor russia basically accepts the u.s. intelligence assessment of the use of chemical weapons.

at the end of the day, i do hope when the president gets the mandate from the u.s. congress, and it will in the next few days, that president barack obama goes to security council, provides what we have in terms of intelligence, tries to convince the international community, the russians and the chinese, and in fact the obama administration does not have anything to lose but rather more to gain after getting the u.s. congress approval by going to the security council and showing the world that the united states basically is a global citizen and basically understands the aspirations and fears and responsibilities of global leadership. >> professor, always great getting your point of view. thanks for joining us. up next, how would this all work? our resident war strategist says it won't. so does war hawk john mccain, but for very different reasons.

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we are back with breaking news.

the senate foreign relations committee has just passed a draft resolution to strike syria. it includes a 90-day limit on punitive strikes, strikes that are limited to syria only. the language is clear. it argues for no boots on the ground. a similar proposal is being worked up in the house. the vote was 10-7. meantime, the folks at the pentagon want to assure the american people they are on the same page with the commander in chief. >> we're looking at a different kind of military mission that's meant to send a strong signal to a brutal regime that is conducting the worst kind of violence against its own people. when the president says no american boots on the ground, and that means no american troops on the ground, that's what it means. >> nbc's chief pentagon correspondent joins us now. two thoughts from you at the top here. number one, any reaction to this vote out of the senate foreign relat relations committee sending back

a revised resolution authorizing strikes in syria, narrower than what the president's people sent down? number two, what does it mean from your view at the pentagon for congress to try to put these limitations on, when we know this president, like all modern presidents, envokes his article two constitutional authority. >> well, as general dempsey has testified before congress both yesterday and today, essentially you tell us what we can do, and we'll do it. what concerns the military the most is that the final resolution, which could ultimately be passed by congress, not put too many restrictions on u.s. military operations in and above syria. they insist they, too, have no desire, no plans to put boots on the ground. at this point, they've got everything in place pretty much to do whatever the president

should ask in terms of trying to degrade and deter the chemical weapons systems and operations of president assad there in syria. but they're worried that with every first shot, all the plans go out the window. that's an absolute truism in any kind of military operation. they want to have the kind of freedom to operate and respond to any possible contingency. so far we're not hearing many complaints about the resolution as it stands, but if it should get in any tighter, i think it hears some kind of resistance from the military. >> all right. thanks, mick. now let's turn to former military intelligence officer tony schafer, who's now a senior fellow at the center for advanced defense studies. his latest book "the last line" is a novel based in the shadow world of espionage and government power. tony, always great having you here. >> thank you for having me. >> when we talk about the end game, the aftermath of all this, you know, the strike itself is

so essential. david ignatius wrote about this in "the washington post" last week. the main rationale for military action by the u.s. and its allies should be restoring deterrence against the use of chemical weapons. it should potent enough to degrade assad's command and control structure so he cannot conduct similar actions in the future. officials hope the strike will -- it continues on. walk us through what the strike means. you have to walk such a fine balance here. if you don't get it right, then you will very well expect an aftermath, right? >> well, that's the problem here. when you talk about attacking his ability to take action, one of those actions we want him to continue to take is keep and protect the storage of chemical weapons. i was appalled by p.j. crowley's, well, if we hit him and he does it again, we hit him

again. you have to understand they are doing everything they can, the assad regime, to keep control of these chemical weapons. if we start hitting them with sufficient clarity and ability and success, we degrade his chain of command, we degrade his ability to protect these things. again, we talked about this the last time i was on the show. are we thinking through the secondary consequences of our own actions? secondly, inevitably, as you mentioned in the intro, things are going to go wrong. we got to look through this with the eyes on the horizon of what's going to happen a year from now, two years from now. obviously, we've seen 100,000 people dead. do we really want to now take the potential of increasing the refugee flow, which i predict if we start doing this we'll see more refugees going into turkey, into jordan. most importantly, you take the potential of killing the technicians who are maintaining -- the russian technicians who are maintaining the assad aircraft and the 50,000 force in the bases all

around syria who are iranians. we have great precision weapons. they ain't that great to not take collateral damage from other targets. >> tony, as we were just saying, we've seen the senate foreign relations committee pass by a vote of 10-7 a more limited version of the authorization. the first indication that congress may be getting behind the president. i wanted to get your thoughts on something our last guest had suggested, which is that they take this authorization, if it does pass congress, and take it to the u.n. security council and use it as a point of leverage to try to get russia and china somehow on board with a diplomatic solution. do you think that's realistic? >> i agree with misshis assessm. this is a political issue. this entire thing is a diplomatic, political exercise. we're trying to insinuate military force. that will give the syrians, by the way, the right to retaliate. this is us going to war with them. they're in the going to take this lying down. i think the secondary effects the professor laid out very clearly would happen.

again, i dismiss what p.j. crowley and others have said about oh, they're just going to take it and get the message. no, they won't. we wouldn't. i think we have to look at presenting the evidence to the u.n. syria's not one of the signatories to the chemical weapons regime. i think you have to have united nations support in some order to make this a legitimate legal action by the world. at this point in time, i'm sorry, i dispute president obama. this is not us going with the world. this is us trying to push the world in a certain direction. if we do that, we have to -- i think we're obligated to show them the evidence of why we think we have to act as we plan. >> i'm glad you're pointing out we could increase the humanitarian crisis going on here. we would multiply the number of refugees within syria and other countries. something else you said really stands out to me. no plan survives contact with the enemy. anyone who really knows the military knows that's real. you know the military. you know the politics. you've seen this resolution.

congress micromanaging the military response within syria. is it dangerous for the military when they have politicians telling them in a very precise, micromanaged way what they can and cannot do? >> let me go on with your point. what if the regime collapses and we have all these stores of weapons now insecure? are we going to sit there and let people wander in and pick them up and wander off? no, we have plans to go in and secure them. between you and me, that's in our best interest to put boots on the ground to secure those things. you have to be careful about how you start stipulating certain requirements on a military plan. lbj made the same mistake during vietnam. go to this rice paddy, don't go to that one. you have to be careful once you let loose the dogs of war to let the dogs of war do their job. what p.j. was saying earlier was a non seq. we tir about the military action being sufficient to send a message. again, the secondary and third

order effects we're not thinking through. we have to look at this logically, not politically. this is where we have to put aside the emotion. everybody is emotional about this. what we need to do versus what we can do and what the end result is going to be. >> yeah, tony, appreciate your points and thoughts on the military risk there. a rebuttal to p.j., who we had on a former obama official. you've helped us understand some of the concerns in intervention. thanks for your time. still ahead, can one vote cost you the presidency? it starts with little things. tiny changes in the brain. little things anyone can do. it steals your memories. your independence. ensures support, a breakthrough. and sooner than you'd like. sooner than you'd think. you die from alzheimer's disease. we cure alzheimer's disease.

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until you know how toviaz affects you. the most common side effects are dry mouth and constipation. talk to your doctor about toviaz. as we just reported, the senate foreign relations committee just passed authorization for military action against syria. next up, the full senate. the question remains, will these votes live in political infamy?

the only person we can ask this question to is, of course, howard fineman. welcome back to the show. before we get started, i want to take a quick look at the whip count that "the washington post" has been drumming up. right now they're saying that 20 senators are against, 62 senators are undecided, and 18 are for action. sol there's a lot of room to go there. in the house, 138 lean no or are saying they're completely against, 99 are undecided, only 17 are for. first of my questions to you would be, do you think this will get through congress? the second question, a lot of people are remembering that hillary clinton's yes vote on iraq was a big reason why she didn't get through the 2008 democratic primary. obviously, people on the republican side thinking about a 2016 primary, thinking about this vote could come back to harm them. so how is that going to change some of the calculus on their

side. i want to know both marco rubio and rand paul voted no. >> first, as to whether this thing is going to pass, the narrowed down version the senate foreign relations committee just passed, is probably the broadest thing that would pass. it's narrowed, but it's certainly not going to get any broader as it progresses. it may get even more narrow on the house side. i don't know the answer, toure. i think it's a close call. i think the fact that john boehner and eric cantor on the house republican leadership kind of said, hey, you know, this isn't a party vote. go do what you want. that can cut both ways. not that john boehner and eric cantor have that much power to enforce discipline among the tea party republicans, but if it's every person for him or herself over there, that's not necessarily a good sign for the white house on the house side. i've been struck in covering the hearings yesterday and today that the farther down the row

you get, in other words the farther from the chairpersons you get out to the extremes of the lower ranking members, the more skepticism there tends to be about this proposed action by the president. it's sort of lining up as a leadership versus the rank and file kind of thing. if that's the way it is, that's a very dangerous place for the president to be. i can't predict. as far as 2016 is concerned, look, the tea party people, people like marco rubio and ted cruz and of course rand paul and others are going to be vote no. they're going to vote no because they don't like the president, because they don't like big government, because there's a sort of neoisolationist streak among them. they're all going to vote no, and they would whether or not they're running for president or not. a lot of those people are running. they're certainly positioning themselves on the republican side. it's fascinating, toure, because what you're seeing develop is a

sort of reemergence of the pre ronald reagan republican party. >> howard, how much of the republican resistance to this action is rooted in their hatred for this president? i read an op-ed interesting in "the washington post" this morning from two republican representatives. i'm simplifying here, but they spent some time in the beginning making the case of how strong they've been against obama. then they made the case for action, which has nothing to do with obama. at the end, they said, don't worry, we reserve the right to still be able to attack obama. so how much of the problem in the republican caucus with this action is just distaste for the president? >> well, that's a big part of it. representative cotton just actually came out in the house hearings just a little while ago and made a pretty strong statement in support of the proposed action by the president, but he did it with his teeth clenched. he did it against every fiber and instinct in his body.

but he recited both the strategic and moral case for doing it, and every time he said, yeah, but i'm going to vote for this thing. that's a very big part of it on the republican side. on the democratic side, i think it's a different kind of folk memory and operation here. i think that the democrats remember how barack obama ran for office. they remember his skepticism about the use of military force to settle civil wars and other kinds of disputes around the world. and they're kind of wondering how the democratic party suddenly became the war party in america. no matter how john kerry labor usely tries to tailor this thing and narrow it and say it's just to send a moral message and a strategic message and there are no boots on the ground and so on, general dempsey said, i got to say, this is an act of war. that's what general dempsey just said on the house side. and it is an act of war. so a lot of liberal democrats

are saying to themselves, yeah, i get the moral case. we can argue the strategic case. as a party, what are we doing here? >> yeah, i think that's such an important point. people in a lot of other countries have a hard time understanding how in the united states you can authorize force in a proactive attack on a sovereign nation and have a serious discussion among foreign policy hands in the secretary of state discussing the idea that it's not war, it's not a war-like action. legally, and this is what i want to get your thoughts on, looking at what we just saw out of the committee, legally under the war powers act, this is equivalent in the authority it gives to the president authorizing a war and triggering all the deadlines and such that we know about. what do you read in to the way this process has moved? it would seem in a senate that doesn't do a lot, they moved very quickly to hold the hearing, not a lot of time to think it over here, right, and moved directly to the vote and get us then to the senate floor

quickly after that. what does that say to you? >> well, what it says to me is that this is a kind of war situation, and to some extent, the credibility of the president and the united states has been put at stake by the method that the president chose. he's essentially daring the congress to deny him the authority to do this. as senator rand paul pointed out, kind of angrily, there's every reason to think the president would end up doing it anyway, even if he were denied this specific vote by the congress. he has the inherent power to do it anyway. but i think the president having called the congress' bluff, i think the congress is moving pretty expeditiously on it, as well they should. >> all right, howard. thank you very much. up next, from military strikes to mass surveillance. how much must we sacrifice in the name of safety? two pulitzer winners and investigators uncover a mini cia

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ironically, the g-20 economic summit so far has failed to touch on the economy. syria's obviously dominating the conversation, and this morning, appearing with the swedish prime minister, the president also tried to assure global audience that the u.s. is not spying on their e-mails and phone calls. >> our focus is on

counter-terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, cyber security, i can give assurances to the publics in europe and around the world that we're not going around snooping at people's e-mails or listening to their phone calls. what we try to do is to target very specifically areas of concern. >> still, there's a little question that this post 9/11 world has forced americans to sacrifice in the name of safety. how much is too much? joining us now, pulitzer price winning journalist matt puzzo and adam goldman, their new book called? enemies within." gentlemen, thank you for joining us. matt, you call the nypd a mini cia. what do you mean by that? >> after 9/11, ray kelly became police commissioner and decided that they capitol just leave the security of the city in the hands of the federal government.

and they recruited a man by the name of david cohen out of retirement from the cia. and they also got active duty cia officer on loan from langley to come up to the nypd and revamp their intelligence division. what they did was create add intelligence division that monitors muslim neighborhoods in ways that would have run afoul of federal privacy laws if it had been done by the federal government just intrucive kind of ways that we won't have thought. surveillance methods we won't have thought about pre9/11. >> the book makes it sound like david cohen, one person had a huge impact shifting the entire approach of the nypd. is that a good or bad thing? >> you can judge the book for yourself. david cohen is in fact, a force of nature. and he, you know, did similar things in the cia instead of reorganizing its bureaucracy. he came in and built an intelligence division the way he

saw fit. >> well, and matt, talk to us about the undercover operation that goes on. bass as you guys write about, the nypd essentially treats the entire muslim population as terrorists. talk to us about the rakers and what you call the listening posts. is there a certain code language that you look out for or do you just -- is what they're doing essentially looking if they're muslim or not? >> what the nypd has done is created the demographics unit. plain clothes officer who's hang out in muslim neighborhoods and just listen and gauge the sentiment of the community. we've seen some of their police files show that these officers would put in police documents that they heard two people talking about their views on the president's state of the union address. that ends up in a police file. and as you mentioned, they did label entire mosques as terrorism enterprises. and by doing that, it allowed

them to open up these investigations that stretch for years. when the mosque is the subject of the investigation, then everybody who prays there or visits there can be a subject of a surveilance and subject to the investigation. it's a fascinating legal and intelligence gathering strategy. >> adam, it's fascinating and yet, it's completely unproductive. as you guys wrote in more than six years of spying on muslim neighborhoods, eavesdropping on conversations and cataloging mosques, the nypd's secret demographics unit never generated a lead or triggered a terrorism investigation which was acknowledged by the department. once again, we see racial profiling does not work. >> well, the demographics, it's true, didn't generate any leads. it certainly cataloged some of the best ethnic restaurants to eat in new york city. >> can we get a list of those? >> we tried to demonstrate in the book with these dueling narratives, we oo talk about the can case of app zazzi from

queens and he got recruited by al qaeda and they were going to blow up the new york city subways in september of 2009. what we tried to illustrate was the effectiveness of these nypd programs by telling the story of azazzi's mosque. they had recruited his imam as an informant and surveilled the travel center he and his two friends used to fly to peshawar. at every step, it seems they missed these guys. this is what the intelligence division was created to prevent, to stop somebody likenage i but azazi and they had no clue. >> there's a lot of things i did not realize in the book. matt and adam, thank you for being with us. we're back with a final thought after this. ♪

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that does it for the cycle. martin, it's all yours. >> good afternoon, it's wednesday, september 4th. and on the issue of a strike on syria, a senate committee has just voted. and the world waits. ♪ >> i didn't set a red line. >> the president trying to depersonalize this. >> hundreds of children were killed. >> it's a red line that anyone with a conscience ought to draw. >> we agree with the same red line actually. >> my credibility is not on the line. >> you cannot trust democrats to be a commander in chief. >> the international community's credibility is online. >> if the united states community doesn't do it, it's a guarantee they'll do it again. >> i'm going to support the

president's call for action. >> i can't support something that i'm afraid may be doomed. >> let's have a real debate and not a meaningless debate. >> i assure you there's nothing meaningless. >> i opposed the war in iraq. >> we want to fair a shot across the bow and then he goes off and plays golf. >> watch this drive. >> there are known knowns. there are known unknowns. >> when bad stuff happens around the world, the first question is, what is the united states going to do about it. ♪ >> good afternoon. and moments ago, the senate foreign relations committee passed its bill authorizing the president to use military strikes against syria by a vote of 10-7. the amended bill, which limits the timetable to act and would prevent boots on the ground, now goes to the full senate for debate and a possible vote. the passage comes on