good afternoon. i'm abby huntsman. as we come on the air, i'm sure you're aware of those disturbing developments in the crash of germanwings 9525. turns out a safety protocol put in place after 9/11 might have doomed those innocent passengers on board. french officials have listened to the cockpit voice recorder and the results were chilling. initially, the conversation appears normal between the captain, who has ten years of flying experience, and the co-pilot, 28-year-old andreas lubitz. at one point, the cockpit door is heard opening, then being closed. the pilots leaves likely for a bathroom break or some coffee. the co-pilot takes the controls alone in the cockpit. then he manipulates the plane to descend. experts hear several attempts by the pilot to re-enter the cockpit. they say it was a deliberate voluntary action by lubitz to barricade himself inside.

>> i think voluntary. he refused to open the door. and he turned the button to get down the plane. >> air traffic control and other planes try to contact the man at the controls. still, no answer. an alarm sounds more desperate attempts by the commanding pilot to get inside. and then the sound of impact. throughout all of this not a single word is spoken by the co-pilot. not even his breathing indicates that he was stressed or in fear. but experts say that breathing pattern and the deliberate manipulation of the controls proves he was alive and conscious. and that he knew exactly what he was doing. post-9/11 safety rules give the pilot the ability to keep the door locks for protection. unlike in the states most european airlines do not require two people in the cockpit at all times. a policy the head of germanwings' parent company says they are now re-evaluating. >> there is regulations in some parts of the world but only a small number of airlines in

europe as far as i know. for sure none of the big airlines we work with. i don't see any need to change our procedures at this very point. i think it's a single occasion. we will get together with the various experts in the lufthansa group airlines in the authorities, with our german government to see if our procedures can be refined. >> we'll dig into the co-pilot's possible mental state coming up. meanwhile, french investigators are working with the germans to study his background and possible motivation. meantime, the fbi is offering its expertise to investigators. interpol has deployed support teams as the well. and as family members arrive near the crash site one small bit of comfort. the french say according to the voice recordings, passengers did not realize they were in trouble until the final seconds. screams were only heard in the last moments before impact. let's start with nbc's tom costello, who covers aviation for us and has been all over this story from the start.

tom, are we going now to see a domino effect here? really, a public support of airlines changing their protocol so that two members of flight crew have to be in the cockpit at all times. >> yeah that's the rule in the united states. it's an faa rule. it comes after 9/11 of course but as you heard from the ceo of lufthansa, that's not the rule worldwide. however, we have already seen just in the last few hours three carriers adopt that rule. effective immediately, in essence. it's going to be norwegian air as well as easy jet out of the u.k. and air canada. those three have already said just in the last few hours that effective immediately or within the next few days their flight crews will be required to have that policy where they only leave the flight deck on the circumstance of somebody being able to come in and take their place, at least standing guard. for example, a flight attendant or maybe an off-duty pilot who might be deadheading. i think we're going to see this kind of snowball around the

world, especially in europe in the wake of this disaster. in the meantime, another development here is that we've now learned that the co-pilot apparently programmed into the autopilot a descent level, target if you will of 100 feet. he was coming from 38,000 feet and he programmed in 100 feet. well, he knew that he was going to go into the alps. so he knew automatically that's a death sentence, right. the alps the mountain he hit was somewhere in the neighborhood of 6,000 to 6500 feet. so there should be no question, at least in the immediacy, of what his motive was. that is why french prosecutors, german prosecutors, and indeed the ceo of the airline have said that in fact this was a suicide and a murder mission. he killed 149 people. clearly a mass murder. and that will be tallied as so at the end of the year when we take a look at all these horrific acts that we see every year. beyond that i think there's also a lot of questioning about his psychological state and why

nobody caught anything up until now. we know that lufthansa, and for that matter u.s. airlines only do a psychological screening during the initial hiring process and training process. but once you're on board as a certified pilot who's actually flying, there's no regular psychological screening process. you go through a physical depending on your age, every six months or every year but as a part of that physical there is no psychological workup. i just got off the phone, in fact, with a flight surgeon who said, no i think maybe we need to do that. but there's no requirement of that. in fact, we're discouraged from that because of the unions. in the united states the hope is if somebody is expressing some sort of a sentiment or is acting strangely and would lead you to believe that they're having psychological issues that that would be caught by their co-workers by their union reps, by their bosses and managers, but not necessarily by a doctor. and that is the same process that we have in the states that they have in europe. i think at this point, we also

have questions about whether we might also consider adding a psychological component to the yearly physical. back to you. >> all right. tom costello with the latest from washington. thank you, as always. joining us now from the staging area near the site of the crash in france is nbc's claudio lavanga. claudio, this has been a heart-wrenching day for the families of the victims. >> reporter: yes abby. we've seen some heartbreaking moments. about 200 family members arrived here in the early hours of the afternoon. this is the town that's closest to the crash site. they were taken to about a 15-minute drive from here a mountain top, very small village. a few houses there. it's about two miles away from the crash site where they set up this makeshift memorial. they stood there overlooking the mountain range where the crash happened. of course, they couldn't really see the debris. but that was the closest they could get. some flags were being hanged

from the representative nationalities of the people on board. mainly, of course, from germany and spain. you could see, of course the suffering in those family members' faces. many tears. we saw some french police some female french police trying to console the female members of the relatives. there was a spine-chilling moment where we saw some commercial airline flying over that site. of course that is a route that many commercial airlines take to go from barcelona to dusseldorf just like that germanwings plane did. well, then they came back here to a makeshift chapel for a special ceremony. most of them now have returned to marseille, which is about two hours away from here. it's very tragic for them to hear that their family members, which we are being told were screaming and crying until the

end. you can hear in that recording they were very well aware of what was happening until the very last moment. >> just heartbreaking. claudio lavanga, thank you so much. there's a lot of focus, of course, today on the post-9/11 procedures that lock the cockpit door. in 2002 the airbus group, which makes the plane involved in the germanwings flight, created a safety video showing the steps of locking this door and the emergency access procedures to override it. we want to play that for you now, so you can see it first hand. remember, this is a demonstration video with actors. this is not the crew that was on this flight. take a look. >> on the code patch, he enters the emergency code then presses the hash key. this triggers the timer for 30 seconds. the green light on the code pad flashes, indicating imminent unlocking. in the cockpit, the buzzer sounds continuously and the open light flashes, also indicating imminent unlocking. when the elapsed time is over with no action from cockpit

crew the door goes into unlocking sequence for five seconds. the green light on the code pad remains steady. the open light comes on for five seconds during the unlocking sequence, and the buzzer stops, indicating the door is unlocked. the person now has five seconds to sbrt cockpit. >> in the case of germanwings flight 9525 investigators believe the co-pilot overroad this final sequence keeping the commander out. we just received this photo from inside the cockpit of this plane taken just days before the crash. joining us now from tampa is msnbc aviation analyst and former airline captain john cox. here at the table is retired senior british officer and pilot with more than 3,000 hours in the air, mikey kay. john i'll start with you. we're talking about the post-9/11 protocol put in place to keep us all safe. then something like this happens. how quickly is it going to take for everyone to get on the same page here to make sure that, you know maybe we need two pilots

in the cockpit at all times? >> well i think first we need to get the right people in the room, and i think that you're going to see that as one of the recommendations that will come out of the investigation, is to put together an industry task force of regulators manufacturers, operators, pilot unions get them together and to recognize and see what if any, but what changes need to be made in the protocols for dealings with pilots going through the secure door in flight. there are a variety of them around the world, and i suspect this task force, this specialized group of experts will be able to make recommendations to more standardize the process worldwide and to have the greatest degree of safety both to make sure that there are an adequate number of people in the cockpit at all times as well as being able to protect the cockpit from an illegal attempt from somebody trying to hijack the paper. >> mikey, that notion of

standardizing the procedures worldwide seems like something we absolutely need to do. in america, there's a rule. we must have two folks in the cockpit at all times, not necessarily two pilot, but two people. in europe that has not been the case up until now. some folks are starting to change that. don't want to beat up on europe here. perhaps they have rules we should have. but we have a global terror threat. these rules are in place for that. we have a global mental health issue. why is there not one standard dploebl globally when we're talking about airline safety? >> standardization globally is a really hard thing to implement. i have a couple close sources who fly for major airlines in the u.k. i spoke to them this morning and asked exactly what were their protocols. it all boils down to this video system. it's the little camera that's based just outside the cockpit where you can see the cabin area, which feeds into a screen in the cockpit. it all depends on whether that is serviceable or not.

if it's serviceable, then from their perspective, one of the pilots is free to come and go as they please because when the pilot comes back puts in the code, the alarm goes off, the pilot can look at screen and make a judgment call of whether to let that pilot in. if that isn't working, the pilot still goes. but then if someone needs to leave, a member of the cabin crew has to come in and make the judgment call. so that's kind of -- it's a very pragmatic approach. as we've already pointed out, the security protocols here very much are biased towards the ramifications and consequences of what happened in 9/11 ie hostage taking and people coming into the cockpit. what they're not guarding against is a nefarious situation where there's sabotage or where you have a rogue pilot. that's what we see played out over the last 48 hours. >> indeed. john "washington post" has details of a crash a couple

years ago. the details are chillingly similar to what we've learned about this particular crash. this one a couple years ago, the plane went down in namibia. the co-pilot, same situation, left to use the restroom. the pilot seemed to barricade himself in. there was banging at the door of the co-pilot trying to get in. the pilot then switched the plane's altitude reading from 38,000 feet to ground level. of course you know what happened next. that also was ruled as an intentional act by the pilot in that case which raises the question how common are these types of situations? how common is what's called aircraft assisted suicide? >> it's extremely, extremely rare. when you look at the number of flights in 2014 there were approximately 40 million flights that landed safely. and you go back over the decades, back into the '90s, into the '80s, you find one or two, but we're talking in millions upon millions of

flights. so it's extremely rare. it doesn't mean that we don't need to take precautions, but as a safety professional, one of the things you learn very early is to be very careful about changing procedure because you can introduce more risk than you're actually mitigating. this is going to be one of those cases before we start changing procedures that have proven to be very effective from a security standpoint we need to think through this. we need to gain consensus across the industry of operators, manufacturers, regulators and pilot unions. so all of those need to be in together and we need to think our way through this so that we don't inadvertently add risk that we don't see initially. this is so rare we don't need to move real quickly here. we need to move correctly. >> yeah to that point, mikey, people look at these kind of stories and get panicked based on anecdote. the policies, though are

supposed to be made in the aggregate. this is an inside job. most of the security policies are dealing with the external threat, as you were just describing. so where does pilot screening and those kind of internal security measures fit in here? >> again, going back to my sources i spoke to this morning, i asked them that exact question. what standards and procedures are in place during the recruitment and training process? it was twofold. one was a criminal background check. one was a personality test. whether it's military or airlines, these organizations tend not to like extremes of personality. that's it. once you're in the training system, you go through a very arduous training program. you could be relieved at any time if you're not making the grade. they go through a rigorous program of training on simulators and so on. at any point, really you can get to understand the stress levels and how people react. what i would say is john is absolutely correct. we just need to make sure that this is happening very quickly at the moment. mh-370 still hasn't been

resolved. we need to just take a step back, take a breath see what the fdr says and look at the profile of the guy and come to conclusions. >> that's exactly right. mikey kay, john cox, thank you for being with us. we have much more ahead on this developing story, including what we are learning today about the third american victim. plus, a former ntsb vice chairman on where the investigation goes from here. and the question everyone is asking, what made him do it? what can we learn about the co-pilot's mind set from the pieces that we do snow all the angles as "the cycle" rolls on. you owned your car for four years. you named it brad. you loved brad. and then you totaled him. you two had been through everything together. two boyfriends. three jobs. you're like "nothing can replace brad!" then liberty mutual calls. and you break into your happy dance. if you sign up for better car replacement, we'll pay for a car that's a model year newer with 15,000 fewer miles

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there were two names that we provided yesterday. we also mentioned that there was a third american citizen who was a victim in the crash. so we are able to confirm the death of u.s. citizen robert oliver, who was also on the plane. >> the state department today identifying the third american killed on germanwings flight 9525. that was 37-year-old robert oliver. born in barcelona but an american citizen. he leaves behind a wife and two children. spain and germany suffered of course, the heaviest losses in this tragedy. let's turn now to former ntsb vice chairman robert francis and bill hensley, former commercial aviation pilot, author of "the pilot: learning leadership." robert first to you. americans and people around the world have always looked at pilots as among the folks who are beyond reproach who are super trustworthy and would

never expect anything bad to come from a pilot. you see those wings and that suit when you're walking through the airport and know that's someone you can trust with your life. and you have to. so now that we have folks who are scared because of this story, how do we mollify them? >> well i think that this is going to require a major effort and i don't think it's going to be just the investigation of this accident. perhaps the international civil aviation in montreal which composed all of operators, will get people together and come up with a plan ultimately as to how best to deal with this problem. one of the things that i think that's important here is that we not rush into anything. these are -- this is not

something that's liable to happen again day after tomorrow or year after next. we have precious little history of this in the history of aviation. so let's take our time. let's deal with the issue, but let's deal with it thoughtfully and make certain that we have everyone involved who should be involved in the decision process. >> and bill looking at what actually happened on the flight without getting into even any potential reforms, what is your analysis of the situation when it seems that we have cockpit doors that were reinforced to keep potential on-board murderers out? and that system works up until the point that your potential on-board murderer is actually inside the cockpit already. >> that's an outstanding question. let me premise -- let me start this by saying this. boeing and airbus build fantastic, stunningly sound

aircraft. we have policies and procedures to help us maintain safety of the environment. post-9/11, the cockpit was fortified. we're constantly modifying how we manage that process, but let me remind the public of one thing. we have the human element involved. so as things like this occur, as mr. francis just referenced, we'll modify. but i suggest that right now we take a breath in the national dialogue. and let me give you an example. unfortunately, people have car accidents all the time. sometimes they're stuck inside the car by the seat belt that's jammed, okay. does that mean that we don't want people to wear seat belts? of course not. so do we want to maintain fortified fortress of the cockpit? absolutely. if we need to modify the procedures, we'll do that. also, this hasn't happened on a u.s. carrier. let's keep that in mind. i want people to realize how ultimately utterly safe it is to travel our air carrier system. so let's just take a breath in

the national dialogue and examine what happened and get all of the facts. >> robert let's talk about the investigation. how does it shift now that we're looking at murder versus a technical failure? >> well i think this will remain, as i understand it a german accident to investigate, and it will be up to the german government along with the other parties to the investigation to decide exactly how it proceeds. but it's clearly a criminal investigation now. it's not an aviation investigation. so what is going to be happening is in a sense two different groups of people in concert looking at where do we go from here. the issues of how do you keep

the same thing happening again, and the u.s. is not an issue or has not been an issue because there's a provision for someone else to be in the cockpit. but we should have in civil aviation particularly universal standards. and i think it's up to everyone to get together with the international civil aviation organization, perhaps, and decide what the worldwide standard should be and how it should work. >> and bill something that we naturally do after something terrible happens is we think back on everything that took place and wonder is there anything we could have done differently to change the ultimate outcome or to ultimately handle this differently? you think about the eight to ten minutes of descent and how there was no impact or no response, rather by the co-pilot, even though other planes tried to

talk to them. is there anything else during that amount of time we could have done to figure out what was going on? >> that's also a great question. no, in this case there isn't anything that could have been done. once that cockpit is fortified and a pilot is in there, he or she is able to operate it. now, of course 99.999% of the time, everything goes really well. what this is going to cause us to do is to have a national and yet a worldwide dialogue to see how can we tweak maybe the human factor portion of the aviation industry and of course aviation accidents. believe me this is going to change the way we do things a little bit. it's all going to be for the better. >> we definitely need to have that dialogue. bill, robert thank you so much for your time. ahead, inside the mind of that co-pilot. if you're going to hurt yourself, as officials are investigating, why would you take 149 other people down with you? plus, a check of the day's other top stories, including the destructive path of tornadoes that tore through the midwest

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in the storm cycle this afternoon, the spring's severe weather season has arrived a bit behind schedule but last night it showed its strength across the southern plains. seven tornados in total, one with deadly consequences. the weather channel's mike seidel reports from outside tulsa. >> reporter: good afternoon, abby. here in moore, oklahoma, the cleanup continues following yesterday's twister, which struck just after 6:30. we're about ten miles south of oklahoma city down interstate 35. the damage behind me as you can see, it's mostly roof damage. this house lost its roof. and they're up there right now. you can see the guy waving. they're up there trying to get the blue tarp to keep any additional rainfall from getting into the house. fortunately, it's going to be dry here for at least the next four or five days. the damage piled in the

foreground there. we see that up and down this neighborhood here just to the west of interstate 35. across the street another house that lost its roof. they've already cleaned that up and got the felt down. now the shingles go up next. i'm sure they'll be doing that in the next couple of days. a lot of folks have turned out. air force cadets from the academy were in town building houses for habitat for humanity. they've been out helping to clean up. this area is no stranger to monster, killer tornadoes. back in may of '99, it was an f-5. in '03, an f-4. just two years ago that, deadly and massive ef-5 that came right through moore, oklahoma. fortunately yesterday's tornado doesn't even compare to those. just a few injuries no fatalities here in moore. the national weather service doing their damage assessment. i'd have to say at least an ef-2 damage. so that kind of puts it in perspective at this point. abby back to you. >> that was mike seidel there in oklahoma. thank you for that. now we go to the storm cycle to the news cycle.

sergeant bowe bergdahl releasing information on his time as a taliban prisoner after being charged with desertion. jim mick la-- miklaszewski has been on this report. >> in a 13-page letter by the convening authority who charged bergdahl with desertion and endangering his fellow soldiers, eugene fidel, the lawyer writes that bergdahl is a truthful person albeit naive and somewhat realistic, but he points out in this letter that it was proven in some of the evidence that bergdahl himself did not act out of any bad motive. and he raised an interesting defense saying that perhaps bergdahl should be charged only with awol because he was apparently freed from that base only a few hours before he was

captured by the taliban. that timing alone would qualify for being awol and not a deserter. and then, of course, there was his time in captivity. the code of military conduct says that as a military person if you are captured, you have to try to escape. both bergdahl himself and his lawyer report that bergdahl attempted to escape at least 12 times. he was mentally and physically tortured, often kept chained in a cage and one time beaten so hard with the butt of an ak-47 that it broke off. now, clearly, general milley didn't buy these arguments because he did file those serious charges against bergdahl. even if offered up in a court-martial, it's not clear how far these arguments would go. still, senior u.s. officials are telling us that they suspect that bergdahl will be offered a

plea bargain to avoid any jail time. and quite frankly, rid the military of bowe bergdahl and this episode once and for all. >> all right. mick thanks for that report. now to day 14 in the boston marathon bombing trial. today more testimony about how the destructive pressure cooker bombs were made. nbc's rehema ellis is monitoring the latest. >> we can tell you there have been about 86 prosecution witnesses so far in this trial that you point out is in its 14th day. this testimony from today and yesterday has been all about the forensic elements what exactly was in those pressure cooker bombs, where the pressure cookers were purchased. again, the materials inside those pressure cookers, and the explosive nature of those materials. in addition, the prosecution presented evidence yesterday through an fbi agent of surveillance video of the older brother, tamerlan czartsarnaev

coming out of a target store with a bag. he purchased two backpacks. the government alleges the pressure cooker bombs were placed in those backpacks. those backpacks then left at the finish line of the boston marathon exploding, killing three people and wounding 260 others. on its part the defense has tried to indicate there was only one person seen coming out of that target store, and it was the older brother, not the young man who's on trial right now. we're told that there's a possibility that the prosecution could be coming to an end of its case perhaps today or maybe as early as next week. then we'll get an opportunity to see what kind of defense the attorneys will be presenting on the part of tsarnaev who's frankly on trial to see whether or not they can save his life. >> all right. rehema ellis, thank you for that report. back to our top story this hour. the germanwings co-pilot deliberately crashed that plane, but why? that angle is next.

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i really admire my mother. despite what people said she bought me a sewing machine and she let me play with dolls and that was something that was kind of growing up culturally, it was quite unacceptable and she really dared to let me be different. [thunder and rain] [thunder and rain] [thunder and rain]

back with our coverage of the deliberate downing of germanwings flight 9525. we go back to the staging area near the site of the crash in france with nbc's claudio lavanga. what can you tell us? >> reporter: well we've just heard that the german investigators are looking into what really drove this young man, a 28-year-old, who always had dreams of flying. he did establish that dream. to smash that plane against a mountain with 149 other people on board. they're looking at potentially family motives or debt problems. they're looking for any potential clues that can tell us that can reveal what went through his mind when he boarded that flight on tuesday morning when he so calmly apparently, just locked the pilot outside without possibility of him getting in and just set that

autopilot for the plane to descend down into a steep downhill route into the mountain. i'm standing with the spanish ministry of tourism, who told us that after the about 200 family members came here to attend that little memorial service and also to of course pay their last respects to their family members from a little village nearby overlooking the mountain range, he said that most of the family members, at least from spain, returned to spain tonight but six or seven decided to stay over here. >> claudio lavanga, thank you for your reporting. french prosecutors say co-pilot andrayeas lubitz intentionally flew this plane into the mountain. his breathing could be heard on the cockpit voice recorder showing he was not showing any signs of outward panic. lufthansa says there was a brief

pause on the pilot training that me might have burned out in some way. but they say they have complete confidence in their pilot screening procedures. >> i'll repeat it in english without any doubt. my firm confidence in the selection of our pilots in the training of our pilots in the qualification of our pilots in the work of our pilots has not been touched by this single tragedy. >> still a lot of concerns about the mental health of the pilots. we're joined now by an associate professor of psychiatry at new york presbyterian. good day to you. we can't diagnose this individual. we can't met this individual. at the level of a profile, how do you view this scenario, this profile, of someone who's holding down a steady even stressful job, not according to what we've learned displaying outward signs of any obvious breakdown, then taking an act that's not only suicidal which

we associate with depression but an apparent mass murder. >> no doubt this is really an unusual circumstance. first of all, most people that commit mass murder even with suicide, are really not mentally ill, as in severely depressed and that being the motivator, but are angry, lonely disenfranchised, looking out for infamy, taking out a lot of people with them. then there's a smaller subset that has some sort of psychotic illness going on or unusual severe depression that causes them to suicide and take other people with them. but the fact that a pilot would do it is even more rare because pilots have to work with other people that would note that something was distinctly going on. they have to be very organized. it's a very structured setting. they have to put in many hours. that makes it even more unusual but not unheard of. there was a study, actually, in 2014 that looked retrospectively

at pilot suicide by plane. there were 24 since 1993 but out of 7,220 flights, which is less than 1%. so we're still talking -- >> for a less. >> we're still talking tiny numbers. you have to remember one out of every ten people at some point in their life may suffer depression. and that's not even talking about a high-stress job. we're just talking about li lodge -- biologically biologically, people get depression. >> and the way that depression or even the suicidal impulse comes on you. when folks hear suicidal they think you are just low. but no not always. is it more of a spiking impulse where it comes and goes? >> the impulse to kill yourself doesn't always occur in the lowest setting. i can't take it anymore, and now i've resolved to have this plan that will take me away from the pain. and they may actually experience

sort of an uplift of mood just before they actually institute a plan. >> something like this you may not have woken up that day and said, i want to kill myself but you get in the moment. >> well, it can happen like that. an impulsive act like that. if this is the case if this is what happened here then this is a planned, premeditated -- this it isn't just in the moment. most suicides aren't with the first thought of suicide. the sad thing is that suicides really can be screened for. increasingly they are screened for by primary care physicians and institutions that are using a very short form a columbia suicide form that really looks in a short amount of time with a few questions whether you're at risk for suicide or not. >> one thing that stood out to me one detail was they said on the voice recorder you could hear his breathing, the co-pilot's breathing steady and calm all the way to the very end. >> yes. >> does that stand out to you? >> you know actually people who are intent on committing

suicide -- and let me say here when someone is really intent you might not be able to stop them. a psychiatrist might not be able to stop them. they may be very calm. they may be resolute in their decision and carry it through and not be frightened because for them they've decided it's a relief from whatever they have been living with. >> the big takeaway is how rare it is. for people who are cared ed scared to fly, put this in perspective. >> many people have a fear of flying that's irrational. generally, air flight is safe. nothing is 100%. i think anxious people have to know that, and know that this does not mean that it's more likely to happen. >> thank you very much. up next other developments overseas today as well. john kerry and iranian leaders are back at the table trying to hammer out that big nuclear agreement, only days left in the deadline to make this deal. and how the civil unrest in yemen now evolving into something far more dangerous

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experience the meta effect with our multi-health wellness line. we've got some breaking news in from lower manhattan. fdny is responding to a three-alarm fire in the east village. reports there of an explosion and a major building collapse possibly from a gas leak. you can see the flames and the smoke overtaking that building. that has both store fronts and

homes. those flames have spread engulfing now at least three buildings. more details, of course as they come into us. and also right now, it's make or break time for the iranian make or break time for the iranian nuclear deal. we're now five days away from the deadline to get that deal done. it's a deadline president obama says he will not not extend. secretary kerry, an iran's foreign minister continue to trier hammer out that deal, but a new sticking point has emerged in recent days. iran is refusing to sign any specific handwritten agreement. "the new york times" is reporting. instead they want more of a general, quote, understanding. this gives them more lee way to sell their deal back home. the president may have the same problem selling it here at home as well. the vast majority don't think a deal will stop iran from building the bomb. but first, of course there has to be a deal and for more on that, let's bring in hillary man leverage. she's a former state department official u.s. negotiator with iran and coauthor of the book

"going to tehran." hillary, thank you for being with us today. >> thank you. >> and on that latest news do you take this as the sort of normal bumps in the road especially as you come to the close of a tricky negotiating process, or do you think these problems, these sticking points could derail the deal entirely. >> i think they are more normal to the negotiation. you're dealing with parties with a 35-year history of massive distrust. and so i think we're likely to see, especially as we get down to the wire each side trying to make sure the interests are protected because they cannot trust the other party. i think this is normal and, in fact constructive, so that each party does come away really having an interest in a more constructive relationship going forward. >> hillary, one of the big points in this negotiation has been whether or not iran will be able to enrich uranium on their soil, within their country. do you think iran should be allowed to enrich uranium? >> well you know it's really not up to me or to anyone.

it's a nuclear nonproliferation treaty. international law gives iran that right as part of a treaty right, as well as a sovereign right. the question is it's kind of like anything that's dual use. like a knife. you can use a knife to butter your bread. but you can also use a knife to stab someone. it's the same thing with enriching uranium. they have a treaty recognizing sovereign right to do it. we want to make sure their knife doesn't get too sharp that they can use it for weapons. and we're building into that those assurances within this agreement. it will be a good agreement according to international law. >> and hillary, to make matters more complicated, and bear with me because this is quite complicated. the u.s. is supporting arab countries launching attacks on shiite rebels backed by iran and yemen who have been fighting terrorists there. but in iraq we're launching air strikes to help those who have been helping the iraqis fight isis. we're helping countries fighting iranian backed fighters in

yemen, while at the same time helping the same fighters in iraq. hillary, help break this down. do we have a well thought out strategy here, or is there a reason many people are left confused about this? >> well, this is the central dysfunction incoherence that has plagued u.s. policy now really for decades, but it's been on steroids for the past several years. and it gets to this deal about the nuclear issue. it's not really about enriching uranium or the number of sent centrefuges. and the ability to come to terms with that, as we came to terms in the early 1970s. when nixon and kissinger normalized relations with asia. and today we're not best buddies, but it's much better. same thing is happening with iran. we have a u.s. policy in the middle east in freefall. whether in libya, syria, iraq now in yemen. and the only way to fix that is with a much more constructive relationship with iran.

>> hillary, should we trust iran? many americans don't. >> i think again, you know states don't have friends. they shouldn't have friends or buddies. it should be as ronald reagan once said you trust but verify. that's what international law is about. the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and hopefully this agreement. i think this idea that we should trust any country is a path that leads us into places we don't want to be. >> so you feel confident, though that we can have the sort of controls in place to be able to effectively verify. >> i do. i mean you know the nuclear nonproliferation treaty has been incredibly effective. the countries that have built nuclear arsenals like india, pakistan, they never signed up to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. the treaty has been incredibly effective. those that haven't signed up have been the out lieers. >> a lot of people who deal with iran, thinking about iran are hoping for a future to change the leadership. you tend to feel like we're not going to get that change so we should deal with the folks that we have.

is that how you feel? >> absolutely. and in fact i'm somewhat of an outlie outlier in washington for it. i think the revolution they had in 1979 was their revolution where they built their system warts and all, but it's their indigenously created system. they're not getting rid of it any time soon. i think our push to get rid of it just hurts us not them. >> and hillary, a big part of the the conversation is congress wanting a bigger hand in this. they want to be a part of what is going on. that is going on the continue to play out as crystal was saying. where do you see that going from here? >> i think potentially it's a very serious problem for president obama. he has not made the case to the american people that this is about the united states in our interest. needing a better relationship with iran, just as we needed a better relationship with china in the 1970s. he hasn't made that case. that's not going to sell. if he can't sell it then i think it's going to become -- it may be hard to actually

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ameritrade. you got this. breaking news right now from lower manhattan. we are now learning people may be trapped in a possible gas explosion in new york city's east village. the fdny is on scene and the fire has spread to a number of buildings. you can see the flames and smoke overtaking that building that has both store fronts and homes. we will of course continue to follow the breaking details here on msnbc. but "now" begins right now.

we begin with breaking news at this hour here in new york. the new york city fire department responding at this moment to a building collapse in manhattan's east village. you can see the new footage there. the fire department saying they're responding to what they believe is a gas leak. this is brand new and simply unclear at this point what caused this sort of building collapse or any injuries or other problems related to it on the scene. that is what we know. we are going to bring updates further on the story to you this hour as we get them regarding this problem there in a new york building downtown. we are also of course following the latest developments on the germanwings plane crash in the french alpes. the crash that investigators now believe was a mass murder. today the hunt is on for more information about annddreas andreas