honor the lives lost and pay tribute to all those affected by yesterday's senseless act of violence. >> the nation is honoring the 12 victims of monday's mass shooting as central personnel navy yard are back at work today. one commander calling their return surreal. right now all u.s. navy and marine corps installations are beginning reviews on whether standards are being maintained. a wider review is expected at all facilities worldwide. today the investigation continues into what provoked 34-year-old aaron alexis. he was killed by police who say he acted alone. nbc news justice correspondent pete williams has been all over this. what do you have for us today? >> a couple of things, what we were told by investigators is that aaron alexis was someone who had a navy past but whose

mental health was deteriorating rapidly. just last month we've learned he was staying in a hotel in rhode island while working on a military project and he complained to police at the time that he was being followed and that he heard voices and that he checked into three separate hotels to try to get away from the voices without success. the police report says that they thought he was having some mental problems and shortly after that investigators say he checked into a nearby va hospital for treatment. now, we believe he had sought treatment from the va one time before that while he was in texas. but this was an episode of apparently a fairly serious one, some indication that he was losing touch with reality just last month before he came to washington where he began to work at the washington navy yard. a little fuller picture of the shooting scene inside has come from investigators in the past

24 hours. we were told repeatedly yesterday that the best information was that he had three weapons. now the police say they are after looking at the scene and talking to witnesses and looking at surveillance video, they believe he did the shootings with two weapons, one a shotgun he carried to the scene after having bought it legally last week in virginia. and the second a hand gun that he apparently took from one of the officers that he wounded. so he was able to achieve that level of fire power, that level of carnage with those two weapons they now believe. >> nbc's pete williams, thanks so much. >> you bet. >> cedric alexander is the police chief in the same county where aaron alexis was arrested in 2008 for disorderly conduct and spent two nights in jail. i want to get your thoughts. we just heard the reporting from pete on the sort of deterioration of alexis' mental

health, how he checked into the va hospital and was hearing voices in a hotel. as you look at this profile and these dots of behavior across his life, do you see a place where he slipped through the cracks, where there should have been an intervention and the system failed in some regard? >> well, i believe certainly is pretty obvious to most laypeople that there is some -- there has been some clear history of some mental health issues, particularly, here with mr. alexis. but what i really find most fascinating about all of this, if we look at the number of shootings that we've had in the recent past, active shooter cases the one here in decab and sandy hook and all prior, it appears each one of those individuals that were involved in these shootings appeared to

have had some mental health history. the question becomes to me as a law enforcement official, administrator in my department every day and watch this go on in my county and across the country. it becomes evident, when are we going to pick up the conversation again around mental health issues because it is clearly evident that there is some correlation between those that have acted out in such a violent way and those who have had some real history of mental illness. >> absolutely. and chief alexander, your area just went through a situation all too similar to what d.c. experienced yesterday. and thanks to local police and the chief -- school clerk, no one can forget her and 911 call, let's take a listen. >> it's going to be all right, sweetheart. i want you to know that i love you though, okay. i'm proud of you, that's a good

thing you've given up. don't worry about it. we all go through something in life. >> none of us can prepare for a situation like that and the last thing you probably feel is calm and yet she came across so very calm and handled the situation unbelievably well. it seems like she is the perfect example of how anyone should handle that sort of a situation. >> well, i mean clearly. that was really an anomaly on that particular day with an individual miss tuff who did what she needed to do to get through that event. she did a tremendous job. but unfortunately in the past, things had not turned out the way that they have back in on august 10th. even with that event that occurred, even though there was no deaths, no one was injured, the conversation still did not start and this individual here in dekalb, he clearly and any common layperson can see that

and what has been reported through the media, here's another individual that had some mental health issues but yet the topic just seemed to have just faded away. now here we are again as late as yesterday and we have another violent situation in this country where people lost their lives and people have been injured and scarred for the rest of their lives. so here again for me as a law enforcement official, an administrator here, we're going to have to begin in this country to readdress and revisit and think more about mental health and just begin to have the conversation. it's a very complex issue. there's no simple solutions to it but we got to begin to have the conversation around mental health, those who suffer severely with mental health illnesses and those in possession of deadly weapons. >> chief, i appreciate your call for the conversation and of course we're not on neutral ground here. there's about over $400 million

allotted annually in the federal budget to the community mental health services programs that go out at the local level. and right now we're seeing cuts that could amount to as much as 46 million out of those from the sequester. so if we don't do anything, we continue to have cuts to those kind of programs. do you think that's a good thing from a law enforcement perspective? >> absolutely not. we can't afford to have any cuts in anything that involves mental health in this country. a lot of people are stressed out for a lot of various reasons, some are commonly known, unemployment, wharve the case may be and some is more organic with other people as well too. the point is here, we've got to begin to have more conversation around mental illness in this country, particularly as it results to violence. we're not going to skirt the issue and we're going to continue to find ourselves in this country, confronted with these type of events, until we start having some conversations and come up with some reasonable solutions. and these are not easy

conversations but the conversations are going to have to begin somewhere, putting politics aside. and putting people first in regards to these issues that are hurting us every day as a nation and hurting our families and this country. >> chief, you have a doctoral degree in clinical psychology so you surely know what you're talking about when we get into the issue of mental illness and you also know that the vast majority of folks who are mentally ill are not violent and are far more likely to be victimized than to be violent. and part of the problem in these sort of situations when we shine that light on the mental health part of all of this, which is definitely a part of this in most of the mass shootings but we're stigma tiesing the vast majority that are mentally ill making it hard for those who want help to get help. it allows us to crowd out the part of the discussion that says we have too many guns and too much easy access to the guns in

this country. >> right, what you're saying is absolutely correct. there are a lot of people in the country that struggle with mental health illness,s we can't paint everyone with the same brush and say because they have a mental health illness, they should not be able to go out and xerize their constitutional right. what we have to do is begin to have a conversation as to who has certain mental health histories and this may depend a lot upon frequency, severity, criminal history, a lot of variables have to be taken into account. we have to begin to have the conversation. and until we have a strong and intellectual conversation in this country from washington to our local communities, we're going to find ourselves in the same predicament again and again and again. we've got to begin to think about doing something very different in this country and that is to begin to have further

conversation around gun control and in particularly gun control as it relates to mental health. and we can only do that collectively and we can't do it in separate sides of the aisle. we've got to do it collectively. >> that's absolutely right. chief cedric alexander. thank you for your part. >> flags will remain at half staff at the white house all week to remember the victims of yesterday's tragedy. but some are raising questions about what's going on inside there these days. "the cycle" rolls in for tuesday, september 17th. [ male announcer ] this is claira. to prove to you that aleve is the better choice for her, she's agreed to give it up. that's today? [ male announcer ] we'll be with her all day to see how it goes. [ claira ] after the deliveries, i was okay. now the ciabatta is done and the pain is starting again.

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more than 24 hours removed from monday's mass shooting tragedy and some in washington are questioning the decision for the president to continue on with the planned economic speech with the chaos unfolding a few miles away. we brought this issue up yesterday with peter alexander who told ugs the president never considered canceling. the president gave his big speech about the need to use force in syria at the same time a diplomatic breakthrough was in the works. has the president hit an unlucky streak with timing? or are bigger team problems to blame? >> not to say there aren't still good people, but the people the president most relied on in those areas have left and that is a common phenomenon that a lot of administrations face in the second term. it seems to be hurting them and seemed to have hurt them over the course of the last ten months. >> we bring in our howard

fineman, of the huffington post media group. it seems like the president can't get anything right. you can't help notice the people around him, he's lost the key members of his original band as some people talk about it. david alexrod and david plouffe, is it safe to say he needs to get the band back together? >> i think this is a 50-year problem. as i think jill lawrence of the national journal wrote. this is the first year of the second term. there are a lot of people who have gone and more than the people, the narrative is lost if you will, the original narrative, original purpose, original crusade. the unity of the person and the message and the platform and the proposals. that's kind of gone now and in these last couple months also,

the president, who knows that he's facing this big confrontation over the budget and over the debt ceiling and we're headed for yet another big confrontation, has had trouble getting traction. he wants to get that message out. the reason they went ahead with this thing yesterday, he really is focused on what's going to be happening down the road here in washington and desperately wants to get out ahead of it. and he's having trouble doing it. >> howard, i love you because you bring that wide lens but i think here we've got to look at this through the smaller lens. it was tone deaf for the president to be out there yesterday jabbing republicans, as much as i love to see anybody jab republicans, yesterday was not the day to do it and impractical in that you couldn't possibly cut through the media fog in that all we were talking about was this mass shooting at the navy yard. >> i agree. >> the republicans did it also, eric cantore was talking about

benghazi and deeply disappointing and blah, blah. it seems like a washingtonwide problem really. >> with all due respect to the republicans, especially in this situation, nobody cares what they say. it's the president who matters and it's the president who as a certificaemonial calming head oe function on days like yesterday, especially in washington. i think the fact they were tone deaf to it is part of the larger problem i was talking about. there's an ins larty there. there's a sense that in the white house they are surrounded by either people who don't like them or don't understand them, when often you hear the complaint on capitol hill a lot that the white house doesn't understand the rest of the city. and this was a case where that literally was true. things were going on within a few miles of the white house with only one mile of capitol hill and yet the president was

pursuing his message, his message of the day, message of the week, message of the month, kind of oblivious to what was going on around him. in that sense it was symbolic. >> do you think that is an accurate criticism? that is something we hear from the president's critics all the time, that he's disconnected and doesn't get it. this is the man who really tapped into the pulse of exactly what was going on in america of 2008 and really did it again in 2012 for his re-election. do you think that's actually a fair criticism? >> well, certainly he has never really liked and never really valued let alone enjoyed the give and take of legislative and media politics here in washington. and more power to him for that. because he represented a wave that came from the outside, the kind of wave that washington constantly needs to be hit with

in order to not lose touch with the country. but the same thing that made him a good outsider that brought him in on a wave of facebook and twitter and younger generation, is one that sort of makes him kind of resentful almost of a lot of processes you have to go through around here and not helped by the fact that the republicans made it clear on day one, literally on the day he was sworn in in 2009, that they were going to do everything they could to stop him in his tracks. so whatever chance he had to learn about the skills of deal making and the old ways that we tend to glorify around here, were cut short by the republicans and kind of reinforce the president's own resentment at having to do this kind of thing. he doesn't like it and the republicans don't make it easier for him. >> right and as was put this morning. when you're in a rut nothing seems to go right, that's true in sports and life and yes

american politics. for the obama white house, little seems to be going right, especially when it comes to timing. we can all agree the president is in a rut right now. if you were in his position, what would you do? press the reset button? . i would love to see you as president. >> i think -- well, i think the whole way that the syria thing that's developed, really going back to august of 2010 when he drew the red line about chemical weapons, starting from there until now, it's dangerous for a president to draw lines, to make assertions and promise the use of american power and in the decisive fashion and then change course in public lots of times. and i think the syria thing, you know, a lot of people poo pooed it and said it doesn't matter, it's the middle east, who cares,

too complicated, et cetera. whenever a president looks sort of confused in public and changing courses mid stream in public, one or two times, that doesn't reduce the mythology of the presidency. lord knows it's hard to run this country and hard to run washington and especially in the media age we're living in. especially in the age where leadership is sort of flattened and the participation increases from the sides. a lot of the idea that the president can effect events in a dramatic way has always been myth. but it's a necessary myth and one that presidents need to guard with their lives and i think that president is sort of lost the thread. it's a narrative. his whole campaign from the very beginning had a unity, powerful unity of who he was as a person and what his message was and what he wanted to do with and for the country. that all seems to be lost. it happens in the fifth year of

any presidency, but it happens with a special power when the consistency of his message was always what he was about. >> that's exactly right. howard fineman, thank you as always. >> can't get enough washington intrigue, be sure to watch tomorrow when we dig deeper into the president's messaging challenges and tifs when executive editor joins us to talk about "the message." they have access to america's most secret information and fortified buildings and yesterday something went terribly wrong. what you don't know about the contractors that keep our country running next in "the cycle." ♪ ho ho ho [ female announcer ] at 100 calories, not all food choices add up. some are giant. some not so giant. when managing your weight, bigger is always better. ♪ ho ho ho ♪ green giant

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we now know the gunman gained access with a common access card and shot his way into building 197. but a million contractors currently have security clearances, let's dig deeper into the broader access defense contractors have to our military installations. today the dod inspector general released a previous report showing 52 convicted felons received access to navy's facilities. a retired air force lieutenant colonel with more than 20 years of service, rob, can you explain the role of defense contractors. we've heard in them in the navy yard situation and edward snowden situation. what do they do and how do they splimt the military? >> our hearts go out to the people that experienced this terrible tragedy yesterday. but basically contractors and civilian employees at department of defense, they are serving right alongside our military men

and women, they are often going oversatis overseas into hos till places and do everything except the combat activity. a lot of computer services and things like that are all done by contractors. >> i am a contractor but not a defense contractor. part of the concern is maybe the mentality of a contractor working for a private company that then has a contract with the government is different from someone who works directly for the government and sees themselves a public servient. >> i don't know that that's really true. i mean, a lot of these contractors, myself included, i was a defense contractor, are former military people and former government employees. they have certainly a slightly different attitude about that because they are contractor but i don't know if i go so far -- most of them view themselves as

doing vital support work for the armed forces and other government agencies. >> looking at his past, two run-ins with police over shooting incidents. in 2004 shot out a tire of someone's vehicle. it was xman explained as an anger fueled blackout. and now we're getting information about the screening process, a spoekdsperson for the company say they confirmed they used a service to perform two background checks. it's hard to imagine this part of his past simply wasn't brought up or was missed. what's going on here? >> yeah, this part of the story is kind of disturbing. a government security clearance and remember, all of the security clearances which this guy apparently had are given by the government, they are not given by the contractor. and a security clearance background investigation like ones i went through should have picked up some of these law enforcement issues and also his kind of sketchy military record he apparently had. a government security investigation should have picked up some of this stuff and really

questioned whether or not this individual was worthy of a security clearance. >> i've got to tell you, rob. i think a lot of stuff about the contractors is a bit of a shell game. we saw this with snowden as well. if they are giving away too much or not running the right standards, that does go back to the federal government whether people like it or not. i wonder if ythink the sequeste kits have a roll to play as well. how does an incident like this play out with the contractors who want to stay in good graces with both taxpayers and their client, the government? >> well, it is certainly a possibility. it's a little early to tell what role sequester and budget cuts might have played. but the government is looking for ways to save money and contractors who say we can do a job cheaper, the government will find that attractive.

it is possible but i want to be very careful because we don't know everything. it is possible that some corners may have been cut in an effort to save money on the security issues that is certainly a possibility. >> and i'm not suggesting that because we don't have any information in that level detail yesterday. but it is an area where we have a lot of money swirling around. >> just about saving money or is that sometimes contractors can do things that the government is not legally able to allow its employees to do? >> toure, i don't think in most cases that's usually the case that the government can't allow its employees. there are specific cases, i recall when involved with operations in colombia last year, we had a cap on military personnel and sometimes they could use contractors for missions they couldn't use military personnel but it's generally pretty rare. they don't want to hire a military person who incurs long term cost when you can hire a contractor and fire them pretty

quickly. >> thank you very much. congress is back to work after yesterday's scare a few miles away. could that tragedy bring them together? i doubt it. hero: if you had a chance to go anywhere in the world, but you had to leave right now, would you go? man: 'oh i can't go tonight' woman: 'i can't.' hero : that's what expedia asked me. host: book the flight but you have to go right now. hero: (laughs) and i just go? this is for real right? this is for real? i always said one day i'd go to china,

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seeing my doctor probably saved my life. warning signs are not the same for everyone. if you think something's wrong... see your doctor. ask about gynecologic cancer. and get the inside knowledge. we continue to think of our friends in colorado, the sun is shining and waters are receding. unfortunately the damage is done from the 100 year floods. eight people have been killed and evacuations continue as rescuers are finally able to reach residents trapped in their homes because they were cut off by crumbled road. they got 350 out on monday and hope to double the number with the improving weather today. the governor said it could be years before repairs may be completed. that may be overly optimistic considering what the state has gone through and we're not just

talking about floods. >> it's a strange run that we had these drought and fire and floods, shootings. it's been a variety of stuff that's all coming from different places. >> one of the hardest hit communities is jamestown, northwest of boulder and miguel almaguer returned home with a residents forced out. >> why do you think so many people stayed behind? >> mostly because they just didn't want to leave their houses, didn't want to leave -- leave and have their house gone. >> president obama has promised the full resources of the federal government to help the victims in their recovery. >> back to the other story that is dominating today. washington's attempt to return to normal following this horrific navy yard shooting. it's not business as usual at the capitol where police have beefed up presence and senate was put on lockdown for several hours at the height of the shooting investigation and less urgent in the house, they were not formally in session.

we now have just four working days that includes today on the calendar before we get to, yes, a potential government shutdown. the debt ceiling follows just a couple of weeks after that. president obama, of course, has said he will negotiate over the budget but debating our credit limit is off the table. >> i'm happy to have a conversation with him about how we can deal with the so-called sequester, which is making across the board cuts on stuff we shouldn't be cutting, while continuing tax breaks for example for companies that are not helping to grow the economy. just they haven't been willing to negotiate in a serious way on that. what i haven't been willing to negotiate and will not negotiate is on the debt ceiling. >> that sentiment is echoed by top democrats in the house including peter we wi er welsh. 50 house members have signed onto it. he is with us in the guest spot.

have you gotten any response from the white house yet? >> you just heard it. the president gets it, america has to pay its bills and that's nonnegotiable, this notion that obligations we've incurred for things like the iraq war or veterans health care or authorized by previous congresses that we can default on that much like somebody might like to stop paying their mortgage, it's bizarre and it's a tactic a lot of anti-obama care folks are employing. essentially what's going on. there's a cage fight on the republican side. the folks who just are determined to repeal obama care despite the last presidential election are literally willing to use tactics that in the effort would destroy the country and shut down government and default on our obligations. >> congressman, i completely agree with you. i'm been surprised that the continuing fight against obama care and how close to the edge they are willing to go, you've been around washington a long

time. i want to get your judgment, not what you hope but what you think will happen. do you think there will be government shut down? do you think there will be a debt default? >> you know, it's really 50/50. mr. boehner knows that that would be bad not only for the country but really bad for his party. but on the other hand, the gop is backed itself into a corner where there's a significant number on that side that are defining obama care as such an exo tenl threat that even if we destroy the country by defaulting on our obligation and by shutting down government, that's better than having obama care implemented. you know, essentially, mr. boehner has a choice, he can work with democrats or president. if he wants to do that, his discussion has to be about the budget and they have to shelf this crazy demand at this point to get rid of obama care. >> historically, congressman, we never fought over the debt ceiling. when he says i'm not budging on this.

if you look back on history since 1940, congress effectively approved 79 increases to the debt ceiling, an average of more than one a year. why are we seeing this fight? we know republican and democrats have always disagreed when it comes to spending. why now? why are we fighting now? >> you're right. we've always increased the debt limit. there's always been grandstanding on the debt limit, and party out of power used as a way to chas ties the incumbent power but never have we seen a situation where we were going to default and that's changed. it's the radical nature of the position on the republican side. it's anti-government and really vir you lent anti-obama care. they have embraced as a legitimate tactic default. that's bizarre. in the bottom line here is that it won't work. if they are able to have us default on monday, then on tuesday the markets are going to react violently. we as a congress are going to be

pistol whipped by the markets into paying our bills and doing what we should have done up front. this is really just a crazy tactic on the part of the republicans. >> nobody wants to be pistol whipped by the markets. >> something we can all agree on. >> in the last time we had this in august, of course was in august of 2011 when we had the first downgrade of our credit rating in the history of the country that is disgraceful. that is no different than a homeowner being fed up with something in his or her life and i'm going to not pay the mortgage. that's a nice thing to want not to do but it doesn't work. you lose your house pretty quick. >> congressman, what do you think is the state of john boehner's speakership right now? we know he only won the gavel back by six votes. he needed to get 214 votes this last time around. he got 220. he to his credit boldly stood with the president on his syria

stance which led to some criticism from his right. as you're talking about, he's trying to find a way to keep the government from shutting down and yet the extremists are saying it's not enough. we don't want to just have a symbolic vote on defunding obama care, we want to defund obama care. do you think if a vote were held today, would he get back the speaker's gavel? >> i don't really know. but i'm a boehner sympathizer. he's got the toughest job in the capitol. the bottom line is he's got to make a decision whether he's going to adhere to the rule where everything has to be passed by republicans or work with democrats who will be reasonable. if he does that, is he dead on the fiscal cliff and violence against women act, we're going to start making progress. the dilemma mr. boehner has is not so much his of his creation, it's about congressional dysfunction. but this decision he's about to make will ajs the question as to whether congress goes from

dysfunction to disintreg gas station. >> we got the first nsa leaks and a lot of defenders said it's legal. and we learned from leaks over the past few weeks that's not the case. the court repeatedly found aspects of the program illegal and harshly criticized the nsa and lawyers for misleading the court. we've seen some movement on the hill. i spoke to someone from congressman issa's office, he's going to change his vote and join the ranks of people who said they should defund the nsa until they get their act together. are you seeing any others like congressman issa coming along, giving these block buster disclosures? >> yes, i am. that vote was unprecedented. we came within 12 votes of cutting back funding when it was

revealed that nsa was getting your e-mails and mine without probable cause. there were a lot of leaders like darrel issa who went with leadership and understandably so because they wanted to err on the side of security. bumt the revelations and public reaction to the close vote has been very supportive of those like justin and me and others who have said, it's time to curb the nsa. even president obama is acknowledging that. when you see darrel issa, high on the republican leadership saying we've got to take another look and i want to change my vote, that's a real har binger that the time has come. >> congressman peter welch, thanks for spending time with us. up next, do you know what's up next? >> i don't know. i'm excited though. >> what our own krstal ball has

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on highlighting what they call the female advantage. you heard that right. promises two days of panels and workshops headed up by leaders across fashion and business and even been so kind to invite me to moderate about women shaping the news. here with us now co-founder and ceo of the we network. starting with the female advantage, what do you see and what do you hope to highlight this weekend? >> the reason for using that theme, there was two fold, one is that women often told in the workplace they are not quite enough of one thing or too much of another. too aggressive, not aggressive enough. what we're seeing is research that's been done that women feminine traits are key to business and business success today. so things like collaborative thinking and sort of empathy --

compassion lack of reckless risk taking, things are seeing as quite female. >> krystal is big on all of those things. >> i do my best. >> those things are really important. i think women need to stop worrying about having to be something they are not and more like whatever they think is key and sort of focus on their strengths and being authentic in all of this. >> and you know, we talk about how far we've come as women, but still so far to go. and an interesting study came out according to the women's media center about one on one interviews on sunday talk shows, guess the percentage of those interviews are men? >> 98%. >> pretty close actually. 86% of them are men, 14 are women. we pose this question on facebook, do you think there's a biased against women? we received a number of great responses, keep those coming. what's the under lying issue

here? >> i don't understand why that happens and it's a topic we're going to explore and that's the topic that -- panel that krystal will be moderating at the conference. i we need to sort of change our way of thinking. and we need to sort of penetrate deep -- deeply held beliefs about what the public wants to see and what's interesting to them. so i think often certainly in sort of -- in the news media, the people making the decisions aren't really even aware of perhaps biases they have, you know, in choosing guests or choosing topics. so it's really important for them to be aware of that, and that's what we'll try and do. >> do you think part of that is that women are not doing a good enough job promoting themselves as a potential expert on a particular topic? >> i think that we certainly tend -- we err towards modesty, and we don't like to seem like we're bragging and we don't like to, you know -- sort of boast about our achievements. and we need to do more of that. that certainly is some of it.

but some of it also is sort of this long-held bias towards women and, you know, just what's perceived as great television or great news. >> in a essay you pointed out the office was constructed at a point when men were only in the office and women were not allowed to be in the office. and as women, it filtered into the workplace last few decades, the workplace has not changed, the corporate culture has not changed to reflect that. more than 50% of people who work in corporations are women. where do you see that, the office is just constructed for men and not for women, and what do you want changed? >> so i have a young baby. and -- >> very cute one, i might add. >> thank you. so i'm certainly practicing this firsthand. i'm an entrepreneur. so i work for myself. i choose my own hours. i'm lucky. but if you are in this sort of corporate -- if you're in the corporate environment, you don't have those choices. you have to, you know, work 9:00 to 5:00 and sometimes longer

hours in the office. you have to work. and if you're a mother, that's impossible. so that sort of 9:00 to 5:00 construct to me seems very old fashioned, for men and women. because we're in the age of technology and smartphones and you can work wherever you are. so why do we need to have, you know, these -- these sort of 9:00 to 5:00, you know, hours and rules. so, you know, that's -- so i would certainly love to see more flexibility in the workplace. and just an ability for women to work from home. yeah. >> so there a common theme among women around the workplace that they say is most challenging for them? obviously balancing everything is difficult for any woman. but is there a it particular challenge that they point to most of the time? >> yeah. i mean, from personal experience, and it's certainly echoed by friends and colleagues, i think that certainly the corporate -- corporate sort of workplace can be very difficult for women, just navigating that environment.

it can be very aggressive. and so if that's not in your -- sort of in your nature, it's very difficult for you to get ahead. >> still very much an old boy's club. >> very much so. >> i'll really excited about this weekend. thank you for having me and thank you for being here today. >> absolutely. up next, what yesterday's tragedy made clear to me, my thoughts are next. ♪ loosen my lips faith and desire and the swing of your hips ♪ ♪ pull me down hard and less saturated fat? it's eb. eggland's best eggs. better taste. better nutrition. better eggs. it's eb. i got this. [thinking] is it that time? the son picks up the check? [thinking] i'm still working. he's retired. i hope he's saving. i hope he saved enough. who matters most to you says the most about you.

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yesterday thousands of people got in their cars, boarded a bus or walked to the metro with their headphones on or maybe a book in hand or distractedly reading e-mails.

another monday, i wait on my report, got to leave early to get the kids to swim practice. individuals lost in their isolated thoughts. or so it seemed. suddenly at about 8:15, that illusion of separateness and isolation was shattered when a lone gunman began firing. as words spread throughout the navy yard building, the instinct was not every man for himself. but we're in this together. colleagues helped colleagues, police arrived on the scene in minutes, and the country watched, praying for those still trapped inside the building. it's natural in the wake of a horrific tragedy like this to focus on the evil of the killer, what made him tick. how could a person turn to senseless violence or maybe to despair for our violent society. what is wrong with us that we have had on average one mass shooting a month since 2009? all of those questions are natural, and important. there's no excuse for failing to prevent avoidable tragedies. but when i really think about who we are as human beings, and as a nation, actually, i can't help but feel proud.

proud of the first responders who selflessly put themselves in harm's way in service of the greater good. proud of cathy lanier, the tough it as nails d.c. police chief who went from teenage mom on food stamps to here owic commander whose steely voice steadied the country and is now a heroine to keep people safe. proud that when push comes to shove, it is all for one and one for all. people comforting one another as they hid in their offices, an entire nation asking, what can we do to ease the suffering of those who lost loved ones? the very fact of our bewhich wouldment at the violence is a testament to the fact that every day, millions of people go to work, open the door for one another, give up their seat on the metro and are generally good and kind citizens. tens of millions of people obey traffic laws, donate to charity to help people they will never see. cook food with kindness and care in restaurants. keep our water supply safe.

quietly empty our trash cans and protect our little ones as they crass the street. and so we ask ourselves, what is the essential nature of human beings? seems to me that even as we stare evil in the face, the answer is so overwhelmingly abundantly clear. we are good, we are caring, we are selfless, we are kind. our default mode is cooperation, not aggression. that's why the entire body politic grinds to a halt at the axe of one mad person. not because we're a violent and aggressive society. but precisely because we are not a violent society and such acts are so against our nature. and for all our illusions of individuality, deep down, we sense and we feel and deeply instinctively know, we are all connected, dependent on one another in ways big and small, every single day, protected by the kindness of millions of anonymous strangers, strangers who are also our brothers and sisters. the truth is, that love, not

selfishness, not violence, not fear, but love makes us who we are. all right. that does it for us here "the cycle." martin bashir, all yours. >> makes you who you are, crystal. thank you very much. tuesday, september the 17th. and as we confront yet another american mass shooting, the portrait of the gunman includes a history of psychiatric illness. >> what president obama called -- >> yet another mass shooting. >> eye-witnesses report that the shooter took up a position overlooking a massive atrium. >> we have him on the fourth floor. multiple shots fired, multiple people down. >> three gunshots, pop, pop, pop. >> 13 fatalities, including the shooter. >> confusion and chaos. >> one again, the nation is searching for answers. >> what drove aaron alexis? >> how did he get these weapons into this navy yard? >> he was discharged in 2011 over a pattern of